Clyde Wilson on American Populism

Up at the Forks of the Creek: In Search of American Populism

The New England Push for Secession

A Sympathy for Disunion By Vito Mussomeli

John Taylor of Caroline

It was his birthday yesterday.

The Political Wisdom of John Taylor of Caroline by W. Kirk Wood

John Taylor and Construction by James Rutledge Roesch

John Taylor of Caroline on Tyranny

The Imaginative Conservative: The Wisdom of John Taylor of Caroline
by Bradley J. Birzer

"Tyranny is wonderfully ingenious in the art of inventing species phrases to spread over its nefarious designs. ‘Divine right, kings can do no wrong, parliamentary supremacy, the holy alliance,’ are instances of it in Europe. ‘Common defense, general welfare, federal supremacy and political economy,’ impressed into the same service here. When the delusion of one phrase is past, another is adopted to work out the same ends as its predecessor."

Two more from the Imaginative Conservative

A Little Rebellion by Clyde N. Wilson


Inspired by Liberty & Virtue: The Education of the Founders of the American Republic (video)

"A slightly revised text version of this address can be found here."

Items of Interest, 8 February 2012

Robert M. Peters, First Principles

Mark T. Mitchell, Conservative in America

Conservatism at Its Highest

John Taylor of Caroline: The American Cato by Brittany Baldwin

Wendell Berry to Give 2012 Jefferson Lecture (Rod Dreher and FPR)

Daniel Larison, Romney and Santorum on Foreign Policy

Buchanan's Revolution

Daniel McCarthy, Is Santorum Buchanan 2.0?

Thomas Fleming, Adolf Assad

Why Edmund Burke is Studied
The Conservative Movement, Then and Now

Rod Dreher, Social Conservatives & the Politics of Now

Tom Engelhardt, Kicking Down the World's Door

Chinese Fascism's Global Consequences

Iran:
Fabius MaximusIran: War Drums Beating
Patrick Buchanan, Iran, War or Peace?
US Oblivious to Unintended Consequences of Foreign Policy by Ivan Eland
Paul Craig Roberts, Will Iran be Attacked?

Localism:
Robb's 27 Rules for Global Guerrillas
Seeing Berry’s Wilderness again by Chris Chaney (EB)
Community supported agriculture by John McKay (EB)
How do we build local social capital? by Dave Pollard (EB)

Mad City Chickens - trailer #3 from Tarazod Films on Vimeo.

Documentary
Madison, Wisconsin

Economics:
Is There Such A Thing As Ethical Capitalism? by Kerry-anne Mendoza (EB)
More on the job numbers--Michael Shedlock and Paul Craig Roberts.
Growth and free trade: Brain-dead dogmas still kicking hard by Herman Daly (EB)

Energy and Peak Oil:
OutThere Monthly - Interview with Richard Heinberg
Peak Oil Debate Continues
What is energy for? by Rebecca Willis (EB)
Arthur E. Berman, Petroleum Geologist: Magical Thinking and Fracking by James Howard Kunstler (EB)

Christian:
Rorate Caeli: A new Traditional monastery of Benedictine spirituality in France
Rod Dreher, Cardinal Egan Cracking Up

That article on French parenting: Why French Parents Are Superior

Music:
Today's Country: Rhonda Vincent
NYC: Upcoming performance by St. Vlad's Chorale (May 7, 2012)

Exploring Bay Area's hidden country music scene

Steve Martin Throws Down the Gauntlet

Feminism:
APNewsBreak: Sources: New military roles for women
What happened to downsizing the military? Are there not enough qualified men for these roles that women have to be allowed? But of course, everything must be thrown open to women, so that they can advance their careers.

Equal opportunity launchers of mass nuclear death
Insert a jokes about the synchronization of cycles and the end of the world...

Historical All-Female Flight Takes Place Aboard USS Carl Vinson

Without women there is no food sovereignty by Esther Vivas (EB)

Ending "Farmer's Wife" Syndrome by Sharon Astyk

Misc:
Tim Kennedy gives it to us straight about Iran, his duty as a sniper and retiring from MMA

More Stromberg on John Taylor of Caroline

Joseph R. Stromberg, The Political Economy of John Taylor of Caroline
Artificial Aristocrats Can Only Sustain Their Projects through Political Despotism
Country Ideology, Republicanism, and Libertarianism
John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824), Federalism, and Empire

And: Civil War and the American Political Economy and Civil War and the American Political Economy: Response to a Critic

Related:
Slavery in the North - not sure if the author has an agenda other than historical research.
A review of Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South.
Daniel MacCarthy's review of Adam Tate's Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789-1861: Liberty, Tradition, and the Good Society.
A Place for Interposition?
The Constitutional Republicanism of John Taylor of Caroline

Arator: Republicanism and Liberty: The "Patrick Henry"/"Onslow" Debate by H. Lee Cheek, Sean Busick, and Carey Roberts (via The Imaginative Conservative)

More from Arator:
The Origins of Jeffersonian Political Economy
by John Devanny, Jr.

John Taylor of Caroline's Agrarian Republicanism
by Joseph Stromberg

Another Stromberg piece on John Taylor of Caroline

The Constitutional Republicanism of John Taylor of Caroline by Joseph R. Stromberg

Some reading for the 4th of July

The Old Cause by Joseph R. Stromberg
John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824), Federalism, and Empire
JEFFERSONIAN THEORIST PAR EXCELLENCE

An Inquiry Into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States by John Taylor

The Old Cause by Joseph R. Stromberg

May 29, 2000
John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824), Federalism, and Empire
JEFFERSONIAN THEORIST PAR EXCELLENCE

Progressive historian Charles A. Beard called John Taylor of Caroline "the most systematic thinker" of the Jeffersonian Republican party. Taylor was an American exponent of republican theory as developed by English opposition movements in the 17th and 18th centuries. A successful lawyer and planter – and, yes, of course, a slaveholder, let's get that out of the way at the outset – he served in the American Revolution as a major in the Continental Army. He was a member of the Virginia legislature 179-1781, 1783-1785, and 1796-1800, and by appointment of the Governor served in the United States Senate, 1793-1794 and 1822-1824, on the death of the incumbents.
'ANTI-FEDERALIST' AND DECENTRALIST

Taylor preferred managing his properties and promoting agricultural improvement, to politics, as his brief forays into political life suggest. On the other hand, he could not overlook anti-republican folly and wrote a number of important works to set out his views on the proper relation of people and government. Among these was An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814), an answer – twenty years in the writing – to John Adams' Defense of the Constitutions of the United States.

Taylor had been an "anti-federalist" (a term of art) during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. After the new government came into being, Taylor and other former anti-federalists argued for interpretations of the new document in line with their principles. This was hardly arbitrary and it can be argued that the "intentions" of the ratifiers outweigh those of Mr. James Madison. Ten amendments incorporating the anti-federalists' chief concerns – especially as to the scope and powers of the new government in relation to the states – had been quickly adopted, giving enemies of centralization and mercantilism an entirely plausible platform (the fantasies of Garry Wills notwithstanding.).

A LIBERAL-REPUBLICAN SOCIOLOGY OF POLITICS

Naturally, the triumphant federalists kept their side of this constitutional bargain or compromise in much the same way that England honored the details of the treaty uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1707, which is to say that violations began immediately. Faced with federalist mercantilism and specific outrages like the Alien and Sedition Acts, Taylor weighed the secession of Virginia to secure the reserved rights of the state and its people. The revolution of 1800 – the election of Jefferson and the eclipse of the Federalist Party nationally – averted the crisis. Taylor was soon to learn that his own associates – in power – were quite capable of taking up where their opponents had left off.

In the writings which came out of his confrontation with national state-building, Taylor drew alike on the heritage of republican theory and the newer ideas of laissez faire liberalism. In the end, his synthesis bore a great resemblance to that of the French "industrialist" (radical liberal) school from the 1820s onward. Government, improperly framed, he believed, gave some men the opportunity to live parasitically by political means.

As Taylor put it: "No nation was ever oppressed, ruined or enslaved by the prodigality of individuals; all nations have suffered some of these evils from the prodigality of governments." Instead, the people were ruined by the "regular advances, which artificial interests or factions are forever making in straight or zigzag lines, against the citadel of our rights and liberties." The result, in America, was a "paper aristocracy" resting on tariffs and national debt, which threatened to be more costly and oppressive than even the feudal system had been. Established churches, after all, had been content to make a prior claim on a mere ten percent of the people's production. Taylor estimated that the paper aristocracy was extracting as much as forty percent of its victims' earnings.

Getting to the heart of what we now variously call neo-mercantilism, corporatism, or interest-group liberalism, he wrote: "As the members of the government, and members of legal frauds, both extract power and income from the majority, they are apt to coalesce; and each party to favour the designs of its ally, in their operations upon the common enemy. Hence governments love to create exclusive rights, and exclusive rights cling to governments. The ligament of parent and child, binds them together, and the power of creating these abuses, must make them props for its support, or instruments for its subversion." [my emphasis]

This, in a word, is the political basis of "class conflict" – politics as plunder – and here Taylor agrees with the French liberals and anticipates the similar arguments of John C. Calhoun.

WAR AND PEACE

As matters stood, considerable power of patronage and corruption had accrued to the American presidency. In time of war these powers were greatly increased: "War is the keenest carving knife for cutting nations up into delicious morsels for parties and their leaders." Given such views, it is not surprising that Taylor opposed the War of 1812 – the creation of his own political party.
A POSITIVE PROGRAM FOR REPUBLICAN LIBERTY

The solution seemed clear enough: "Remove the legal base from under the stock jobbers, the banks, the paper money party, the tariff-supported manufacturers, and so on; destroy the system of patronage by which the executive has corrupted the legislature; bring down the usurped authority of the Supreme Court." This was a tall order, and one never fully put into practice even by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, who carried out some of the details.

Like F. A. Hayek in his last works, Taylor thought that a proper political/legal framework could remove most of the incentive for the policies he opposed. Thus he sought to distribute power: "Our policy divides power, and unites the nation in one interest…." Power was to be divided between branches of government and between the federal and state governments, leaving no one "sphere" able to claim a final sovereignty over all. Hence Taylor's insistence on "strict construction" of constitutions and the notion of delegated, limited powers. And hence his disagreement with James Madison's proposition that endless territorial expansion across the continent would prevent the evils of faction. Expansion, periodic elections, and all the rest were not as decisive as the proper division and distribution of power.

CHATTEL SLAVERY AND POLITICAL SLAVERY

Now, there may be those who will say that Taylor overlooked a great abuse – chattel slavery – in which he himself participated. Perhaps so. Like many of his contemporaries, he wished to be rid of slavery in some remote future, if emancipation could be undertaken without destroying his own society. But I leave this matter to one side, as there are tens of thousands of scholars working overtime on such matters, a good many of whom find therein the justification of a permanent federal campaign against actually existing American life. Let us leave them to their fun.

Taylor's views survive their limitations. Chattel slavery, after all, was only one institution, one abuse, and it could be and indeed was abolished, although one might wonder whether a state-strengthening war with some 620,000 deaths was the best or only way to accomplish that end. I do not wish to argue the last point here. Rather, my point is that all the other abuses – the ones John Taylor so ably took on – are still with us, and in aggravated forms which could only astound both Taylor and his 19th-century antagonists. It was therefore with good reason that William Appleman Williams wrote that John Taylor "made the best case against empire as a way of life."

Taylor clearly understood the connection between state power at home and abroad. A republican empire was contradictio in adjecto.
Sources

Robert E. Shalhope, John Taylor of Caroline (Columbia, S.C., 1980), William Appleman Williams, Empire As A Way of Life (New York, 1980), pp. 49-50, John Taylor, Arator (Indianapolis, 1977 [1818]), and An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (New York, 1969[1814]), and Joseph R. Stromberg, "Country Ideology, Republicanism, and Libertarianism: The Thought of John Taylor of Caroline," Journal of Libertarian Studies, VI, 1 (Winter 1982), pp. 35-48.

John Taylor: New Views of the Constitution

The word Congress requires attention. It was adopted by the provinces, and the declaration of independence was framed "by the representatives of the United States in Congress assembled." The representative character, was common to the Congress of the provinces, of the states under the confederation of 1777, and of the states under the constitution of 1787; but neither this character, nor the intrinsick meaning of the word, were supposed to convey any powers until very lately. If the phrase "Congress of the United States," or the representative character of one branch of that body, had conveyed implied powers, it would have been useless to grant specified legislative powers to this "Congress of the United States" by the first article of the constitution. The numerous sovereign powers not granted by this article, must either pass by implication, or not pass at all. If they did not pass by this mode of conveyance, they remained with the states. The implication or inference is obviated by selecting the word "Congress" in preference to the words parliament or assembly, to the comprehensiveness of which the states had been accustomed. It was the precise word used to express a congregation of deputies from independent states or governments. In that sense it was adopted by the provinces, used in the confederation of 1777, and repeated in the constitution. No word could have been selected with equal felicity, to convey the idea contemplated by a federal system. It avoided the implications which the usual words parliament or assembly might have furnished, and demonstrated that a body of men invested with powers equivalent to those exercised by such denominations, was not intended to be established. And it intimated the independence of the several states as being similar to the independence of the several provinces of each other, as well as to that of distinct kingdoms. The assemblage of men which framed the constitution, was called "A convention of deputies from the states of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia." By what authority did the states appoint these deputies, if not in virtue of their respective sovereignties, existing in common with a "Congress of the United States?" If a Congress did not destroy the sovereignties of the states at that time, is it reasonable to suppose that the present "Congress of the United States" was constituted to destroy them? The deputies of the states in the convention, though representatives, could not have enacted a constitution, because it would have violated the limited powers which they received from state sovereignties; and in like manner, the deputies of the states now composing a Congress, though representatives, cannot exceed their powers. It is upon this principle, that Congress cannot alter the terms of the union.

The word "federal," also adopted into our political phraseology, is a national construction of the terms used in forming our system of government, comprising a definite expression of pub-lick opinion, that state sovereignties really exist. It implies a league between sovereign nations, has been so used by all classes of people from the commencement of our political existence down to this day, and is inapplicable to a nation consolidated under one sovereignty.

The meaning of the word "state" accords with that of the words associated with it. Used in reference to individuals, it comprises a great variety of circumstances, but in reference to the publick, it means a political community. Johnson thus expounds it, and adds, that it implies a republick, or a government not monarchical. What other word was more proper to describe the communities recognised by the declaration of independence, the union of 1777, and the union of 1787? Can the same word have been intended to convey an idea in the last, inconsistent with the idea it conveys in the two first instruments? Neither monarchy nor aristocracy would have fitted the case, and the word republick itself would have been exposed to uncertainties, with which the word state is not chargeable; because it has been applied to governments discordant with those which were established by our revolution. As no word more explicitly comprises the idea of a sovereign independent community; as it is used in conjunction with a declared sovereignty and independence; as it is retained by the union of 1787, and in all the operations of our governments; and as sovereign powers only could be reserved by states; there seems to be no sound argument by which it can be deprived of its intrinsick meaning, contrary to these positive constructions.

An alternate American political tradition

One defended and advocated by Dr. Clyde Wilson and others...

The Works of John Taylor of Caroline


A portrait from 1822.
The Papers of John C. Calhoun

I have one volume of the former, and am considering getting the latter. What else would I read to get a better insight into a republicanism that is properly centered on the states? How many Americans really care about reading works such as these, or the debate between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists?

Contrasting Themes in the Political Theories of Jefferson, Calhoun, and John Taylor of Caroline, by C. William Hill