Nolite confidere in principibus

Having had a day to mull over Ted Cruz’s declaration that he shall be voting for Donald Trump, here are a few of my scattered thoughts.

First of all, while it’s true that he did not technically endorse Trump, a politician indicating who he is voting for is a tacit endorsement. If aliens should invade my body and make me type the words “I am voting for Trump,” that isn’t quite an endorsement. But coming from the pen or keyboard of a politician – and one who was Trump’s primary opponent – it kinda is.

That being said, he is still not in a class with the Chrities and Carsons, nor even with Walker and Perry, the latter of whom have made the silly “If you don’t vote for Trump, you’re voting for Hillary”* argument. Cruz has put himself in a class with the likes of Rubio, who have declared their intention of voting for Trump without mocking those who have decided to do otherwise.

*It’s been a bit funny read those who have said the opposite – not voting for Clinton is the same as voting for Trump. So in voting for neither I am evidently voting for both. Well, at least I cancel my own vote out.

I also think some of the reaction against Cruz, especially on the #NeverTrump side, is a bit much, as though Cruz has personally betrayed them. Cruz, in his convention speech, urged people to vote their conscience. Yes, you could make the leap that he was subtly saying “Don’t vote for Trump,” but that’s not what he said. Ergo, this is not a “flip flop.”

This points to a somewhat worrying trend I’ve seen in some Never Trump quarters. Now I haven’t come down from my position of voting for neither one bit, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize with others who have decided Clinton is so awful it leaves them no choice but to vote for Trump. I adamantly disagree with their logic, but do not question their character.

Similarly, finding both characters disagreeable doesn’t mean I need to devote my twitter feed to bashing both at every turn. I have seen conservatives turn their twitter feed into Kurt Eichenwald’s sub-account. I don’t assume every allegation against either Trump or Clinton is automatically true because I don’t like them. I have found Matt Yglesias to be a vapid know nothing for 12 years, and that didn’t change because for once we happen to agree on precisely one candidate.

Ultimately, though, Cruz’s decision to announce his support reveals a severe lapse in judgment. Cruz has not disqualified himself from my support. Were I a Republican and a Texan, I would almost certainly vote for him in the 2018 primary. However, while my support for him in a presumed 2020 run was all but certain, now I have to rethink things. From accounts I’ve read all but a handful of his advisers advised him against this decision, and yet he went with the advice of his campaign manager. Simply put, it was terrible advice, as Cruz has pleased almost nobody with this declaration. Some of Trump’s supporters have embraced Ted, but most have continued to ridicule him. Meanwhile, many on the Never Trump side have seen this as nothing but confirmation that Cruz is a self-promoter who can be bought just as easily as any other pol. It is difficult to argue against them right now.

Such poor judgment is a worrisome character trait in a would-be president. True, everybody makes mistakes, but such a grand strategic blunder does concern me and makes me question how Cruz would approach weighty decisions were he in the White House.

Ultimately, this entire 2016 campaign season has been a giant confirmation of the 146th Psalm. Politicians will disappoint us all.

Burke and Rousseau (1)

Following up on the previous post about the Enlightenment, the contrasting philosophies of Burke and Rousseau are worth exploring. Though neither were a direct influence on the Framers, I am in full agreement with Irving Babbitt, who wrote:

One may, therefore, without being fanciful, regard the battle that has been in progress in the field of political thought since the end of the eighteenth century as being in its most significant phase a battle between the sprit of Burke and that of Rousseau.

This is a succinct and accurate summary of, really, most of what I have been and will continue to be writing about.

The crucial difference between Burke and Rousseau is over the role of history. Like most of his British counterparts, Burke favored slow, organic development. The lessons of the past are not to be disregarded. Rousseau places his confidence in the will of the moment, rejecting the idea that we are bound by tradition and custom. This battle of ideas over the role of history and custom reverberates to this very day.

Whereas Edmund Burke places much stock in such items as tradition, precedence, and prejudice Jean-Jacques Rousseau seeks to emancipate humans from the fetters of tradition. Hoping, in a sense, to begin the world anew, Rousseau speaks for spontaneity and individualism. Whereas Burke writes wistfully of the ties between generations and between members of the community, or the “little platoons,” Rousseau seeks to isolate individuals from one another, and creates a pseudo-anarchist social bond where each member of society feels a sense of duty to the rest of the community, but only in the most abstract fashion.

Burke is guided by what is termed the “historical sense.” He does not believe that individuals can come to full enlightenment without the guidance of their forefathers; instead we must draw on the experiences of the past in order to accumulate wisdom and knowledge. He writes that “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and ages.”Burke does not believe that individuals spontaneously form their opinions; instead, only through the accumulated experiences of past ages are we as humans able to develop our culture and mores.

Burke praises prejudice, which “is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of nature.” To cast aside prejudice is to cast off all accumulated knowledge and to start anew. This is extraordinarily foolish, according to Burke, because then we would be in constant need of learning again what already has been taught by past ages.

In the same vein society should not be so quick to throw off its connections with the past.  To do so would entail leaving society in a constant state of flux. Burke uses the metaphor of flies of summer to expand on this principle:

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were their entire masters, that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who came after them a ruin instead of an habitation – and teaching those successors as little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers.  By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken.  No one generation could link with the other.  Men would become little better than flies of a summer.

A society which ignores its traditions and constantly changes its structure does so at its own peril.

That is not to say that change is not possible or never acceptable. “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation,” Burke writes. “Without such means it might even risk the loss of the part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.” Burke does not argue that society must forever remain fixed in its original state.  Instead he advocates deliberate change, the kind of change which does not ignore the lessons of history and tradition. This is not the kind of change which was occurring in revolutionary France. The French revolutionaries intended to overturn the entire order of things. Burke observed in horror as French society tore off the “decent draperies” of life and flung the French nation into a state modeled after Rousseau’s philosophy.

The radicalization of the French Revolution horrified Burke precisely because it rejected those values that he venerated. More importantly, the Jacobins were attempting to construct a society through abstract concepts, particularly of liberty. Burke had a much more pragmatic approach to political affairs. Writing of the American Revolution, for example, he criticized Parliament for taxing the colonists. While Parliament certainly had the right to tax the colonists, it was not the prudent political course of action. “The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.” This highlights the importance of prudence in Burke’s political thought. He was not easily swayed by abstractions. He felt that prudent statesmen ought to be careful not get carried away by general philosophies, but instead they ought to carefully consider the particularities of a given moment before rendering judgment.

This points to one last important concept in Burke’s political thought: particularity. What works for one society or nation may not work for another because of the difference in manners and custom. Again speaking of the conflict between Britain and the colonies, he observes:

I was never wild enough to conceive that one method would serve for the whole, that the natives of Hindostan [sic] and those of Virginia could be ordered in the same manner, or that the Cutchery court and the grand jury of Salem could be regulated on a similar plan.  I was persuaded that government was a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians.  Our business was to rule, not to wrangle; and it would have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed in a dispute, whilst we lost an empire.

Political systems will work differently depending on the particular people. That is not to say that Burke rejects the concept of a universal moral law, but rather that its application will differ in each particular society. Burke would therefore eschew a political approach that would try to uniformly instill values on all people.

The Enlightenment(s) and the Founders

Nothing is sure to boost website traffic quite like talking about political philosophy, but I think it’s worth examining the ways in which Enlightenment thinking influenced America’s revolutionary generation, and what that means in examining America’s ideological roots.

First of all, it’s important to delineate what we exactly mean by the Enlightenment. No doubt you were introduced to the Enlightenment in some high school history class. Even if you went to a “Catholic” high school as I did, you were probably taught something along these lines: for most of the history of the world there was intellectual darkness. It was never darker than in the Middle Ages, when all of Europe was under the thumb of Emperors and Popes. There may have been a Dante here or a Chaucer there, but these few lights only highlighted the deep darkness that surrounded them. Then the Enlightenment happened and suddenly everyone realized that they were just chained to an authoritative system of some kind. The Enlightenment – always singular, mind you – changed everything. Inspired by the Enlightenment, the colonists finally decided to throw off the shackles of the ancien regime. And all was light and happiness, well, at least until modern day conservatives sought to throw us all back into the darkness.

That may work if you are Louis Hartz and you are writing the Liberal Tradition in America, but reality is a little different. If you want to find out how dark the Dark Ages really were you should probably go read C.S. Lewis. More importantly, the singular nature of the Enlightenment wasn’t in fact so singular. There was no single epoch in time called the Enlightenment. Rather it was a movement spread across Europe that encompassed many different points of view, but which in some cases offered radically different views of human nature and the ideal political system. Trying to lump Adam Smith and Voltaire together as adherents of a similar political awakening is suspect at best, and academic malpractice at worst.

That is not to say that there were not important common themes throughout all of Enlightenment thought.  Peter Gay, who specializes in thesubject of Enlightenment, sees general harmony through all aspects of the Enlightenment.  He captures the essence of what unites the various philosophies.

The men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program, a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all freedom in its many forms – freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one’s talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom – in a word, of moral man to make his way in the modern world.

The key word is freedom.  If there was a single, underlying theme that guided the Enlightenment, it was the quest for freedom.  But what kind of freedom?  Political freedom, certainly, but different groups within the Enlightenment had respectively broad and narrow conceptions of freedom.

Who were these different groups?  Connor Cruise O’Brien and Gertrude Himmelfarb in particular distinguish between the Scottish and British Enlightenments[, exemplified by figures such as Locke and Montesquieu, and the French or Continental Enlightenment.  These two groups differed particularly over religion. The Scottish and British Enlightenment philosophers by and large did not disdain organized religion, specifically Christianity, and in fact co-existed with it and celebrated the positive influences of religious ideals upon the populace.  On the other hand, French Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire disdained religion and sought to undo its baleful intrusion into the political sphere.

Michael Spicer explains other differences between these two Enlightenments. Most of the philosophes were rationalists who believed in perfectibility. They thought that human beings, guided by properly trained reason, could build greater societies. They also generally relied more heavily upon a priori or abstract reasoning.  As he puts it, they were optimists who believed that “once all are properly trained and educated as to the nature of the common good and the means necessary to achieve it, agreement on action for the collective good becomes possible.” Furthermore, rationalists – and the philosophes belong to this group – view customs and traditions as obstacles. They prefer to look to science in order to “aid our understanding not only of the laws of physical phenomena but also of laws of human behavior and relations.”

The bulk of British Enlightenment philosophers would fit into the group Spicer terms “anti-rationalists.” They were much more skeptical of human nature. They did not believe in the ultimate perfectibility of man, and were consequentially less utopian in outlook.  They relied more heavily upon empirical evidence, and were also less hostile to tradition and custom.

 

Much as the term anti-Federalist distorts the actual philosophy of those so named, the term anti-rationalist seems to suggest that these thinkers opposed the use of human reason. It would be a laughable exaggeration to claim that the British Enlightenment philosophers were opposed to human reason. In fact, the major source of commonality between all Enlightenment camps is the embrace and celebration of human reason. But what separates these two camps is the degree to which they place their faith in reason.  The anti-rationalists, Spicer explains, more fully appreciate the limits of human reason.  They hold that people do not have the necessary wisdom to “consciously design and run a social order.”Human beings are fallible, and must rely on customs and tradition as well as reason.  As such, Spicer places thinkers such as Locke, Ferguson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke in the anti-rationalist category because they all, to one degree or another, emphasize the role of tradition in shaping human affairs.

Thomas Sowell employs a similar dichotomy in explaining the difference in worldviews.  He posits that men such as Smith and Burke had what he terms a constrained vision of man.  They did not seek to change human nature, but rather hoped to deal with the imperfections of men and form a political system around those imperfections. On the other hand, those who shared an unconstrained vision believed in the perfectibility of men.  They did not necessarily posit that humanity could be made to be actually perfect, but continuous improvement was possible, and society could plan in such a way so as to ensure this continued improvement.

Like Spicer’s anti-rationalists, individuals with a constrained vision appreciated the limits of reason and knowledge and also placed much stock in experience and tradition.  “Knowledge is thus the social experience of the many, as embodied in behavior, sentiments, and habits, rather than the specially articulated reason of the few, however talented or gifted those few might be.” Those men who clung to the unconstrained vision rejected the usefulness of “collective wisdom” and sought to ignore the dead hand of the past.

Friedrich Hayak came up with a similar distinction between the “empirical” outlook of the British Enlightenment and the “rationalist” approach of the continental group. The British empirical method is more spontaneous, lacks coercion, and favors a slow and steady timetable of progress. The French philosophy believes that freedom is found “only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose. Hayak preferred the British approach, writing “they knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic but the evolution of ‘well-constructed institutions,’ where ‘the rules and principles of contending interests compromised advantages’ would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims.”

There is a recurring theme here.  The British did not reject tradition. They grasped that society did not form overnight and in a vacuum. Though they certainly advocated reform measures, they tended to be more conservative in their approach. The French philosophes had a much more radical vision grounded in rationalism. They had a greater sense that society could be ordered in a certain way to maximize human happiness.

These distinctions are important for a couple of reasons. First, they show the term Enlightenment admits of different meanings, and not all Enlightenment thinking was the same. More importantly, it sets the frame for much of the analysis to come, because these dualing philosophies – particularly as highlighted in Sowell’s conflict of visions – continue to frame our political debates, though not in an explicit manner.

 

September 11

We have forgotten much, and learned little. But let us pray for those who died that day, those whose lives were forever changed, and for our nation, and the goodness which still resides in the hearts of most of its citizens.

Liberalism and Republicanism

(The combination of a long weekend and a lawn mower-induced internet outage led to a slightly longer than anticipated delay in posting. I’m back, although I might be looking for mulch sometime soon.)

In my previous post I mentioned this Jack Balkin piece, which critiqued Randy Barnett’s appelation of our “republican” constitution, or at least criticized Barnett’s understanding of republicanism. Balkin looks to antiquity and classical understandings of republicanism to separate it from classical liberalism. For Balkin, republicanism means something much more substantial than being anti-monarchial.

The discussion begins on page 16 of the attachment and stretches out for several pages, so I won’t quote too much from it, though it is worth the read. I’ll just paste Balkin’s summary paragraph:

To sum up: republicanism includes seven principles: (1) opposition to monarchy, aristocracy, and oligarchy; (2) duties to further the public good and act for the public interest; (3) equality of citizenship with no special classes, privileges or disabilities that might create a new aristocracy; (4) freedom as nondomination; (5) individual and political self-rule; (6) a principle against corruption (including individual and systemic corruption); and (7) a principle against political self-entrenchment.

I have not yet read Barnett’s book, so I can’t speak to whether or not he glosses over or completely ignores these distinctions, but as applied to Locke and classical liberalism, I’m not sure there is quite as much tension as Balkin seems to imply. Balkin spends much time discussing the anti-aristocratic elements of republicanism, and thus the inherent push for equality, but Locke’s own writing would indicate he would be fairly sympathetic to these outcomes.

Locke is widely and rightly recognized for his writings on property, and specifically citing property within his trinity of inalienable rights. Yet Locke goes to great lengths in the Second Treatise to emphasize that the accumulation of property beyond one person’s ability to make use of it would be a waste. Hording, essentially, would be unethical. Locke of course makes allowance for trading and for cultivating land beyond what one person or family can directly use, so long as the yield remains productive and can provide nourishment for a sufficient number.

Adam Smith would make similar arguments in The Wealth of Nations. Though Adam Smith’s hidden hand, laissez-fair philosophy is a natural progression of Lockean liberalism, it is not necessarily in conflict with republicanism. What is at odds – and this is no small matter – is the duty of the government to promote these concepts. Almost all classicly liberal thinkers emphasize the need to have a moral citizenry, yet they draw the line at compulsion.

If anything, the birth of liberalism marks the line of demarcation between civil society and government. Whereas previously it would be more difficult if not impossible to distinguish between these concepts, liberalism (of the classical variety) creates a space between society and the government. Government has a limited portfolio under the liberal approach. Government is essentially there to preserve the peace, safeguard property rights, and enforce punishments. While it was assumed that a society governed in this manner would require virtuous citizens, sumptuary laws and other types of legislation designed to constrain behavior would be out of bounds.

There was a divide in early American history, with New Englanders more prone to that republican tradition, and some of that will be discussed later on. For now, I think it’s important to understand where Locke and other liberals were coming from, and how their thinking may have influenced the Framers. For while I sympathetic to Balkin’s view, as well as some of the other writers he cited, I think the classical liberal tradition of Locke is the one which not only had the most influence on our founding, but is one which adeptly weds different strands of thought together.

Now I said previously that Locke was overrated and yet under-appreciated. He is overrated in the sense that Bernard Bailyn designates him as such (though in much more acadmic language), because ultimately I don’t think Locke was necessarily a direct influence on the Framers. The Framers relied on many different writers and had a variety of influences, and oftentimes they merely cited works that were convenient to them at the time they were making the argument. So I would agree that America is not exactly a Lockean nation, and Louis Hartz was fundamentally off.

At the same time, I think much of Lockean liberalism – dare I say, the spirt of Lockean liberalism – certainly influenced American political development. I also think a careful reading of Locke reveals a little more, ahem, nuance than is often appreciated. I don’t think Locke’s ends are entirely different than that of classical republican thinkers, yet he had a different conception of how to achieve those ends. Again, this is not a minute difference by any means, but I think liberalism’s critics overestimate how much it departs from classical political thought.

Locke and Hobbes

I don’t want to spend too much time on the political philosophies which inspired the Founding Fathers, in part because there were so many disparate influences and because they ultimately forged their own unique brand of political thought. That being said, it would be useful to go over some of the general influences and ideas which helped shape the young American nation.

John Locke is at once overrated in his importance and influence and yet perhaps under appreciated. If you’re Louis Hartz, Locke represents just about everything when it comes to forging early American political thought, yet Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Forrest McDonald and others have disputed Locke’s influences, and in the main I tend to agree with their assessment. Americans certainly read and respected Locke, and Thomas Jefferson’s works – including, of course, the Declaration of Independence, superficially seem to seep with Lockean sentiment, but it’s doubtful that the Framers en masse upheld him as their preeminent influence.

Yet Locke, as well as Thomas Hobbes, must be understood if we’re to have some sense of the ideas percolating in late 18th century America. Hobbes and Locke are perhaps the two earliest social contract thinkers, and both mark a departure from classical political thought.* Whereas writers/theorists from Plato to Augustine to Aquinas were concerned primarily with creating a polity which promoted civic virtue and, ultimately, the summum bonum, or greatest good, the focus of Hobbes and Locke was ultimately the individual. Hobbes specifically rejects the idea of working to promote the summum bonum.

*: Whether Machiavelli is the end of a classical political thought course or the beginning of a modern political thought course is a good indication of what the professor sees as the underlying currents tying together these different strands of thought.

While there is much that separates Hobbes and Locke, which I will get to in a moment, there are some unifying themes. Both write about the “state of nature,” or man in his primitive, pre-political state. Hobbes describes such a state as one of constant warfare. Locke, on the other hand, views the state of nature as generally sanguine, yet rough enough to necessitate the creation of the political state. The political state is created, according to both thinkers, in order to provide security against the ravages of the state of nature. In a sense, both anticipate the libertarian view of government as one of minimal purpose other than as being a means of ensuring personal property and life.

Hobbes advocates a much different form of government. He favors an absolute monarchy to which people surrender their rights. Locke’s system of government is a democratic form of government with multiple branches (executive, legislative, and federative) that is a close model of the American form of government. For Locke natural rights are inalienable, and the sovereign power cannot take away our rights. Therefore revolution, as long as it meets certain criteria for justness, is permissable, which it is not for Hobbes.

I will concentrate on Locke, but I will note that Hobbes’ Leviathan, despite being an absolute form of government, is not necessarily an intrusive government. In fact it is little more than the night watchman state, in which the primary and almost sole purpose of government is to punish criminal offenses. Government has few responsibilities outside of this. Now, obviously an authoritarian government can more easily become a totalitarian, intrusive one than the polity promoted by Locke and later the Framers, but it is not ipso facto the same type of Leviathan as we would categorize the Leviathan state today.

As for Locke, he is generally seen as the father of classical liberalism, and with reason. Lobbes argues for inalienable, God-given rights; a limited, non-absolutist government chock; separation of powers; proprty rights; and he is supportive of the free flow of ideas and maximization of personal liberty.

Many view Locke’s philosophy as a marked departure from classical republicanism. Jack Balkin, for instance, draws a sharp distinction between Lockean liberalism and classical republicanism in an essay critiquing Randy Barnett’s recently published book, Our Republican Constitution. Balkin argues that Barnett’s vision of republicanism, which is so heavily imbued with Lockean liberalism, can’t even properly be called republican.

Much of what Balkin writes is perceptive and correct, though I think there is some space for Lockean liberalism within classical republicanism, and I will discuss that in the next post.