America and the Liberal pact.
Continuing the conversation.
By Paul J Cella Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
With the promulgation of A Reactionary’s Shorter Catechism — and despite its probable deficiencies, beginning even in its questionable character as, indeed, a catechism — we hoped to provoke a conversation. Conversations, after all, are what republics are all about. As distinguished from democracies where the exercise of will is not delayed by a deliberative institution, a republic filters its sovereignty through representative assembles whose primary purpose is to talk. These deliberative assemblies are instituted in order to represent the people, in whom rests the final sovereignty — in the idiom of the Federalist, it rests in “the people themselves” — and therefore the debate inside these institutions is expected to reflect a larger debate outside them, that is, out there in the republic.
One of the clear points of contention in the conversation that ensued upon the promulgation of the dubious Catechism, concerned the status of what was called the “Liberal pact.”
Read on.
This pact is probably best described as of Lockean providence; and it signifies that quintessential “functional atheism” of modern political philosophy. Man is conjectured, at least for political purposes, as driven primarily by his acquisitive passions. He is defined by his desires. He is through and through a material being. Thus politics becomes an enterprise of peace-making in the midst of what would otherwise be a ruthless pursuit of these things, a “war of all against all.” The peace-maker is accepted by all men, in their emergence from this brutish “state-of-nature,” and this contract is the foundation of the State. In the darker visions, where a solid sense of the Fall endures, the State becomes Leviathan. In the brighter versions, it becomes a mere adjudicator of competing rights-claims. But in all versions, the permanent questions of God and Man — or, if you like, of the nature and destiny of man — are, as my co-author put it, “bracketed” and removed to the private realm.
Much of our conversation concerned the status of this theory — another common phrase for it is “social contractarian” — in the American political tradition. Is America, or is she not, a nation founded upon a strict social contract model of politics?
Now let us not underestimate the importance of this question. A great deal hangs upon it; and until we dispel the confusion that surrounds it — one need only look at the long and convoluted comments discussing it to realize that there is considerable confusion indeed — the progress of our conversation (which, to repeat, is what republics are all about) will be hindered. For instance, if the pact is in force, if it enjoys constitutional status, then our Liberals are quite right to fear and loathe the encroachment of religion upon politics; for these encroachments, even when they have no official state sanction, augur a dangerous usurpation of the contract from whence comes the very legitimacy of the state. In constituting ourselves a people we deliberately set aside such questions; our first act as a nation was to “bracket” questions of the nature and destiny of man. Nor is that all: for not only is religion a usurpation, or at any rate an aspiring one — so, also, is justice, or at least justice defined as anything other than the fulfilling of contracts. As one of the Republic’s great writers put it, “This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation” — except that the statement was true, not merely when Justice Scalia wrote it, in a dissent to a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, but from the moment when the American Republic began. Morals legislation means laws designed to, as it were, interfere in even private contracts for no other reason than that the moral sense of the community is offended by them. Morals legislation, strictly speaking, does not speculate that the activity to be proscribed is physically harmful (though it may occasionally call upon physical harm as an ancillary argument), and thus, in the social contractarian view, it cannot be justified, because only physical harm, a threatened reprise of the “war of all against all,” can rouse Leviathan. Quite apart from its validity — a question which the Peace-maker State remains pristinely agnostic about — the Peace-maker State is not in the business of enforcing the morality of the community.
Nor is that all: the acceptance of the social contract model as fundamental to our political tradition means that the Libertarian view of Free Speech is unassailable. It is obvious that the peaceful adjudication of competing desires requires a free interchange of ideas and expression. It is clear, moreover, that only physical violence may rouse Leviathan. Therefore, a sort of Free Speech absolutism must reign. Exceptions from this orthodoxy (and even the strictest Libertarian must recognize some exceptions) will be afforded only the most grudging of acknowledgements, and even then only by various legal devices of dubious character. Again, the point to emphasize is that the Liberal pact will not allow the exercise of the moral sense of the community to operate through legislation.
I do not flatter myself that this debate can be ended here and now. My more humble purpose is to merely advance the conversation. With that in mind, I will offer a few brief sketches of the sort of solid evidence that this theory must contend with in order to be persuasive. In short, I aim to offer counterpoints to the argument that the Liberal pact is at back of the American political tradition.
(a) The Preamble to the United States Constitution. In a word, it is not the sort of prefatory note one would expect from strict social contractarians. It sets out six purposes toward which “We the People” aspire; and several of them do not fit the bill of the Liberal pact at all. One of our purposes is Union or unity. Another is the establishment of Justice. Yet another embraces not merely “ourselves” but also “our Posterity,” thus unmistakably expanding the supposed contract to men and women not yet even alive, and therefore quite unable to assert their desires.
(b) Self-government. One of the most crucial phrases in the Federalist is this one: “the deliberate sense of the community.” Both Hamilton and Madison use it, and moreover use it will sweeping implications. Madison (No. 63): “the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers . . .” Hamilton (No. 71) “The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs . . .” Now this sounds suspiciously like an endorsement of moral legislation. If the deliberate sense of the community on obscenity, on sedition, on deceptive advertising, or on a dozen other things, is to be thwarted by the social contract at back of our tradition — why, then, according to Publius both “free government” and “the republican principle” is frustrated by the very document by which we made ourselves a republic under a free government. In other words, the Liberal pact stands in opposition to self-government; indeed it prevents self-government on some matters touching on things, judging by the intensity of the debate on them, of deep importance to a great many people. We are, according to this theory, a republic that thwarts the republican principle; and a government that by design stands in contrast to “all free governments.”
(c) Lincoln and purpose. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In this most famous of all sentences in American oratory, Abraham Lincoln actually sets forth four propositions. (1) “Our fathers brought forth . . . a new nation.” (2) It was “conceived in Liberty.” (3) It was “dedicated” to a “proposition.” (4) This proposition was “that all men are created equal.” All but one (the first) of these propositions is in tension with the Liberal pact. Lincoln may be espousing a contractarian theory of sorts, but it is emphatically not one defined by the adjudication of material desires. Proposition 3 alone seems quite irreconcilable with the Liberal pact. The new nation is “dedicated” to a higher purpose, which is something much more than mere procedural neutrality. If equality — so high a purpose as to require the bloody butcher’s bill commemorated by Lincoln in his brief oration — is conceived as nothing more than the neutrality of the state in the peaceful pursuit of acquisition, well, then I’m a donut.
(d) The Declaration of Independence. In American literature there is also a most famous of all passages — the one to which Lincoln hearkened back. Usually its later clauses are emphasized, but it seems to me that the ringing phrase with which it opens deserves more careful attention: “we hold these truths.” Our fathers brought forth a new nation, and they set its foundation upon truths held in common: shared beliefs about, if I may be so bold in rounding out my argument, the nature and destiny of man. To fancy that these shared truths extend only to the neutral character of the state, and the desire for peace in the midst of competition is, I’m afraid, to render much of the power and nobility of the American tradition absurd. It is a strange and almost pathetic man who, “with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” pledges his Life, his Fortune and his sacred Honor to the cause of procedural neutrality in the service of acquisition.
Those who set the Liberal pact at back of the American tradition have some tangles indeed to unravel.
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The spiritual unity of pre-reformation Europe coexisted as easily as anything in this world can with a robust diversity, even an incomprehensible patchwork, of adjoined, competing, and overlapping political, ethnic, and cultural formations. The shattering of this spiritual unity - the longing for which cannot be uprooted from the human spirit, let us remember - ultimately led Europeans of those generations to gradually transfer the emotive investment formerly deposited with the Church to those entities which afforded some semblance of unity in the form in which it really matters to men (that is to say, tangibly), the nation-states. I can only assume that a similar dynamic obtained, to some degree or other, in the Islamic world.
This is, of course, nothing more than the existential "cash value" of functional political and social atheism.
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
a spiritual unity for pre-Reformation Europe when it fact the continent and its civilization was riven by a divide between East and West. The Eastern church is and was not simply Catholicism Lite.
....because political modernity came to Western Europe well before most of its effects were felt in the East. No disparagement of the East was intended.
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
let us refer to it simply as identity, will, in the case of many of the deracinated elites and those among the masses who have adopted elite modes of thought along with lifestyles derived from patterns established by elites, will fall to all of the fictive, fabricated identities that people assume when they "determine for themselves the meaning of life and the nature of existence." These identities will be largely parasitic upon other, more primal sources of identity, much as they have always been. As such, their bearers will ultimately fail to reproduce them.
In direct proportion as others have liberated themselves from elite modes of thought, they will revert to ethnicity, religion, and the occasional recrudescent nationalism in order to ground stable identities and impart significance to their actions. This will not, considered solely as a phenomenon in itself, be a terrible thing; in fact, in many respects, it will be positive. In multicultural societies bereft of a dominant source of identity, or in which the nature of a nominally shared identity is controverted, things will be ugly. Very ugly.
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
That is what many thinkers in the nineteenth century thoght would happen. You are familiar with Nietzsche.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...
And people such as De Tocqueville and Mallock said much the same thing.
After the first shots were fired at Bunker Hill, and at Washington's encampment across the Delaware that December, how much conversation took place between the tories and the colonists?
After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, after the first Manassas, after Gettysburg, or after the The Wilderness how much conversation took place between the rebels and the northerners?
We are at the same impasse today.
On one side, we have the "ease and comfort generation" stridently calling for the end of any and all stressors, for peace at any price. Isn't that the promise of the "Nanny State?" Forget History. Forget the consequences. As long as its somebody else's family that takes that final ride on that airplane, as long as it's somebody else's family member at work in that building, nothing is worth war. The "it can't happen to me syndrome" is riding rampant with the left.
On the other side we have people who recognize the threat to Democracy, to Western Civilization, and to Christianity that the present moment presents and who also remember and acknowlegde the grave danger that the appeasement the left wishes to offer presents. We are at a point where the people who refuse to recognize, let alone do anything about the danger, are a grave threat to themselves, and the people who do actually perceive the threat.
not part of the solution.
we are NOT at war with each other (though we are at war with outside enemies).
We do not need military action against each other; we need something like Paul's conversation: sober reason among folk of good will.
The Civil War ought not be our template (and certainly not when we are waging external war!) rather we should look to the example of the Founders who might have fallen out in selfish strife and arrogant combat with ecah other but instead came together to do the harder work of hammering out their differences.
All of this is part of a debate that has been going one since at least the 1960s in academic circles when the Hartzian "liberal consensus" was effectively challenged by JGA Pocock, Bernard Bailyn, and Gordon Wood among many others. Interestingly, these criticisms of the liberal consensus originally came from what we might call the academic left, but they were soon joined, especially by those influenced by Strauss and Tocqueville by more conservative folks like Forrest McDonald and Harvey Mansfield.
He has been my primary teacher on this matters. His students are still active at the University of Dallas.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
His book, Vindicating the Founders, is very good, and he is at the University of Dallas. He's a Straussian.
"During my lifetime, all our problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions from the English-speaking nations across the world." - Thatcher
I am not well-acquianted with his work, but I do know from a brief correspondence that we are both Kendall admirers.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
But West is an interesting person. U Dallas is known as a Straussian department, but one characterized by a Straussianism rather its own.
His introduction to the Liberty Fund edition of Algernon Sydney's Discourses is eccentric, to say the least. Sydney himself was eccentric. And the shifting politics of Restoration England makes definitive claims like "Sydney believed x" or "Locke believed y" tricky.
It is important to note that not all Straussians are conservative, and not all conservatives are Straussian.
What's really interesting in political theory right now is how more or less the conventional political left/right distinction has more or less collapsed, or at least is quite muddled. The post modern types are more or less out there doing their own thing, Marxists are more or less irrelevant and aren't really doing political philosophy anymore. You've got democratic discourse people making common cause with neo-republicans arguing with social choice who make old fashioned liberals uncomfortable, but maybe not as uncomfortable as democratic theorists.
It is important to note that not all Straussians are conservative, and not all conservatives are Straussian.
Yes, that is important to note. Many of them are stone-cold Nietzscheans. It would seem pretty obvious upon examination that such theoriests are at odds with Conservatism, but our journalists have forgotten the art of examination when it comes to Leo Strauss.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
...that while it would probably be somewhat strained to posit any sort of causal relation, an analogous process, occurring separately but in tandem, is transpiring politically. The ideological turmoil that characterizes much of the discourse of left and right is in part a product of a broader realignment of issues, allegiances, coalitions, etc. The old paradigms that outlived their formative period of the Cold War, and much of their relevance, are slowly, but inexorably, disintegrating.
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
Re: Yet another embraces not merely “ourselves” but also “our Posterity,” thus unmistakably expanding the supposed contract to men and women not yet even alive, and therefore quite unable to assert their desires.
Except of course that the Constitution allows posterity to amend the Constitution or even to void it entirely and replace it with a new one.
Re: For instance, if the pact is in force, if it enjoys constitutional status, then our Liberals are quite right to fear and loathe the encroachment of religion upon politics
Let's not ignore history here. The 18th century views on religion and politics, on Church and State, did not arise in a vacuum. The Founders had 1400 years of civilizational experience to gaze back upon and determine thereby that the comingling of the things of Heaven with the things of Earth works to the severe detriment of both, as well producing no limit of human misery and injustice. Nor is this only true of our own civilziation, since to this day we may look upon the self-same experiment being run in Islam, more thoroughly than it was ever run in Christendom, and with correspondingly more hideous results. And when azizhp doubts the Peace of Westfalia he ought give more consideration to the gruesome horrors of the warr that it ended.
But we have more civilizational experience (or at any rate we potentially have more) to draw upon; and one of the more striking experiences is the slaughter of the 20th century, occasioned by atheist and pagan states. Even after the French Revolution, the wise realized that atheism in politics had the potential to be as fatal as religion in politics.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
WARNING: I am completely out of the field here when it comes to discussing political theory, a topic on which I am mostly ignorant, especially in comparison all those others who have posted here. I am not qualified for academic discussions on that basis and so may be shedding more heat than light, as Jon said it. I respond only to the extent the diary purports to demand answers to criticisms of a personal view I have expressed. That view is but the heartfelt view of a common citizen, perhaps armchair philosopher. It is possible that I may have misunderstood the entire course of this conversation and Paul’s meaning, method and motivations. So with that disclaimer, my response….
I don’t assert that American tradition incorporated the liberal pact as you have defined it. I will assert that Locke and others influenced American founders. That a valuation of liberties was an innovation arising out of Western European culture entailing a move to rely less on authorities and more on reason; and to rely on natural law, natural rights, and comprehension of man and the world rather than more strictly on divine guidance represented by a special class of soothsayers.
There is a consensus that we are material beings, at least that. There is not a consensus that we are only that; not now and not then; so there can not and could not possibly be any pact on that point. That some modern liberals insist on that is a fact but not a pact.
The questions of God and Man are not “bracketed” out of public life in any way I comprehend. Just ask President George W. Bush. But the “deliberate sense” does not reach sufficient consensus on the nature of divine revelation or man’s relation to god in order to make that be absolute basis for polity. As for my own reliance on divine revelation, I take the message that it decisively refrains from claiming authority over the polity, making its own “bracket” if you will.
As to questions of the “nature and destiny of man” I, with my pact in tow, put that squarely in the center of the public realm. I don’t genuflect to that “openness” and “tolerance” which is designed to set these questions aside; I, with my pact in tow, challenges these as constraints which cannot be taken seriously because they descend into absurdity, emasculating our natural faculties.
Quite in contrast to America, Communist countries are good examples of atheist states. And theist states are also quite in contrast to America. Perhaps America is an agnostic state. But to say that Nazi Germany and the communist USSR are products of the liberalism that is practiced by America is utterly absurd by my lights. America based on vibrancy of its liberalism denounced those atheistic states and did them in. And so it also did with a more theist like Japanese state.
I see this pact as a cultural innovation. It is something we just generally sort of realize and extend to each other by the values we have adopted. I have no idea whether it is the political theory which is used to justify government or the idea which is at the back of everything in the constitutional convention and I really don’t care. I like our polity because it does protect these liberties which are a very real part of my daily experience, because it offers a decent measure of justice to me and those I care about, because it gives me and those I care about opportunity to make the most of our life; those and reasons like those. I evaluate it and it seems good to me and I am one among many who all are making such evaluations and together we make a verdict. “Deliberate sense” is just what I would call it. That is a great innovation away from obedience to the authority of some special class of deciders and from authority which trumps reason, evaluation and choice. Here I observe a pact to value our “deliberate sense.” Where “religion” or Tradition has something to say on the nature and destiny of man, on matters of justice, let her say it loud and clear. Let her submit herself to the “deliberate sense.” But if she purports to command that “deliberate sense” then indeed she has crossed the line; she has usurped, she affects to abolish the “deliberate sense.”
That some have moved on from these innovations on the valuation of liberties and turned Liberty into an Ideal, some principle that must be kept at all costs, some Kantian moral imperative, is highly disturbing to me. They, being elite instructors, have put this notion in many people’s heads and it often shows as an impediment to discourse on policy, and it does affect misguided policy. I believe its practice will be its demise, as is the way for ideals in general. And I hope that the “deliberate sense” will keep it from being our polity’s demise.
Issues of morality are not outside of my pact or conception of the realm of the government. On the one hand, I do not think the polity can or should try to legislate virtue into a man’s heart. Even Christ (as I know him) does not purport to do so. There is a basic and natural respect – deriving from our comprehension of human nature -- that our shared values accord to choice, disrespect for which reduces man to slave or automaton. And virtue entails that choice being willingly made. On the other hand, questions of what behavior ought to be sanctioned for the health of the society and the delivery of justice are certainly moral (there is a lot of ambiguity in this term) questions and are legislated. If the “deliberate sense” concludes that sodomy ought to be proscribed then indeed it ought. But, for the afore mention reason, the laws of our polity cannot have as their purpose to save men’s eternal souls or to presently set them in right relation to god or even to make them virtuous. “Justice” for me, with pact in tow, is not simply about fulfilling contracts. I personally make judgments about what is unjust. It is in the nature of man to do so. It is a service that the polity needs to provide. And the “deliberate sense” is the best yet determiner of it. Nothing convinces me that god has descended from his heights in order to meet it out for us day to day. Morals legislation – legislation guided by my moral sense -- has not ended in my vote, and I suspect it has not ended in many other votes. And so I think it is an ongoing part of the representative legislative process by which we grant authority to our laws. And if a few Justices have conspired to end it themselves, in defiance of the “deliberate sense” then they may suffer the reaction to tyranny. For now I’ll stake my hope on that sweet innovation of checks and balances.
For me, this social contract is not achieved in signing on to a script of Ideals. It occurs in according mutual respect to a shared set of values. I suppose Libertarians have idealized it. We should notice that we are not all Libertarians. You have certainly noticed that I, pact in tow, am quite ready to follow my own sense and rise to condemn certain ideas as evil and to proscribe their spread. And if the “deliberate sense” is joined in this conclusion, then it may enjoin those who corrupt other men’s minds with evil ideas. On all these matters, I fail to see where consistency demands otherwise. Free speech deserves presumption, but it is not an ideal which commands obedience. All our answers are not made so clear, so reason continues its compass.
As to the enumerations, first tell me, in order to maintain my position along with its dialectical criticisms, do you believe that I need to sustain the claim that the Liberal pact is at the back of American political tradition, the very first cornerstone as it were? Or do I simply need to show that it is a part of the landscape of American political tradition which was balanced with many other values like Union, Justice, and fealty to Posterity.
Now in (b) your discussion of “deliberate sense” shows just what I was looking for you to offer in your catechism. I have criticized it for being incongruous with this very concept, for you have clarified that it demotes “deliberation” by demands to piety and obedience to its rulers: Church and Tradition. And “deliberate sense” is just where we hopefully look to discover “progress” And this pact on valuing our liberties is just what guards the reign of our “deliberate sense.” I think there is some modern mutation of the Liberal pact that is frustrating the operation of the “deliberate sense” in the manner you describe, but it is not that version I have staked out or the one which I have used to criticize your catechism. May I refer you to the introduction of Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” for what I think is a good explanation of this mutation (which I hope will suffer extinction)?
I am still studying (c) in search of the tangles I need to unravel. And I am not one who “pledges his Life, his Fortune and his sacred Honor to the cause of procedural neutrality in the service of acquisition.” I am pledged to other men and their institutions who are pledged to me, to defend our store of shared values. Nor do I look for the immediate protection of Divine Providence in my affairs with men, whereas I hope that one day Providence will divvy Justice.
To say that the state is of entirely neutral character is absurd on its face. Our state clearly reflects the character of our people, the character of the combination of fresh ideas and the culture of the people that spawned it and of those which it have so beneficently allowed it to grow. This character is not stagnant; it is not beholden to a rigid tradition; it is not under the authority of any religious institution. Its character is one of vitality and that is highly related to the fact that it has learned how to protect and rely upon the “deliberate sense” of its people. And I’ll double down on your denigration of “the desire for peace in the midst of competition.” It is absurd not to value as a great achievement that mechanism which increases the opportunity for the competition between ideas to be worked out peacefully rather than in all that violence that was the status quo according to history. Such history makes it obvious to me where revolt against this value, if successful, will lead us.
John E.
To the extent that we are engaged in a discussion and disagreement over theory, I submit the following as my perspective of what may be the broad outlines of it.
- 1. Our 18th century thinkers were influenced by a cultural trend of valuing liberties, elevating the weight given to Liberty in the overall system of values.
- 2. There is a tension between Liberty and Authority.
- 3. This trend shifted the balance between Authority and Liberty, giving more weight to Liberty.
- 4. The new American polity was affected by this trend.
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- 4a. Less reliance for the Authority of the State on Traditional Authority. Increased reliance on the will of the citizen as the source of Authority.
- 4b. Less Authority in the State to guide beliefs, to instill virtue.
- 4c. In effect Authority was transferred to the Culture, increasing its dynamism but also increasing risk of foolishness and vice.
O1. We agree that Liberty was and is only one value in a system of values.
O2. We agree that Liberty should not be made the one value that rules all others.
O3. We agree that there has been a trend to do this.
O4. We agree that trend is misguided and dangerous to our culture.
O5. We disagree?: you apparently think that this trend is an inevitable result of that shift in the balance between Liberty and Authority. I do not.
O5.1 You consequently believe it is necessary to return to some form of the pre-American polity in which the State relied more on Traditional Authority and asserted its Authority over the culture’s beliefs and virtue. Some of the post US constitution State polities are offered as avatars. I believe rather, that this is regressive and unnecessary.
O6. We disagree?: I believe this transfer of authority from State to Culture (effected as in 4.) does make the State neutral on “questions of Man and God” because it leaves them to the Culture. Thus it cannot be classified as either Theistic or Atheistic. But the Culture may be able to be characterized by degree – at specific points in time – as Atheistic or Theistic. This of course impacts the character of that State which is the representation of its people and their Culture. This line of thinking is precluded to you because of O5.1.
O7. We disagree?: You believe that “Indiscriminate blending of cultures is thus undesirable, and more often than not an at least implicit act of aggression against the existing majority culture “ and “to shelter [Traditional Life’s] natural limits [is] one of the basic duties of the state.” This is precluded to me by O6.
O7.1 I believe, that deriving from human nature, cultural identity is malleable but is ever-present. Hence separating it from the State will not cause its disappearance; interaction between cultures is a natural inevitability; non-violent interaction is a desirable achievement; violent interaction is sometimes unavoidable; competition between cultures may perhaps be conceived of as aggression, but evolutionary change is achieved by natural selection. Case in point: the exponential dynamism of America in the last 200 years. You are agnostic on cultural production and so rely on the State to be Tradition’s guardianship, and this circles back around to the foundation of Authority. (I am out on a limb feeling you out a bit at this point, well perhaps at all points, so I will stop here).
John E.
I'd like to butt into the ongoing discussion between Paul and you. With your mutual consent, of course. I may be able to offer some ways to escape from your impasse.
John, it is somewhat difficult to discern from these comments what your true opinion of the Liberal pact is. At some points you criticize it; at others you seem to endorse it warmly. So I am at something of a loss.
You do seem to accept Publius's theory of the "deliberate sense" as the governing authority in America. This may be a good place to tease out our differences, so let me press you with a dilemma:
For many decades the deliberate sense of the American people, at least in some states, was on the side of religious tests for office. I say that the American tradition does not frown on this. I say that the American tradition, when it says it believes in self-government, really means it; and thus that the deliberate sense must have compass over even these matters. There are, of course, some matters where the Constitution prohibits certain actions, but these prohibitions may be removed -- assuming the deliberate sense is sufficiently strong against them.
So my question for you is whether you would place at back of this tradition, certain irremovable restraints on the compass on the deliberate sense.
My view, as embodied in this essay, is that a great many Liberals, even right-Liberals, are prepared to do this with the Liberal pact: to say, for instance, that religious tests are wrong, always and everywhere, and therefore no "sense of the community," however deliberate and decisive, may justly institute them. Some Liberals follow the logic even further and say that all moral legislation stands under this censure.
So, contrary you're formulation, I think the real issue that divides us is not Liberty vs. Authority, but Liberty vs. Self-Government (that the latter two words were once thought synonymous should not confusion us). Does the deliberate sense have compass over even the liberty of individuals*, or shall they be "forced to be free"?
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* Let me emphasize that as things stand the deliberate sense is very firmly on the side of individual liberties, and I am glad; but the question is whether it could, justly, turn against them to some degree. The question is whether indeed "the cool and deliberate sense of the community ... [ought to]... ultimately prevail."
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
So my question for you is whether you would place at back of this tradition, certain irremovable restraints on the compass on the deliberate sense.
NO.
So, contrary to your formulation, I think the real issue that divides us is not Liberty vs. Authority, but Liberty vs. Self-Government (that the latter two words were once thought synonymous should not confusion us). Does the deliberate sense have compass over even the liberty of individuals, or shall they be "forced to be free"?
I had not conceived that Self-government and Liberty are in opposition to each other. Is this a conception of Liberty as Anarchy? Or is it a conception of Self-government as Tyranny? I will press on regardless and try to answer. You will have to tell me whether I have discovered their opposition.
Yes, I would leave it compass, not because it will always be right or Just at a given period in time, but because, of all the alternative choices, this is where I feel most comfortable putting my faith in the long run; in the long leash on reason; in the drive toward comprehension of the good; dynamism; the linkage between responsibility, authority, credit/blame; and such as that.
It occurs to me that the "deliberate sense" itself cannot function well without some kind of respect for the liberty of individuals, since it is comprised by individual evaluations. So perhaps some commitments in our shared values have been made in order to bootstrap the "deliberate sense" and to maintain it as an effective mechanism. Is this perhaps related to that familiar discussion: "the tyranny of the majority?" I could not articulate what is the best balance between collectivism and individualism, but I know that in my social dealings I am regularly confronted with choosing a balance; and those who disregard me I disregard. Am I wrong to think that our culture and perhaps our polity has found some balance between liberties and other values – a system of values entailing a mutual regard -- which allows the "deliberate sense" to actually function fairly effectively? I think of the First Amendment and perceive an attempt at codifying these values . But I also think that I do not value tolerance so highly as many have come to value it. So I think this “deliberate sense” is like a seething cauldron in its aim to forge beliefs. And where we as a people take our beliefs off in the wrong direction – as measured by the reality of our natures – we will bear the consequences and have no other to blame, and be obliged to right ourselves or else go under. Now I wonder if you might consider this appeal to values argumentative or dodgy, but I recall a diary in which you pointed out, and I felt the need to concede, that “democracy project” might not work out in Iraq because the requisite values (I don’t know if that was your word) on which it depended may not be present in their tradition as they were in ours.
I would say that the scientific community is a good example of how I conceive of operating by the "deliberate sense;” a value oriented joining of liberty and self-government with comprehension as the aim. A theory is reviewed and tested and accepted eventually when it is convincing to the critical mass or else rejected. Still, the procedure is not infallible and so must always value critical questioning and new ideas in order to be self-correcting and improving. There is teleology of sorts to it, being shaped by its aim at comprehension.
I am still inclined to think, with the caveat that I am a poor historian, that the "religious tests" in question were not arrived at very deliberately, but as holdovers from a past errant elitist way of thinking: Cicero/Cotta’s employment of the god’s (in this case substituting the church for the pantheon’s temples) as the paradoxical basis for the State. The removal of them must have required significant deliberation which we can see was taking shape very early in the American tradition in “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In GKC’s analogy, the reason for the fence was comprehended and the fence was taken down (in a deliberation that lasted a number of years) to make way for an innovation conceived as better for the farm, and we have a history or experience behind us that supports the correctness of the once theoretical decision. As you note in your footnote, the “deliberate sense” has reached a verdict on this. And we can look at history for confirmation. The older tradition turned out to be wrong on that score and some of our Father’s made the mistake of holding onto it. I no doubt have made and am making mistakes too, so I don’t count myself superior; just thankful that we have made some progress and hopeful that we will make more. So in this case the deliberate sense worked itself ought to rid our society of those unjust “religious tests” which are actually contradictory to the values that enable the “deliberate sense” to operate; the values of the American tradition frowned upon the “religious tests” and the incongruity in values was resolved. A revision was made that has acquired status as tradition.
To address the 18th and 19th century dilemma specifically, I must concede that I don’t think that some elites could have or should have come in and removed those “religious tests” against the will of the people. I do believe though that if those had been a people who had a value system fully congruent with “religious tests” that their value system would have put them on track to failure, perhaps collapse; that their values would produce an inoperability of the deliberate sense or resistance to innovation and growth in comprehension or stagnating isolation or confrontation with a faster growing and successful culture such as ours which would also perhaps overwhelm them one way or the other. Cicero’s dilemma as an elitist, between true philosophy and the ordered state would have forced the deliberate sense in the individual philosopher to give way the needs of the State, stagnating the thought which leads to comprehension.
We might take the institution of slavery as another example of this kind of dilemma you are presenting. A significant portion of the society depended upon it. But the values that were to be its demise were essential to the culture and new polity. Simple abolition, perhaps the course demanded by these values would have produced a major disorder that the deliberate sense of many determined the need to avoid. The tension in the “deliberate sense” between two somewhat different regional cultures reached a snap point and the differences got settled roughly. The “deliberate sense” which was the “governing authority” broke down in effectiveness because of problems in the value system. They are tangled. That conflict has affected the course of our history and shaped our tradition and our verdict regarding the issue is quite unequivocal from the present standpoint.
REFLECTION:
I have been mulling my answer over, because I start out with unequivocal answers to your questions but then stumble into the shared values talk – I assume my emphasis on them is what you equate with the liberal pact - as if I am introducing them by a back door. But this is the accurate course of my thinking. I don’t know how to separate them, but it seems you are after showing me I must make a choice between them, give one preeminence. Is it clear enough to say that I think: a) the people are the governing authority in America (this form is most desirable for mankind according to our nature, unless perhaps god was actually governing without intermediaries); b) my identity lies with my values; c) my loyalty with those who share those values; d) if the people in their “deliberate sense” produce a tyrannical authority over us, I shall have tough choices to make to be determined by the specific circumstances and nature shall take its course; e) fortunately it seems the American polity and the values shared by its citizens seem to join together to make this “deliberate sense” operative and effective by avoiding (d), and this very precious balance makes her especially lovable to me and very much the focus of my guard.
When people, whether an Islamist or a Christianist (and I count myself a Christian but one who believes Christ’s Revelation specifically denies that it is a basis for man’s polity) break faith with me on these values and exploit them and the nature of our polity to return us to these older value systems and polities with their very evident (from history) forms of tyranny I stand up with all my force to block them. I do this on behalf of my ancestors who have won this tradition for me and on behalf of my heirs who I wish to win this tradition for. I do this as a true believer in this aspect of the public orthodoxy.
Now since you don’t seem to be arguing that we could or should be a “Christian polity” I don’t think this applies to you. But I still don’t understand how you can think that American tradition fails to frown upon “religious tests” and/or how you yourself can fail to frown upon them.
So how does this show you I come out on with regard to the Liberal pact? Do you think me incongruous? How do you come out on this dilemma? Do you think that Self-government requires that we must give up Liberty since you seem to indicate they are in opposition to each other? If liberalism is so wrong in any from then are you an advocate of iliberalism?
I have written more analysis based on the duality issue in the very fine essay you recommended. I believe I can identify my own positions against the backdrop of the framework it sets up and I would be interested if you could identify yours. But I am following your lead to tease out differences so I will hold the rest back for now.
So in your opinion religious tests for offices are and would be always and everywhere wrong? If so, I cannot follow you in that view; we will just have to acknowledge disagreement. But you are right to note (it may have been in the other thread) that I see the specter of historicism in your arguments of progress. For instance, this: "The older tradition turned out to be wrong on that score [religious tests] and some of our Fathers made the mistake of holding onto it." I worry that this sort of argument amounts to an invocation a vague "verdict of history." I would like to see an argument that attempts to demonstrate the wrongness of religious tests qua religious tests. I can see several ways such an argument might be formulated, but I'm leery of all of them.
Another argument from progress that (so it seems to me) is redolent of historicism is this one: "I do believe though that if those had been a people who had a value system fully congruent with 'religious tests' that their value system would have put them on track to failure, perhaps collapse." Let us assume, arguendo, your position on religious tests -- that is, let us assume they are always and everywhere unjust; how do get from that point to your second point that their acceptance will issue in failure? There seems to be some latent premise that injustice must fail.
Anyway, I'm not asking that you necessarily answer these rather peculiar objections. I am just trying to show where the doctrine of progress strikes a discordant note as I follow it.
I also noticed this, which might be worth teasing out. You write, as an aside, "I count myself a Christian but one who believes Christ’s Revelation specifically denies that it is a basis for man’s polity." Here you make a theological assertion, and (based on your arguments here and elsewhere) show your intention to make its acceptance binding politically. Fortunately for you, you have a solid portion of the American tradition behind you in this, so the controversial nature of it is somewhat obscured. But by golly it sure was controversial when first formulated. And until we understand the objections to it, back when first formulated, we cannot really understand its merits.
Earlier Christians read the same Scripture and discerned in it the monarchical ideal -- and what reader of Scripture can deny they had some real basis for this? -- patterned on the kingship of Christ. We must not confuse the modern -- yes: modern -- accretions upon this form (bequeathed to us by Richelieu and the like) with the ideal itself. As Jacque Barzun demostrates in his masterwork From Dawn to Decadence, the absolute monarchy that haunted the American founders was a modern innovation. And it won't do to simply attack this innovation as if it were the ideal.
So another of my importunate questions: Do you think republicanism (or democracy) is, simply, the best system? Or would you allow that monarchy has its merits too? I think we would be in firm agreement that in America the republic is the best system. But what about elsewhere, or in other times?
I bring this up again to get back the progress issue, which, it seems more and more clear to me, is one of the issues between us. And the Progress doctrine very often includes a proposition about democracy as the final and best political state of man (end of history and all that).
This has been a scattershot response. I apologize for that. My hope that that my questions and points might open more fertile lines of debate, but it is entirely possible that I will fail in this purpose, and you will have to set me straight again.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
That was a sweet ending to your comment that made me laugh and say “I love you Paul.” Thanks for putting up with me.
So in your opinion religious tests for offices are and would be always and everywhere wrong?
I do seem to be saying something like that, but argued more narrowly; specifically that there were vestiges in the American instances we are discussing carried forward from European practices founded on erroneous beliefs which resulted in unjust practices. That we can look at it from our vantage point in history with sufficient understanding in order to compare and evaluate and so make a very confident judgment on those cases and even to generalize a bit from them. But I can’t go so far as to say everywhere and at every time. I already conceded that point to you in saying “I can agree in principle that no moral proposition can be treated as an Ideal and applied deductively; we always need to evaluate according to the circumstances and try our best to balance the claims of our conflicting values.” I can grant arguendo that there might be some very specific set of circumstances when competing claims on justice might legitimate religious tests. I can even imagine some such fictitious scenarios. And I am judging the ideas, not men, some of whom may have been more well-intentioned than I; which could also be said of the Inquisitors or Jihadists. The world is better today without those practices and the ideas, and the view of humanity, that undergirded them.
Now I can put forward my comprehension of the facts and the argument which justifies my judgments. But I haven’t because I think the presumption lays with this judgment and so the burden of proof with your view. Actually, you pointed to “religious tests” (which are no more) in several 19th century state constitutions as an argument to disprove my claim that an innovation of religious liberty is part of the American tradition. I countered that they were vestiges of an older tradition (like slavery for example) that took a while to go away. You say no, that they were instituted wisely for good reason. But what reason? Because there happened to be some Jews, Catholics and non-believers in NC whose religious beliefs made them unqualified or untrustworthy for State government? I say can you or anyone prove this convincingly? A Khilafah Islamist might make an analogous argument; why should I consider yours any differently from his? In fact I don’t see how to make a distinction, and this is what has been sending me over the edge.
the specter of historicism
I had previously read about Hegel in many philosophical surveys (like Durant) but historicism is not a theory I studied and signed on to. Coming across it in the essay you recommended, I did branch of to Wiki to read about it. I note both similarities and dissimilarities to my own line of thought. I am much less sophisticated. I could trace out the kind of reading that has influenced me if it would be helpful. At any rate, it seems obvious to me that when we look at human history, especially the development of civilization, we can trace the course of innovations that were good and lasted and those that were lousy and were discarded. We can see that some conceptual systems were better than others. We can see that some produced good fruits and others produced bad fruits. We can compare and evaluate. We can see an increase in comprehension. Unless you are of the value/cultural-relativist school of thought (a very prominent school indeed) I don’t see why it is tendentious to judge these particular religious tests by their fruits and that involves history, a verdict from our present standpoint in history with our accumulation of knowledge. Since we both like to lay aside abstraction and idealism that is the best form of argument. If you want a more deductive one then let’s continue the line of argument at the end of the last paragraph and see if we can both avoid using particular effects in our reasoning. The starting point is how we shall know what test is good? But I suspect even that shall devolve into matters of practice.
how do get from that point to your second point that their acceptance will issue in failure?
I was trying to make a sort of observational argument that there is a shared core system of values that makes our present culture successful and enables our form of government and the efficacious operation of the “deliberate sense.” Religious liberty is very closely tied into and congruent (using your grant of arguendo) with this value system. So I predicted that without this value system they would not do well. I don’t remember whether I have said above, or elsewhere or perhaps it is in something I did not post yet but I believe this value system and polity is working well because it is predicated on a fairly accurate, relatively more accurate comprehension of human nature. And furthermore, drawing upon the essay discussing Cicero’s dilemma, the polity is somewhat unique in being founded upon a conception of human nature rather than upon the gods or the guardianship of a specific tradition. This decoupling allows it to guard that pursuit of the good and transcendence so aptly described by the essay’s authors as in man’s nature, rather than the static tradition itself. So it breaks us out of Cicero’s dilemma that pitted man’s philosophical nature against his state and produced constraining stagnation.
My “latent premise” is that reality sets in; so less accurate comprehensions of the good will be less successful than more accurate ones. The epistemological framework laid out at the beginning of the Wilhelmsen-Kendall essay seemed to be an excellent reflection of my own: recall man in pursuit of comprehension of the good; the good inhering in reality. It seems to me a natural step -- based on observation of nature at work -- that the success will outlast failure and so comprehension of the good will tend to be preserved. Now just because historicism or unilateral social evolutionism reflects a similar premise does not mean that I subscribe to some particular version of those theories or extended conclusions developed in them. And I do categorically reject the relativist alternative analysis that supplanted them. We still haven’t clearly pegged you on that landscape either have we?
Earlier Christians read the same Scripture and discerned in it the monarchical ideal
I must again admit to ignorance on the structure of thought of Catholic(?) monarchism. I would start my education looking for answers to questions. My first questions are on the practical side. How serious are these monarchist advocates today in preferring this “ideal” to what we have presently discovered? Is there some idyllic Authurian kingdom they assert compares more favorably overt the non-idyllic polity we presently have? Why did it fail and why is it replaced? Shall I be convinced by these comparisons that we should not be worse off under this system of monarchism? If the notion is idyllic, was the ideal ever achieved, and if not, doesn’t that discount the whole project.
On the theological side, in that the argument extrapolates from the “Kingdom of God” motif (which Jesus would have drawn upon for communicating with his Jewish audience because of Kings in Jewish history and scripture) I suppose I can grasp the lineaments of the argument. The “Kingdom of God” remains a mystery, eschatological in its full realization, with Christ as King. I do myself attach idyllic sentiments to such a polity. But what man, like Christ, has overcome the temptations; knows God with certainty; submits his will to God absolutely; and is appointed by God for the task? We have learned enough about human nature to know that this monarchial ideal of Christ as King cannot be achieved by men kings. Let us ask these scripture reading men to look at the scriptural source of the kingdom motif that Jesus relied on to communicate his message. In Jewish history the judges were the rulers before the kings. We find that the people wanted kings instead of judges because they wanted to be like the neighboring nations who had kings. And did these kings produce an idyllic polity for Israel? No. We clearly see all the problems of human nature expressed in the history of these kings. So the monarchial ideal works for Christ but outside of that the ideal is confounded by human nature.
But there is a more primary question to ask. Why were these earlier Christians thinking their religion taught them about an ideal form of government when Christ, the apostles and the early Church all merely advocated good citizenship in the governments under which they found themselves? Where do they find any theological basis for even thinking in terms of a “Christian polity” such that they could go about seeking for scriptural answers to achieve it? If there is no such basis, then there is no scriptural predicate for searching scripture for the ideal form of government in the first place. I have observed that there is no such predicate. I even find evidence of an anti-predicate (is there a proper word for this?). Is there a serious argument – one with any persuasive force -- that contradicts my observation? Lacking that – and it is sill utterly lacking in my current comprehension -- I firmly assert that this idea of a “Christian polity” is a human one, not one based on what we have learned of Christ thru the early church. I observe that changes wrought by Constantine -- who governed in the gods-and-polity tradition of Cicero -- introduced this kind of gods-and-polity thinking into Christian tradition giving us the seductive “Christian polity.” It did not come from Revelation; it was not in the mindset of the early church which was persecuted because of the gods-and-polity conception. Changes wrought by later men, of whom we are the direct heirs, undid this kind of thinking. Hence, you and I can make our judgments about which form of government is better, which man-made tradition we think is desirable for ourselves and our heirs, and we may end up fighting each other to death on behalf of preserving and advancing these man-made traditions: Humanistic (based on human-nature) polity; Christian polity; Islamic polity; Anti-religionist polity.
So the following statement appears from my perspective as somewhat misdirected, though I can perceive an inimical esoteric perspective that makes it work: “Here you make a theological assertion, and (based on your arguments here and elsewhere) show your intention to make its acceptance binding politically” My primary theological assertion, which I find nowhere refuted, is that “Christian polity” is not a concept that originates with Christ or the apostles; and is even at odds with how they conceived their relation to the polity. My theological assertion is to believers in Christ: the idea of a pre-eschatological Christian polity is of human origin, not divine. My politically binding assertions are based on my human evaluations of what is good for us: that the Islamist and the Christianist alike are dangerously misguided by the notion: that god has given them the special holy knowledge for governance; that the polity will only be right when they control it and make all else submit to their supposedly divinely sanctioned ideas. I am convinced from every angle, from the standpoint of every field of knowledge that I have applied myself to, that this notion is wrong. And similarly for the Anti-religionist who claims certain knowledge, and would enforce it by his new form of polity, that no revelation can be true.
Now on the other hand, I, and by analogy so many others, am very pleased that I, as a Christian, with all my values, can fully participate in this American polity; and that it prevents me from being persecuted for my reverent pursuit of God and the good. And for our common sake in this, we share a common value of religious liberty; we don’t seek to make this a Christian nation, a Protestant nation, a Catholic nation, a Hindu nation, a Muslim nation, an Atheist nation; we are very rightly a Human nation. If God should transform every man’s heart tomorrow and infuse it with all His perfect knowledge then we shall become God’s nation. If God wanted “God’s nation” he could very well have it. If you want it, you should have to do this miraculous feat that he has declined to do. Religious tests, revealed polities, “Christian polities,” Cicero styled government guarded Christian public orthodoxies, Islamic polities, Caliphs, Shari’a, Atheistic polities: its all from an indistinguishable line of thinking. The motivating idea is at enmity with the shared values in our culture, the core system of values that make our polity possible. Those values are what bind us together. So yes, there is something binding in what I am saying. And if some do not bind themselves to us via those values then I don’t bind myself to them. If you don’t extend them to me I won’t extend them to you, come what may.
This seems like a tacit pact to me, even a public orthodoxy. We still seem uncertain about whether it is the dreaded “Liberal pact” But it does seem to stand in the way of something some are after, something related to religious tests. Is it possible for us to examine your system of thought with respect to the “Christian polity” as I have framed it above? Or perhaps in terms of how you relate to Cicero’s gods-and-polity concept. The essay authors (p.98) abstracted the “gods” aspect to “public orthodoxy” and noted that modern day American public orthodoxy is perhaps already transformed from gods-based to the “liberal myth.” Is your project conceived so as to cut away the “liberal myth” and return public orthodoxy to the “gods;” your “Christian polity?” Or put another way, what do you say to the man who makes it his project in the USA to roll back religious liberty, to return to a state religion, to define as a duty of the state the sheltering of that religion, and the duty of maintenance of a majority population that follows that religion, and the privileging of those that do keep that religion? Is this the correction of a misstep by the recoup of a gem of our past traditions or a step backwards?
The public orthodoxy to which I subscribe does cut that project out. But it is of no use to complain and argue as you have several times that I am forcing my orthodoxy on such back-to-the-gods-and-polity project-makers by declining to enable them by giving to them just what they plan to take away from me. I do however put my orthodoxy up for examination. I’ll open it up to challenge and attack with the hope that if it is wrong I will learn why and change. There is a bottom line though: I will not accept increased limits on our pursuit of the comprehension of the good. My “liberal myth” is that an innovation has occurred in our culture and polity which has made progress in breaking down Cicero’s paradox between the philosopher and the state by making a good comprehension of human nature the cornerstone of our public orthodoxy and polity. My modern myth says we need to keep working our comprehension forward from there. I said elsewhere that there is a modern myth that needs articulating. It is myth just like myths of old in that it ties together everything we know and explains our place in the world. It is different because we know a lot more. So I believe we have been somewhere and we are going somewhere: we are on an unsteady path toward increasing comprehension. And each of us is part of it, making our 2 cent contribution, casting our lot with one thing or another.
Do you think republicanism (or democracy) is, simply, the best system? Or would you allow that monarchy has its merits too? I think we would be in firm agreement that in America the republic is the best system. But what about elsewhere, or in other times?
Where I may make absolutist claims like the end of history and all that, I expect a hard slap down. There is much I believe firmly but, as man, naught I can expect to know absolutely. I like the Churchill(?) quote about it being the worst except for all the others. I do judge it has proven itself to be based on a more accurate understanding of human nature than any of the others we know about. I’ll grant that there is some trial and error to this approach of building a polity on “human nature”, so perhaps I do now see that the approach has been responsible for some terrible results in the 20th century where the theories were wrong (like in Marx and Hitler’s Social Darwinism). But then again all of civilization and human existence has involved trial and error and tragic results. I do think (and perhaps this corresponds to your catechism) that deliberate change ought to be small and incremental and may often involve missteps that have to be retraced. Change often occurs irrespective of deliberative attempts to control.I think that our culture has made some missteps that we need to walk back from; perhaps not the same ones that you identify. There is no guarantee that we are making all the right choices and I can but hope that our “deliberate sense” will right itself when it errs. If we go terribly wrong – there are no guarantees -- then I expect our polity or culture or civilization will fail. Then I may hope that some peoples in the future, with the survey of information available from our history and all the others, may be able to set something good or better in motion, just as America’s forefathers did from their vantage point. But one way or another I do think they will be heirs of our Western tradition. As an aside, it may be seen here that in my myth, the goal of preserving the State (as articulated by Cicero) has fully given way to the goal of liberating the “deliberate sense” in its transcendence-styled quest for the good. If the State should go under due to the error of its peoples, hope still clings to humanity’s resilience.
While I do think that democracy is the best form of government that we know of, it seems predicated on an accumulated comprehension of: Nature, of the realities of the world, of a certain well-conceived system of values, and I would also tendentiously say of God (along with our Pope). I think I may take this insight from you and your kith. So while it may indeed be the best, its introduction in some other time and place requires more than just the institutional forms. And this makes me sympathetic to some kind of benevolent colonialism, predicated on the idea that a man will choose a steel knife over a flint flake cutter, given the opportunity. But I suppose I may take colonialist sentiments even farther than that, because I am a true-believer; that is my two-cent contribution. Someone who knows more than we do will judge all of us and that is important to keep in mind.
Monarchy? There are obviously merits to it, else it would not have been so common a polity for thousands of years and in so many places. It was apparently better than known alternatives. The grand accomplishments of mankind are primarily in civilization, which is enabled by social order, very often thanks to Monarchies. We can praise the Strong Man/Chief of smaller social organizations as well; the Pharaoh, the Caliph, the Oligarchy, the ancient Republics. They all have merit. You show me my ignorance though for I have not studied enough history to adequately appreciate Monarchy. Literature and surveys mostly fills the gap between my readings in ancient history and the present. Though not an adequately thoughtful answer to the question, I can say this: if I could have chosen to be born into any polity in history as a person of unknown ethnicity, heritable culture/religion or sex it would here in the USA. That is about as succinctly circumspect as I can get in answer to your question about what system I think is best.
As has been always been the case, you challenge me to think, and I appreciate that. And I hope we may at least determine whether my position can be dismissed as by liberal-pactaphobia. Seriously, am I an advocate of the Liberal pact?
[This is only a reply to the first half of your comment, as the second half will take more time.]
And furthermore, drawing upon the essay discussing Cicero’s dilemma, the polity is somewhat unique in being founded upon a conception of human nature rather than upon the gods or the guardianship of a specific tradition. This decoupling allows it to guard that pursuit of the good and transcendence so aptly described by the essay’s authors as in man’s nature, rather than the static tradition itself. So it breaks us out of Cicero’s dilemma that pitted man’s philosophical nature against his state and produced constraining stagnation.
Recall the the conclusion to the Cicero essay was that there is no way to break out of the dilemma; there is only a way to "break in." I do think Mr. Kendall at least (an unquestioned expert in American political theory, and legend at Yale while he was there) would very quickly call foul on your implication that American politics provided a break out.
The problem of achieving the proper reverence and loyalty for the country is alive and well as a problem here in America. We have not broken out. Consider Lincoln's discussion of the problem:
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; -- let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap -- let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; -- let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
The language is openly religious. Is Lincoln not appealing to the same patriotism, reformulated for his age, as Cicero? Can you can almost taste his concern, like Cicero's, that reason and philosophy, unchecked, will undermine it? There is a particular irony here, for this speech was delivered when Lincoln was young, and known as a bit of a local freethinker and scoffer. So his pulling in of all this religious language is exceedingly similar to Cicero dilemma. He was unbeliever, and want (for himself) to throw off the yoke of religion -- but yet he saw how perilous that was, for the state and therefore for justice, and so ends up talking about political religion.
Because there happened to be some Jews, Catholics and non-believers in NC whose religious beliefs made them unqualified or untrustworthy for State government? I say can you or anyone prove this convincingly? A Khilafah Islamist might make an analogous argument; why should I consider yours any differently from his?
I cannot prove it, of course. I say that compared to the few prominent examples we have of constitutionally Atheist States, the entire bloody history of the Spanish Inquisition was but a slow week. I can also say that there is, contrary to received opinion, an aspect of the American political tradition that is prepared to keep atheists from offices of public trust. I am glad there is. Perhaps the trend of our history does make this aspect obsolete, but I'm not so sure.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
call foul on your implication that American politics provided a break out.
Well it is likely I misunderstood then. Maybe I have broken in.
Part of the problem here may be that I do not tie my identity or my purpose to the preservation of the State. Maybe I am only the philosopher and my commitment to the State, unlike Cicero’s is contingent. I do very much want to preserve our State, but because it makes me its lover. The pursuit of the good is my primary aim (like the philosopher) and I love our State because she enables that. If she did not I would begrudge her and hope for another. Now that would be a dilemma. But in that Cicero is not like me, then you are right to say he has not escaped his dilemma. And perhaps I have merely broken in.
While I am ready to die for my country and for some of the reasons for that are captured by Lincoln, I do not quite reach that absolutist zeal for the Law or “political religion.” Yes he is employing the language of devotion, as you say religious language. It is effective rhetoric to move men to action. There is a time for action and a time for deliberation, so at a time for action any leader (and if I were one) would be concerned about dithering in reason and philosophy. There comes a time where a man must put his beliefs on the line. But this speech is not sufficient for the purpose of drawing conclusions about Lincoln’s view of our general motive relation with the State, is it?
And just let me make sure I do not misunderstand you. We are interpreting Lincoln’s reference as ‘devote yourself to your country/politics with a zeal like that with which you devote yourself to your religion.’
I cannot prove (that a Jew, Catholic, or Atheist is untrustworthy for office) of course.
Shall I press the argument here. If our tradition leaves that decision for every voter in the booth then I shall not be able to make a general criticism of our tradition. That lack of proof answers for an argument against legally codified religious tests for office. So I am retiring from the “religious tests” debate on that note. Ssshheeooo
John E.
random comments.
Thus politics becomes an enterprise of peace-making in the midst of what would otherwise be a ruthless pursuit of these things, a “war of all against all.” The peace-maker is accepted by all men, in their emergence from this brutish “state-of-nature,” and this contract is the foundation of the State.
One could extrapolate from this that the Treaty of Westphalia ultimately did more harm than good, because it solidified the above role of politics and thus fostered the materialistic self-interested policies of State-State interactions.
I have my own thoughts on Westphalia; for one thing I can see an argument waiting to be made that Westphalia actually undermined the spiritual sense of identity than transcended demographic boundaries, both within Christianity and Islam, to the detriment of both. It also may have had the effect of forcing a rigorous "functional atheist" interpretation of the Enlightenment into orthodoxy. I am waaay out on speculation land now though.
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Dean Nation is now Nation-Building: Purple politics, muscular liberalism, principled pragmatism