I pulled up this 07/04/2011 article by Brian Glenn, intrigued by the title What is a "constitutional conservative" anyway? and the subtitle, "From Goldwater to Bachmann, the meaning of one of the right's favorite terms has evolved considerably." I was expected a discussion of the John Birch Society's and other groups on the Radical Right and how they conceived "constitutionalism." And maybe he eventually gets there, I don't know. I stopped reading when I saw this at the start of the fourth paragraph:
The great writers in the conservative pantheon such as J. S. Mill, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and the authors of the Federalist Papers ...Now, it may be that conservatives today like to cite those people. But seeing them described as a "conservative pantheon" didn't go down so well with me.
Let's start with Edmund Burke (1730-97), mainly known for his rabid denunciation of the French Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). As Ian Harris writes of that work in his article on Burke in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010):
Whether Burke was right in these claims about the Revolution, of course, is another question, and one that can never be answered: French readers of Reflections could take its lessons to heart, and, anyhow, events have a way of modifying tendencies independently of intention and interpretation. Indeed, none of this is to say that Reflections was intended as an academic work, or even an accurate factual statement, about the Revolution. It was calculated to produce a practical result, which was to dissuade the British from admiring the Revolution and so to dampen any propensity they might feel to imitate it: and thus to protect civilization in Britain. In the course of pursuing this goal, Burke was willing to satirize the Revolution and its English sympathizers unmercifully in order to make them as unattractive as possible to any sane reader, and he matched the satire with a panegyric on British social and political arrangements. [my emphasis]It's at least questionable whether Burke belongs more in the classical conservative tradition or the outright antirevolutionary (i.e., anti-French Revolution) tradition that includes thinkers like Juan Donoso Cortés (1809—1853) and Franz von Baader (1765-1841). But Burke's political writings were enough of a grab-bag that conservatives and some liberals could take inspiration from them, as well. So there's a reasonable argument that Burke belongs in a "conservative pantheon." On the right wing of it, anyway.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): if anyone ever deserves to be called a liberal, it is John Stuart Mill. Whether you regard it as a compliment or a cuss word. He was working in the classical liberal (pro-democracy) tradition. But he also helped significantly in laying the basis for the more social-minded liberalism of the 20th century, a constructive developed away from the laissez faire dogma that easily degenerated into Social Darwinism in the Gilded Age. (Given the way maldistribution of wealth and income has developed in the US the last 30 years, maybe we should call the 19th century version the First Gilded Age.)
Mill stressed the importance of political liberty including the political equality of women. As a Member of the British Parliament, he introduced a measure that would have given the vote to women, which failed to pass. He thought natural conservation was a good idea. He recognized the importance of good wages for workers and workers' rights. He viewed distribution of wealth as a phenomenon not determined by economic or moral laws but one determined by social institutions. While he never embraced the program of the social democratic movement, he didn't see socialism as an impossible or evil thing. And he even suggested a worker-directed form of economic organization that might be called a brand of utopian socialism.
Does John Stuart Mill belong in a pantheon worshipped by union-busters, wealth-worshippers, and climate-change deniers? Not in this dimension. Maybe in some alternative world existing somewhere in the FOXverse, I don't know.
Benjamin Franklin the American Revolutionary leader a conservative? Please.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859), author of Democracy in America (1835/1840), was also a classical liberal. Conservatives always found something to like in his worries about the egalitarian trends during the Jacksonian era in the United States. But he viewed the United States as an exciting living example of a functioning democracy, one that offered lessons that France could usefully emulate. During the post-Napoleon Restoration period in France, he was active in politics and gravitated to the Liberal party, not to the Conservatives. During the 1848 revolution in France, when the working class emerged as a distinct political force with a preference for socialism, Tocqueville supported the liberal (capitalist) order rather than socialism. But the experience of that revolutionary period created new doubts for him about the compatibility of classical liberal notions of property and liberal concepts of political freedom. During the 19th century, when his influence was greatest, he was clearly associated with the classical liberal, pro-democracy tradition.
Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves and who the Southern slaveowners and secessionists viewed as a Jacobin revolutionary - he's a conservative too? Only if conservatism includes things like this, from his First Annual Message to Congress of 12/03/1861.
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. ...Not in 1861, nor in 2011, is that a conservative notion. The difference is that in 1861, that was the head of the Republican Party saying that. No one will hear such a thing from a Republican leader in 2011.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. [my emphasis]
Then there are the authors of the Federalist Papers: James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. It is true that along with a vague idolatry toward the Constitution and the Founders, conservatives regard the Federalist Papers as some kind of iconic text. But despite some fuzzy confusion over the nature of the political fight for the Constitution, encouraged in no small part by the Progressive historian Charles Beard, the advocates of the Constitution to be substituted for the Articles of Confederation were the reformers and the pro-democracy liberals. It was conservatives of the time who were the main opponents of adopting the Constitutional system. So, in the specific historical and political context in which they were written, the Federalist Papers are classical liberal arguments.
Alexander Hamilton was a conservative in the context of the new government: favoring strong Executive power and believing an elected Congress could not function practically without essentially being corrupted by the Executive and its supporters. This was central to Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the National Bank supported by Hamilton.
John Jay was a leader of the Federalist Party in New York State, where he was an opponent of slavery and an advocate for internal improvements and other reforms. The Federalists were the more conservative party.
Of all the names in Brian Glenn's "conservative pantheon," only Hamilton clearly deserves to be there, with Jay second. But not in their Federalist Papers roles as advocates of the Constitution against the Articles of Confederation.
I'm not sure by what reimagining of American history James Madison could be considered a conservative.
Naturally, something that was liberal and cutting edge in, say, 1840, might sound like hidebound conservatism in 2011. Andrew Jackson's opposition to the Bank of the United States might superficially look like Ron Paul's Bircher opposition to the existence of the Federal Reserve. But only if one takes no account whatsoever of the particular historical situation in which Jackson's fight with the Bank took place. Jackson would have rightly regarded the Pauls, both Papa Doc and Baby Doc, as Calhounites, which they are. He would not have approved of them. To put it very mildly.
So it's not surprising that present-day conservatives and the Radical Right pluck selected quotes from famous political figures of by-gone centuries to act as proof-quotes for their talking points. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to park our brains in the corner when we hear them do it!
Tags: andrew jackson, liberalism
No comments:
Post a Comment