Phase Two

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March 26, 2006

Collapse of the American Revolution

There is a profound reverence for the Constitution of the United States, based on the premise that the founding fathers were extremely wise, and we should continue to follow their guidance as inscribed in the Constitution. The attribution of wisdom to the founding fathers is generally due to the fact that “things have worked out well” for the United States over the last 200 years, and since they got the ball rolling, they must have known what they were doing.

The difficulty is that this ignores the realities of both what the founding fathers really wanted for their country, what went on in the interval, and what we have on our hands today.

The collapse of the American Revolution started with the end of Washington’s second term as President, and really ended about the time Jackson was elected. From then on we’ve practiced a form of government missing crucial elements of the founding fathers intent.

(Continued below the fold)

I should start by acknowledging that Constitutional reverence is strongest as you get closest to Washington DC. Our public education system attempts to inculcate this belief in students with varying degrees of success. The citizenry is generally aware of the Constitution as an important document, and perhaps even has some vague ideas of what it says, but as the Constitution doesn’t really effect their daily lives, they are pretty ignorant of the details of the Constitution’s formation, intent and content.

The story of how the Constitution was formed is truly amazing, and not in small measure due to the men who wrote it who were amazing themselves. They were mainly idealists, although some were pretty practical. But the ideals they attempted to instill into the Constitution were very classical in nature, mainly founded on Cicero’s writing.

Following Cicero, the framers were intent on founding a republic on virtue, coupled with freedom. This freedom was articulated as rights that every member of the republic had, but the quid pro quo was every member of the republic was responsible for developing and maintaining his own virtue. (I apologize for the founding fathers exclusion of women – I’m not happy about it, but it’s just the way it was).

It must be noted that the framers were a little fuzzy on who was a member of the republic. Various scholars have suggested that the founders intended for membership to include anyone who “owned land”, but this wasn’t meant to include “peasant farmers” with a small plot of land. The framers really intended to cast themselves, the wealthy elite, as “philosopher-kings” to rule the United States with virtue.

As you may recall, things didn’t work out exactly that way. Almost all of the founding fathers died disillusioned and bitter, regretting, surprisingly that the revolution had created a functional government. They were truly intent on creating a better world – the one they saw developing after Washington’s last term was heading in a profoundly different direction than they intended.

The key problem that the founding fathers saw was the disconnection of personal freedom from the requirement for personal virtue. They intended to assure the connection between these two things in the same way Plato expected the guardian (philosopher-king) class would, through education and practical training.

The way the founding fathers looked at things, giving common people personal freedom without the requisite moral training was equivalent to giving a very young child a knife – dangerous in the extreme.

You may remark at this point that the founding fathers “got it mostly right”, but I think that’s confusing a few things: the “success” of the United States, our current perception of our government, and the chances for our continued success.

One of the unintended consequences of the revolution was the creation and development of a unique entrepreneurial spirit, and led to explosive, ad-hoc growth of both people and commercial activities across the continent. The wealth created by this activity is what people typically associate with the success of the revolution.

The growth of the population and the commercial success of the people living in the US was almost completely assured, given the vast natural resources of the continent. To be sure, the revolution had created a relatively level playing field where anyone who desired could participate in commercial endeavors (as opposed to the model used in Europe at the time). But it wasn’t “democracy” that produced the wealth – that came from the land. The cascading effect of the enormous wealth of the continent propelled the United States onto the world stage of power, and subsequently made the country the most powerful nation on earth. Again, the governmental form was merely a carrier of, not the reason for the power.

There’s a misguided notion today that by exporting our governmental form, we can make others happy and successful. With the great number of counter examples, this claim doesn’t even pass the straight-face test.

The founding fathers saw the incredible resources the continent had to offer, and envisioned a nation where personal integrity and freedom would grow hand in hand. Instead we have a nation where appetite drives most of the countries behavior, which is exactly what the constitutional framers were trying to avoid.

Note that the United States is very young compared to other civilizations. As the current experiment runs it’s course, our form of democracy will show it’s age – it may not last another 200 years without change. But it’s dangerous in the extreme to believe that such a young nation with so much power has the collective wisdom to foist our ideals onto a reluctant world.

Posted by pgutwin at 8:26 AM | Comments (0)