Our Founders

The American right (and before 1917, the American left) have always existed within an ideological box, the sides of which were the major Enlightenment works of the 17th and 18th centuries, with perhaps a dash of the Civil War’s rhetoric thrown in for good measure. Any high school graduate can probably name these works- Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, the English Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and perhaps the first five or six important cases of the Marshall court. These writings epitomize the mainstream thinking of the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment era- they are the gold standard of liberalism, and so, the right and left of American politics has generally been hemmed in by Liberalism, not least because our Founders were- as one would expect for the time- liberals.

As first the left, and in our own time, the right, begin to explore the frontier of illiberal politics, we are left with a vexing question: in what light should we regard the Founding Fathers, who established the United States, and its classically liberal form of government?

We know how the left answered this question, at first quietly in the Red 30s and 40s, and then openly in the 1960s- the Founders were bad, actually, because they were white (true), racist (also true), sexist (to some degree, true), supporters of slavery (mostly false), supporters of genocide against the Indians (also mostly false) and of course, colonialists (also false). Because the left began shedding its liberalism in favor of group-dynamic based thinking beginning in the 1930s, these labels were convenient slurs to discard liberal pieties, at least when those pieties worked against them. But the right has steadfastly stuck by the right-liberalism of the Founding Fathers; libertarians and constitutional conservatives have even elevated many of them to nearly divine status. The author is old enough to remember the Tea Party conservatives dressing up in 18th century costumes and holding up pocket Constitutions in the air at rallies.

Since the failure of the liberal-right to carry the 2012 election, and the increasingly strident social-justice movement that began to dominate the media space in 2013-14, the right has begun moving away from its old liberal commitments. Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism conference regularly draws popular politicians, authors and media personalities. You hear little talk of the Constitution anymore at such gatherings, but instead talk of “the common good”, natural communities, justice and virtue.

The Democrats have gone on a spree of tearing down statues, graves and memorials of defeated Confederate generals, and renamed military bases. They have not stopped there; a statue of Lincoln has been the subject of protests; Woodrow Wilson’s name was removed from the school of government at Princeton; a statue of Thomas Jefferson was removed from the city hall of New York. None of these men had anything to do with the Confederate States of America. The right instinctually feels that this is sacrilege, blasphemy- but why? If we want to resist this kind of soft Cultural Revolution, we must develop a cogent and reasonable view on the Founders, without deifying them or caving to the critical theory frame of the left. We must reclaim the Framers as belonging uniquely to us; we must appreciate them in a new light.

The most important thing to understand about the Founders is that they were not ideologues. Jefferson’s lofty rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence was the work of a man in his 30s whose only political experience to that point had been reading books. Washington himself had served in the Virginia House of Burgesses but rarely attended sessions, and his strongest opinions in 1776 seemed to be opposition to the ridiculous mercantilist policies that drained the profits from his plantation. John Adams had been a practicing attorney and writer; if he had an ideology at this time, it was a far more conservative one than the Declaration, with an emphasis on law and order, and against violence and impulsive mob action.

Their real first experience with government was not the abstract Enlightenment liberalism of political philosophy, but the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles government was the state that the Revolution was fought for; its congress was a continuation of the Continental Congress. And, as a state, it did not work.

The Articles government required a supermajority of 9 of 13 states to pass laws. It had no real executive to enforce those laws, and it had no authority to raise taxes or regulate trade. And, worst of all, it required unanimity to amend the Articles.

And, to the horror of many, the Articles system was an “excess of democracy”, with far too much input from the people. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts put it plainly: the people “are the dupes of pretended patriots”, and “daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.” That is, the democracies present in the state governments and the articles were paralyzed by misinformation, rumor and passion.

Many agreed that something had to be done- but when what we now know as the Constitutional Convention was called, it was intended by the states who sent delegates merely to propose amendments to the Articles. The resolution authorizing what would become the Constitutional Convention said:

“Resolved, that in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress…”

The Founders, of course, intended to do no such thing. Instead, they plotted to overthrow the lawful government, and replace it with a less democratic, right wing alternative- an alternative that would actually function. James Madison didn’t try to hide what he was up to. Hamilton even suggested the President ought to serve for life. Others proposed a monarchy. There were no Dantons or Robspierres or Saint-Justs present. This was a right-wing coup against the Articles.

Wasn’t this….sedition? Or treason? Weren’t they worried about being arrested by the Continental Army? This is why Washington, agreeing to act as the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, was so important. Four years earlier, the Continental Army had nearly overthrown Congress, angry over unpaid salaries. Washington had vetoed the plan, demonstrating to the Articles government that the soldiers indeed answered to, and were loyal to, Washington rather than the Congress. No soldier was going to march upon their general or lay a finger on him- the fact that this threat was implicit, rather than explicit, speaks to the high level of culture at the time.

With their safety guaranteed, the Founders adopted a Constitution- that was, itself, illegal as all of the states did not vote to ratify it. Instead, the new government of the United States simply started functioning -as debate continued. They dared any state to try to hold out against the others- and none, in the end, accepted the challenge. The old government melted away, overawed by the speed and power of this new creature born out of the old chrysalis. The best revolutions are like this- like East Germany simply dried up and blew away, so did the Articles. No one was shot, like the Tsar, and no one was lynched, like so many in Paris a few short years later.

We think that assessments that impugn the Founders as “liberals” or “small government conservatives” or even “progressives” entirely miss the context of the Constitution. They did nothing but compromise on their personal ideas about the ideal form of government- so long as the end result was a strong state, that could impose tariffs, develop the interior of America, collect taxes and defend the country from British predation. They were bold enough to break the law to do it; they were also wise enough to gather enough intellectual, political, and even military power to ensure that the law would never be held to them. They were ultimately people of action over talk; they preferred results to ideological purity.

I think this is eventually how the American government will be reformed, and transform itself into the State- not through blood, but through the irresistible weight of an idea whose time has come.

As such, I think we must hold the Founders out as important to our cause, even on the illiberal right. They were willing to take bold action, and risk everything for reform. That is the real legacy they bequeath to us- and they told us it plainly, in the preamble- that it is our duty, as it was theirs to:

“...to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”