The Bell Tower

“The ruling President, acting for what he supposed to be the best interests of the country, by one of his last acts of power, deliberately intended to perpetuate the principles of his administration, placed at the head of the judiciary, for life, a man as obnoxious to Jefferson as the bitterest New England Calvinist could have been; for he belonged to that class of conservative Virginians whose devotion to President Washington, and whose education in the common law, caused them to hold Jefferson and his theories in antipathy. The new President and his two Secretaries were political philanthropists, bent on restricting the power of the national government in the interests of human liberty. The Chief Justice, a man who in grasp of mind and steadiness of purpose had no superior, perhaps no equal, was bent on enlarging the powers of government in the interests of justice and nationality. As they stood face to face on this threshold of their power, each could foresee that the context between them would end only with life.”

- Henry Adams, A History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson

In his brilliant history, Adams here recounts his great grandfather John Adams’ final act of either defiance or service to his country - depending on how you want to look at it. He also recalls perhaps one of the most significant images in the history of the United States: Thomas Jefferson being sworn in as President by his arch nemesis John Marshall. It’s important today for a number of reasons.

People now often think of the founding generation as a united group of enlightened thinkers who, like God himself, created a country in their own likeness. While the revolutionary period cemented an extraordinary bond of unity and common purpose amongst that generation, the Constitutional era and the early governance of the country embedded deep and lasting differences. Jefferson taking the oath before Marshall is as good a snapshot as any of the early tradition of what politicians today love to call partisanship.

Every time they don’t get their way, modern politicians on both sides of the aisle say the same thing: “Stop the partisan bickering, the people are being hurt because of toxic politics, the great work of this country is being undermined by petty politics…” The founders said the same thing once they actually started governing. Jefferson suggested Washington was losing his mind late in his presidency, Adams completely ceased talking to Jefferson for many years over criticism of his presidency, the federalists threw Republicans (Jeffersonian) in jail for writing negative opinions of the Adams administration, Madison accused Hamilton and the Federalists of wanting to put a king in the place of the presidency, and hell nobody liked Aaron Burr. His partisan operating to promote his own personal career was most distasteful to most of the founders who preferred to pretend they weren’t acting in their own self interest. Burr was like a harbinger of the future political class of America.

All of them were actually acting in their own self interest. The reality has been that our system of Constitutional government has worked well for so long precisely because of those politics. I’ve repeated it a thousand times in this space: efficient government is tyranny. Give me petty politics, stalled legislation, local grandstanding and partisan roadblocks all day. All this arguing and infighting is what keeps us from living completely under the yoke of a vigorous federal tyranny. Here’s hoping November brings us a divided Congress even weaker and less capable of action than the fools in office now.

With his usual eloquence Will clarifies the difference between actual conservatism (I call this true liberalism) and various brands of populism masquerading as conservatism. It’s not about the type of government or who wields the power of government. It’s about the role of government:

Liberty

“Judicial review — let us be candid: judicial supervision of democracy — troubles people who believe, mistakenly, that the Constitution’s primary purpose is simply to provide the institutional architecture for democracy. Such people believe that having government by popular sovereignty is generally much more important than what government does; hence courts should be broadly deferential to preferences expressed democratically. This is the doctrine of those conservatives who deplore, often with more vigor than precision, “judicial activism.”

The latter kind of conservatives are more truly conservative than the former kind because they have stronger principles for resisting the conscription of individuals, at a cost of diminished liberty, into government’s collective projects. So a constitutional challenge to the mandate serves two purposes: It defies a pernicious idea and clarifies conservatism.”

“The Italian tragedy, in my opinion, had its beginnings in August 1939, when, having gone to Salzburg on my own initiative, I suddenly found myself face to face with the cynical German determination to provoke the conflict. The alliance had been signed in May. I had always been opposed to it, and for a long time I had so contrived that the persistent German offers were allowed to drift. There was no reason whatever, in my opinion, for us to be bound in life and death to the destiny of Nazi Germany. Instead, I was in favor of a policy of collaboration, for in our geographical situation we are bound to detest the eighty million Germans, burtally set in the heart of Europe, but we cannot ignore them. The decision to conclude the alliance was taken by Mussolini, suddenly, while I was in Milan with von Ribbentrop. Some American newspapers had reported that the Lombard metropolis was proof of the diminished personal prestige of Mussolini.

Hence his wrath. I received by telephone the most peremptory orders to accede to the German demands for an alliance, which for more than a year I had left in a state of suspense and had thought of leaving there for a much longer time. So ‘The Pact of Steel’ was born. A decision that has had such a sinister influence upon the entire life and future of the Italian people is due entirely to the spiteful reaction of a dictator to the irresponsible and valueless utterances of foreign journalists.”
- Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, December 23, 1943, Cell 27 of the Verona Jail

There are two central concepts to this blog: individual liberty and restraint of power. These two concepts are inextricably bound as the former cannot possibly exist without the latter. As organized power grows and devolves into the hands of fewer individuals or groups of people, personal freedom declines. It makes no difference how intelligent, beneficent or well-meaning those individuals may be. Power does not leave room for freedom. Period.

Ciano touches on an important demonstration of this as he writes his last passage before being executed by his ruthless Nazi captors. The entire fate of Italy and the consequences of that fate not only for the Italian people but for the world at large in the 1930’s and 40’s rested almost soley in the hands of a single human being. No other person had either the will or the ability to stop him. The fate of millions rested on the arrogant whims and jealous emotions of a flawed individual. It can be pointed out of course that the individual responsible for the decision - Benito Mussolini - was a pompous, ignorant and profoundly ruthless person. The individual to whom he was fearfully subservient - Adolph Hitler - was infinitely more ruthless and ignorant. There is no doubt that this is true.

But it is almost always this manner of human being that seeks to find him or herself at the seat of such power. And it is rarely any other type of inividual who has the stomach to maintain such power for very long. Whatever utopian platitudes or benevolent purposes such seats of power are established to pursue, corruption is inevitable. This is what Benjamin Franklin meant when he declared the lifespan of our Constitution temporary. Sooner or later, despotism will take hold.

What is the point of this post? Responsible citizens should carefully consider those policies of their government which seek to centralize power. Sooner or later, those seats of power will be occupied by individuals whom you will not want empowered to make the decisions they will inevitably make. One of the reasons democracy did not sustain itself in Germany before Hitler was because good people accustomed to entitlement were frustrated with the inability of their government to “get things done” as Hayek put it. Entitlement is a dangerous vice for an ostensibly free people to develop.

“I have observed that the philosophers in order to insinuate their polluted atheism into young minds systematically flatter all their passions natural and unnatural. They explode or render odious or contemptible that class of virtues which restrain the appetite. These are at least nine out of ten of the virtues. In place of all this, they substitute a virtue which they call humanity or benevolence. By this means their morality has no idea in it of restraint, or indeed of a distinct settled principle of any kind. When their disciples are thus left free and guided only by present feeling they are no longer to be depended upon for good or evil. The men who today snatch the worst criminals from justice will murder the most innocent persons tomorrow.”
- Letter to the Chevalier de Rivarol quoted from Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind

“These professors of the rights of men are so busy in teaching others, that they have not leisure to learn anything themselves; otherwise they would have known, that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor’s security, expressed or implied. They never so much as entered into his head when he made his bargain. He well knew that the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate, except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large. This was engaged and nothing else could be engaged, to the public creditor. no man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.”
- Reflections on the Revolution in France

“To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinancy and the blindest predjudice, we have consecreated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him back into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may rengenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father’s life.”
- Reflections on the Revolution in France