Yet, paradoxically, progressives insulate themselves from effective reform or even criticism despite their endless writings about social experimentation and learned expertise. Their pursuit is undeniably ideological. Remember, progressives refute natural law—that is, the principle of eternal, transcendent moral law, truths, and knowledge—for they cannot control it. It is dismissed as either a passing historical footnote or an obstacle to societal progress, or is ridiculed as gibberish. They revile the Constitution’s limits on unified, centralized power and its separation-of-powers formula.
Since the principles undergirding America’s founding are beyond mortal law, they are beyond the reach of the progressives and the administrative state. Hence the war on the founding values, beliefs, and traditions was and is intended to, among other things, stop legitimate inquiry into and teaching of first principles or purposes. They are to be made intellectually and culturally off-limits. Consequently, what is left is only one acceptable and overarching agenda—the progressive agenda. The only relevant political and historical discussion is about progressive ideas and, more specifically, about their promotion—secularism, value relativism, social experimentation, unified political power—but never about slowing the pace or altering the main thrust and trajectory of progressivism. There can be no serious consideration of constitutional limits on the administrative state; no serious debate about governmental spending and debt; no serious argument about the “science” of climate change; no serious discussion of effective reforms for governmental entitlements and programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, or Obamacare; no serious thought of eliminating governmental departments and agencies. Ignorance is knowledge and centralized power is progress. In truth, however, it is progressivism that is “stuck in history” and intellectually exhausted.
The progressive’s deliberate effort to denude the individual of his free will and uniqueness; to organize mankind by a growing and ubiquitous centralized authority and collective command into a conforming, uniform mass; and to reject right reason and sober circumspection about true reform of the progressive project despite its manifest failures and dangerous boundlessness, presents all the markings of a nihilistic, autocratic mentality—unsurprising considering its ideological roots. But the disastrous consequences for the individual cannot be overstated.
FIVE
* * *
LIBERTY AND REPUBLICANISM
THIS LEADS US TO the next related and essential area of inquiry—what do we mean by human and individual freedom and how do we apply them in the context of what has been discussed thus far? While these issues are too large for an all-inclusive dissertation, they require concentrated treatment.
On April 4, 1819, in a letter replying to Isaac H. Tiffany, Thomas Jefferson succinctly described liberty: “Of liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”1 In this short statement, did Jefferson capture the essence of liberty?
Let us begin with John Stuart Mill, a distinguished British philosopher. I start here not because Mill had any influence on the Founders (an impossibility since he lived from 1806 to 1873) but because his utilitarian-libertarian writings are useful in understanding, developing, and discussing what is meant by liberty, a subject more multifaceted than one might at first imagine. Mill’s book On Liberty (1859) has been prominent since its publication. He asked: “What . . . is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?” Mill answered, in part, that “every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be found to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interest of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. . . . Nor is this all that society may do. . . . As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no person besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like. . . . In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.”2
Mill explained further that his utilitarianism is not a philosophy of isolated individualism or social disinterest: “It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing and well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase in disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people of their good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or metaphorical sort. . . .”3 However, Mill added that “neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do. He is the person most interested in his own well-being; the interests which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect. . . . Individuality has its proper field of action. In the conduct of human beings towards one another, it is necessary that general rules should for the most part be observed, in order that people may know what they have to expect; but in each person’s own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”4
However, for Mill the ultimate end for the individual and society is happiness. In his 1863 essay, Utilitarianism, Chapter 2, he wrote: “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.”5
Some criticized Mill’s view as entirely hedonistic, to which Mill replied in Utilitarianism, Chapter 4:
The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as mean
s to that end. . . . But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from considerations of this description, what is virtuous, they not only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to the ultimate end, but they also recognize as a psychological fact the possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this manner—as a thing desirable in itself, even although, in the individual instance, it should not produce those other desirable consequences which it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held to be virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, is to be looked upon as means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that account. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.6
The Declaration of Independence states that among the individual’s “unalienable Rights” are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It would seem that happiness, properly understood, coupled with virtue, was also a critical factor in the Founders’ comprehension of liberty. For example, on December 10, 1819, in a fascinating letter to John Adams, Jefferson, while reflecting on the reasons for the demise of the Roman Empire, described the basic elements of liberty and good government, with an emphasis on a virtuous people:
I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters of Cicero. They certainly breathe the present effusions of an exalted patriot, while the parricide Caesar is left in odious contrast. When the enthusiasm however kindled by Cicero’s pen & principles subsides into cool reflection, I ask myself what was that government which the virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, & the ambition of Caesar to subvert? And if Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plentitude of his usurped power have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government? I do not say to restore it, because they never had it, from the rape of the Sabines to the ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had been, like ours, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious—“restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.”
But steeped in corruptive vice and venality as the whole nation was, (and nobody had done more than Caesar to corrupt it) what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government for their country? They had no ideas of government themselves but of their degenerate Senate, nor the people of liberty, but of the factious opposition of their tribunes. They had afterwards their Titusses, their Trajans, and Antoninuses, who had the will to make them happy, and the power to mould their government into a good and permanent form. But it would seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. No government can continue good but under the control of the people: and their people were so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab incunabulis [from infancy]. Their minds were to be informed, by education, what is right & what wrong, to be encouraged in habits of virtue, & deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments, proportioned indeed, but irremissibly; in all cases to follow truth as the only safe guide, & to eschew error . . . [which] bewilder us in one false consequence after another in endless succession.
These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order & good government, but this would have been an operation of a generation or two at least, within which period would have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who could have quashed the whole process. I confess then I can neither see what Cicero, Cato, & Brutus, united and uncontrolled, could have devised to lead their people into good government, nor how this enigma can be solved, nor how further shewn. Why it has been the fate of that delightful country never to have known to this day & through a course of five & twenty hundred years, the history of which we possess one single day of free & rational government. Your intimacy with their history, ancient, middle & modern, your familiarity with the improvements in the science of government at this time, will enable you, if any body, to go back with our principles & opinions to the times of Cicero, Cato, & Brutus, & tell us by what process these great & virtuous men could have led so unenlightened and vitiated a people into freedom & good government. . . .7
Hence, for Jefferson, and most of the Founders, virtue was an essential element of liberty; if the people lack virtue, no form of government can rescue them from tyranny. Again, it must be remembered that the Founders relied on the wisdom of such thinkers as Aristotle, Cicero, and Locke and were influenced by such contemporaries as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, among others, all of whom spent considerable time contemplating virtue. And the Founders returned repeatedly to the importance of natural law, eternal truths, and the transcendent moral order, including virtue.
Indeed, French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu (1689–1755) and his book The Spirit of the Laws (1748) were widely embraced by the Founders, especially during the constitutional period. Montesquieu explained: “There are three kinds of government: REPUBLICAN, MONARCHICAL, AND DESPOTIC. To discover the nature of each, the idea of them held by the least educated of men is sufficient. I assume three definitions, or rather, three facts: one, republican government is that in which the people as a body, or only a part of the people, have sovereign power; monarchical government is that in which one alone governs, but by fixed and established law; whereas, in despotic government, one alone, without law and without rule, draws everything along by his will and caprices. . . . There need not be much integrity for monarchical or despotic government to maintain or sustain itself. The force of the law in the one and the prince’s ever-raised arm in the other can rule or contain the whole. In a popular state there must be an additional spring, which is VIRTUE. What I say is confirmed by the entire body of history and is quite in conformity with the nature of things. For it is clear that less virtue is needed in a monarchy, where the one who sees to the execution of the laws judges himself above the laws, than in a popular government, where the one who sees to the execution of the laws feels that he is subject to them himself and that he will bear their weight. . . . But in a popular government when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can come only from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.”8 In despotic government, “virtue is not at all necessary to it.”9
Montesquieu saw despotism, including its frequent antecedent, anarchy, as a continuing threat. He explained: “When that virtue ceases, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all. Desires change their objects: what which one used to love, one loves no longer. One was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them. Each citizen is like a slave who has escaped from his master’s house. What was a maxim is now called sev
erity; what was a rule is now called constraint; what was vigilance is now called fear. There, frugality, not the desire to possess, is avarice. Formerly the goods of individuals made up the public treasury; the public treasury has now become the patrimony of individuals. The republic is a cast-off husk, and its strength is no more than the power of a few citizens and the license to all.”10
Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism Page 11