by Sean Hannity
Madison wasn’t naive enough to believe that citizens’ rights would be secured by virtue of a grant on a piece of parchment. The delegates would need to design a system that would ensure liberty by leveraging man’s weaknesses instead of ignoring them—pitting men against other men and levels and branches of government against one another. These competing institutions under the control of fallen men would keep each other in check, thereby maximizing individual liberties. “This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public,” Madison explained. “We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.”
Had the framers crafted a pure democracy, there would have been no safeguards against encroachments on citizens’ unalienable rights. The rights of the minority would have been subject to abuses at the hands of the majority—a concept Madison called the “tyranny of the majority.”41
The delegates’ challenge was to establish a federal government sufficiently strong to protect its citizens from domestic and foreign threats but without enough power to imperil the people’s liberties. Their solution was to build into the Constitution a scheme of governmental powers and limitations. The government would have defined (enumerated) powers, but there would also be specific limitations on government to guard against its natural tendency to expand at the expense of individual liberties. They reserved for the states those rights not granted to the federal government and distributed federal power among three separate, coequal branches of government.
“VIRTUE IS OUR BEST SECURITY”
As realists, the framers understood that even with such institutional checks on government as federalism, the separation of powers, and subsequently the Bill of Rights, there was no absolute guarantee against tyranny. They knew liberty would not be self-sustaining. Though they understood man’s sinful nature, they believed that by relying on God he could become more virtuous. They reasoned that the Constitution would have a greater likelihood of succeeding if the people adhered to Christian moral standards and aspired to a virtuous society. “A free society demands a higher level of virtue than a tyranny,” writes Michael Novak, “which no other moral energy has heretofore proven capable of inspiring except Judaism and Christianity.”42
In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned his fellow countrymen against adopting the militant antireligious philosophy of the French. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” said Washington. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician… ought to respect and to cherish them…. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…. reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”43
The founders strongly insisted on this point. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He argued that “virtue must underlay all institutional arrangements if they are to be healthy and strong. The principles of democracy are as easily corrupted as human nature is corrupted.”44 Samuel Adams observed, “We may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored.”45
Almost half a century after the Constitution was ratified, in his famous Democracy in America, Tocqueville observed the strong connection between America’s religious character and its political system. “It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society,” he wrote. “In the United States religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism.”
“OUR ENDURING CONSTITUTION”
Due to the brilliance and foresight of the framers and the American people’s dedication to liberty, the Constitution survived the trials and tribulations of the growing republic, including the brutal Civil War, which tested it to its limits. In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln commented on the foundational importance of the liberty principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence to the endurance of the Constitution. The Declaration’s expression “liberty to all,” noted Lincoln, “was most happy and fortunate.” He said we could have declared our independence from Britain with or without it, “but without it, we could not have secured our free government and consequent prosperity.” Our forefathers wouldn’t have pressed on if they’d had nothing more to fight for than “a mere change of masters.” The expression of the principle of liberty has proved an “apple of gold,” and “the Union and the Constitution, are the picture of silver subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.”46
A few years later, in his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln might have had that metaphor in mind when he reaffirmed that the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” I noted above that in Federalist 1, Hamilton recognized that Americans saw themselves as having undertaken the responsibility of determining whether free people could establish a system of good government. Lincoln seemed to invoke that sentiment when he said, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.” In his conclusion Lincoln answered the question: “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”47
Hamilton and the other framers believed that their designed structure of government would endure and that freedom would prosper under it. Lincoln was reporting that great Americans since the founding had vindicated the framers’ vision. Now, in the midst of the Civil War, Americans and our Constitution were undergoing their greatest challenge yet, and we would meet the challenge by preserving our unique system of government and sparking a rebirth of the liberties it guaranteed. McClay summed it up nicely, saying that Lincoln redefined the war “not merely as a war for the preservation of the Union but as a war for the preservation of the democratic idea… which America exemplified in the world.”48
In assessing the United States Constitution in 1878, British prime minister William Gladstone declared, “The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. It has had a century of trial, under the pressure of exigencies caused by an expansion unexampled in point of rapidity and range; and its exemption from formal change, though not entire, has certainly proved the sagacity of the constructors, and the stubborn strength of the fabric.”49 Gladstone’s point was that our Constitution had stood the test of time, surviving vast territorial expansion (with the Louisiana Purchase and territories acquired from Mexico) and deep internal conflicts.
Despite the myriad cautions the framers incorporated into the Constitution, they knew, as did Abraham Lincoln decades later, that political freedom would be difficult to sustain. Human nature being what it is, there would always be internal and external threats to our liberty. This is why, in his remarks to Kiwanis International in 1987
, President Ronald Reagan said, “It is time that we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers and if we will pass on to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth, because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.”50
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Over time well-meaning but pernicious forces began chipping away at the pillars of our constitutional system. I have come to believe that the momentum against our founding principles crystallized in the Progressive Era, roughly during the first two decades of the twentieth century, though the movement’s political and intellectual roots stretched back into the preceding decades among journalists, novelists, political scientists, and social scientists.51 I would strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with this period of our history. It will give you a much clearer insight into today’s left.
Concerned by societal disruptions and wealth inequalities they believed were caused by the industrial revolution and capitalism’s excesses, Progressives targeted corrupt trusts and mercenary capitalists.52 For example, Henry Demarest Lloyd demonized Standard Oil Company in his book Wealth Against Commonwealth, and economist Thorstein Veblen denounced the wealthy in his The Theory of the Leisure Class.53
Socialists and social justice reformers focused on the problems of urbanization and advocated for the urban poor. Let me stress that I strongly believe in helping the poor, but I don’t believe the answer is the government seizing control of the economy and suppressing individual freedom in the name of “equality.” Of course there should be a safety net for the needy, but socialists constantly exploit the poor as a pretext for accumulating more power for themselves and confiscating more of society’s wealth for their own ends.
Progressive academics pressed for social justice reforms following the example of European socialists. Advocates of women’s suffrage joined in the struggle for social justice.54 Progressives rejected the founders’ belief in, and the biblical teachings on, the depravity of the human condition, believing instead that people are essentially good and perfectible, and that evil resulted from imperfect social systems and corrupt institutions that were impeding man from reaching his true potential.55
But despite their high view of man, they didn’t believe the solution lay in empowering individuals with greater liberty or authority. They dismissed the notion of rugged individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, which were central to our founding and our subsequent history, and placed their faith in government.56 Big business was the problem; big government was the answer. “This is the universal human purpose of the state,” said John Burgess, a progressive political scientist. “We may call it the perfection of humanity; the civilization of the world; the perfect development of the human reason, and its attainment to universal command over individualism; the apotheosis of man…. The national state is the most perfect organ which has yet been attained in the civilization of the world for the interpretation of the human consciousness of right. It furnishes the best vantage ground as yet reached for the contemplation of the purpose of the sojourn of mankind upon earth.”57
Progressives dismissed the founders’ view that man was born free. Our rights were not God-given or inalienable. They were bestowed on us by government and could be denied when expedient or in the state’s interests.58 Progressive intellectuals dismissed the founders’ conception of republican government as a social compact among free people—government by consent of the governed. “The present tendency, then, in American political theory is to disregard the once dominant ideas of natural rights and the social contract, although it must be admitted that the political scientists are more agreed upon this point than is the general public,” wrote University of Chicago political scientist Charles Merriam, a leading progressive thinker. “The origin of the state is regarded, not as the result of a deliberate agreement among men, but as the result of historical development, instinctive rather than conscious; and rights are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law.”59 He further explained, “The notion that political society and government are based upon a contract between independent individuals and that such a contract is the sole source of political obligation is regarded as no longer tenable.”60
Philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey was one of the Progressive movement’s leading players. “The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ,” wrote Dewey. “Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free.”61 He insisted that freedom is not “something that individuals have as a ready-made possession.” Rather, “it is something to be achieved.” Even more cynically, he wrote, “Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology.”62
As businessmen were successfully relying on scientific advancements, Progressives believed that government could do so as well, which also led to their increasing reliance on and expansion of the federal government.63 As such, they saw the concept of natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution as obstacles constituting formidable, institutional restrictions on the power of government to address societal problems. They didn’t conceal their desire to move beyond the Constitution’s system of limited government toward a more energetic, centralized government to tackle social and economic conditions that, in their view, the founders didn’t anticipate and provided no mechanism for handling in the Constitution.64 “Progressivism… amounts to an argument in favor of progressing, or moving beyond, the political principles of the American founding,” writes Hillsdale College professor Ronald Pestritto. “Progressives sought to enlarge vastly the scope of the national government for the purpose of responding to a set of economic and social conditions, that, it was contended, could not have been envisioned during the founding era, and for which the Founders’ limited, constitutional government was inadequate.”65
Progressives believed that government in the able hands of a self-appointed elite could advance mankind toward societal perfection.66 They looked toward an administrative state, delegating government powers to federal bureaucracies and empowering them to more closely manage and control business and the affairs of men. The administrative bureaucracy was to consist of nonpartisan “experts” who would direct the restructuring of the social world and implement the larger goals of governing powers.67 Why couldn’t society’s vast and varied problems be managed by these experts? These enlightened managers presumed that their expertise, backed by state power, could finally eradicate poverty and war.68 “Progressivism was an outlook that cared deeply about the common people and knew, far better than they did, what was best for them,” writes Wilfred McClay. “Thus there was always in Progressivism a certain implicit paternalism, a condescension that was all the more unattractive for being unacknowledged.”69
Progressives nominally advocated a purer form of democracy in contrast to the founders’ notion of republican government. For example, Progressives advocated the direct election of senators, while the Constitution originally mandated they be selected by state legislatures. However, Progressives actually diminished the people’s power by delegating such extensive power to the administrative agencies.70 They disfavored private property, and some were openly socialist. The federal government, they believed, should have greater powers to protect people against corporate abuses.
The reformers favored an expansion of the public sector and a corresponding shrinking of the private sector. The state had to expand its size, reach, and control in the name of protecting the individual.71 Enlightened bureaucrats saw themselves as better equipped to spend people’s money than the people themselves.72 They also believed it was the government’s duty to redistribute resources and control prices and methods of manufacture.73 Accordingly, the government needed greater revenues, which gave rise to the federal income tax as codified in the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitut
ion, passed in 1913.74 The Progressive movement thus chipped away at the founders’ ideal of equal opportunity under the law in favor of equal outcomes.
PROGRESSIVISM BEGETS PROGRESSIVISM
Statist politicians continued to expand the federal government and undermine the Constitution throughout the twentieth century, particularly Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, a violent, extremist left-wing movement emerged. At that time, the radical left fought for outright revolution through such militant groups as the Weather Underground, the May 19 Communist Organization, and the Black Liberation Army. When their revolutionary dreams failed, leftists adopted a long-term strategy of the “long march through the institutions,” implanting themselves in the education system, the media, much of the legal profession, and the entertainment industry, aiming to subvert these institutions from within and transform them into tools of the revolution.
Their patience has paid them huge dividends. Now firmly in control of these institutions as well as the formidable social media companies, the left subjects us to daily barrages of left-wing propaganda.75 Along with many other conservative media personalities, I do my best to fight back against this torrent of disinformation and leftist dogma. However, although their arguments are often transparently false, the left’s uniform control over these key institutions gives them a crucial advantage in spreading their message and limiting the circulation of opposing views. What we need is our own long march through the institutions, with courageous young conservatives wading back into what is now hostile territory and reclaiming a space for our dissenting views.
During the 1960s, profound changes occurred in societal attitudes and mores, characterized by a pronounced focus on self-discovery, including through recreational drug use and self-gratification. People abandoned traditional values for moral relativism. Instead of conforming to external societal norms, people embraced self-liberation and self-exploration, looking inside themselves for moral guidance.76 This was a radical departure from the past, which had recognized that the inner self of flawed human beings was not a reliable moral compass.77