FROM DEMAGOGUE TO TYRANT

“Think of your forefathers!  Think of your posterity!”–John Quincy Adams

” To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and by the bitterness of their invectives.”

I’ve been thinking about these words from Alexander Hamilton quite a lot this election season.  He was referring to the angry debate over the newly proposed Constitution, but in many ways his description of the political climate in 1787 sounds a lot  like 2016.  Indeed, the quote above, originally published in a New York newspaper over the pseudonym “Publius,” could come straight out of the op-ed section of one of today’s newspapers, except for the fact that columnists can’t use words like “declamation” and “invective” any more and hope to be understood.

In the same essay (which we now remember as Federalist #1), Hamilton went on to sound a word of warning that I also keep thinking about during this bizarre presidential campaign:

. . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.  History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

HOW JAMES MADISON AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON WOULD COUNSEL REPUBLICAN CONVENTION DELEGATES

No one can know for sure how the country’s Founders would advise the delegates to this week’s Republican National Convention, but it seems likely that they would have little patience with the common claim that it would be unethical to disregard the wishes of primary voters if the delegates were convinced that the people’s preference was ill advised.  In general, the framers of the Constitution expected that occasions would arise when it was necessary for elected officials to stand against their constituents; indeed, the willingness to do so was a litmus test of genuine virtue.  Here are just a couple of example of such belief, drawn from the contemporary commentary on the Constitution called the Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays penned in 1787-1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay:

From James Madison, Federalist no. 63:

James Madison

” As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.  In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?”

From Alexander Hamilton, Federalist no. 71:

Alexander Hamilton

“It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the PUBLIC GOOD.  This often applies to their very errors.  But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it. . . .  When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.”

Neither Madison nor Hamilton was writing with a party nominating convention in mind, of course, but the underlying principle that animated their observations seems pertinent to this week’s doings in Cleveland.  When a public official is convinced that a popular preference would be disastrous for the nation, there is nothing noble or admirable about yielding to that preference in the name of “duty,” and the GOP shouldn’t have to invent a “conscience clause” to make that apparent.

“COMMENCING DEMAGOGUES AND ENDING TYRANTS . . .”

“Think of your forefathers!  Think of your posterity!”–John Quincy Adams

” To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and by the bitterness of their invectives.”

I’ve been thinking about these words from Alexander Hamilton quite a lot this election season.  He was referring to the angry debate over the newly proposed Constitution, but in many ways his description of the political climate in 1787 sounds a lot  like 2016.  Indeed, the quote above, originally published in a New York newspaper over the pseudonym “Publius,” could come straight out of the op-ed section of one of today’s newspapers, except for the fact that columnists can’t use words like “declamation” and “invective” any more and hope to be understood.

In the same essay (which we now remember as Federalist #1), Hamilton went on to sound a word of warning that I also keep thinking about during this bizarre presidential campaign:

. . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.  History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

Your thoughts?

SHOULD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE A SAY IN THE SUPREME COURT’S DIRECTION?

“Think of your forefathers!  Think of your posterity!”—John Quincy Adams

I have a hard time taking seriously Democratic appeals to the Constitution as they insist that Senate Republicans act promptly on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  Most Democrats long ago embraced a role for the Court that the Framers of the Constitution could have scarcely imagined.  It seems more than a little opportunistic to rediscover the authority of original intent now that it suits their purposes.  As I noted in a previous post, the Founders described the judicial branch in terms of its essential “feebleness.”  The Court could never be a threat to the rights of the people, Alexander Hamilton insisted in Federalist no. 78, because under the Constitution the Court possessed “neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment.”  The Framers would be stunned to see the power that the Court wields today.

And yet they would be equally mystified by Republicans who insist that public opinion should play an important role in shaping the composition of the Court.  In arguing to postpone consideration of Obama nominee Merrick Garland, for example, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell observes that “of course the American people should have a say in the Court’s direction.”  That subterranean rumbling you may have noticed afterward came from the Founders collectively turning over in their graves.

The Framers’ vision for the proper place of public opinion in a free government is easy to caricature because it is complicated.  In their reading of human nature, it was just as fallacious to assume “universal venality” (i.e., moral corruption) as to assume “universal rectitude,” to use Hamilton’s terminology.  They believed that there was enough “honor and virtue among mankind” to justify an experiment in republican government grounded in the consent of the governed.  But they also knew that there was enough “folly and wickedness” in human nature to make such a government perpetually susceptible to tyranny and injustice.  And so they sought to ensure a degree of popular involvement in the new government while protecting it from undue popular pressure.

Remember how federal officeholders were originally to be selected: Only members of the House of Representatives would owe their appointment to the direct election of the people.  According to James Madison in Federalist no. 52, this meant that the House, unique among the components of the new government, would have “an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.”  But even then, “the people” who would so influence the Representatives comprised a severely truncated shell of today’s electorate.  The Framers did not specify who should be eligible to vote, except to stipulate that the states should apply the same criteria for federal elections as they did for the houses of representatives in their own state legislatures.  Based on state voting laws as they currently existed, the Framers could expect that members of the U. S. House of Representatives would be chosen by the votes of adult white male landowners.  (Depending on the state, the property requirement for voting regularly disqualified from one-third to two-thirds of adult white males.)

So much for the government’s “popular branch.”  The members of the more august Senate would be selected, not by the people directly, but by the state legislatures. To buffer the Senate further against popular pressures, only one-third of Senate seats would be open in any given election year.  These features would make the Senate less susceptible to “the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” as Madison put it.  More removed from “the people,” the upper chamber would function as an “anchor against popular fluctuations.”  “I shall not scruple to add,” Madison further noted, that the Senate “may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”

Less “popular” still would be the executive under the new Constitution.  We sometimes forget that the Articles of Confederation didn’t include an executive branch at all, and so the Constitution’s framers were in uncharted territory as they sought to define the role of a “president” of the United States.  Andrew Jackson would later redefine the office of president as the most uniquely democratic element of the federal government.  This was true, he contended, because the president alone among all federal officeholders was chosen by the entire country.

But Jackson, keep in mind, made a practice of inverting the vision of the Framers while claiming to uphold it.  In reality, the Framers went to great lengths to isolate the executive from popular pressure.  They anticipated that, in most election years, the president would actually be chosen in a run-off in the House of Representatives where each state delegation would cast one vote.  The congressmen would be choosing from among the five individuals who had received the most votes by “electors” from each state.  (These are the members of our so-called electoral college.  The Constitution does nothing to tie the selection of electors to the vote of the people, but leaves the manner of choosing them to each state legislature.  For the next generation, at least, upwards of two-thirds were appointed by the state legislatures, not elected by “the people.”)

By protecting the executive from direct popular pressures, the Framers hoped that the executive would be able to perform his duties more effectively, always sensitive to the public welfare but never captive to the passions of the people.  Alexander Hamilton developed the point at length in Federalist no. 71:

There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation.  But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted.  The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive.

Which brings us to the judicial branch.  According to Mitch McConnell, it’s self-evident that “the American people should have a say in the Court’s direction.”  He may be right.  Given the inordinate power that the Court wields today, he probably is right.  I would just like to hear this prominent conservative leader tell his constituents that none of the Framers whom he claims to venerate would agree with him.

Just think for a minute about how the Framers of the Constitution expected the members of the Supreme Court to be chosen: Supreme Court justices were to be appointed for life by the president of the United States, who in turn was to be elected by the House of Representatives, who would choose the president from a group of finalists identified by electors, who in turn were appointed by the state legislatures, who for their part were elected by adult, white, male, property-holding voters.  Whatever you or I or Mitch McConnell may think, the Framers certainly didn’t believe that “the people” should “have a say in the Court’s direction.”

So what do we do with this information? I’m far from suggesting that we simply ask WWFD—What Would the Founders Do?—and then go and do likewise.  Figures from the past have no authority over us, and figuring out what the Founders would think about contemporary politics settles nothing.  But following John Quincy Adams, I think there’s more than a little wisdom in situating our contemporary debates within the larger conversations across time of which they are but a part.  While we shouldn’t be slavishly submissive to the values of the Framers, neither should we be cavalierly dismissive.  In Christian terms, the former is idolatry, the latter is arrogance.  We avoid both these extremes when we assess their views critically but respectfully, grappling with them as we seek to clarify and justify our own positions.

The Framers’ determination to shield federal officeholders from undue popular pressure stemmed logically from a skeptical view of human nature that few twenty-first century Americans share.  Nearly two centuries have passed since Alexis de Tocqueville noted wryly that the American people “live in the perpetual utterance of self-applause.”  Most Americans—including most American Christians—now reflexively view human nature as essentially good and the wishes of the majority as essentially just.  It might not be a bad thing if we reevaluated that popular prejudice in the light of Scripture.

But whatever your view of human nature, we might at least concede that there is a consistency and symmetry in the Framers’ efforts to shield the judiciary from popular opinion.  In Federalist no. 52, James Madison explained the overall structure of the proposed government with reference to the maxim that “the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration.”  Because the House of Representatives would be Constitutionally charged with the responsibility of initiating all revenue measures, it was right and proper that representatives have the shortest terms of office and be most immediately responsive to “the people.”  Terms of office would increase in length as the power of the office declined.  Congressmen would serve for two years, presidents for four, senators for six . . . and Supreme Court justices for life.

That the Framers would allow such dramatically longer terms for Supreme Court justices makes sense only in light of their belief that the Court would exercise dramatically less influence on the life of the nation than it now does.  If Mitch McConnell is right, and we now need to disregard the Framers’ goal of protecting the Court from public opinion, he is right because we have long since abandoned the Framers’ vision of a “feeble” judiciary with “neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment.”

“NEITHER FORCE NOR WILL”: ALEXANDER HAMILTON ON THE SUPREME COURT

              Think of your forefathers!  Think of your posterity!                      —John Quincy Adams—

As if things weren’t bad enough in this interminable election cycle, the recent death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia has added to the partisan posturing plaguing the nation.  With righteous indignation, Senate Republican leaders avow never to consider a replacement until after the coming election on the grounds that, to quote majority leader Mitch McConnell, “the American people should have a say in the Court’s direction.”  With righteous indignation, White House spokesmen present President Obama as a strict constitutionalist who is bound by his sworn oath to the law of the land to act immediately to fill the vacancy.

Let me be honest: I’m skeptical of both claims.  They strike me as equally self-interested and disingenuous.  But I’ve never wanted to make this blog overtly political, and the point of this series on the 2016 election is not to take sides but to put it in historical perspective.  Americans in 2016 are engaged in an ongoing debate about the role of government in a free society that began long before any of us arrived on the scene.  Why wouldn’t we want to learn from that conversation?  With John Quincy Adams, I think that listening to our ancestors is one of the best things we can do to serve our posterity.

Let’s start with Democratic appeals to the Constitution to arguing that President Obama was obligated to nominate a successor immediately.  It’s worth pointing out that the Constitution says almost nothing about the nomination process.  The Framers devoted a total of twenty words to the subject, and nearly half of them are and, of, by, or the.  Buried in a portion of a single sentence in Art. II, sect. 2, we read that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.”  Not a lot to go on there.

Imagine for a moment the following scenario: President Obama holds a press conference and announces, “Given that my party has lost control of both houses of Congress, and that Constitutionally any nomination that I might make requires the Senate’s approval, it makes sense to forego a nomination at this time and allow my successor to act.”  Would that be unconstitutional?  I don’t think so.  It might be politically irresponsible—not to mention utterly inconceivable—but it would be hard to twist it into a palpable violation of the Constitution, even if it meant postponing Scalia’s replacement an entire year.  The Constitution only requires that the legislative branch meet once a year, for goodness sake, and through the end of the nineteenth century Congress was in adjournment for nine months in every odd-numbered year, so the possibility that a seat could remain vacant for an extended period was ever present.

But my objection runs deeper than this.  Democratic appeals to the Constitution on the issue ring hollow because most Democrats long ago embraced a role for the Supreme Court that the Framers of the Constitution could have scarcely imagined.  In their essays promoting ratification, both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton insisted that the proposed Supreme Court would have the right and the responsibility to rule on the constitutionality of federal and state laws.  At the same time, however, they went out of their way to assure critics that the Court’s powers, though important, were limited.

Alexander Hamilton

Of the eighty-five essays in the Federalist Papers, only six focus on the judiciary (nos. 78-83), all of them written by Hamilton.  The New Yorker wrote to refute Anti-Federalist charges that the Framers at Philadelphia had created a monster that would run rough-shod over the prerogatives of the states and the liberties of the people.  In Federalist no. 78, for example, Hamilton led with the reminder that “the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.”  Hear how he explains “the natural feebleness of the judiciary”:

 . . . the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.  The executive not only dispenses the honors but holds the sword of the community.  The legislature not only commands the purse but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.  The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatever.  It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment.

In Federalist no. 81 Hamilton again sought to reassure his readers.  He acknowledged the popular fear that the Court would abuse its prerogatives to usurp the power of the legislature.  According to critics, the justices would be free to evaluate laws according to “the spirit of the Constitution,” rather than the strict letter of the document.  This in turn would enable the Court to mold the laws “into whatever shape it may think proper; especially as its decision will not be in any manner subject to the revision or correction of the legislative body.”

This “supposed danger . . . is in reality a phantom,” Hamilton insisted.  And why was this?  Because “there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution.”

Bottom line: In 1787 the Framers of the Constitution believed that the Supreme Court would have “neither force nor will” and that “the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter.”  Does anyone believe this in 2016?

In my next post I’ll share what the Founders would have thought of the Republican claim that “the people” should influence the make-up of the Court.

WORDS FROM THE PAST: JAMES MADISON ON THE ROLE OF ELECTED LEADERS

“Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!”

The former president (and now U. S. congressman) John Quincy Adams made this impassioned plea at the conclusion of an antislavery speech late in 1844 as the U. S. Congress considered the annexation of Texas.  As he shared with his constituents his fears that the annexation of Texas would enlarge the empire of slavery, Adams exhorted them to consider their ancestors as well as their descendants in deciding how to respond to the political turmoil of their day.  It was good advice then, and it’s good advice now, which is why I’ve promised to share words from the past from time to time that might be relevant as we make sense of this year’s contentious presidential campaign.

James Madison

Here then, is another favorite passage from the Federalist Papers, that compilation of eighty-five essays that Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (with the brief assistance of John Jay) wrote in defense of the newly-proposed Constitution.  It’s taken from Federalist no. 63 and comes from the pen of James Madison, the slight Virginian often remembered as the “father” of the Constitution.  In context, Madison was making a case for the proposed structure of the U. S. Senate.  In the passage below he makes no bones about the role that he hoped the Senate would play:

I shall not scruple to add that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?

To understand what Madison is saying here, we need a sense of his view of human nature.  Madison, like the Founders generally, thought that men and women were guided by three different faculties.  The rarest was reason, a logical quality of mind that points reliably toward virtuous decisions that promote the general welfare of the larger society.  More common was what he called interest, which is essentially the rational calculation of individual self-interest.  Most common, and most dangerous, was passion, an irrational faculty dominated by prejudice and emotion.

To oversimplify, reason rationally promotes the common good, interest rationally promotes individual self-interest, and passion may irrationally (if unintentionally) undermine both.  Because the majority would not always be guided by reason, the role of the Senate would sometimes be to counter popular passions.

Bottom line: In Madison’s view, the role of the responsible government leader was typically to moderate popular passions, not inflame them.

 

“OFFERED IN A SPIRIT WHICH WILL NOT DISGRACE THE CAUSE OF TRUTH”

At its best, historian David Harlan tells us, history can be “a conversation with the dead about what we should value and how we should live.” The bad news is that most of us live our lives “stranded in the present,” to quote historian Margaret Bendroth.  What is worse, we like it that way.

I’ve been thinking of this a lot as our already interminable presidential campaign season proceeds.  A lot of politically active Americans claim to venerate our nation’s past, but I see almost no evidence that anyone’s listening to our ancestors.

At the end of an impassioned speech against the expansion of slavery, former president John Quincy Adams punctuated his appeal to the nation’s conscience with a fervent cry:

“Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!”

I love Adams’s exhortation on multiple levels.  It exposes our relentless present-mindedness and individualism and calls us to a new kind of connectedness that transcends generations as well as geography.  Adams reminds us that we live in the flow of time, part of a larger story that began before we were born and will continue long after we die.

Adams’s exhortation is also a call to humility.  There is an arrogance to present-mindedness that C. S. Lewis rightly labeled “chronological snobbery.”  By challenging us to recognize an obligation to our forefathers as well as our posterity, Adams is telling us (among other things) to open our eyes and get over ourselves.  Stop patting the past on the head and be open to the possibility that we need to learn from it instead.

Finally, I find that Adams’s words perfectly capture my understanding of the value of history: we study the past to live more wisely in the future.  And this means that we cannot begin to honor our obligation to our descendants until we learn to listen more closely to our ancestors.

In the spirit of Adams’s plea, from time to time between now and election day, I think I’ll share quotes from our past worth chewing on during this contentious political season. My goal is not to be overtly partisan, and you can make of them what you will.

Let’s start with a quote from the Federalist Papers, a series of eighty-five essays penned primarily by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in 1787 and 1788 to rally support for the newly proposed Constitution.   The Federalist Papers are not an infallible source of wisdom, but they’re one of the best windows that we have into the values of the original framers of our Constitutional system.

Alexander Hamilton sat for this portrait by John Trumbull in 1792.

The quote below appeared in the very first number of the Federalist.  Knowing that the supporters of the Constitution faced an uphill battle, Alexander Hamilton hit the ground running.  He dashed off Federalist no. 1 within a couple of weeks of the adjournment of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia.  The debate would be fierce, Hamilton knew,  and the stakes would be high.  The future–even the very existence–of the infant United States hung in the balance.  And precisely because the stakes were high, Hamilton knew full well that “a torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose.”  Hear then, how he cautioned his audience:

We, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.

In sum, Hamilton was conceding at the outset that there would be intelligent and honorable individuals on both sides of the coming debate.  And what is more, some on the “right side” would have dishonorable motives.  This is a far cry from business as usual in 2016, isn’t it, where presidential candidates  denounce one another as “liars” and “con artists” and train their followers to see the opposition as either malevolent or stupid.

Hamilton went on to predict that partisan firebrands would strive to prove “the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”  Sound familiar to anyone?

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Over the next seven months, Hamilton and Madison wrote some 175,000 words about the proposed Constitution.  Together, they crafted a reasoned argument aimed at a reasonable audience about how to perpetuate liberty and justice under a representative form of government.  In concluding the opening essay, Hamilton laid out the approach that the authors would follow throughout:

My arguments will be open to all and may be judged of by all.  They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth.

Sounds like an approach worth recapturing.

SUMMER READING ON CHRISTIANITY AND THE CONSTITUTION

There were two department stores in the small southern town where I grew up.  My grandmother preferred Woolworth’s, on the town square across from the courthouse, while my mom always shopped at K-Mart, right next to the A&P on the highway heading out of town.  This time of year I despised them both equally.  You couldn’t enter either without being accosted by signs announcing “Back to School” sales, usually accompanied by cardboard cut-outs of yellow school buses or of school-age children inexplicably delighted by new no. 2 pencils and a spiral notebook.  Such signs always made me angry.  Like death-row convicts, we kids already knew that our time was running short, and it just seemed cruel to rub our noses in it.

It’s forty-five years later and I still feel that way when the 1st of August comes around.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love teaching at Wheaton and feel unbelievably privileged and blessed to work here.  And yet . . .  I just spent the morning on my favorite bench out at Lake Ellyn Park reading about American history.  The temperature was in the mid-70s, there was an occasional breeze through the trees, the sun felt good on my back, and I didn’t want it to end, ever.

I still hope to squeeze in a few more books before the summer ends, and thinking that you might be looking for something to read as well, I thought I would make a few recommendations.  Last month I shared my suggestions on works related to faith and the American founding, and because I have been blogging recently on Christianity and the Constitution, I thought I would suggest a few books that I have found helpful in thinking about the creation of the Constitution.  Not all of the authors mentioned below are Christian or especially concerned with the relation of Christianity to the Constitution, but each has valuable insight to offer.

If you’re game for some eighteenth-century prose, I would recommend that you start with the Federalist Papers, a source that I alluded to in my last post.  These originated as a series of essays written primarily by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in 1787-1788.  Published serially in New York newspapers, they were written intentionally to sway public opinion in favor of ratification.  They are hardly unbiased, but the authors appealed to the reason of their readers more than their emotions and produced a body of reasoned commentary that today still stands among the most important political writings in American history.  (Supreme Court justices have cited the papers over three hundred times in their rulings.)  If this is a bit ambitious, consider at least reading essay no. 10 (“arguably the most famous writing in the field of American political science”), or no. 51, my personal favorite.  It is no. 51 that contains Madison’s haunting rhetorical question–“What is human nature itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”–followed by his trenchant observation, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Having recommended the Federalist Papers, I would recommend also a modern work about those essays: Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World (2008), by Michael Meyerson.  Meyerson is Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore.  The author provides much of the back story of the Federalist, exploring the relationship between Hamilton and Madison (allies in 1788, they would soon become bitter enemies), the ideas that shaped their thinking, and the arguments that they articulated with such effect.

Countless books have been written on the Constitutional Convention itself, but I think my favorite is Richard Beeman’s Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2009).  Beeman is a distinguished historian of early America at the University of Pennsylvania.  Although it is a skill too lightly valued by historians these days, one of Beeman’s strengths is bringing the historical moment to life through a compelling narrative.  He is masterful at recreating the physical setting (you will learn much about the sights, sounds, and smells of late-eighteenth-Philadelphia) and adept at crafting engaging sketches of the leading characters.

As I tried to convey in my last post, nailing down the personal religious beliefs of the Framers is far more difficult than is commonly supposed, and many well-meaning popular Christian writers make dogmatic arguments on the slenderest of foundations.  The titles that I have found to be most helpful do not focus exclusively on the Constitution but speak more broadly to the religious beliefs and objectives of leading Americans from the Revolutionary Era through the end of the eighteenth century.  Two such works I have already recommended in previous posts: John Fea’s Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (2011) and Thomas Kidd’s God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010) both have chapters on the Constitution.  Both Fea and Kidd are wonderfully able Christian scholars.  Although its author is not a historian, I also like Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (2008), by Steven Waldman.  A former editor at U.S. News and World Report, Waldman went on to serve for a decade as editor-in-chief of the online news service Beliefnet.

Check one of these out if you have the time.  Better yet, turn off your phone, log out of Facebook, and make the time.  Summer’s almost over.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE CONSTITUTION–PART III

Followers of this blog will have already figured out that I sometimes get to the point slowly.  (I prefer to think of myself as systematic.)  A case in point is this series of posts on Christianity and the Constitution.  Rather than dive right into a dogmatic argument, I began by asking us to consider our motives for exploring the subject in the first place (see here).  I followed that crucial question with a warning, using the often embellished story of Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for prayer at the Constitutional Convention as a reminder that “revisionist” history was not invented by post-1960 liberals.  (See here.)  Well-meaning Christians have been revisionists, too.

I’ve taken this path because my goal in this blog is not so much to convince you what you should believe about the role of Christian faith in American history.  I am more than ever convinced that a genuinely Christian approach to the study of the past will be reflected more in how we think than in what we conclude.  Developing Christian habits of mind as we think historically requires that we practice metacognition, i.e., that we self-consciously think about how we think.

With this caveat, I’m finally ready to make my own case about the relationship between Christianity and the Constitution–sort of.  My approach may not be what you expect.   I believe that one of the greatest obstacles to our learning anything from the Constitution (as opposed to about it) is our very preoccupation with constitutionality.  Caught up in contemporary political struggles over the acceptable place for religious belief in the public square, we ransack history for evidence that the Framers were on our side.  This is the epitome of the “history-as-ammunition” approach to the past.  (See “What is the Value of History–Part II.)  As I have argued repeatedly, this approach always exacts its price: we find what we already “know” but actually learn nothing at all.

Seventy years ago, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter captured the cost of the transaction when he observed, “Our constant preoccupation with the constitutionality of legislation rather than with its wisdom tends to preoccupation of the American mind with a false value.”  Did you notice how he distinguished between constitutionality and wisdom?  Following Frankfurter, as a Christian interested in learning from the past, I would argue that going to the Constitution solely with questions of constitutionality in mind closes us off from a much richer payoff.  I’m enough of a realist to understand that we can’t ignore questions of constitutionality entirely, but we mustn’t allow them to become all consuming.  We need to be seeking illumination more than ammunition, and that necessitates a different approach.

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy

Popular Christian writers have explored the relationship of Christianity to the Constitution primarily by posing one huge, dichotomous question: Is the Constitution a Christian document, or isn’t it?  To confirm that it is (and this is typically their predetermined goal), they have either tried to prove that the document was shaped by Christian (or Judeo-Christian) thinking, or, more simplistically, to establish that the men who crafted it were orthodox believers.

Both approaches are fraught with difficulty.  Establishing intellectual causation may be the most difficult task a historian ever attempts.  We know from their correspondence, diaries, “common books,” and libraries that the Framers were not only extraordinarily well read–students of history, philosophy, science, and ancient literature, as well as theology–but also practical men of the world with practical concerns about profit and power.  Unraveling the interwoven threads of intellectual influence to identify a single strand as determinative is almost impossible, and our conclusions will in all probability say more about our own biases than about the mindset of the Framers.

We should also be leery of the claim that it is a simple thing to substantiate the faith of figures from two centuries ago.  “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him?” the Apostle Paul asked (I Corinthians 2:11).   We should be even more suspicious of the implicit supposition that professing Christians will necessarily think and act Christianly, as well as of the corollary that Christians from the 18th century would necessarily agree with Christians in 2013.

Candidly, I’m for abandoning the whole attempt either to identify the Christian influences on the Framers or to determine what proportion of them were authentic believers.  It is far more fruitful, in my opinion, simply to take the document that they bequeathed to us and try to figure out the values and concerns that it reflected.  Rather than merely searching for ammunition with which to score points in contemporary debates, we can approach the creation of the Constitution ideally as we would any other crucial event from the past.  We can think of it as a window, a portal through which to explore the mindset of another time.  We cal also welcome it as a mirror, inasmuch as contemplating the past can often help us to see the present more clearly.

So here is my recommendation: rather than asking, “Is the Constitution a Christian document,” it is far better to ask instead, “What values and convictions inform the Constitution, and to what degree are they consistent with Christian teaching?”  Note two key features of the latter question: It is not dichotomous (yes/no questions always promote oversimplification), and it asks us to think about correlation (which can be logically demonstrated) rather than causation (which is almost impossible to prove).

The broad question that I am advocating actually encompasses a host of subsidiary questions.  In exploring the “values and convictions” that informed the Constitution, we might subdivide the task to ask a series of narrower questions.  For example, what view of the role of government shaped the Framers’ deliberations?  Or what was their understanding of society, of equality, of justice, of individual rights?  As we explored each, our goal would not be to determine the way that Christian conviction shaped the Framers’ particular views, but instead to evaluate the degree to which their views, whatever their foundation, can be reconciled with Christian principles.

I wish I were knowledgeable enough to investigate all of these questions with you, but I am not.  I do want to take the time to explore one such question that I have thought a lot about, namely, what is the view of human nature that under girds the Constitution?  Popular writers interested in Christianity and the Constitution have devoted much of their attention to figuring out what the Framers thought about God.  I’m inclined to believe that we should spend more time trying to determine what they thought about man.  Certainly, the Framers thought that no free government could long endure without an accurate understanding of the human condition.  As Virginia delegate James Madison put it so memorably, “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”

Figuring out the view of human nature that informs the Constitution isn’t easy if we limit our search to the document itself, however.  As historian Forrest McDonald has observed, the Constitution is essentially a procedural document.  Apart from its brief preamble, it just tersely specifies who exercises which powers and how.  What is more, it comes without study notes or elaborate commentary to help us understand it.

For that we need to turn to the record of the extensive conversation that unfolded as Americans debated whether to ratify the proposed framework.  There is no better starting place in this regard than the Federalist (often known as the Federalist Papers), a series of eighty-four essays penned in 1787-1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay  (The first two were delegates to the convention itself.)  Staunch advocates of ratification, the authors undertook a systematic justification of the proposed Constitution, and their arguments on its behalf regularly link its signal features to the Framers’ understanding of the human heart.

In the Federalist we read about “the folly and wickedness of mankind” and the “ordinary depravity of human nature” (no, 78).  We are told that “men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious” and that “momentary passions and immediate interests” control human conduct more than “considerations of . . . justice” (no. 6).  We hear that “the mild voice of reason . . . is but too often drowned . . . by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain” (no. 42).  Other similar characterizations abound in the Federalist.  Collectively, they drive home the authors’ conviction that self-interest was the predominant motive in the human breast and that virtue (which they would have defined as self-denial for the common good) was as uncommon as it was precious and fragile.

From these two convictions, it followed that power, however wielded, would always pose a threat to justice and liberty.  When the people wielded unchecked power, some subset of the population would always be vulnerable.  (“If a minority be united by a common interest,” Federalist 51 averred, “the rights of the minority will be insecure.”)  When the government wielded unchecked power, on the other hand, the rights of the people would be in jeopardy.  (Once in power, according to Federalist 61, leaders are prone to “forget their obligations to their constituents and prove unfaithful to their important trust.”)

In the light of this skeptical understanding of human nature laid bare by the Federalist, the significance of the procedural details of the Constitution that we all learn in civics class comes into focus.  Both the system of checks and balances designed to constrain the government, as well as the limitations on popular influence designed to protect it, are reflections of a fundamental suspicion of unlimited power, which in turn reflects the Framers’ basic assessment of our flawed human nature.  The very structure of the Constitution becomes an implicit reminder of the view of human nature that the Federalist makes explicit.

As Christians, we can then proceed to ask whether this underlying understanding of human nature is consistent with what God has revealed through His word.  You and I might disagree, but I would say that it is absolutely consistent.  Whatever the source of their views, the Framers held an understanding of human nature that as Christians we can in good conscience affirm.  Whether that view of human nature continues to shape government today, or the ideology of either major political party, or even the values of many American churches, is a different question entirely.