Thanks to all of you who have sent in ideas for the conference at Berry College on teaching American politics. For a variety of reasons originating in my personal incompetence, the conference will now be on April 22. We’re still taking suggestions and looking for volunteers.
One of the proposals raised lots of interesting issues concerning the popular Founders=good/Progressives=evil teaching “narrative.” A variant of this approach, of course, is Locke=natural rights=good/Hegel (a German)=History (which includes Darwinian evolution)=evil. Here’s the (somewhat edited) version of the strengths and weaknesses of this narrative I got in the (e)mail:
Strengths: 1. The narrative is a fine way to boil dow the complicated story of American politics for undergraduates and the educated public. 2. It inculcates reverence for the Founders and works to reverse the prejudice of today’s young against anything old and established. (I would add: It makes the old seem more noble and rational than the new, creating an aristocratic prejudice against the vulgarity and stupidity of contemporary opinion. It creates an elite perspective by which to look down on the pseudo-sophistication of contemporary intellectual elites.) 3. Progressivism is overlooked in the mainstream literature as an important cause of the character of American political life today.
Weaknesses: 1. The virtue of simplicity is also a vice. The Founding is oversimplified and the thought-provoking tensions within our originating liberalism are neglected. No Founding is flawless or without problems that could morph into the seeds of its own destruction, and intelligent citizens shouldn’t be blind to these inevitable “issues.” As Jim Ceaser reminded us, liberalism, from the beginning, has had really big sustainability issues–especially when it comes to its ungrateful dependence on the nation and genuine religion. (I would elaborate: Strauss himself says that Rousseau [History] radicalizes Locke by exploiting obvious contradictions in his contractual doctrine, and there is, after all, something proto-historicist in the Lockean idea that nature gives us almost worthless materialism and so everything natural should be transformed by being mixed with our labor.) 2. The populism of the Jacksonian era is slighted as a cause. (I would add, following Tocqueville, that democracy is slighted as a cause of our pragmatism–which is a progressivism based in a vague faith in the indefinite perfectibility of man.) 3. Important differences (on, for example, the culturally libertarian front) between (manly, TR) Progressivism and today’s post-Sixties liberalism go relatively unexplained, and (I would add) there’s insufficient appreciation of the basic decency of the immigrant New Deal Democratic Party of, say, 1960. (I would also add that a very important difference between these days and, say, the 1930s is the death of the Historical ideologies. Liberalism, as Ceaser and Rorty agree, is now foundationless, and conservatism may or may not be, depending on who you ask. An unseemly feature of today’s back-to-the-Thirties “discourse” is the utterly misleading allegations of Fascism in both directions–as in Liberal Fascism or all Straussians are really Fascists.)
So we’re still especially soliciting a greater variety of proposals with this “narrative” in mind, including those from a Porcher, Anti-Federalist view and others outside the Locke box. I certainly would also welcome someone who’d be tough enough to defiend the poor Progressives from all this abuse.
The conference will also feature sessions on teaching American politics through films (such as ROCKY) and the use of high technology is the American government classroom. Additional proposals are especially welcomed along those lines too.
November 29th, 2009 | 11:45 am
[...] Originally posted here: The Founders, the Progressives, and Teaching American Politics … [...]
November 29th, 2009 | 11:57 am
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November 29th, 2009 | 1:08 pm
Well here are some thoughts.
1. We should keep in mind that the thoughts of most people and even most political actors are compounds of partly overlapping partly contradictory traditions and that no narrative of binary opposition can hope to capture this reality.
2. Your point about the politics of the white, urban, working class, base of the Democratic party is an interesting one and it is worth exploring that constituency’s combination of social democracy, social conservatism (on issues such as abortion, welfare, the role of religion in public life, and police authority), and unironic patriotism. The causes of the collapse of that style of politics are certainly many (and some laudable), but we are poorer for its loss. It lingers in our time in the Stupak amendment, but it is a disgrace that the majority of our present social democrats are so committed not only to government-run healthcare but one that subsidizes abortion. Conservatives could learn from this style of politics to mix more subsidiarity oriented policy with their family values rhetoric.
3. There are, within the Declaration, and Lincoln, resources for understanding people as rights-bearing beings that are more than selfish rights-hoarding, contract-waving creatures defined by their seeking to extend their personal power (in the name of freedom) over their environment. The double commitment to transhistorical principles and that these principles can be accessed and applied through reasonable deliberation allows for a kind of deliberation that can take into account the reality of humans as both rights-bearing and social (or as Peter Lawler likes to say relational) beings. This allows for a conversation about both human rights and human flourishing. This contrasts with both President Obama’s phony and partisan political humility (We all have opinions about abortion, but they are all just opinions, so lets keep a virtually unlimited abortion license and subsidize the practice) and his psuedo-deliberation of pretending to have a conversation and then demanding obedience based on authority (We’ve talked enough about climate change/healthcare/the economy and the real consensus of experts agree that the time for talking is over and we need to take the actions of cap and trade/Obamacare/the stimulus).
November 29th, 2009 | 1:16 pm
[...] See original here: The Founders, the Progressives, and Teaching American Politics … [...]
November 29th, 2009 | 3:38 pm
Weakness 1 is right on the money. Presentations of the Founding both in the classroom and in the countless books being released on the subject are vastly over simplified (and I do have to plead guilty to such over-simplification myself).
A particular pet peeve of mine is the common declaration that “the Founders believed X” (“X” usually being something along the lines of “every American should be armed to the teeth,” or “religion should be kept in the shadowy underground of society and as far away as possible from any and all public institutions”, or the like).
This of course ignores the fact that there were so many Founders that lumping them all together and making universal claims about them is virtually impossible. For virtually any position, a Founder can be found to defend it. A good example is the case of the relationship between religion and the state, where you have an entire spectrum of ideas, ranging from the Ethan Allen/Thomas Paine pure-secularist camp to the Patrick Henry/Benjamin Rush “America is the New Jerusalem” side of things.
Having aired my grievances, I would be interested to know how people (particularly those who teach introductory-level college courses) get around this issue. My approach so far has been to say “this is a vast over-simplification, but we just don’t have time to go in-depth where we need to” and then proceed to do that which I complain about. This is obviously an unsatisfactory approach, but I’m not sure how to fix it…
November 29th, 2009 | 6:42 pm
Revisiting Beard’s impact on our understanding of the Founders might be another rather more creative way of juxtaposing Progressivism with the origins of our Constitution. It would be interesting if it could be shown that current understanding of “original intent” depends on a polemical stance towards Beard’s progressive revision. An examination of Merrill Jensen might also be useful given the decisive importance of the “Documentary History” he inspired. And don’t forget the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776: opposition to it gives a unique perspective on the concerns of 1787-8.
November 30th, 2009 | 11:23 am
Christmas Revolution
Two thousand years ago, the world faced the Christmas Revolution at the birth of Jesus. It had to be a revolution because Old World governments began a serious and brutal counter revolution against the revolutionary teachings of Christ. Christians were taught they each had interests and aspirations that were special and unique. They were beyond the rule of an elite few. This revolution was dangerous to established order and was a potential new world order in itself. It took root 1620 years after it began in the Middle East with a small band of Pilgrims settling in Massachusetts. It spread across North America. It proved itself successful. The individual interests and freedom to pursue them proved harmonious and prosperous within communities established by a free people who ruled themselves. It is still a major world revolution, however, and is in danger of being defeated within America, by an elite few who believe community interests are more important than are individual interests. The Christmas Revolution is the object of ridicule and legal blockades in many areas of America today, because it still preaches that individual freedom is the best answer to the problems facing the world, not the dictatorships of elite still infecting the rest of the world and the modern American Democrat Party. Claysamerica.com
November 30th, 2009 | 3:54 pm
Mr. Barham,
I guess I have to ask two questions:
1) Is your comment written tongue-in-cheek?
2) If not, could I ask you to explain a bit more about where you see the Gospel fitting in to this “Christmas Revolution?” Specifically, how and where do sin and grace fall in the grand scheme of things?
I’d like to ask more, but I suspect I ought to wait to get your answers to these first two questions (particularly the first one…).
December 4th, 2009 | 5:29 pm
“poor progressives”…gosh , for a moment there I actually developed a tear from all the anguished cries emanating from the “poor progressives” in their Briar Patch. But, more to the point….by “porcher anti-Federalist” would you be speaking of Federalism as practiced by the Framers or the current version of Federalism……a kind of One Size Fits All Well Armed and Roundly Blind Printing Press?
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