So here’s a modest effort to open up a discussable little fissure in the unified vanguard of the political and philosophical juggernaut that we know as Postmodern Conservatism.
Is it fair, and is it consistent with Pomocon-ism to say that the American Founders “founded better than they knew”? Does this venerable and catholic criticism not seem to imply the possibility of a founding in which the truth of practice might receive a definitive, complete and thus internally stable formulation in theory? But are we Pomocons not rather in agreement with the first great Pomocon, Monsieur Tocqueville, that there is and can be no such complete and definitive theory?
Hobbes and Locke, certainly, might be criticized (even excoriated, be my guest) for attempting to sever the right from the good, for proposing to “enlighten” society with the proposition that rights can be established without any reference to a common Good, that freedom can produce order from itself, without acknowledging any power not only outside by above itself. And there can be no doubt that those who articulated the premises of American constitutionalism adopted much vocabulary and many bits of arguments traceable to the finally atheistic foundations of the modern theory of Natural Rights. We have every reason today to be more alert to the radical and destructive resonances of these terms and arguments than any but the profoundest philosophers could have been 230 years ago.
To be sure, 220 years ago (go ahead and correct my chronology), Edmund Burke grasped immediately this radicality and destructiveness when it showed its face in the streets of Paris. And John Adams, to take one notable example, was not far behind. But neither of them, any more than Tocqueville a few decades later, proposed an alternative theory in which freedom would be answerable to a fully knowable Order or the right could be logically derived from The Good. And neither, I take it, do we Pomocons.
(Or did Thomas Aquinas supply such a theory? Full knowable? – I think not. Allow me to cite, for those familiar with it, Marc Guerra’s important Christians as Political Animals, forthcoming from ISI. Prof. Guerra, if I understand him – and he is invited to correct me – finds it necessary to keep Augustine in play along with Aquinas, which seems a way of saying that there is no final theoretical solution to the puzzle of man’s at once mysterious and rationally-politically ordered existence.)
Our Founders were not philosophers; they had a job to do, albeit one that required great insight into the human condition as well as a myriad of changing circumstances. But if we dispense with the comforting illusion that there is some Pure Theory of The Good Order in which human freedom is acknowledged by securely contained, then it does not make sense to blame our forefathers for not being in possession of such a theory, and for improvising as best they could, given the available terms and possibilities, as stable an equilibrium between freedom and order as could be asked of any human founders.
The Founders founded better than they said, better than they could have said, better than anyone could have said. There was no theory and there is no theory that could have comprehensively guided their practice. Or ours. Knowing what we must do (which is not easy) guides, at least as much as it is guided by, knowing what we must say. And to me it is clear that we must now say that freedom has no meaning without virtue, nor rights without duties. And if we find an effective way to do this, we too will be founding better than we can say, for there is no final way of saying the way that freedom and truth contain each other.
May 14th, 2010 | 2:12 pm
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May 14th, 2010 | 2:20 pm
Really thoughtful post, Rost. However, It’s not obvious to me that the “building” thesis does presuppose a final compatibility of theory and practice-in fact the Tvillian disjunction it begins with, what we say as americans and what we do-seems to presume a real problem regarding the distance between the two. In fact, the shaky compromise between locke and Calvin, as Peter plays it out, aknowledges that liberal democratic politics might even require some lockean abstraction for the sake of practice. The purported compromise creates a political arrangement superior to any one the other two could generate on its own but the two together don’t fully capture the theory and practice of human life. In some sense, both sides of the bargain concede an ultimate elusiveness, if they end up responding to that recognition in very different ways.
May 14th, 2010 | 3:41 pm
Utilitarianism does pretty well in deriving Freedom from The Good— not Freedom as Good in itself, but as instrumentally useful in making people happy.
May 15th, 2010 | 11:05 pm
I my reading I think it must be KNEW instead of SAID. There is too much evidence amongst the founders to think otherwise. If I take Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Franklin at the least, I think they knew what they were doing–even if Franklin calls Spinoza a “Hobbist” aka an atheist. As statesmen they certainly knew, a la Machaivelli of the utility of religion and perhaps like Hobbes they knew there was a “natural seed” of religion. That said, there was never any kind of anti-ecclesiastical/theological ire that animated the French after 1789. Thomas West has written extensively of the theology of the founding in this era, but it nonetheless follows a declension from the Puritan fathers a Perry Miller extensively demonstrates (and he only speaks on new England).
I just saw an interesting Glenn Beck show on George Whitefield (okay so I watch bad TV every once in awhile). We are told that Whitefield was friends with Ben Franklin, and the question became whether Whitefield could have have spoken to so many thousands of people at one time. Ben Franklin proved it through good scientific manner. What Beck doesn’t mention is that not once does Franklin relate the content of Whitefield’s sermon. So uninterested is he that he spends his time with a tape measure. The tape measure is a surer guide in such matters than any divine could ever relate through his interpretation of scripture and the nature of faith in divine revelation.
Now if one wants to follow Willmoore Kendall and read Elliott’s debates from the state ratifying conventions as the true meaning of the constitution, I still think the scholar has a hard time in arguing that this much larger group of founders did not know what they were doing, but only said what was “in the air” at the time, as it were.
That said, I agree that I speak what is in the air these days but I always speak freedom in terms of virtue and rights in terms of duties. Our situation is different, it seems to me–in part because the building better better than they knew argument is not to be heard.
In the end, I have no problem with building better than they said. I just think that this is too close to the Quentin Skinner Wittgensteinian language games defining the historical times argument.
May 16th, 2010 | 12:49 am
I should say I was unfair to Thomas West’s argument. He has the most elaborate and elegant defense of a political theology of the founding that I have read.
I should also mention Lincoln–whether refounding (Kendall) or completing the founding (Jaffa)–in his Second Inaugural there is a much greater or explicit understanding of Divine Providence compared to the brief mention in the Declaration or even his mention of that “other” political community at the very end of the Lyceum Address. What this political theology means is beyond my capacity–see Glenn Thurow or Alan Guelzo.
I should also mention RP Warren’s poem “Founding Fathers: 19th Century Style”–I quote the title from (bad) memory.
May 16th, 2010 | 1:17 am
Here’s the Robert Penn Warren poem–
“Founding Fathers, Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast
U.S.A.”
They were human, they suffered, wore long black coat and
gold watch chain.
They stare from daguerrotype with severe reprehension,
Or from genuine oil, and you’d never guess any pain
In those merciless eyes that now remark our own time’s sad
declension.
Some composed declarations, remembering Jefferson’s
language.
Knew pose of the patriot, left hand in crook of the spine or
With finger to table, while right invokes the Lord’s just rage.
There was always a grandpa, or cousin at least, who had
been, of course, a real
Signer.
Some were given to study, read Greek in the forest, and
these
Longed for an epic to do their own deeds right honor:
Where Nestor by pigpen, in some tavern brawl played
Achilles.
In the ring of Sam Houston they found, when he died, one
word engraved:
Honor.
Their children were broadcast, like millet seed flung in a
wind-flare.
Wives died, were dropped like old shirts in some corner of
country.
Said, “Mister,” in bed, the child-bride; hadn’t known what to
find there;
Wept all the next morning for shame; took pleasure in silk;
wore the keys to the
pantry.
“Will die in these ditches if need be,” wrote Bowie, at the
Alamo.
And did, he whose left foot, soft-catting, came forward, and
breath hissed:
Head back, gray eyes narrow, thumb flat along blade-knife,
blade low.
“Great gentleman,” said Henry Clay, “and a patriot.” Portrait
by Benjamin
West.
Or take those, the nameless, of whom no portraits remain,
No locket or seal ring, though somewhere, broken and
rusted,
In attic or earth, the long Decherd, stock rotten, has lain;
On the mold-yellow Bible, God’s Word, in which, in their
strength, they had
also trusted.
Some wrestled the angel, and took a fall by the corncrib.
Fought the brute, stomp-and-gouge, but knew they were
doomed in that glory.
All night, in sweat groaned; fell at last with spit red and a
cracked rib.
How sweet were the tears! Thus gentled, they rove the dark
land with their old
story.
Some prospered, had black men and lands, and silver on
table,
But remembered the owl call, the smell of burnt bear fat on
dusk-air.
Loved family and friends, and stood it as long as able,
“But money and women, too much is ruination, am Arkansas
bound.” So went
there.
One of mine was a land shark, or so the book with scant
praise
Denominates him, “a man large and shapeless,
Like a sack of potatoes set on a saddle,” and says,
“Little learning but shrewd, not well trusted.” Rides thus out
of history, neck fat
and napeless.
One saw Shiloh and such, got cranky, would fiddle all night.
The boys nagged for Texas. “God damn it, there’s nothing,
God damn it,
In Texas,” but took wagons, went, and to prove he was
right,
Stayed a year and a day, “hell, nothing in Texas,” had
proved it, came back to
black vomit,
And died, and they died, and are dead, and now their voices
Come thin, like last cricket in frost-dark, in grass lost,
With nothing to tell us for our complexity of choices,
But beg us only one word to justify their own old life-cost.
So let us bend ear to them in this hour of lateness,
And what they are trying to say, try to understand,
And try to forgive them their defects, even their greatness,
For we are their children in the light of humanness, and
under the shadow of
God’s closing hand.
–from Robert Penn Warren, “Promises” (1957)
May 17th, 2010 | 5:23 am
It seems the phrase in question perfectly reflects the revolutionary encounter engendered in the attempt on the part of the founders to reach consensus while incorporating: (among other philosophies)an Hellenic philosophy that in the noetic sense had been much modified (deformed) and affected by imperial expansions, the rise of post-Enlightenment ideologies, and wars; and a Christian religion much affected by doctrinal wars and contretemps and in to many instances much removed from the teachings of the Christ.
Even with these structural difficulties, the founders managed to cobble together a functioning republic, amazingly, in the midst not only of political challenges but an economic upheaval in the form of the so-called industrial revolution. And, it is a testament to their genius and the moral worth of the American citizen that the republic existed for eighty years.
Did they understand that ‘they created better than they knew?’ Maybe yes, maybe no. But they probably all knew that freedom could be maintained, at least internally, only by a moral people.
May 17th, 2010 | 8:12 am
John, cool stuff.
Ralph, I’m not entirely clear how the knew/said distinction is supposed to work here. Is it that the TJ-like Founders talked more Theistic and the Christianity-grounded Founders talked more Lockean? On both sides for the sake of unity? Or is it that what was most deeply known about the government best for America could not be said, as Burke and Oakeshott might insist, in any crisp Publius-like fashion?(Oh, how many of my students would–wrongly–laugh at that “crisp!”)
But Ralph admits that almost all of the Founders couldn’t “know” what we do 230 years later, so I’m confused. Don’t we have to conclude that many of them knew no more than they said?
Now to the point about pomocon theory. America, for as long as she exists, is probably stuck with her founding, in that she either stays true to it or has her rebellions against it shaped by it and/or limited by it. That goes for both the Constitution and the Declaration/broader-theory-of-the-Founders.
And I mean to speak of potential conservative “rebellions in thought” as well by this, such as Ralph’s. If it “is clear that we must now say that freedom has no meaning without virtue, nor rights without duties,” two things would haunt us whenever we said so: a) that lil’ word “now,” and b) the fact that the study of Locke, TJ, Madison, etc., isn’t going to go away or cease to be aware of the rather plausible argument that freedom/rights were understood differently than Ralph insists they must be. Yes, we can find many of the founders seeming to agree with Ralph’s formulation, but mustn’t we ultimately agree that some sort of “Lockeanism-in-the-driver’s seat” or “Locke as the first among equals” version of the “multiple traditions approach”(See Alan Gibson’s Interpreting the Founding) is the most convincing interpretation of it? And given that fact (among others), can we not expect that those with Rawlsian or Nozickian instincts, or even with purely Jeffersonian instincts, are going to insist on interpreting the founding in ways hostile to Ralph’s formulation? Our founding saddles us, so to speak, with having to perpetually hear out and refute the various “unboxed” Lockeans. Rights-talk of one sort or another will always be with us in the U.S.
For other nations, however, if and when any of them experience an opportunity to “found” or “refound” a modern democratic government, pomocons should be free to say that Tocqueville, Guizot, Beneton, and even Aristotle might well be better guides for how to speak about one’s foundational principles than either of the Declarations philosophically understood. And certainly, even if it were found that the language of rights and rights/contract-based legitimacy should not be ditched (by said nation), a more deliberate balancing of rights with virtue/duties/prudence could surely be formulated. As for constitutional structure, there may be a whole number of guides, but certainly Publius would be first in line. I am not convinced, as many good conservatives are, that many of the best features of American Constitutionalism are connected at the hip with Lockean and/or God-given Natural Rights. Nor would Montesquieu be convinced by such a stance.
I thus hold that, given an opportunity, and given the influence of the best contemporary thought(that indebted to Tocqueville, to the lessons of the 20th Century, to Strauss and other good modern thinkers, to subsidiarity, etc.) that a better founding than the American one is theoretically a possibility. Do I then believe in “the possibility of a founding in which the truth of practice might receive a definitive, complete and thus internally stable formulation in theory?” Obviously not. Would any pomocon?
May 17th, 2010 | 8:27 am
A clarification: I did not mean to say Strauss is “modern.” I was rather meaning to say that he can be seen as one among a number of good and mostly continental 20th-century thinkers. IMO the outstanding one, but I do like to be polite.
May 17th, 2010 | 10:03 am
Bob raises a good point with his reference to the eighty-year lifespan of the old republic. My own problem with the founding-better-than-they-knew argument is that I’m not sure it makes sense to speak of a single founding. The original founding moment was rather long and far from univocal. And the USA was “refounded” at least once, during the Civil War, and perhaps yet again with the rise of imperial state around 1900, and yet again with the development of the welfare and national security apparatuses between 1932 and 1945.
Still, none of these changes were foundings de novo. Each found a way to draw plausibly on both the principles of 1776 and the principles of 1789. So it part of the accidental genius of the American political tradition may be the way that it allows periodic revision within the broad context of an original founding. As opposed to, as Burke and Tocqueville recognized, France, which offered little place for reform or contestation outside revolution.
May 25th, 2010 | 8:39 am
[...] Postmodern Conservative site, Ralph Hancock’s May 14 article titled “‘Founded-Better-Than-They-Said’ Studies?” resonates particularly with my own queries in the past 3 years as to whether the Founders [...]
May 25th, 2010 | 8:59 am
Good post. I am reading the “Conservative Mind” by Kirk right now. He discusses, ad nauseum, some of the issues and responses to those issues you bring up here. I recommend it for anybody wanting to learn more about this very subject and what great conservatives from the past thought!
July 4th, 2010 | 7:36 am
Foundress of American religious order moves closer to beatification…
My blog readers will be interested in your post so added a trackback to it on CatholicTide…
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