A LETTER FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANIA, CONTINUED


contemporary politics seems so stale to me. geo-politically the world changed after 1989 and then again after 9/11. domestic politics has changed too. the old divisions between the parties over civil rights, taxes, the size of government and crime don't exist anymore.

the civil rights struggle is over. that is not a contradiction with my earlier suggestion that we should hammer the gop on it forensically but that was a tactical point over a matter of legitimacy. no republican supports repeal of civil rights legislation so SUBSTANTIVELY, if not tactically, the issue is dead.

bill clinton ended, for now at least, the split over taxes. taxes were THE issue in the '80's: prop 13, "tax and spend" and so on. clinton cut taxes, giving the republicans apoplexy because it took away their issue. my sense is bush's recent tax cut largely fizzled with voters, not that they don't want more money in their pockets, but as a rallying cry. i think voters thought it was sort of stale old-school.

clinton also innoculated the democrats from the charge of being the party of big government. he "ended welfare as we know it" and bush, the republican, has created a new cabinet department, drastically increased military spending and driven up the deficit.

and finally, the decline in the crime rate in the last 10 years has wiped that issue off the political map, and i don't think voters give either party credit for it, clinton for the economic boom or the republicans (giuliani) for the "broken windows" theory.

i think all of the above is beyond dispute. the world of american politics, domestically and abroad, is vastly different than it was 14 years ago. but politics is still being practiced according to the same paradigm it has been since the '60's.

when pollsters ask people to explain their party affiliation they still get the answers they did 40 years ago. people say they're democrats because the party represents the working class or the little guy. republicans say their party stands for smaller government, lower taxes, and more individual responsibility, but those are not wedge issues anymore.

the terms of the debate between the parties will change eventually of their own weight but what the democrats need to do is to force that change so that it is on terms favorable to us. "he who defines the terms of the debate wins the debate."

ignoring the specifics of the old divide, there is still a generalization that can be made that is still true: the social referrent of the two parties was and continues to be different, in emphasis at least. the republicans referrent is the individual, the democrats is some larger social unit.

these referents, the individual and the community, have been at the center of american politics since before the revolution.

"tocqueville came to the conclusion that there was an inherent
struggle in america between two opposing impulses: the spirit
of rugged individualism versus the conflicting spirit of community..." (1)

that explains a lot about american politics in the last 200 years and of the ideological differences that voters still see between republicans and democrats. walter isaacson wrote though that,

"franklin would have disagreed. a fundamental aspect of franklin's life
AND OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY he helped to create was that individ-
ualism and communitarianism, so seemingly contradictory, were inter-
woven." (2)

those two traits certainly can be in conflict and often have been in our political history but they NEED NOT BE and franklin was the proto-american who embodied this synthesis. it's my argument that it is the republicans today who are, in the main, responsible for keeping these two in conflict and that the democrats are positioned to resynthesize them into the unique american character that franklin embodied. if the democrats do this and let the synthesis guide their policies, as they have not done in the last 40 years, then they will recast the modern political debate to their advantage.

republicans are proud to "conserve" things, especially traditions and values from other eras that have a nostalgic patina and a presumption of correctness for "having stood the test of time." they wear their little adam smith ties to their federalist society meetings and urge fealty to the "original intent" of the framers and a return to the values that inspired "our founding fathers." i believe that our entire heritage is consistent with a democratic vision of america and that the PART of our heritage that republicans want to conserve is the defeated elitism that their federalist party stood for.

the republicans should be engaged on this claim they have to conserving the "best" of america, not in a political campaign, but doctrinally and historically. the history of elitism, wealth, work, privilege and politics in america is an intense history.

by the mid 18th century the common man, today and then the man republicans wish to ignore and demean, and his interests dominated american politics. but it did not start out that way.

the peopling of the colonies began with englishmen who had just overthrown and executed the last of the stuart kings in the glorious revolution. that revolution did not just replace one king with another. it devolved power from the monarchy to parliament. this institutionalized monarchical weakness which made it distinctive from the monarchies of europe. the greater freedom that this created for the average englishman was celebrated by all aspects of english society, including the crown.

the institutional increase in the power of commoners also resulted in a de facto blurring of class distinctions in everyday life, in dress, in manner of speaking to members of higher classes and so forth. criticism of government in the press and on the street became more common. all these aspects of this new anti-authoritarianism were accelerated by the rationalism of the enlightenment. both in everyday life and in the intellectual tenor of the times man was given more say over the conditions of his life and the society he found himself in. as concomitant to all of this, and probably owing something to inherent character, englishmen were notoriously hard to govern and insolent

the religious feelings of the early settlers contributed here also. a society's dominant religious institution normally reinforces the legitimacy of the social order but the pilgrims left anglicism behind also as a dominant, legitimizing institution. from the earliest days there were religious conflicts etween the colonies and great britain.

secondly, the pilgrims viewed man as inherently corrupt and the goal of society to protect man from himselv, by avoiding concentration of power and by promoting only thoroughly vetted virtuous men to occupy positions of power.

finally, the pilgrims thought that they had a divine responsibility to recreate english man in a purified form in america and to establish a government that reflected all of these principles and brought god's kingdom to earth.

this then was the legacy brought to america by the earliest settlers.

the new world the pilgrims settled was by definition one without a governmental structure or social hierarchy. whatever form of local government and class system was going to occur would be determined by the colonists themselves.

the nature of north america also was important here. wild, untamed, dangerous, it called on all of the rugged individualism a man could muster BUT it also demanded committment to community. no matter how self-sufficient an individual was he was unlikely to survive long in the difficult this difficult territory and if he did would revert to hunter and gatherer status without helping and being helped by others.

in the minds of many contemporary historians, all of these factors made the revolution to come almost socially and historically pre-determined. and independence may have been. but the nature of the new country was not and its eventual character would have been an unbelievable and horrific site to the earliest colonial leaders.

the english were proud of their distinctive monarchy and the pilgrims, viewing themselves as a purified version of english man, were also a concentrated version. they were more loyal to the crown and more hard to govern at the same time. they accepted the social hierarchy of english society without question and literally could not conceive of an alternative. to the eve of lexington they wanted to preserve some kind of affiliation with england that would preserve monarchical authority in america.

intense as their devotion was to the crown it was exceeded by reverence for the english constitution, that "perfect" instrument, in john adams' description, that exquisitely preserved the power and rights of the three post-medieval estates, the monarchy, nobility and commons.

even putting aside slavery and the status of women, colonial society, by modern standards or those of objective anthropology, was obviously hierarchical, but the important point for history is that it was less so than in europe and the trend line was distinctly, maybe inexoraly, less hierarchical.

from the beginning the colonists tried to order their new society along english lines. they already had a monarchy and the commons estate but they didn't have an aristocracy and this caused great concern because that meant that the only alternative was republicanism, which was a slippery slope to dreaded democracy. a concentration of power was a concentration of power was a concentration of power whether that power was concentrated in the monarch, the nobility or the common man. of the three, democracy was most feared because of the presumed unsuitability of the common man to govern.

there was no inherited nobility of course in america and so there were proposals to create an american aristocracy, as was actually done in canada. naturally, the wealthy landed gentry was an inviting talent pool for these proto-repbulicans.

the (republican) thought behind this was that only a man with no individual interests could be virtuous enough to hold power. so in england the nobility were of such great wealth that they didn't have to work and therefore they didn't have monetary interests. it was also thought that a life free from workaday concerns was necessary to provide the dedication to advanced learning necessary to govern.

these were socially complex attitudes toward work and wealth. the protestant work ethic was firmly in place, but only for commoners. wealth was necessary and was in that sense "good" but the pursuit of it (i.e. work) was not, and so in THAT sense the emerging merchant class was looked down on more than the base worker because he was seen as having social pretensions based only on the greater amount of money he had.

although there were some fabulously rich people in colonial america, rich enought that they didn't have to work there were not enough of them to create a "class" and in a version of the adage "no man is a hero to his valet" there was a lack of mystique about these noveau riche that the ancient families of england had going for them. five years prior today's man of leisure might have been a cobbler, so great was social mobility and the opportunity to acquire wealth in america.

in the end the idea of an american aristocracy was hooted down, helped along immensely by the publication of thomas paine's incindiary "common sense" which for the first time dared argue passionately the idea that common people (i.e. non-republicans) could govern themselves.

john adams was a conspicuous opponent of paine's idea and their debate reflected the differences that existed between the views of the original settlers and that of paine and his new american man on issues of religion, society, government and man himself.