THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 147, July 6, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
By Christopher Flannery
FULL STORY:
Anything in these remarks that does not stray from the truth is indebted to the American Founders, who bequeathed these ideas to
us, to Abraham Lincoln, who preserved and ennobled them in the country's greatest crisis, to Harry V. Jaffa, who has done more than
anyone since Lincoln to recover them, and to the late Tom Silver, the wisest and best of those who founded the Claremont Institute
for the sake of these ideas.
American children are not born understanding the principles of their country, and most American college students if reports can
be believed are still largely unfamiliar with them when they graduate. So it is a useful tradition, as the Fourth of July comes around
each year, to reflect again and again on the American political principles famously proclaimed on the original Independence
Day, which, as many college graduates know, happened sometime in the past, possibly during Summertime. Lest we seem to rest all
our political expectations on the capacity of the next generation for self-government, let us admit that the grownups, as well, can
benefit from an annual refresher.
As Thomas Jefferson said late in life, when explaining the genesis of the Declaration of Independence, the ideas expressed in it were
"the common sense of the subject" in Revolutionary America. In drafting the Declaration, he had not meant to proclaim any "new
principles, or new arguments, never before thought of," but merely to express "the American mind." The Declaration contains a
stunning summation of the principles of free government; but it was only because the American people had already learned to
understand and to embrace these principles that it was possible to establish an American republic. As the Declaration proclaims, the
just powers of government are derived from "the consent of the governed." Only a people prepared to consent to a republic is
capable of establishing one or capable of keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin later reminded his fellow citizens. Are we still such a
people? No one else can answer this question for us. It is up to this generation, as it has been up to each generation that preceded
us and will be up to each generation that succeeds us, to demonstrate our capacity for self-government. This we do for our own
sake and for the sake of the cause to which our country was dedicated on that Fourth of July long ago.
Through the Declaration of Independence and the long war that followed it, the American people "assume[d] among the Powers of
the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle[d] them." The most famous
passage of the Declaration explained to the world what Americans regarded as the principled foundations and purposes of their
political independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
."
The self-evident truth "that all men are created equal" is the most fundamental and far-reaching principle affirmed in the Declaration.
This is the central idea of the American political experiment from which all other ideas radiate. It is a philosophical idea about human
nature, the natural relation of each human being to all others, and the place of all human beings in the natural or created universe.
The revolutionary and founding generation of Americans expressed this idea of human equality in a variety of ways. The language
of the Declaration of Independence is "that all men are created equal." To express the same idea, the Virginia Declaration of Rights
(June 12, 1776) stated that "all men are by nature equally free and independent." The Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (March 2, 1780) stated that "All men are born free and equal."
All of these phrases are different ways of expressing a doctrine about the "state all men are naturally in," which the American
colonists had learned in large part from the English political philosopher John Locke. Locke had written, less than a century before
the Declaration of Independence, that all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their
possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will
of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing
more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the
use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and
Master of them all, should by any manifest declaration of his will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear
appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
To say that all men are by nature equal is to say that human beings are not naturally subordinated one to another: No man is by
nature a master; no man is by nature a slave. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, in his last extant letter, written just the week before he
died: "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride
them legitimately, by the grace of God." Human beings, then, are naturally free as they are naturally equal. It is from natural human
equality and freedom that the Founders derived the idea that government could only justly be founded on consent. Because
human beings are not naturally subordinated to one another that is, because they are equal and free their consent must be
obtained before any human being may rightfully exercise authority over them. It is the voluntary consent of the people that gives
authority to government.
Government among free and equal men is formed, the American Founders would say, by "social compact." In the words of the
Massachusetts Constitution of 1780:
"The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: It is a social compact,
by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole
people
."
The American body-politic is a social compact in which each citizen is pledged to the defense of all and all to the defense of each
for the sake of the ends set forth in the American Declaration of Independence, through the means established in the United
States Constitution. This is the political community begun when, in the last words of the Declaration of Independence, "for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge[d] to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Because they are equal and free by nature, human beings may not rightfully consent to just any government to a form of
tyranny, for example. In the idea of natural human equality and freedom is the recognition of human rationality and of the limits of
human rationality. As Locke wrote, "we are born free as we are born rational." Because human beings are by nature rational beings,
one man may not rightly rule over another as he may rightly rule over a non-rational being (like a dog or a horse). But also, because
no man is all-knowing or all-good that is, because human reason is limited and fallible and subject to human passions one
human being may never rightly subject himself to the unrestrained will or unlimited power of another. This is what James Madison
meant when he wrote that "government... [is] the greatest of all reflections on human nature[.]"
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither
external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government
which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first
enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
Human nature or human equality the fact that human beings are neither angels nor mindless brutes gives rise to the idea of
constitutional (or limited) government. This is a political constitution that conforms to the natural constitution of man. Because
human beings are fallible and because their reason is subject sometimes to their passions, human government must be subject to
law. Human beings would only reasonably consent to be ruled by laws made by another if that other agreed to be bound by the
same laws. A nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" will if circumstances permit be under a
"government of the people, by the people, for the people." In other words, the principle of equality gives rise most naturally to a
democratic or republican form of government. James Madison expressed this idea in Federalist 39, where he considered whether
the government proposed under the new constitution would be "strictly republican."
"It is evident, that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people
of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable
determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political
experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."
This brings us votaries of freedom back to where we began. So let these suffice for our Fourth of July reflections this year, save one
final thought. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought it prudent recently, in the Wall Street Journal, to offer his fellow
Americans the following sober reminders:
"The years after our war of independence involved a good deal of chaos and confusion. There
were uprisings such as Shays' Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government
buildings. There was rampant inflation caused by the lack of a stable currency and the issue
of competing paper monies by the various states. There were regional tensions between
mercantile New England and the agrarian South. There was looting and crime and a lack of an
organized police force. There were supporters of the former regime whose fate had to be
determined. Our first effort at a governing charter the Articles of Confederation failed
miserably, and it took eight years of contentious debate before we finally adopted our
Constitution."
Even for the heroic Revolutionary generation of Americans, there was much to learn and much to overcome on the way to ensuring
that free government would be good government. So let us gather again on Constitution Day, September 17, to continue the
conversation. It will do us all good young and old alike.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
U.S. Constitutional Law & Political Philosophy
Christopher Flannery is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books.
The foregoing article by Christopher Flannery is reprinted from the July 4, 2004, issue of Precepts. The article was originally
published in the July issue of The Proposition. Precepts and The Proposition are publications of the
Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. The Claremont Institute, a Conservative political,
cultural, and educational organization in the U.S.A., describes its central purpose as the mission "to restore the principles of the
American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life." Committed to American constitutionalism and
republicanism as well as representative democracy, the Institute's mission statement declares: "America's Founders endowed our
Republic with sound principles and a framework for governing that is unmatched in the history of mankind. The prosperity and
freedom of America can only be made secure if they are guided by a return to these basic principles as our country enters the 21st.
century."
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