Why The Dissonance
Introduction
I’d like to explain the purpose of this blog by reflecting upon something I recently heard on a podcast.
The podcast in question covers the current state of American democracy from a perspective somewhere left-of-center. The guest on this particular day ended with a heartfelt tribute to what makes America great:
That’s really what America is. It’s that common belief that we were all created equal … that the government is ours, that we own it, the ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ part. Most Americans believe that the Constitution is a pretty … awesome document. I can’t tell you the number of people who tell me they read the Declaration of Independence every year on the Fourth of July just for fun. So … those are the things that bring us together, and I think we all, just on a very basic human level, everyone needs that. And at its best … that’s who we are.
The host warmly agreed. And years ago, the familiar invocation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address (that’s the part about “government of the people, by the people, for the people”), would have struck, at least for me, a harmonious chord.
Now, however, I hear dissonance.
Here’s my issue: the guest’s comment suggests that a consistent ideology, one favoring popular democracy, as opposed to rule by an elite few, is foundational in all three documents. This ideology, we are given to understand, is first expressed in the Declaration of Independence, summarized by the guest as “we were all created equal,” and we “own the government.” It is then presumably given effect and order in the “awesome” Constitution, which famously begins with “We the People.” And it is later reaffirmed in the Gettysburg Address.
But is this understanding correct?
Progressive scholars, beginning at the start of the twentieth century, argued that the Constitution could be better understood as an attempt by economic elites to reassert political dominance in the midst of an economic, social, and ideological conflict roiling America between Independence and the late-1780s. In broad brushstrokes, this conflict pitted those who favored expanded political equality and democracy against those who sought to restore the sort of political domination by economic elites that had existed in the colonies before independence from Great Britain.
For example, in 1907, J. Allen Smith, a pioneer of the progressive critique, wrote in The Spirit of American Government:
Democracy—government by the people, or directly responsible to them—was not the object which the framers of the American Constitution had in view, but the very thing which they wished to avoid. In the convention which drafted that instrument it was recognized that democratic ideas had made sufficient progress among the masses to put an insurmountable obstacle in the way of any plan of government which did not confer at least the form of political power upon the people. Accordingly the efforts of the Constitutional Convention were directed to the task of devising a system of government which was just popular enough not to excite general opposition and which at the same time gave to the people as little as possible of the substance of political power.[1]
A few years later, in 1913, Charles Beard famously framed the Constitution in economic terms. In An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Beard argued that, aside from “mere repression of physical violence,” the primary object of government “is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society.” In drafting a constitution, “the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes . . . .” The methods and nature of their control over the mechanisms of government in order to ensure this outcome becomes “the fundamental problem in constitutional law.” The United States Constitution “was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake; and as such it appealed directly and unerringly to identical interests in the country at large.”[2]
Over the years, even some of the progressives’ staunchest critics reached not-dissimilar conclusions. For example, Gordon S. Wood, in The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969), wrote that,
The Federalists meant to restore and to prolong the traditional kind of elitist influence in politics that social developments, especially since the revolution, were undermining…. The Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period.[3]
Why does any of this matter? Well, if the earlier progressive critique of the Constitution retains any validity, then current-day Americans who believe, as the podcast guest did, in the Constitution’s intrinsic “awesomeness,” while at the same time decrying the overweening political power of economic elites, may be living with extreme cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort that arises when reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate with deeply held beliefs.
J. Allen Smith raised this in 1907:
[T]he political ideas of our educated classes represent a curious admixture of democratic beliefs superimposed upon a hardly conscious substratum of eighteenth-century doctrines. It is this contradiction in our thinking that has been one of our chief sources of difficulty in dealing with political problems. While honestly believing that we have been endeavoring to make democracy a success, we have at the same time tenaciously held on to the essential features of a political system designed for the purpose of defeating the ends of popular government.[4]
Can modern-day Americans who decry the political power of elite economic interests in modern-day politics say any different? And if they cannot, should they be willing to question and even challenge the ideological purpose of the Constitution? Sharpening this further, to what extent should the discussion regarding the direction of the American constitutional order be framed and engaged, first and foremost, in ideological terms? And still further, do such reflections lead us to question the legitimacy and viability of the constitutional order itself?
The purpose of this blog is to grapple with these and related questions. This will be done through weekly essays drawing upon history, sociology, political science, the law, and current events. Over time, it will develop a vocabulary and a set of conceptual frameworks that can be deployed in support of a rational and respectful discussion. I will not pretend to have any definitive answers. Rather, my hope is that, through this blog, we will be able to identify and refine interesting and provocative questions. I hope you will join in this discussion.
[1] J. Allen Smith, The Spirit of American Government, A Study of the Constitution: Its Origin, Influence and Relation to Democracy 29-30 (The MacMillan Co., 1915).
[2] Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States 13, 188 (The Free Press, 1986).
[3] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 513 (1969).
[4] Smith, supra note 1, at 303.