A Republic if you can keep it.

A discourse on when Benjamin Franklin's warning came to fruition.

Now the truly bold will argue that the Republic died in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787; an unrequited love for the Articles of Confederation is leading astray those who would make this argument, as Franklin was pronouncing on the newly proposed government, not the unlamented and ineffectual Congress of the Confederation that preceded it and necessitated the convention just concluded.  Nor was Franklin an unabashed supporter – he was indeed, quite equivocal about the merits of the proposed charter.

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

Given that last sentence, I challenge anyone to argue that a better form of government is ever likely to be conceived.  For if you deem it possible, then you must assume a conference of angels and not men will write it and carry it into operation.  Franklin’s entire speech is at the above link and is well worth your consideration.

The Federalist contention might be something like the Democrats current conceit about democracy, that the Republic was over either with Jefferson’s ascension to the presidency or with the territorial expansion – under questionable Constitutional legitimacy – of the Louisiana Purchase; in short, concurrent with the decline and fall of the Federalist party.  It was after all the Federalist Northeast that first openly talked of secession, most seriously in opposition to Mr. Madison’s war.  The petition they had prepared to send to Congress was mooted by the end of the War of 1812.  The defenders of the Lost Cause would do well to remember that though the South did secede, they didn’t originate the idea; it wouldn’t be bad for unrepentant Unionists to ponder that as well.  All that said, there is a case that can be made that westward expansion broke the original concept of the republic, but that’s a pretty narrow argument.  After all, the Roman Republic was not limited to the original territory of the Latin league, but expanded during it’s entire pre-imperial existence.

Which of course leads us to the unpleasantness between those states that wished to leave the union and those who wished to preserve the status quo.  There are those, fairly numerous in certain precincts, who have the enmity for Lincoln to match (in total intensity) the praises sung in his name by the greater number of folks in the country.  We have of course the ebb and flow of historical opinion, from the days when he was held in low regard to the days he tops the charts of presidential greatness (whatever that is supposed to represent).  I will note here that the Articles of Confederation (sometimes held in veneration to offset the loathing of Lincoln by the same set of people) declared the confederation to exist in perpetuity.  There was no escape clause written in, so the lack of one in the Constitution shouldn’t really be deemed a defect, even if it seems to introduce some ambiguity in the matter.  I am of the opinion that the republic did not die in the conflict, nor in the amendments adopted in the aftermath.  The unbridgeable rift built into the union in the compromises of the Constitution on slavery, and the expansion of the country, was resolved once and for all – as a Constitutional matter.  The flaw of democratic governance would allow legal discrimination to flourish for many more years, but no person would ever again be the property of another.  If something was lost, something much greater was gained.

The limits on our federal government were loosened greatly in the Progressive Era.  It is Progressivism that introduces conflicts only slightly less intractable than the 3/5ths compromise.  It was Progressive belief in expertise that started the transformation to policy making within the bureaucracies of the Executive and delegation of that aspect of law-making (regulations being extensions of the law) from Congress.  The civil service reforms that preceded the Progressives established the permanent bureaucracy (as opposed to the spoils to the victor that had it’s flaws, but did offer a clean slate every few years).  The return to the Hamiltonian belief in a central bank is a curious twist in American partisan history.  The two great reforms (in terms of amending the Constitution) were both regrettable – mandatory popular election of senators and the income tax.  Unfortunately, only the folly of Prohibition was obvious enough to people over time to reverse the error.  The two presidential handmaidens of Progressivism, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, pushed the arrogation of power to the federal level at the expense of the states and the presidency at the expense of Congress.  You can’t say the Republic was near death yet, but the deterioration in its health is obvious enough.

Two world wars and a pocketful of dreams.  How the world changes, for we plunged into a European war on the basis that one combatant should dare to interrupt our sales to the other.  Lest we forget, the people were stirred into a war frenzy by the mass media of the day – and the titans of newsprint were all quite proud of that.  Modern mass and social media works the same, just much faster.  The Espionage Act may have been tolerable as a wartime measure, but you’ll note that it was never repealed (and it very quietly asserted the seed of a general police power).  Though conscription was not technically novel, it had been a state issue, not a federal one, during the Civil War.  There is no Constitutional connection upholding conscription to be found, instead, it was upheld based on a set of PA Supreme Court decisions (which could at least lean on the police power at the state level) and the fact that other countries do it, as set against the text of the 13th Amendment.  Just when you think our current court is a disaster, you need only dig through some mind-boggling decisions of earlier versions of the institution to see that it is the same as it ever was.  Really, every aspect of American involvement in WWI is a study in decisions taken in leisure, not of a nation in extremis.  Normalcy, to a degree, did return after the war, and with the transition of Wilson to Harding and then to Coolidge.  The country refused the Wilsonian League of Nations, reverting to the non-entanglement that was our historical norm.  But Wilsonianism had captured the elite imagination and would not be so easily eradicated, taking root in both academia and the State Department bureaucracy (and ultimately underlying the neo-conservative movement). We would not be so fortunate twice.

Credit to the US Army for two things in the run up to WWII.  First, they figured it was very likely we would end up embroiled in it and conducted very large scale exercises to work out a lot of kinks – tactical and logistical, and despite Kasserine Pass they were mostly right.  Second, they got the right Chief of Staff, GEN George C. Marshall.  What Marshall did couldn’t possibly be repeated today – he autocratically bypassed the better part of senior officers in the ranks, and planned for the elevation of a whole new breed of general officer.  Patton was one of the notable exceptions to both of these moves, as Patton was a 2-star when war was declared and he absolutely did not fit the model Marshall was looking for; Eisenhower and Bradley are the exemplars of Marshall’s program.  [To prove he was human and fallible, Marshall had thought highly of Fredendall who commanded the disaster at Kasserine Pass.]  I think Marshall was truly the indispensable man of the American war effort, for unlike a progressive he didn’t double down on failure.  The bureaucracy that now surrounds the Army, and the other Services, would never tolerate that kind of initiative, or the substitution of group-think with clear decision making authority.

The contrast with the Navy (FDR had been an Assistant Secretary of the Navy during WWI) is notable.  The Pacific fleet was based on the West Coast – beyond the reach of the Japanese, until FDR moved it out to Hawaii in 1940 for an exercise (ironically enough for “two weeks” that turned into 18 months) – as a show of force.  The fleet languished there and was deteriorating, since Pearl at the time was not capable of actually supporting normal operations and maintenance.  It was only good fortune that prevented the Japanese from catching the carriers in port and from destroying the forward oil supply.  This is the first clue to the incompetence of FDR that would undermine the victory and ruin the peace after the war.  It may actually be inevitable that a progressive must become cosmopolitan – believing that they know not just best for one country, but for the entire world.  Of course the inter-war years had consigned Wilsonian beliefs to the dark corners of academe, while non-intervention and outright isolationism reigned in the sunlight.  Except for the man who occupied the White House and had already broken the honored precedent of only serving two terms as president because he believed himself to be indispensable.

Any study put into the effort to win the war leaves you rather astonished.  It really shouldn’t have been possible then, and it would be unimaginable to duplicate today.  The nation sacrificed blood and treasure, but the worst price was yet to be paid for winning – the transformation of the republic into an empire.  This was a Pyrrhic victory for it bound the U.S. to the rest of the world, both allies and the vanquished.  We imposed a peace and for the second time proposed a league of nations (and this time joined it), yet we also crafted an alliance (NATO) at odds with that.  The Long Telegram and containment policy can be viewed as realist statecraft, but it can’t logically be reconciled with the idealism of the U.N. – which only really existed because we willed it into existence.  Nor should NATO have been a necessary organization if the U.N. had been meaningful.  Yet we embraced both with equal fervor.  This was, and is, nonsense even if the U.N. did not suffer from the defects that kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations.  But Wilsonian dreams are seductive things to those with power and the hubris to believe that they are anointed to lead mankind to a brighter future.  Note the difference of that mindset with Franklin’s at the dawn of the republic.

The other feature of WWII that played prominently in the demise of the republic was the alliance with Britain, whom we bled mercilessly from 1939 to 41.  This was something FDR enjoyed, for he was no Anglophile (giving the ultimate insult by sending old man Kennedy as ambassador to the Court of St. James).  Churchill was a vastly more gifted statesman but was shunted aside as FDR actually believed he could charm Stalin like he did recalcitrant Republicans.  Stalin duped FDR repeatedly, and as FDR’s health declined, Stalin took full advantage.  This was in some ways a repeat of Wilson’s performance with Clemenceau and Lloyd-George – an American with an enormous ego that ended up the mark in a con.  Churchill sacrificed the future of England, the empire most of all, to redeem his nation’s honor; no other English politician of the age would have done so.  In doing that, he subtly shifted much of what the English had meant to the world onto the United States.  It would be the U.S. Navy that would thence forward rule the waves.

There was no plan to return to normalcy in the 50s (and the falsity of the notion of returning to pre-war norms – which wasn’t even true in the 20s).  Whereas the 20s roared, the 50s were haunted by the spectre of atomic annihilation and a Cold War that found numerous ways to be hot.  Eisenhower’s triumph over Taft was also signal, in that a man dedicated to allied operations in winning the war would feel at ease in such international entanglements that were to become our new normal.  I always marvel how both left and right can be so nostalgic for that era, for each is only looking at it out of only one eye.  While winning the war cannot be downplayed in terms of our national pride – it was a stunning, defining, moment in our history – we took upon ourselves a new point of view that would grow into an arrogance that would have a comeuppance half a century later.  And that wouldn’t come without warnings – Viet Nam (much more so than Korea), our national malaise (and the incompetence of our response in Iran); even that we failed utterly to predict (and be prepared for) the end of the Cold War (and the many false lessons we took from that).  No, we just did a victory dance and concluded that nothing could stand against our inevitable march to a glorious future – where the whole world would be remade in our image.

I have a great respect and fondness for the analysis and writing of Christopher Lasch.  He explored the deep roots of contemporary events and trends, unlike the typical American pundit who is long on moralizing (whether from the right or left) and rarely sees past the end of his own nose (or lifespan).  I am striving to imitate Lasch in looking at the accumulation of effect over time.  You can’t simply say, ah – here is the point where it all went wrong, even if you accept my premise that it was victory that was our [not-quite-final] undoing.  I did give short-shrift to all that FDR (and the Democrats) did prior to the war, as well as the economic crisis that led to FDR’s first two administrations.  There were many steps along the way, but the final loss of the republic was in the victory in WWII.  That placed our country in a situation which the Constitution was inadequate to address; and as we had found and would continue to find – the living, ever-morphing, constitution of imagination was more amenable to our needs than the dusty old paper and ink.

Now, I’d like to bring your attention back to a part of Franklin’s speech, for it will weigh heavily in where we are and where we are bound, absent some shock that forces a full rethinking of our society and government:

…and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

We find ourselves inexorably drawn to a despotic governance – because the people have become incapable of any other.  Franklin anticipated Breitbart, or Breitbart read Franklin.  Lysander Spooner’s criticism of the Constitution was well anticipated, for no words on paper will have meaning when the people yield their understanding of what was written in favor of their passions and prejudices.  The Progressive movement is of course the most destructive element, second only to slavery across the span of our history, when it comes to the Constitution and governance based there on.  But the social effect is far greater than the legal/political effects, for the Progressives transformed the the relationship of citizen to state into one of client and provider.  If we only had to unwind the former, the task would be hard but achievable; alas I can see no way, absent some truly traumatic event to the body politic, to undo the damage done with the latter.