United States or united States: Some Additional Thoughts on Revolutionary Documents and State Sovereignty

 
Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Two of COL Lang's most recent posts, on the Declaration of Independence and on Fareed Zakariya's understanding of the nature of the US, especially federalism, got me thinking a bit about American Political Development (of which I did not specialize in...) and how America has and has not changed over time.  

In the first post COL Lang asks if the document could bear scrutiny today and if its author, and I take that to me its primary drafter Thomas Jefferson, could avoid police state surveillance?  I think the answer is quite simply that Mr. Jefferson would have little to no place in modern American political society.  And while this has been evidenced by the State of Texas writing him out of their history textbooks (apparently the religious conservatives who control the board do not like him because he penned the phrase "separation of Church and State"), I think it goes farther than just Mr. Jefferson's status.  I have often wondered, and sometimes remarked, that I do not think any of our founding and framing fathers could be elected to office today or even approved by the Senate for appointment.  And this is not because of the obvious concern that many were slave owners and therefore on the wrong side of what we would today call racial issues (it was the 18th Century after all).  Rather it has to do with their political views, ranging from the radical to the reactionary, their beliefs about the world and nature and the Deity, their understanding of government, and finally their personal lives.  While I could produce a long list of these men, their ideas, and their foibles, with appropriate links, suffice it to say that Jefferson's affair with his sister in law (Sally Hemmings was Mrs. Jefferson's sister),

 

Washington being a rum runner (smuggler), Hamilton's repeated affairs, Franklin's education and expertise (not to mention that he liked to pose, in prose, as a young housewife, making him a literary cross dresser), etc, etc, etc (and lets not forget they were almost all Freemasons, the horror...) would make it impossible for them to get elected today or confirmed if they were appointed.  The genius of these men was not that they were all simon pure, but rather that they were as flawed and fallible** as the rest of us, yet able when the time came to rise above their limitations, to compromise (even if they were bad compromises in retrospect), and to do the work that needed to be done.

To be perfectly honest I am not sure that Ronald Reagan could be elected today, and certainly not as a Republican, given that he raised taxes seven out of the eight years he was in office, increased, or authorized by signing legislation that increased, spending, enlarged the deficit (tax and spender), and that he pulled US forces out of Lebanon after the Marines were attacked twice (cutting and running), negotiated under the table with Iran to try to secure the release of US hostages taken in Lebanon (negotiated with Islamic extremists), head of a union, and that is not counting me being polite and not mentioning the breakdown of his first marriage and other personal/familial issues that would not be off limits today.  While many of my memories of President Reagan were formed in adolescence, it says something about where America is today that the great conservative icon, Ronald Reagan, could not make it through an Iowa caucus.  At this hyperlink you can find the Austrian Economics (this is the philosophical/normative type of economics subscribe to by Congressman Paul, Senator Paul, Congresswoman Bachman, Congressman Ryan, and many others) folks going after him.   I am not trying to run down President Reagan, rather this list of actions that he and his administration undertook (whether I agree with all, some, any, or none of them) are intended to demonstrate that the flexibility to make policy adjustments regardless of ideological posturing are something that is no longer valued in American political life any more by a great portion of the electorate.  Given that conservatism's greatest American icon, President Reagan, would fail almost every litmus test that has been created by his own party, its supporters, backers, and those who claim to be part of the same overall movement, should clearly demonstrate that real radicals like President Jefferson, a man who wanted the Constitution scrapped and rewritten every generation or so as he perceived it as the ultimate social contract, would certainly be out of the question.

What appear to be the historical tone deafness of Mr. Zakariya's remarks about the nature of the US are related to whether the Declaration would be acceptable today or if the founders and framers would really be held in such high esteem if they should suddenly reanimate and run for office.  COL Lang is 100% correct that the original and initial conceptualization of the US was of a united States, where each of the (then thirteen) states was sovereign and independent and would work together on issues of defense and economic matters.  This was modified at the second founding when the Articles of Confederation were abandoned and replaced with the Constitution; thirteen sovereign states were replaced by one sovereign state made up of thirteen semi or limited sovereign components governed by the concept of federalism.  And it is this concept of federalism more than anything else that has evolved, been adapted, been adjusted, and changed over time.  In many ways what Mr. Zakariya and Mr. Toobin were agreeing about is accurate: each of the fifty states that make up the US is no longer sovereign.  Or rather they are no longer fully sovereign.  They are not allowed to conduct their own foreign policy, they can not strike their own currency, they are, after several decades of bitterly fought legal battles, fought out in the Supreme Court during the early to middle 20th Century on everything from religion (Abington v. Schemp for example), privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), and a host of other Bill of Rights' issues, as well as the Civil Rights legislation and subsequent enforcement, fully subject to the guarantees granted to each individual US citizen under the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.  If each state was fully sovereign then the rights one has as an American would not necessarily travel with one as an American as you moved across the country (and that was, once upon a time, the case).  Where Mr. Zakariya and Mr. Toobin got it wrong was in failing to understand that federalism means shared sovereignty - the Federal government does somethings and the state governments do others.  

Our real problem today, though, is that our ability to govern ourselves is breaking down.  Rather than recognizing that government can, and when necessary should, do certain beneficial things for everyone - what we call delivering public goods, we have degenerated into a citizenry that is poorly informed, often poorly educated on the most important issues, contemptuous of expertise and the education that goes with it, and convinced that government is the problem.  And a good chunk of our elected officials seem determined to prove that government is good for nothing and should therefore be down sized if not gotten rid of (all while enjoying government pay checks, health care, and retirement - kind of makes one wonder).  There was a time where American government was part of the solution.  America's infrastructure was the marvel of the developed world - our interstate highway system, our bridges and tunnels, the rail roads, our airports and sea ports, and our power grids and sewer systems.  These were not built with private dollars, they were built as public investments, as public goods, so that private investments could flourish.  Today many have been sold off, and often not to the highest bidder, and they are crumbling, and they are no longer a shining example to the rest of the world, but rather something between a sad joke and the example of what happens when a society decides to consume itself.  So government is not the problem, just as it is not always the solution, but our real problem is bad government, bad governance, and bad elected and appointed officials, as well as an uninformed and not particularly inquisitive citizenry, and a news media designed to make money, not to help overcome the problems of low and bad information.  Our social contract is frayed and the wisdom of those who wrote it fails us even as it and they are venerated to new heights.  

*Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College or the US Army.

** Just look up and read the differing accounts of how Washington came to be the commander of the Continental Army by the men who were in that hot, humid, little room in Philadelphia.  Compare his letter home to his wife with that of several of the other founders' letters about how he was selected.

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

Terrific post so thanks Dr. Silverman! The elected politicians really do not want to govern and have other reasons for seeking office. Usually corrupt reasons IMO!

[Arun]

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/02/259908/team-john-jay/

Speaking of founding fathers, could John Jay get elected today?

Jay not only founded the African Free School in New York City, as Governor of New York he signed the bill that ended slavery.

[R Whitman]

I generally do not like thse "doom and gloom" pieces about the United States. Right now we are going through a down period in our national psyche. The last time this happened was in the 1970's. My parents told me about a similar time in the 1930's.

The United States is all about the future, not the past and certainly not about feeling miserable in the present.

At the risk of sounding like an American cheerleader, in the future, probably sooner than we can imagine, the US will be in much better shape physically, mentally and financially. We need to quit feeling sorry for ourselves.

[Arun]

In the National Air & Space Museum, I saw this along one of the displays:

"The first airlines began to fly only 11 years after the Wright brothers' first flights in 1903-and they quickly began to fail. They could not make enough money to survive.

To help create an air transportation network, the US government began flying the mail. Once reliable service was established, the Post Office turned over air mail delivery to private companies. By 1927, a commercial airline system had been born.

--
a. Is it true?
b. Would it be feasible in today's political climate?

[Patrick Lang]

RWhitman

"The United States is all about the future, not the past" IMO that attitude is why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. pl

[Adam L Silverman]

Arun: the quote about the aviation industry is accurate - as far as I know. What is interesting, however, is that the air line industry has always been heavily subsidized by the government as it is a very unprofitable business model. I'll pull the citation later and put it up in comments, but several years ago when doing research on aviation security I came across the profit data for the airlines prior to 2001 and with projections out through the 2020s or 2030s. Basically the industries profits almost always track $0, the only real periods of profitability correspond to federal bailouts,

To answer your second question: no, it wouldn't be possible today to do this. Please remember that when President Obama and his administration, in what we now know was a successful attempt to stabilize the US auto manufacturing industry, partially nationalized and subsidized two of the big three US auto makers, preserving the companies and the majority of the jobs, he was pilloried for it. He's still being attacked over it, yet had 2/3rds of Detroit's auto manufacturing collapsed it would have taken the rest of the industry down with it. All the companies -American, Japanese, German, etc - all make, buy, and sell parts for each other whether they're in union shops in the upper mid West or non union plants in the South. Things like this are definitely covered under the no good deed goes unpunished rule.

[Adam L Silverman]

Mr. Whitman,

I respectfully gave to disagree. We don't live in the future, we live in the present. And to get to an acceptable future we have to be able to dispassionately review the problem sets we face and come to workable solutions to resolve them. This requires an accurate command of the facts, especially accurate historical information, not revisionism. It is important to remember that one of the drivers of the Texas history book rewrite, the rewrite that I referenced which removes Thomas Jefferson, is Reverend David Barton. Reverend Barton has been invited to Congress to teach classes on the constitution by Congresswoman Bachmann for her tea party caucus . Reality is often unpleasant, but it is important that in both domestic and foreign policy that we deal with it.

[William P. Fitzgerald III]

Pat Lang, et.al.,

I urge you to read, or re-read, Dr. Silverman's reply to Mr. Whitman. The three sentences beginning with "We don't" comprise as good a definition of the liberal mind as I've seen.

WPFIII

[Adam L Silverman]

Mr. Fitzgerald,

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Adam

[Nightsticker]

Colonel Lang,

"The United States is all about the future, not the past".

Ignoring for a moment other issues with the above sentence,perhaps we should return to an earlier syntax and semantics and write:

"The United States ARE all about the future, not the past."

Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96

[Fred]

Adam,

The condemnation of the automotive bailout is the best distraction the bailed out bankers on WallStreet have ever had.

[VietnamVet]

Dr. Silverman,

Excellent response. We need to know the past to understand the present to plan for the future.

My old age is showing but human beings are taught. My world view comes from the public schools in the State of Washington. Red Seattle / 1919 General Strike and the 1930’s Longshoreman Strikes were never mention. Even so, there is now a concerted conservative campaign to discredit public school teachers and promote vouchers, home schooling and charter schools; in order to eliminate history, science, and the arts. They are creating the 21st Century digitalized mind bots.

When I was growing up these conservatives were the far right kooks of the Birch Society. Beyond the death, wounding and lost treasure, the greatest tragedy of the Vietnam War is that the disgust at government for lying to the people and losing the war was the traction that it gave to these conservatives that ultimately led to the current corporate takeover of the federal government.

[Brent Wiggans]

All this talk of “flyover country” and “coastal elites” is more than an acknowledgement of cultural differences and interests; it is a bellwether of political chaos. Why can’t our republic contain them both? Since when did they become mortal enemies in an existential struggle? Some have become convinced that their differences cannot be accommodated since we got the notion that the pie we are fighting for shares of is diminishing. The benefits of a national aggregation of our far-flung and unevenly distributed resources are forgotten as we become convinced that they are shrinking and that their allocation is corrupt and unfair. In this time of distress one of our two great political parties has made it their doctrine to enable the few at the top to acquire the lion’s share of the national wealth and we speak here, almost casually, of breaking apart our country in a squabble over what is left.

[optimax]

Sally Hemmings was Mrs. Jefferson's half-sister. DNA evidence does not prove Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemmings children. It could just have well been his nephew who was a known "alley cat" and Sally Hemming's births happened 9 months after his visits to his uncle.

Abigail Adams worried about Sally Hemmings accompanying his daughter to France because she was extremely beautiful. TJ may have fathered SH's children but there is not proof positive he did.

[William P. Fitzgerald III]

Dr. Silverman,

It is, of course, a good thing.

WPFIII

[Jose]

"...thirteen sovereign states were replaced by one sovereign state made up of thirteen semi or limited sovereign components governed by the concept of federalism." - ALS

Dr. Silverman, the States surrendered their sovereignty when the 17th Amendment was ratified.

IMHO, this was a catastrophic mistake against the balance of power between the Federal Government and the States, but reality is what it is.

[Patrick Lang]

All

Sovereignty in the US is shared among three elements; federal government, state governments, and the citizens. pl

[Patrick Lang]

optimax

Even if TJ did father SH's children I know of no evidence that Jefferson started "interfering" with her before the death of her half sister, his wife. Why is it so surprising that he would "take up" with his wife's sister after her death? She evidently looked just like Mrs. Jefferson. Let us not forget that she could have remained in France and returned because he asked her to do so. pl

[Nancy K]

Brent Wiggens, I so agree with you. I live in Calif near the coast, does that make me a coastal elite. I am soooo sick of the terms elite and fly over as the defining characteristics of a state. Our country is becoming wacky. There is really nothing very united about us anymore, maybe there never has been, I was just unaware.
Maybe we should just divide up and each state keeps it own revenue. California and New York may not mind that but I'm guessing West Virginia, Alabama or Mississippi might not be too happy. Texas needs bailing out because of it's massisve drought. Who would bail it out if it were it's own country. Good thing there is no global warming or they could be in even more trouble in the future.
If I sound disgusted, it is because I am. I realize all countries probably have their differences, but ours are getting out of control.

[optimax]

Col,

I have no problem with the idea of Jefferson taking up with Sally Hemmings. A movie with Nick Nolte is of that perception. The proof he did is not 100% positive.

[Patrick Lang]

NancyK et al

To be in the "coastal elite" you haveto be in the "elite." Otherwise you are just coastal. :)

[Roy G.]

Thanks for your comment to NancyK, Col. Lang to clear up that point. Thinking about it further, I may suggest that a more proper term for Zacharia and his ilk would be the 'global elite,' who have understood their mutual interests supersede any national/tribal/religious/moral allegiances they may have had.

Brent, I agree with your point, and Nancy K's, as well as Vietnam Vet's, and believe that they are all linked. It was mentioned in a recent post that the plans for the Patriot Act were sitting on the shelf, waiting to be implemented; the same is true for FOX News, which we recently learned was cooked up by Roger Ailes during his time as sorcerer's apprentice during the Nixon administration:

http://wapo.st/maKkyu

It is We The People who have been targeted by the elites for subjugation; first came the carrots, now come the sticks.

[Trent]

Nancy K,
as for the California revenue, did you offset that against the debt?
Best of luck.

[Eric Welch]

I think it's less a battle between dual federalism and cooperative federalism than simply excessive self-interest. Congressmen no longer have legislative aims; rather their sole interest is to get re-elected, over and over again. To do this they have to raise money for the next election cycle from the moment they take office and to do that they must cater to a.) the most vocal, and b.) the most rich, usually corporate interests.

We live now in a political environment where representatives from states who receive substantial federal largesse like Kentucky and Alaska argue for smaller government and lower taxes while they demand more federal support for local initiatives.

It boggles the mind. I seriously think the time is ripe for a third party candidate.

[William R. Cumming]

No airline has ever made a profit in each year it existed and in reality many only exist because of federal or other nation-state subsidy.

It is false to assume that the USA airline business is a private enterprise in almost any way.