The Federalist Papers As Public Discourse
The shutting down of public discourse is the direct result of the vilification of one's opponent and a claim to perfect knowledge.
How did America navigate the adoption of a new constitution, one which would scrap their Articles of Confederation favored by many, creating a new, far-reaching national government, weakening the states, and binding together a country with profound differences on their views of the scope and place of government?
My interest here is not to retrace this history; others have ably done so. Rather it is to consider how the Federalist Papers (and the Anti-Federalist response) were an example of public discourse. What amazes one about the Federalist Papers is that a single short letter can speak of both the “nature of man” and “apportionment of taxes.”
All involved recognized politics requires observations about broader, human concerns – public safety, civic trust, well-being, the future, even happiness. Politics requires addressing competing interests, the irreconcilability of some, but perhaps or hopefully, a common ground of baseline agreement. Vilifying or pretending the opposing side will go away only leads to perpetual warring of various kinds.
My purpose is to highlight what at bottom has radicalized and fueled America’s current culture war: claims to a moral high ground.
James Madison recognized, for example, that religious toleration would be the only path forward in a new nation that had collected numerous Christian sects seeking relief from warfare in Europe. Their instinct was domination; Madison instead promoted toleration. Hence the First Amendment; hence its first protection – religion. Live according to your beliefs, your conscience; but don’t expect the option of eliminating those of others. That’s the bargain. It’s rather amazing and a sign of the poverty of our education that political factions today seem to believe the other will simply go away.
Politics would necessarily have to appeal then to both shared private interests (religion) but also to the common good, to justice of the broadest possible interests. Alexander Hamilton reflects on this in Federalist No. 1, the paper that sets out the terms for public discourse on the adoption of the new constitution.
It may seem naïve to believe we can return to such a discourse, given today’s knowledge economy or knowledge “scape” is claimed to be radically different from all previous ones. But my purpose is to highlight what at bottom has radicalized and fueled America’s current culture war: claims to a moral high ground.
The near-defeat of checks and balances in America today follows from the claim that a morally superior position can transcend any institutional constraints, that such constraints are necessarily to be ignored in “doing the right thing.” This is the premise, sometimes spoken sometimes not, of the “woke” left. Yet the Founders were not unaware of this problem, even if not articulating it in today’s language. Madison’s warning against “factions” was premised on the observation that politics is rooted in opinions, from worshiping God to raising one’s children to the proper role of government. Opinions are the varieties of ways human beings attempt to find their own way in the world and this variety arises necessarily in a democratic society protecting liberty for each individual to pursue happiness as they see fit.
But opinions are not knowledge and this knowledge deficit is explicitly addressed by Hamilton. Moderation is a political virtue because errors enter into politics just as they do into any other attempt at knowledge. But perhaps Hamilton is disguising a deeper problem as well: we all assume we really know about politics. Or rather: we all have opinions, really strong ones, on political issues. It’s not brain surgery. We do not defer to experts. The U.S. government is learning this lesson: politicize the science and trust in experts disappears when the expert becomes a mere politician.
Yet expert or not, the point Hamilton makes is clear. Allow me to quote at length:
…men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable – the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.
Both sides may be in error; both sides may be driven by less than pure motives. Both sides need moderation. One of the clearest prescriptions of the Federalist Papers is taking these facts of human nature and, to the degree possible, channeling them through institutions that can constrain them. Ambition counteracting ambition. Many will argue, however, that this can no longer be a tenable solution given the current state of things, given “the culture” or lack thereof. The wholesale rejection of the usefulness of institutional constraints by many on the right, especially the so-called alt-right, isn’t without reason; yet it also seems to serve those on the left who are more than happy to abandon the U.S. Constitution and rule of law and play the moral superiority game.
Being “woke” means knowing the answer to what human beings for millennia have fought over: exactly what justice is and how to apply it to a particular political circumstance.
Today’s progressive left attempts to transcend institutional limits through the vilification sects have always used to marginalize their opponent. Calling one deplorable or insurrectionists or terrorists eliminates any need for public discourse. Public discourse is, in a word, the moderation Hamilton extols. It is the compromise rooted in the Founding documents’ very designs. It is the attempt to find a basis for justice, the common interests of a nation as a nation, despite the radical differences that always have and always will (to varying degrees) exist between the separate states. Imperfect knowledge necessitates mixed government, a republican form of government that pays heed to various opinions on what government can, and should, aim to achieve.
California and Texas may have had more in common in the past. But let’s not continually pretend that everything is new under the sun. Party strife is fundamentally American. Alexander Hamilton died because the Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr, shot and killed him in a duel. A duel. Like two guys standing a few feet apart and shooting guns at each other.
The shutting down of public discourse is the direct result of the vilification of the other side and a claim to perfect knowledge. Loaded accusations directed at a particular policy, the left has learned, allows them to hide behind their own inferior policies, policies that aid their self-serving agenda. If immigration restrictions are labeled “racist” one need not bother justifying or disentangling policy prescriptions or impacts. Being “woke” (in whatever way its ever-changing definition demands) means knowing the answer to what human beings for millennia have fought over: exactly what justice is and how to apply it to a particular political circumstance.
Since their enlightened policies should stand above institutional constraints, the woke elites have made the claim of Plato’s philosopher-king, the one who rules on the basis of possessing perfect knowledge. All others have no claim to rule, and certainly not to self-government.
It should go without saying that today’s various definitions of justice are all insufficient, precisely because historically and philosophically illiterate. To cite only one consideration: If the left’s new definition of justice, what they label “equity,” results in preferential treatment for their political allies at the cost of the common interests of the country as a whole, there are serious questions about this “justice.”
Flash forward 220 years after Hamilton succumbs to a bullet and the language of “isms” has reduced political discourse to oversimplified, jargon-laden lingo confusing the very issues at hand. The Founders speak, by contrast, of competing interests which necessarily disagree; factions forming to pursue these interests; and human ambition, resulting in both good and ill, driving this competition. This analysis is much more useful than accusations (without basis) of racism or sexism or any other “ism.” Ideological reductions do not explicate policy issue; they obscure them. In the more descriptive language of Aristotle, the oligarchs and democrats fight over competing views of justice, each of which necessarily misses the entirety of it.
But even supposing the Twitterati and other media elites of the woke church, Curtis Yarvin’s “cathedral,” have discovered Justice Itself, Morality Itself, Politics Itself, they still have problem. Why bother speaking of the middle class or the working class or pretending that America is a democratic government of self-rule of any kind? Why bother speaking the language of a common good, of a justice that serves the common interests of Americans qua Americans? By claiming to know, they imply such knowledge provides them with a title to rule. Since their enlightened policies should stand above institutional constraints (their implicit or even explicit claim made every time they critique, say, the filibuster or the Supreme, Court), the woke elites have made the claim of Plato’s philosopher-king, the one who rules on the basis of possessing perfect knowledge. All others have no claim to rule, and certainly not to self-government, since on the woke left’s own view, those who won’t bend a knee are ignorant.
Far from expanding voting, the woke elites in America should eliminate all voting. We should implement a religious test for office – wokeism. If one deviates from the dogmas its High Priests decree, then one is simply unfit for office. We should rule by executive fiats and decrees and all offices of government need not be constrained by legal parameters on their power should the moral imperative driving policy be sufficiently attested to as woke.
How dare the U.S. Constitution stand in the way of progress toward the Woke Utopia we all need but are too stupid to see! Let the light of Wokeism guide us to the better life we never knew we could achieve.
But the woke have made a very grave miscalculation. As Hamilton observes later in Federalist No. 1:
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.
One can hope Hamilton is wrong in his qualifying “rarely.” Since political heresies are necessarily the result of assuming homogeneity of beliefs, the best path forward for America today is a true toleration and diversity expressed via red and blue states along with an agreed-upon (if heavily curtailed) common interest. Moderation pursued in this way guards against acts of persecutory, political excess, acts surely required to transform the cultural instincts fostered by, and expressed in, most Americans and their unifying history.