Radical Midwest, Conservative West

I am almost ready to conclude that most of the radical doctrines that have sprung up in America in the come from, or at least have taken ready root in, Midwest soil: generally speaking, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, western Pennsylvania, and New York. (At the time of their settlement, of course, these areas were considered the "west"). This region, or rather the urban centers in this region, became the driving engine of the Progressive Era.

One of the early indications of all this was the nationalism and populism of Henry Clay and others, a sort of democratic-imperial spirit that influenced America's first experiment with dictatorship in the person of an Illinoisan named Abraham Lincoln. Around the same time they can also boast frontier revivalism, the free-soil movement, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, Joseph Smith and Mormonism, Robert Owen and the public school movement, and, of course, experiments with utopian communism.

Although the Midwest was, and remains, highly agricultural, they did not develop the same ideas of localism, decentralized government, and aristocratical society as did the other predominately agricultural region, the South. Sez Russell Kirk:

Although the West as at first agricultural, it had no desire to remain in that condition and was hardly second to the manufacturing interests of the Middle Atlantic States in the demand for stimulation of domestic industries. Then, too, the West was the home of belligerent nationalism; thence came most of the War Hawks, "the Grundys, Clays, and Seavers," that Randolph hated. Moreover, the West was the seat of radical egalitarianism, and the western state constitutions were anathema to Randolph. (John Randolph of Roanoke, 202-3.)

Perhaps to the surprise of Jefferson, freeholding farmers had no natural bent to virtue, humility, and self government--at least not in the abstract. His native Virginia was heir to centuries of restrained and orthodox Anglicanism, gentrified English taste, highly educated gentlemen with ideas of noblesse oblige, and a stable and tradition-loving peasant stock to round out society. In such conditions a wide distribution of modest freeholders could conduce to virtue; without this influence they were easy fodder for radical innovation. Indeed the Midwest landscape, vast, flat, and uniform, seemed tailor made for a cog in the great machine of industrialism. Carl Sandburg memorably depicts Chicago as a hellish marriage of industrialism and agriculture,

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

The midwest also, of course, oversaw the mechanization of agriculture to its present condition as a corporate venture requiring massive infusions of capital and technology, pushing it to ever greater economies of scale until Jefferson's ideal society of small, independent freeholders became a distant and derided memory.

Commensurate with these changes was a quiet but equally radical shift in the conception of man and his relation to society. As in commerce, so in politics, a man's first duty was to himself, and that chiefly consisted in "getting ahead" and "being somebody big." The great new cities of the Midwest were famously under the control of political machines (Wikipedia mentions Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, and St Louis as chief examples), a far cry from the Jeffersonian ideal of a decentralized structure in which small-scale freeholders actively participated in their government through local representatives. Although a fairly moderate example of the Midwest, it must not be forgotten that Harry Truman was given his start in politics by the Pendergast machine. Noteworthy too are his letters in early life proclaiming a burning ambition to become famous. Such self-interested domination was far cry from John Adams' "natural" aristocrats who assumed, in rotation, the onerous task of government, or John Randolph's actual aristocrats who considered their status, their wealth, and their education, to be given in trust, and administered on behalf of their constituents as a public duty, required by their station in life.

To be fair (or perhaps to spread the unfairness around a little) most of the Midwest's radicalism came from New England. Although Mormonism first took root in western New York, Ohio, and Missouri, both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were native Vermonters. The soil for their movement, the "burned over districts", was prepared by Charles Finney, a native of Connecticut. John Brown, prototypical Midwesterner and the first political terrorist, sprung from a tormented, hyper-Calvinist father who also hailed from Connecticut. Walt Whitman, prophet and examplar of the pushing, aggressive, skeptical naturalism of the rising West, was born on Long Island and spent his life in New York. Finally, Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott were all ex-Puritans from Massachussetts who greatly influenced the anarchical, experimental, and utopian bent of the territories.

Having said all that, I would not wish to include the American west proper in this denouncement. Once past the grain belt a far different character takes hold, and states such as Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Idaho show intriguing potential to someday wield a contrary influence. The climate is difficult and remote, the people are tough and accustomed to handling their own affairs without bureaucratic interference. Most farms and ranches are still owned by families, often descended from the original settlers. From personal observation there seem to be large numbers of hardworking, mature men with families, experienced marksmen, and both community-minded but self-sufficient, scattered widely throughout even the most remote pieces of country. Perhaps most importantly, the spark is not wanting to light this tinder, for a distant national government has consistently overreached in its relations toward these mountain states, controlling the majority of land and water and tying it up with bizarre environmental regulations that threaten to destroy the livelihoods of many long-established ranchers. These cases form almost exact parallels to the distant tyranny of Britain over the American colonies, or the New England attempts to control Southern agriculture for its own benefit by means of enormous tariffs. Nullification movements have not been lacking, and I would not be surprised, in another generation, to see serious secession movements in these states. Unlike most of the other states in the Union, the mountain states may actually have the capacity for self-government if they declare independence.

A third interesting thing

In Russell Kirk's biography of John Randolph of Roanoke, I ran across a striking argument:

To grant non-freeholders the right to vote violates the principle of no taxation without representation. If propertyless men are allowed to participate in government, which unavoidably includes the power of taxation, then they have the power to impose burdens which can only benefit, and never burden, themselves. If untaxed men are given power to dispose of other men's money, we have set ourselves up for tyranny. It's a simple and obvious deduction.

Property was the traditional requirement for representation in government from mediaeval England up to the early decades of American independence, and I am a bit surprised how quickly it was abandoned, considering the generally conservative nature of American leadership from colonial times through the revolution. I'm curious whether the change to one man, one vote can be traced to some secular extension of Puritan ideas of priesthood and equality, or to simple Enlightenment doctrine, or Jacobinism, or the "frontier spirit" in the age of Jackson, or to some combination of these.

It also helps demonstrate how odd is our current notion of the "ontology of franchise," if you want to call it that--the somewhat hazy idea that the right to vote is what makes you fully human. (Recently the state of Washington allowed criminals serving time in jail the right to vote!)

Two interesting things

1) I recently discovered the difference between natural law and natural rights philosophies. Natural law is the morality and right order revealed through creation, accessible by reason, conscience, history, and experience. Its great advocates are Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, and Hooker. It presupposes the existence of God (specifically the Christian God with Aquinas and Hooker). It requires an original and natural commonwealth among mankind, instituted by God at creation. Man is defined principally in terms of his duty toward the community and toward God, the final End for whom he was created.

The theory of natural rights, on the other hand, is based on the hypothesis that mankind is originally and naturally individual and autonomous. Any associations in which he participates, such as marriage or society, require a cession of some rights and a degree of autonomy, but every power not delegated is retained. Thus community is extraneous to his nature, and is simply arrangement of convenience. Man is defined principally in terms of his rights, and his rights are defined principally in opposition to other men. Its great advocates are the Enlightenment theorists: Locke, Hobbes, and Co.

Now put like this, there is a radical shift from the Christian to the Enlightenment understanding of Nature, and its implications for society. But James McClellan, in Liberty, Justice, and Virtue, observes that at the time of the American founding, the distinction was not fully appreciated, and much of the natural rights jargon used by certain Founding Fathers cannot accurately be read as endorsing a full-blown, radical revision of the Christian understanding.

2) I recently read a great article by Clyde Wilson (written all the way back in 1968).* In it he argued (among other things) that John Adams and other advocates of "checks and balances" in the Constitution were actually being radical and theoretical! But stay: he made some good points. According to Wilson, the thirteen colonies had, in the course of their joint history, evolved a comfortable set of mutual relations (admittedly, in need of adjustment and definition). In the Philadelphia convention, however, the old balance was upset in favor of a new (to America) and abstract system of checks and balances. He goes on to point out a number of very convincing historical proofs for the failure of the system to keep tyranny at bay. For instance, and I quote:

The chief concern of the Federalists within the polity was to check a rash majority by erecting powerful independent offices in the executive and judiciary. Some what short-sightedly, they believed that these centers of power would always be instruments of restraint. They failed to foresee the true course of events, i.e., that there was no natural reason why the executive and judiciary would remain conservative, and if ever once captured (as in the New Deal) by the passions of the mob or the spirit of rash innovation, the presidency and federal courts provided impregnable bastions for radical sorties upon the social order. The Federalists can thus be seen as tinkerers who sought to secure conservatism by means of abstractly conceived governmental machinery. Their tinkering has been largely responsible for the successes of anticonservative movements and the seemingly irreversible institutionalism of New Deal Liberalism in the federal courts and bureaucracy.

And more:

The Federalists’ political speculations (as have those of twentieth century liberals to opposite ends) tended to focus too much upon European society and not enough upon particular American conditions. The unrestrained majority which the Federalists feared was not, in America, a desperate, propertyless mob, but a restricted electorate of middle class property holders. The danger to the constitutional and federal republican polity in America has never come from the majority but rather from ambitious tyrants and alienated intellectual coteries for whom the strong presidency and judiciary are tailor-made fortresses.

So, according to Wilson, because of the stable and conservative condition of the American populace at large (far cry from the rootless and unpropertied agitators of the old world), the strong executive and judicial powers intended restrain the mob were not only unnecessary, but ended up playing into the hands of the much more present danger: aggressive reformers and disillusioned intellectuals.

This is really hard to argue with. But it's blowing my paradigm all to pieces, in a cool kind of way.



* http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2011/09/jeffersonian-conservative-tradition.html

Baptism and circumcision

Paul seems rather down on circumcision. In Romans 4 he makes a big deal of the fact that Abraham was given the promise of the Seed before he was circumcised, not after. Therefore, he argues, our justification comes through belief in the promised Seed, not in performing the law. Paul equates circumcision with the "law" (Romans 4:13), presumably because circumcision was a mark of the Jews, who had the Law; circumcision seems to anticipate the law that came 430 years later (Galatians 3:17).

In contrast to the legal character of circumcision is the coming of the Seed, and the work of His Spirit (Galatians 3:1-9). If we are members of Moses, we are bound to keep the law. If we are members of Christ, then we are members of Abraham, who was given the promise before the law, and therefore we are justified apart from works. There is a strong contrast between circumcision and membership in Christ.

We tend to equate baptism with circumcision, since they certainly fill similar covenantal functions. Thus we tend to transfer Paul's remarks on the futility of circumcision to our theology of baptism. But Paul is very "up" on baptism. Through Christ, of whom we are made a member through baptism (Romans 6), our sins are put to death, whereas through the law, of which we are made a member through circumcision (Romans 4, Galatians 3) our sins are provoked and made manifest (Romans 4:15).

The similarity between baptism and circumcision is real: both rituals join us to a covenant head. But the difference is also real: the covenant heads are different. Circumcision unites us to Moses, baptism unites us to Christ. Moses is bondage, Christ is freedom. Circumcision is efficacious to unite us to Moses, but Moses is futile to justify us. Baptism is efficacious to unite us to Christ, and Christ is powerful to justify us. So it is wrong for us to downplay baptism because Paul downplays circumcision. In both cases the ritual accomplishes covenantal union; in only one case does the covenant head accomplish salvation.

A "high" Reformed view of baptism (if rightly applied) cannot possibly be a return to the law, or a falling away from faith. The new covenant, the promise, the seed, the Spirit--Paul uses these terms to describe our new-found life apart from the law. If baptism is a "sacrament of the New Testament," as Westminster says, then it pertains to the Spirit and the freedom. One cannot possibly claim that this view is legalistic without making the New Covenant itself legalistic.

Here is where the great danger lies in making use of a facile division between "visible" and "invisible." There is an unstated equivocation of "invisible" with "spiritual" and "visible" with "fleshly" or "legal." Thus the new covenant, the promise, the Seed, the Spirit can only exist meaningfully apart from visible forms. By contrast things like sacraments are tangible and observable, and therefore do not partake of the free character of the new covenant. To connect "externals" in any way to the spiritual work of Christ is to fall into legalism.

But this is all messed up. The great division in the Bible is between Old and New, between the law and Christ, between the letter and the Spirit. Terms like inner and outer, in the Bible, describe the difference in power between the old and new covenants--not a division between the visible and invisible forms found in both covenants. In the new covenant we are given new hearts, and the grace transforms us beginning with our deepest inner man. This is a power the old covenant did not have; I believe this is what Paul meant by circumcision of the flesh in contrast to circumcision of the heart. Circumcision partook of the futile nature of the law; the cutting of the flesh had no effect on the heart. In the new covenant, however, baptism must partake of the spiritual, efficacious work of Christ. If it does not, if baptism is no better than circumcision, then the new covenant is no better than the old, and we might as well have remained under Moses.