Entering Monticello,Thomas Jefferson's home, you are flanked by two busts, Jefferson on one side and Alexander Hamilton on the other. Since the two were political foes it's a surprising choice. But the busts were placed there by Jefferson himself who said, "we were ever-opposed in life and now we shall be ever-opposed in death." The Jefferson-Hamilton battle continues to this day (read the link for more and don't miss the many interesting comments.)
Addendum: Brad was perhaps fooled by the name of this blog but then there are two of us.
"Edison" myth--Edison consciously cultivated image of himself as solitary inventor.
"Persecuted genius" myth
"Self-appointed expert" myth--rationalizations for disregarding expert opinion when it clashes with personal beliefs.
Mobility and homogenization
Chance to start over again
Lack of local roots
Anti-authoritarianism
Resistance to both illegitimate and legitimate authority.
Many "authoritarian" movements are also anti-authoritarian. (Nazi Germany a prime example--Hitler based his appeal on resentment over German surrender terms).
Idealism vs. pragmatism
Exploration
Romantic view of Westward expansion.
Louisiana and Alaska purchases ridiculed at the time.
Immigration
"Give me your tired, your poor..."
Restrictive immigration policies.
Invention
Idealization of inventors.
Reality--steamboat was called "Fulton's Folly"
The Golden Fleece Award
The pattern
Myth: Lone "practical" innovators stand in opposition to a hidebound intellectual establishment that says, "It can't be done."
Reality: Innovations often pursued by intellectuals who are ridiculed by the "practical" common man.
The Switch: Opponents of innovation in the present identify themselves with innovators of the past.
High level of violence for a developed nation
.
Ten homicides/100,000 vs. 1-3 in most other developed nations.
Optimism; faith in future and technology.
Loss of this faith in the 1960's and 1970's was a major blow.
Ideological shallowness
Incongruous choices: 1968 - one survey respondent preferred Robert Kennedy (very liberal) but would vote for George Wallace (ultraconservative) if Kennedy not nominated!
Flexibility
Two-party system a major result?
Grudges often short-lived
"C'mon, already, forget the Alamo"--gag sticker
Compare to Ireland or Yugoslavia, where grudges centuries old still cause bloodshed
First post-war ambassador to Vietnam spent 6 years there as P.O.W.
Ideological conflicts frequently expressed in pragmatic issues.
Gun control and crime.
Church-state separation
Aid to parochial schools
Abortion
Pornography
Nuclear power
The American Concept of Rights
"Inalienable"--Declaration of Independence
Life
Liberty
Pursuit of Happiness
Explicit Constitutional Rights
Religious freedom: Amendment I
Freedom of Speech: Amendment I
Freedom of the Press: Amendment I
Peaceful Assembly and Petition: Amendment I
Right to bear arms: Amendment II
Protection of Property Rights: Amendments IV, V, XIV
Trial by Jury, Due Process: Amendments V, VI, VII, VIII
Freedom from Slavery: Amendment XIII
Equal Protection of the Laws: Amendment XIV
Right to Vote: Amendment XV, XIX, XVI
Inferred or interpreted Constitutional Rights
Equal Opportunity
Reading of Suspect Rights
Free Counsel for Indigent
Abortion
Some Historical Factors in American Values
Early Colonization
Roots of Libertarian vs. Communitarian conflict
Libertarian
Popular image of colonists: they came to American to do their own thing.
Communitarian
Groups like the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America explicitly to construct a society around certain values. Individual rights were subordinate to these values. The advantages of living in the colony were contingent on adherence, or at least non-opposition to these values. Contrary to popular misconception, these groups were not at all inconsistent with their own principles when they expelled dissidents.
Other Communitarian Systems
19th Century Socialist groups (Amana Colonies, Iowa)
Mormons in Utah
Amish, Mennonites, etc.
Communes of the 1960's.
Failure to appreciate the roots of the Libertarian-Communitarian dichotomy is probably the biggest single misconception in contemporary values conflicts.
Revolution and Development of Constitution
Revolution as a source of identity and role models
Revolution was conservative (contrast with France a decade later)
Development of the Constitution; resolution of conflicts
Centralized vs. Decentralized Government
North vs. South
Urban vs. Rural
Nature and Range of Individual Rights
Origin of many U.S. political values
Centrist
Separation of powers
Why did the process work?
History affords surprisingly few examples of revolutions that did not degenerate into oppression as flagrant as the old system. Some possible reasons:
Driven by middle and upper classes with a vested interest in keeping the scope of change limited and controlled.
Took place during a period when there was a general belief in the effectiveness of reason (but compare the French Revolution, which claimed to deify Reason!).
Unusual concentration of talented leaders.
Jefferson-Hamiltonian Conflict
Technology is so intimately connected to American values that it seems impossible to picture a time when there was ever a debate about the desirability of technology. But exactly that happened about 1780-1820.
Jeffersonians
Held that the values of a agrarian society were superior to those of industrial societies and that America should remain rural and agrarian. Pointed to the abuses of England as a warning. Essentially an elitist, estate-owner philosophy.
Hamiltonians
Argued that industry did not have to lead to abuse and that American would be dependent on Europe without its own industry.
This conflict has been played and re-played throughout American history, usually whenever technology approaches a breakthrough into a new level of intensity. It was an essential ingredient of the Civil War, which pitted the industrial North against the agrarian South, and appears today in controversies like environmentalism.
Early 19th Century Industrialism.
The Hamiltonians won the debate by default when industrialists began operating despite the concerns of the Jeffersonians. The New England textile mills were leaders in this movement. Many industrialists (not all) saw their role as social agents as well as industrialists. They offered education for workers, and so on. Adam Smith had done the same thing 50 years before in England. The problem with this sort of "industrial socialism" is that it is a lot easier and more profitable to run an industry without paying attention to social goals, and later industrialists were not as concerned with them.
The Civil War
Has been called the Second American Revolution
Triumph of the North
Sweeping Social Change
Ending of Slavery
Acceptance of Catholicism as mainstream (nurses in Civil War hospitals were often nuns.)
Source of identity and role models
Introduction of modern technology to warfare
The Frontier Experience
Some Frontier Experiences
Germany, 800-1000 (Settling of Black Forest, Baltic shore)
Siberia, 1600-1900
North America, 1600-1900
What makes the U.S. frontier experience so unique?
Resources were plentiful
Concept of private property
Incentive to develop and exploit resources
Autonomy
Freedom of movement
Opportunity to make a new start
Opportunity for advancement, adventure, self-esteem
Freedom from restrictions
Legal restrictions
Physical limitations (free land and resources)
Advanced technology
Progress rapid enough to be visible.
Contact maintained with mainstream
Comparative safety
Very few wagon trains were really attacked by Indians, and far more cowboys died of disease, accidents and exposure than bullets.
The Frontier as a Mythic Force
Rich source of legend and role models.
Until late 1960's, Westerns were among the most numerous TV shows.
Compare the image of the West in our culture with the image of Siberia in Russian culture.
Re-thinking the Frontier saga
Civil Rights campaign of 1960's and later Native American activism questioned the nobility of the frontier and its treatment of native peoples.
The Vietnam War dimmed the hero-crusader image.
Environmentalism questioned the notion of inexhaustible resources and exploitation as desirable.
Cynicism of 1960's reflected in anti-hero Western parodies (Clint Eastwood "spaghetti Westerns")
Industrialization, 1870-1940
Birth of the assembly line
Birth of the labor movement
Immigration and the "melting pot"
Contrary to current myth, the term "melting pot" never meant total loss of ethnic identity.
World War II
Birth of high-tech civilization
Emergence of the U.S. as Superpower
"Policeman of the World" idea has its roots in late 19th Century "Gunboat Diplomacy" and in British notion of the "White Man's Burden" that justified British imperialism.
Growth of the military-industrial complex
As an idea of the amount of growth, note that when the Pentagon was built in World War II, critics asked what would be done with all the extra space after the war!
The Canadian Experience
Same continent, same root culture, same language, but some surprising differences.
Historical Background
1776 American Revolution Begins
1800-1850 Significant Reforms in England
1867 Canada created by Confederation
Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Roots
United States
Settled mostly by those dissatisfied with British system.
Political system reflects reaction to abuses of British System.
Canada
Settled by colonists who were not so dissatisfied.
Refused to join U.S. in Revolution.
Refuge for loyalists who fled U.S. during and after revolution.
Political system evolved from reformed British system.
Canadian Values and Institutions compared to U.S.
Much lower level of conflict with Native Americans.
Lower white settlement density.
More sedentary Canadian tribal lifestyles.
Less white resistance to regulation.
Lower level of violence
U.S. annual homicide rate 10/100,000
Canadian annual homicide rate 2.5/100,000
Greater acceptance of social intervention
National Health Care
Aid to Church Schools
Cultural pluralism
English/French, Quebec originally settled by France, ceded to England in 1759.
Only in Louisiana (French) and New Mexico (Spanish) do any states officially recognize another language as co-historical with English; (though multi-lingual ballots are required in many areas by Federal Law, the non-English population post-dates the English majority in almost all cases).
Hamiltonians, for the most part, were merchants, bankers, manufacturers, or professional men from New England and the Atlantic seaboard, along with some wealthy farmers and southern planters.
ATTITUDE TOWARD GOVERNMENT
Hamiltonians admired the English aristocracy and the English system of government and wished to ssee it used as a model.
Hamiltonians considered the common people ignorant and incapable of self-government.
Hamiltonians desired high voting qualifications, claiming that unfettered democracy was anarchy.
Hamiltonians favored a broad interpretation of the Constitution to strengthen the central government at the expense of of state's rights.
Hamiltonians wanted an expanding bureaucracy.
Hamiltonians, under certain circumstances, favored restrictions on speech and the press.
Letters
Alexander Hamilton,
secretary of the treasury,
letter to Colonel Edward Carrington of Virginia
May 26, 1792
"it was not till the last session [of Congress] that I become unequivocally convinced of the following truth: 'That Mr. Madison, cooperating with Mr. Jefferson [the secratary of state], is at the head of the faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration; and actuated by views, in my judgement, subersive of the principles of good government and dangerous to the Union, peace, and happiness of the country.'
"In respect to foreign politics, the views of these gentlemen are, in my judbment,...unsound and dangerous. They have a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment against Great Britain. They would draw us into the closest embrace of the former, and involve us in all the consequences of her politics; and they would risk the peace of the country in their endeavors to keep us at the greatest possible distance from the latter...Various circumstances prove to me that if these gentlemen were left to pursue thir own course, there would be, in less than six months, an open war between the United States and Great Britain. "A word on another point. I am told that serious apprehensions are disseminated in your state [Virginia] as to the existence of a monarchical party meditating the destruction of State and republican government. If it is possible that so absurd an idea can gain ground, it is necessary that it should be combated. I assure you, on my private faith and honor as a man, that there is not, in my judgement, a shadow of foundation for it. A very small number of men indeed may entertain theories less republican than Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, but I am persuaded there is not a man among them who would not regard as both criminal and visionary any attempt to subvert the republican system of the country."
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Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists Most people think that the U.S. constitution was just ratified and there was no arguments over its passing. In fact there was almost enough opposition that it came very close to not being passed. It was the Hamiltonians vs. the Jeffersonians in almost all cases. Even before the United States Constitution was ratified there was debate over whether or not to have a strict interpretation or a loose one. There was also debate over a State’s right to nullify a law. As memories of Shay’s rebellion and the reality of the Whiskey rebellion came to the front the issue of undue force became an issue. One of the other major issues during this era was the debt and the national bank. Although the constitution was passed there was much debate over whether it should be a strict or loose interpretation. Hamilton’s federalists thought it should be loose and Jefferson’s democratic-republicans strict. If it was strict then the federal government would only have the powers specifically given to it because of the tenth amendment. Too justify it being loose the federalists used the elastic clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18) and then they could decide what was necessary and proper. Hamilton thought that the only way “to protect states sovereignty and at the same time have a national government would be to have a strong central authority”. The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions brought to the front a very important matter of concern, a state’s right to nullify a law. The federalists said that if a state could nullify a law then what did the laws mean. The democratic-republicans thought that if a law hurt a state unduly then it could be nullified. “Resolved,” the Kentucky Legislature declared in its opening paragraph, “that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” Supreme authority in America, it argued, was held not by the federal government but by the people and the states, and Congress and the president had only those powers clearly delegated to them by the Constitution. This issue would not be settled until the civil war This is one of the pivotal moments of politics at that time the federalists were thrown out in 1800 mainly because of this. Another cause for concern about the new government was the use of undue force. The democratic-republicans thought that Washington used too much force in putting down the whiskey rebellion. He used 12,950 men to put down that rebellion or the“ so-called insurrection” as he called it. Washington did another thing to anger the democratic-republicans when he left Hamilton in charge or making the arrests. They thought that that was too much force for people who in their mind had good reason to rebel. The federalists thought that this was a good move. They based this on what happened with Shay’s rebellion. After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution the debt became an issue. The United States all told owed 54,000,000 and the State’s debts were 21,500,000. Hamilton came up with a brilliant plan to help pay off the debt. He would sell bonds to pay it off and keep the debt solely owed to the citizens of the U.S. Thus the only burden to the taxpayers would be the interest on the bonds, which would actually go back to the people. The Jeffersonians opposed this not because they doubted that it would work but because they “thought that those who deserved the least would make the most”. They were referring to the speculators who had purchased the papers at below their value. Also part of this plan was the bank of the United States. “ The bank was a good idea” but too reminiscent of the Bank of England which some believed had caused England to be so harsh. The Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonians disagreed on almost every issue. There arguments can almost all be traced back to state’s rights vs. a strong central government. Although they agreed on some issues those were few and far between. These two parties would be the dominant force in politics for the next few decades.
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"A word on another point. I am told that serious apprehensions are disseminated in your state [Virginia] as to the existence of a monarchical party meditating the destruction of State and republican government. If it is possible that so absurd an idea can gain ground, it is necessary that it should be combated. I assure you, on my private faith and honor as a man, that there is not, in my judgement, a shadow of foundation for it. A very small number of men indeed may entertain theories less republican than Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, but I am persuaded there is not a man among them who would not regard as both criminal and visionary any attempt to subvert the republican system of the country."
