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Rationalism and ‘the Founding’ of America

Dr Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

Recently, I wrote a column in which I delineated what I perceived to be some of the key contrasts between “neo-conservatism” and “classical conservatism.” In response, a reader suggested that on my analysis of the former, it seems to follow that America’s “Founders” were the progenitors of neo-conservatism. While it would be profoundly anachronistic to ascribe this label to a generation of people from whom we are over two centuries removed and for whom the label “conservatism,” much less “neo-conservatism,” was unknown, the reader’s comment is well taken. The assertions of its opponents notwithstanding, neo-conservatism is not some novel yet sinister variant of Machiavellianism that threatens to affect a radical disruption in the flow of the American political tradition. Rather, the basic theoretical presuppositions of neo-conservatism in terms of which its identity as a distinctive political persuasion is largely (even if not solely) defined, are not without precedent in our history.

This should come as no surprise considering that America became an independent nation during the eighteenth century, arguably the zenith of the Enlightenment. I had argued that neo-conservatism isn’t really a version of conservatism at all but, rather, a manifestation of Enlightenment liberal rationalism. Its trans-historical conception of an unencumbered Reason, as well as its equally timeless principles-oriented conception of morality, are ideas that dominated the Enlightenment liberal mind. Many of our nation’s “founders” were men of the Enlightenment, and in no instance was this more the case than in that of Thomas Jefferson, the author of that quintessential Enlightenment document, The Declaration of Independence. The Declaration knows no rivals for the succinctness and clarity with which it gives overt expression to the characteristically rationalist ideas of reason and morality that figured so prominently in the 1700’s.

From this, are we to infer that our “founders” were the first neo-conservatives, as the aforementioned reader accused me of inadvertently implying?

This would be a mistake. Neo-conservatives aren’t the only people to draw philosophical sustenance from the liberal rationalist assumptions embodied in the Declaration. In fact, it is, unfortunately, not with exaggeration that it can be said that the rationalism of Jefferson’s day has come to pervade the political spectrum to such an extent that only its ubiquity prevents it from being recognized. Leftist proponents of the welfare State, including those who unabashedly identify themselves as Marxist, as well as most “libertarians” and even some “paleo-conservatives,” appeal to the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration no less frequently than their neo-conservative rivals. There is indeed a significant sense in which it can be said that the battles that ensue between each of these groups, however intensely bitter they may become, are ultimately internecine, for collectively these groups constitute one big, even if unhappy, rationalist family. Thus, it would be no more accurate to say that the founders were neo-conservatives than to say that they were socialists.

The main point that I was concerned with making in my last article, but which, quite possibly, I failed to make, is that modern conservatism—conservatism since the eighteenth century—originally emerged and subsequently developed as an alternative to the political rationalism that was then just proceeding to sweep Europe and its offshoot societies. To this day, I maintain, the only legitimate alternative to a rationalistic style of politics is classical conservatism. Since neo-conservatism is a rationalistic political style, it is not a genuine kind of conservatism.

There are some other points that I believe it is worth our while to consider.

When neo-conservatives and others speak of “the founding” of America, that they invariably speak of it as having been founded upon an “idea,” “ideal,” or “proposition” gives us insight as to what they have in mind. America, they suppose, was founded in 1776 when the colonists declared their independence from Britain. The “idea” or “ideal” or “proposition” upon which it was founded is, essentially, a notion of “equality” expressly proclaimed in the Declaration: All human beings, irrespective of the circumstances of time or place, are equally endowed by “nature’s God” with the same fundamental “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There are two things to bear in mind here.

First, while “the founding” of America as an independent nation can certainly be said to have occurred at an identifiable moment, like July 4, 1776, say, or some years later with the defeat of the British and the end of the Revolutionary War, America’s actual “founding,” if we insist on calling it that, was a process that began long before that time, at least as early as the first settlement at Jamestown. That is, by the late eighteenth century, America had long been its own country, although legally it still belonged to England.

Second, the position that the members of the Revolutionary generation understood themselves as “founding” a country on an “idea” or “proposition” is difficult to sustain. Though they composed anything but a philosophically monolithic group, I believe it is accurate to say that they were highly conscious of their English, Protestant heritage, and were concerned with conserving and furthering the political tradition of their forbears. While some of them were aware of the culture-specific character of their liberties—“the rights of Englishmen”—there were, admittedly, others who at times indicated that they were not. But even if all of the fathers of the American Revolution were too close to the scene to see that the Declaration of Independence, like John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government written well over a century earlier—the chief source of inspiration for the former—was not the product of rational discovery, but the abbreviation of a historically specific centuries-old English tradition of which they were heirs, their conduct frequently enough revealed the contingent character of their situation. That there was deep and widespread concern over the immigration of Germans—white, Christian, North Western Europeans—to the United States is one such example that brilliantly highlights their acute consciousness of their distinctive circumstance as English men. Another example is their virtually unanimous opinion that blacks and whites could never co-exist in American society as social and political equals (an opinion, by the way, that remained just as widespread long after the Founders had died, and one that Lincoln himself held).

Perhaps the best example, though, is the United States Constitution. It is not for nothing that it was the Constitution, not the Declaration, the Founding Fathers decided to make the law of the land.

Given the abstractness of the Declaration’s principles and the even greater abstractness of the “ideals” that they affirm, it offers us little if any guidance for navigating our way through the sea of problems of which political life consists. That the rights asserted in the Declaration are inexhaustibly invoked by mutually antagonistic partisans on virtually every major contemporary moral-political issue should be more than sufficient to establish this. In other words, it is one thing to know that everyone has “a right to liberty.” To know what this means for these people in these circumstances in this place and at this time, is something else entirely.

Just as there is no “Humanity,” but only human beings, so there is no “Liberty,” but only liberties. “Liberty” is general and uniform, liberties specific and varied. The only “Liberty” in our acquaintance consists of the liberties located in the interstices of the Constitution’s enumeration of powers. That is, in the Constitution’s decentralization of power, it provides us with our liberties.

If the Declaration is the prototypical child of Enlightenment liberal rationalism, the Constitution is the posterity of what I have called classical conservatism. From Burke onward, classical conservatives have been well aware of the fact that a wide distribution of power is necessary to securing “the Liberty” of a people.

June 9, 2008

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