Foundation

Philosophical and Historical Foundation

of the American Political System

The Founders who led the American Revolution were well-read men of action.  For example, Thomas Jefferson's library contained about 6500 volumes.  The people who followed them were well-read and intellectually active as well.  The pamphlets of Thomas Paine were not written for a limited scholarly circle, they were widely circulated and discussed by real people.  These Americans were as well educated, if not more so, in history, philosophy and literature up to their time as any of us today for our time. 

The Americans of those times were experienced as well as educated.  They had lots of problems, controversies and decisions to face.  The framework of their thinking to meet these issues was the natural rights philosophy.  The central political concepts of the natural rights philosophy include 'natural rights' and 'consent' as the only morally defensible basis which could justify any authority for government. 

The opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence (1776) summarize these key concepts.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness ; That to secure these Rights; Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government....

These ideas were not unique or novel inventions of the Founders.  They had already developed and become familiar among almost everyone for decades and even centuries in Western civilization before the Americans revolted against Great Britain.  At that time, the most recent and systematic exposition of natural rights thinking had been presented by the English philosopher, John Locke (1632 - 1704). 

The natural rights philosophy began by clearing away all traditional pretensions by considering the conditions of life in a 'state of nature' ; or 'anarchy'.  The natural law thinkers did not mean the state of people living as naked amnesiacs in a wilderness.  That is, they did not assume people were dumped into a hostile environment totally ignorant and without any possessions or resources.  It is more accurate to say they assumed conditions which we could imagine as this: suppose a strange virus suddenly struck and overnight it killed all officials of the government,  kings, ministers, armies, everyone who had been acknowledged as having governing authority and their bodies vanished.  In today's terms you can just imagine a virus as striking everyone who gets a paycheck from any level of government federal, state, county, city, all of them. Furthermore, let us assume that all the documents and records of the government were also destroyed. 

In certain religious circles, one might imagine the state of nature being the condition resulting from those people and records of government being 'raptured' never to return.

Or, if you prefer, instead of imagining that everyone 'in' government  suddenly vanished, imagine that everyone 'out' of the government was suddenly 'abducted' with all their possessions and suddenly deposited on another planet just like earth.  What would all of you do?  You might also explore, what those government people who were left back on 'old earth' would do?  Makes you go hmmm, doesn't it?

In those conditions, what could the people without any government do? 

Trying to think about what life might be like if there was no government made it clearer for philosophers what kinds of questions would need to be answered.

The first question these philosophers asked was: What is human nature?  That is, what traits do certain creatures have in common that would allow us to identify them as human?

Beyond appearances, what is that these creatures do that is unique to them?

Other questions they considered, and you can consider it too, was: Is government necessary? And, if so, what purposes and activities should it perform? 

These thinkers concluded that government was necessary. But how can it be started up, or instituted?  Following that, arose questions about how it should be organized, what if government 'breaks the rules', when should government be resisted and fought?

These and other questions provided the basis for many arguments the Founders made to explain and justify and persuade people that they should separate from Great Britain. 

The purpose of this inquiry is not persuade you that John Locke and the Founders discovered all the 'right' answers.  But rather to consider that if there are any better or more complete answers, all these questions and many others must be considered.  You may, as I have, decide that Locke and the Founders got about all the answers as 'right' as we could expect them to based on their experiences.  We now have two hundred plus years of experience 'road testing' their conclusions and the modifications that our ancestors since then have made to the Founders original conceptions and institutions. 

If we had to start over today, and knowing what we can know now from what has happened since the time of the Founders, then we would be in exactly the same situation today as they were then.  Whether we could get the answers more or less 'right' than they did is an open question. But if we assume that we have no chance to get it more right, then does that imply that our lives are less important than theirs were?  Does it mean that we are duller, lazier, or somehow inferior?  Are we ' second class' people to them just because of the accident of being born 'too late'?  Are people today ' segregated' by history or circumstances from thinking?  Well,  if we don't think about it, then perhaps we are.

If someone has the opinion that questioning our elders implies disrespect for them, then are we to simply tell our juniors are to never question us?  Everybody just follows orders, right? Don't ask whose giving the orders. Don't ask why.  If you don't ask, there's damn little you have to say. Does anyone really believe they can excuse themselves that easily?  Unfortunately, many people do.  But no one has to...yet.  Tomorrow?  Don't ask!

So for now, what about this guy Locke? 

First, at this point, I am going to introduce a guest to join the discussion.  His name is Tibor R. Machan.  He is a Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University.  Most of what I am going to quote from him appears in The Virtue of Liberty.  Links for more info are provided at the bottom. 

Professor Machan says of John Locke, "The first modern philosopher with a full-blown libertarian political theory....  He held that each person is by birth a sovereign (when he or she reaches adulthood), with no natural rulers or natural subjects."  It was Locke's conclusion, according to Machan, that Government is established to protect the individual sovereign rights which everyone has by nature and the consent, a kind of treaty, of the sovereign (you) is required to legitimize government authority and limit its powers.  "Locke is also the first major thinker to give a prominent place to the right to private property as an extension of individual rights and liberty", Machan points out. 

Machan explains Locke's argument this way: "Essentially Locke accepted as an alleged law of nature that each person owns himself, ergo his labor and whatever this labor touches of as yet untouched nature. There are some supporting elements to Locke's case that make it broader: for instance his belief that because nature inclines man toward seeking happiness, it is a law of nature to do so; and his assertion that political institutions should protect and preserve what the law of nature implies for human community life." 

Machan has two points to make about Locke's view: "The idea that I own myself does not amount to a very clear position, since it implies that where we find an instance of numerical identity  i.e., I and myself are the same entity though designated differently for purposes of different grammatical contexts  we also find a term relation  i.e., between me, the owner, and me, that which is owned.  While some rhetorical force may be attributed to saying that I own myself, the point doesn't make sense from a logical perspective....  So while Locke says many informative, even brilliant, things about the central libertarian political principles, his support for them is weak...."

In the time of the Founders, these ideas of natural rights and self ownership were very persuasive.  It still remains possible that Locke and the Founder's were right in their conclusions, but not quite right in their reasoning to reach those conclusions.  After all, today's scholars have the benefit of two hundred years of hindsight and experience arguing the ideas. 

We will return to a discussion the progress which has been made in the logic of arguments for the view of natural human rights based on our better knowledge of human nature later; but, for the present let us simply follow the main argument further. 

Machan says that Locke's analysis presents the case for individual liberty based the concept of the equality a certain characteristic in human behavior.  "(O)ur human nature requires that we be treated in a certain way and if we are not, we may retaliate against our transgressors.  That's why we call these natural rights."  People assert them without having to be 'taught'.  It doesn't mean they can explain them, but they will act as if they have good reasons.

Anyone who has observed infant children has seen that something makes these little creatures form expectations about how they should be treated long before we can see how they have been 'taught' anything. Today, we call the failure of adults to respond appropriately to these expectations child abuse.  Among adults we view the failure of other adults to respond appropriately to our expectations with a range of allegations from rude to criminal to oppressive.  Most of the controversies in social life involve finding agreement on what is really appropriate.  Natural rights thinking seeks to provide us with basic conceptions to work out responses to social interactions that are just and therefore appropriate. Among adults as well as children, the failure to respond justly is an abuse of human rights, or in the language of the Founders tyranny. 

Locke's great contribution was his elaboration on the idea of property as a basis for drawing a line between things we may treat in one way (our toy) and things we must treat in other ways (your toy).  In fact, we tacitly employ the idea of property as the foundation concept to teach sharing; to children.  Ultimately, we can use the concept of property along with other basic concepts to reason through a chain of thinking which can lead us to decide if and when it is just, or merely prudent, to share our toy by giving it up to others (government) as taxes, for example. Without the idea of property it becomes impossible to find any limits.  Without limits abuse can become universal. If limits are not understood, abuse can be imagined as universal even when it is not. 

One can wonder why some people kill those close to them,  lovers and children are examples, and then they kill themselves.  Perhaps such people feel they have been so fundamentally abused that annihilation is the last resort they have to assert only right of self-ownership they feel they have left.  In a political context, one may wonder if Adolph Hitler was just such a person,  a man who became so convinced that he and the German people were the victims of abuse at the hands of others,  that the only choices were total domination or total annihlliation.  It does suggest that basic philosophical ignorance and mistakes can sometimes lead to catastrophe for millions. 

Locke argued that individually none of us are powerful enough to defend ourselves from another or a group of others who desire to disregard our natural sovereignty and deprive us of life or liberty or property; and therefore without those things we are left without much to pursue our happiness.  The argument, in effect, says that since no man is omnipotent, he must make an alliance with other men which we call government.  What we can infer is that Locke is conceding that government is an alliance, like most, of expediency,  not from affection or any other motive.  You may have heard government referred to as ' the lesser of evils'.  Perhaps, we should amend that to 'hopefully, the lesser of evils'.  History indicates that for people everywhere we know about, the hope seems to be eventually    misplaced.  But the hope also seems to spring eternal that by trial and error it may be possible for us to devise 'a more perfect Union'.  And so we try again and again. 

So, Locke and other earlier philosophers began to think of the State (government) as an enterprise formed by people as owners to hire employees to act as security guards and a common 'library' of property records and an arbitration service for disputes and a custodian of places to lock up and punish violators of the rules.  Of course, the owners reserved the right to squabble among themselves about which other services government should provide and which services they will provide among themselves by more direct action &#150; like trade.

Notice that in the Declaration of Independence it says, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident...."  This statement would hardly sound as good to the ear, if it was amendment into a philosophical essay (like this) by saying something like:

We (after as much study as we can muster) conclude (to the best of our ability to reach an agreement - after various amendments - that) these Truths (given the epistemological limits of human inquiry) to be self-evident (if you wish to perform the same due diligence)...

Not quite so inspiring, eh?  The Declaration is a coded document.  The Founders accepted that it could be an abbreviated statement because the words distilled ideas that the general population could readily grasp and expand for themselves.  They knew their audience and the capacity of understanding in the audience. 

The people of those times we quite familiar with a contrasting view of rights which has been dominant for centuries before Locke.  This reactionary view of rights had been very selective and exclusionary and superficial.  Rights had been considered as special privileges enjoyed by groups because that was their fate.  Kings had a Divine Right to rule and others had a divine right to obey  to a greater or lesser extend dependent on their social class (noble or commoner, etc.) or their national or ethnic group or religious belief and so on. 

Rights were regarded as what I call a kind of paint job which God put on people at birth. This paint job theory of rights meant that there was a place for everyone and everyone could know their place.  The natural rights philosophers set out to abolish all these paint jobs to allow people as  individuals to discover and display their own 'true colors'.  The only fundamental justification for government which the natural rights philosophers could find was to protect the individual.  The government's job was to enforce individual property rights universally so that everyone could 'paint themselves', but no one could 'paint' other people into a class marked for slavery. 

In concluding this discussion for now, I want to point out a fallacy that has arisen about the rights we are supposed to have called 'civil rights'.  Natural rights philosophers like Locke used a social contract or compact as an explanatory device.  NO ONE seriously ever believed that people in a state of nature met on a hill somewhere, had a convention, drew up a contact, signed it and created  the first government.  Furthermore, the contract that never existed, did not obligate that everyone give up all their sovereign rights to the State; and then became obligated to negotiated, petition, beg and cajole the State to get back the scraps of their original rights. The State was not created to dispense this right and that right as a civil privilege granted by the State to various groups of people.  This doctrine of rights is just another version of the old reactionary paint job theory of rights  with the State substituted for God.  There is no security for anyone under government when rights are privileges and dispensations handed out from the great government warehouse of civil rights.  There never was any contract which required us to exchange all our natural rights in return for the paint of civil rights from the State. The paint job that government may give you as a privilege today can be replaced with a different paint job tomorrow.  For an historical illustration of how such a collective theory of 'civil rights' can switch privileges into penalties very quickly consider the Jews in Nazi Germany. 

Natural rights put limits on government's authority. While it may seem obscure, I suggest you read the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution to see how the Founders saw Rights as residing in the people, each and everyone of us, and only provisionally and temporarily and partially have we granted to the federal national government or the governments of the states the authority to tell to do this and don't do that. Otherwise, it was the Founders intention that we retain the authority to make mutually agreeable arrangements among ourselves. 

To be continued...

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