Calhoun, Jefferson, and Popular Rule

by Lee Cheek

John Caldwell Calhoun inherited the social and political tradition of his South Atlantic world, confirmed by participation in a community and intermediary institutions that encouraged a republicanism with the moral and philosophical overtones necessary to encourage a just polity and the ethical life. Contrary to the fashionable and persistent maligning of Calhoun as a departure from the republican tradition--especially the republicanism of a Jeffersonian cast--his lifelong dedication to restoring the regime to its "republican simplicity and virtue" found much wise counsel in the political thought of Thomas Jefferson.[1] The promise and perils of comparing Jefferson and Calhoun are legion, although this essay concentrates on the aspect of Jefferson's thought most influential to Calhoun, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799.[2] As Jefferson had faced the crisis posed by President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Calhoun's devotion to republican principles also forced his separation from the extremes of the Jacksonian consolidation of all aspects of the regime and the Whig accommodation of "interest group" politics regardless of the costs. Having resolved the nullification crisis through maintaining a commitment to the republican idea of diversified liberty, as well as a spirit of moderation amidst great turmoil, Calhoun could toast the Jefferson of the Kentucky Resolutions as the "true interpreter and faithful advocate" of a still-vibrant American republicanism. According to Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson served as the "Republican Patriarch," the political thinker who had incorporated the republican understanding of liberty into a theory of federal relationships most conducive to the life of the community and political order.[3]

The Methodist as Philosopher: Lynn Harold Hough, Irving Babbitt, and Christian Humanism

by Lee Cheek

The First World War and the Great Depression provided myriad challenges to the mission of the Methodist Church. As a nation began to doubt its role in the modern world, one of the country’s most dominant and politically-engaged religious denominations sought to respond to the chaos by reconsidering its own attachment to the historical sources of Christian order. Amidst the crisis, Lynn Harold Hough, Methodist theologian, philosopher, and educator, offered an intellectual framework, guided by hope, and devoid of the messianic tendencies of the emerging ideological movements that had begun to influence many aspects of American Christianity, including Methodism.[1]

Hough was one of the greatest Methodist theologians and preachers of the 20th century;[2] however, his contribution has not received the sustained attention of scholars. For half a century, he published at least a book a year, served as a regular writer for numerous theological journals, was a contributing editor to the Christian Century--and these were his avocational interests.[3] Hough was deeply influenced by the scholarship of his friend and philosophical mentor, Irving Babbitt. It was Babbitt's attempt to renew the notion of humanism that most interested the young pastor, who was deeply embroiled in the religious debates of the 1920s and 1930s. Hough was attracted to the balance of sympathy and selection in Babbitt's presentation of the doctrine. The purpose of this essay will be to present Hough's elucidation and utilization of Babbittian Humanism, and demonstrate how Hough's understanding contributes to some of the important questions of philosophy and religion.

Agrarianism and Cultural Renewal

by Lee Cheek

Among the contributions to I'll Take My Stand, Allen Tate's "Remarks on the Southern Religion" is usually interpreted as the most acerbic, immoderate, and unusual essay in the collection. All too often the essay is read as an apologia for violence or an eccentric defense of tradition. In fact, Tate--like his fellow Agrarians--was seeking to remind his readers of the religious and political society that was once the South. More importantly, Tate's essay is a plea for a recovery of what has been lost: a humane social order.

Nourished by daily labors in the fields, it was the properly ordered agrarian community that produced a more stable and wholesome environment for families and workers than industrialism could offer. According to Tate, an agrarian environment encouraged a life more conducive to religious and ethical living as well. In regard to farming, the experience of tilling the soil and harvesting crops embodied a sense of self-sacrifice and an attachment to a shared community. Farming was by its very nature a communal, rather than a solitary act. The primary aesthetic and spiritual needs of humankind were best fulfilled by the structure and corporate nature of an agrarian society. Tate's close friend and fellow Agrarian, Andrew Lytle, convincingly reaffirmed this sentiment years later: "Agriculture is a limited term. A better one is farming. It is inclusive. Unlike any other occupation, farming is, or should be, a way of life."

Genuine cultural renewal could not take place without appreciating the agrarian worldview--grounded in a connection to the soil and love for the Creator that was increasingly less palpable to Tate's generation, and at the end of 20th century even the memory of such an existence is quickly fading.

The root of the problem for Tate was simple: The significance of New England, and more specifically the Massachusetts Bay settlement and subsequent religious and political developments in American life had crowded out the agrarian alternative from public discourse. For the Agrarians, the "American" political, religious and social experience, as well as the resulting vision for politics, was usually attributed to Puritan New England. The late Sydney Ahlstrom argued that the "Puritan Ethic" of legalistic moral strictures, and a doctrine of labor as serving and pleasing God, became the American ethic. And in the hands of the Puritan divines the "ethic" became incorporated into their understanding of politics, nourishing New England religious and political thought and influencing the Founding generation by providing a way of understanding the unique nature of the American political experience.

W. H. Mallock Revisited

by Lee Cheek

             To challenge the prevailing social and political orthodoxies of one’s time and place often encourages recrimination and eventual neglect.  Such has been the fate of William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923), a seminal thinker of the late Victorian period and a figure who is deserving of greater popular and scholarly attention.  Mallock’s increasing concern for the diminishing influence of personal restraint and ethical discrimination was at odds with Western society’s ennobling of plebiscitary democracy and state control of the means of production.  For Mallock, a steady concentration of political and economic power in national governments, increasing social and regional hostilities resulting from the quest for control, and the debasement of democratic rule, were ominous signs of the future that awaited the West.

 Mallock: His Life and Times

            Born into a privileged family at Cheriton Bishop in Devonshire, Mallock was the oldest child of the Reverend William and Margaret Mallock.  Both sides of Mallock’s family possessed personages of great influence and intellect, and most of his immediate family were members of the agrarian gentry who were Tories in politics and ultra-High Anglicans as churchmen.  In his Memoirs of Life and Literature, written in 1920, Mallock gives the only account of his upbringing, contained within a larger study of the social and political world he had inherited.[1]  In almost every regard, Mallock accepted and affirmed the aristocratic view of social and political life, and this influence would permeate all of his writings.

            Mallock’s education began at home, under the private tutelage of the Reverend W. B. Philpot, a student of Matthew Arnold and a close friend of Tennyson.  While under Philpot’s pedagogical care, Mallock began to question his teacher’s bent towards radicalism and innovation, themes the young student would continue to critique for the remainder of his life.  In 1869, following in his father’s footsteps, he entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a writer of some ability.  From most accounts, he was not an accomplished student, preferring to write verse and occasionally meet with prominent literary figures, including Swinburne and Browning.  Indeed, his writing was his salvation, and his diligent work bore fruit: in 1871, at Oxford, he won the Newdigate Prize for a poem he composed on the Isthmus of Suez.

            During this period, Mallock began to create a series of outlines that would eventually become his most famous work, The New Republic, which, upon publication in 1877, brought great acclaim to the young writer.[2]  A satirical novel, The New Republic was Mallock’s first attempt to expunge the “disease” of liberalism and religious skepticism from civil discourse.[3]  The publication of The New Republic provided Mallock with a literary reputation as a critic, and this work would remain his most popular novel, although many more novels would follow.  The emphases of The New Republic, especially the problem of faith and the nature of truth, would form the first part of Mallock’s literary corpus.  He would spend the second part of his career as a man of letters addressing the prevailing social and political issues of his age, and The Limits of Pure Democracy serves as his last major—and most important—political critique.[4] 

            Mallock continued to write for various publications, composing a wide variety of works, including poetry, novels, theological works, and political treatises.  He was a prolific author who produced over forty books and as many articles during his long career.  As a result of his commentaries and the ardent nature of his own beliefs, Mallock also had many detractors, including George Bernard Shaw, J. A. Hobson, and T. H. Huxley.  As he advanced in years, the appeal of Roman Catholicism for Mallock became profound, but he never became a convert.  He died on April 2, 1923, in Wincanton, Somerset.

 Mallock on Human Nature and the Modern Predicament

             Over time, Mallock became apprehensive about what he perceived to be the decadence of modernity.  The very nature of social and political life was being transformed by the perversion of democratic and socialist thought.  Mallock feared the tradition that he had inherited was being replaced by a radically different view of human nature that included new, malleable institutional entailments as well.  In describing the human predicament in this fashion, Mallock affirmed the Hebraic-Christian conception of human nature, viewing humanity as divided between the higher and lower ethical possibilities, and in need of personal and societal restraint as protection against the impulse of the moment.  Mallock's theory of human nature also rejected social contractarian typologies devoted to promoting humankind's inert strength and virtue or ability to survive amidst isolation.  Mallock contended that humankind's primary obligations lie in his community and an aristocratic ordering of society.  Self-discipline and love of neighbor begin with the individual, and spread to the community, and then to society as a whole.  In other words, human nature serves to define the limitations of society and politics for Mallock on one hand, while on the other it presupposes and defends the necessity of a properly constituted community for securing the moral and ethical results concomitant to society's perpetuation. 

A Useful, New Introduction to the Inherited Tradition of Political Ideas

by Lee Cheek

Spellman, W. M.  A Short History of Western Political Thought (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).

In this readable and succinct volume, Spellman (University of North Carolina, Asheville) provides an introduction to the evolution of political ideas that have shaped the West.  The author synthesizes a tremendous body of historical and philosophical sources into an accessible survey, generally following the tradition of interpretation of the “Cambridge School” of political thought.  The book is divided into six chapters that represent transitional periods, beginning with Hellenic political theory (chapter one), and concluding with 20th century political theory (chapter six).  The greatest contribution of the survey is found in chapter two’s thoughtful analysis of the diversity of political thinking in the Late Middle Ages.  Spellman poignantly surveys the intellectual landscape, arguing “Our penchant, for the most part, is to applaud history’s great centralizers, and in the Middle Ages the list is short.  The modern growth imperative, together with the drive to concentrate power, simply did not inform the thinking of most medieval leaders” (p. 34).

The regular, astute Imaginative Conservative reader will also be pleasantly surprised to see the attention given to Edmund Burke’s and Adam Smith’s (p. 105) contributions to political thought, as these central figures are often neglected or purposely omitted from texts of this variety.  The author even alludes to the work of Sir Robert Filmer (p. 77) and Joseph de Maistre (p. 116) in his attempt to include all perspectives into his narrative.

The book’s lack of attention to the structure and arguments of primary texts under evaluation is a significant weakness, however.  While considerable attention is devoted to historical events, the continuing relevance of central texts in the Western political tradition is ignored.  Regardless of any criticism, the tome is a useful primer on Western political thought for the general reader and undergraduate student.

New Tocqueville Book a Disappointment

by Lee Cheek

Kaledin, Arthur. Tocqueville and His America: A Darker Horizon. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2011.

In this discursive study dedicated to interpreting the “character and thought” (xiii) of Tocqueville, Kaledin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) concentrates upon the ancillary and “darker” (less than optimistic) legacies of Tocqueville’s writings and views on politics and society. While expressing admiration for Tocqueville, Kaledin is more devoted to explicating the weaknesses of Tocqueville as a political thinker, concluding he “was a disharmonious man, full of disunited passions and impulses” (p. 9). The book is divided into four sections. The first part attempts to survey the formative influences upon Tocqueville and his Democracy in America, stressing his “triple-alienation,” ambivalence, and aristocratic tendencies. As the most rewarding and succinct part of the study, part two analyzes Tocqueville’s “political passion” (p. 104), and situates the great Frenchman within his own political tradition. The third part examines Tocqueville’s writing of Democracy in America as an effort to critique the “fate of liberty” in the modern world (p. 263). The final part attempts to defend Tocqueville’s “darker, more apprehensive” (p. 279) view of the American polity. Unfortunately, Tocqueville’s defense of a constitutionally-restrained political order, premised upon the diffusion of authority, cannot be easily reconciled with the author’s interpretation of Tocqueville.

Forthcoming Paleoconservative Defense of Founding Principles

Friends,

Announcing a forthcoming book by TIC contributors Lee Cheek & Sean Busick, The Founding of the American Republic. A fine addition to your list of books to enjoy in 2012. To be published by Continuum, December 2012. Below is the publisher's description.

This non partisan book brings often ignored people, ideas, and events to the forefront to offer new insights into the Founding of the American Republic.

American Founding aims to provide a fair and thorough reappraisal of the Founding of the American Republic. Oftentimes, the Founders are, when not forgotten, made to fit some “ideological box” –liberals or conservatives, villains or saints. This book proves that such views need to be reconsidered, free from past ideologies and interpretations, to recover their teaching and foster a better understanding of contemporary politics. To do so, the authors let the Founders speak for themselves, by looking first at the Declaration of Independence, which reveals their vision of state and federal authority. Next, they examine how the Declaration was incorporated into the Articles of Confederation, in effect the first Constitution, and finally the Constitution of 1787, the most profound manifestation of the Founders’ view of the nature of American politics and society.

American Founding takes a broad view of the Founding while resisting an ideologically charged reading of history. This lively, historically accurate analysis will serve anyone interested in American political history and culture.

The Return of Sentiments to Jurisprudence

by Lee Cheek

This engaging and thoughtful book seeks to “consider the role of emotions in constitutional law, accepting that one cannot understand human behavior and law as a purely rational venture (p. 4).” The author, András Sajó, a practicing judge (European Court of Human Rights) and academic (Central European University), offers a compelling legal and theoretical alternative to the positioning of reason and emotion as the extremes of jurisprudential thinking, while also explicating the pivotal function emotion assumes in constitutional design and law. The book consists of seven chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to the author’s argument on the behalf of a social constructivist concept of emotion, as well as the disadvantages of neglecting emotion more generally. The second chapter outlines the importance of“enhanced emotions” as defined by the French Declaration of Rights. The third and fourth chapters detail the role that emotions of fear (Constitutional Convention) and empathy (Abolitionist Movement) have assumed in modern politics. The fifth and sixth chapters articulate how emotion is pivotal to defenses of freedom of speech and assembly. The final, and arguably the most compelling chapter, argues for the importance of shame as a corrective emotion for past injustices, and the “recognition of responsibility” (p. 299).

Republicanism and Liberty: The "Patrick Henry"/"Onslow" Debate

By H. Lee Cheek, Sean Busick, and Carey Roberts

The fiercely contested, yet inconclusive election of 1824 set the stage for one of the great debates of American political history. According to Irving Bartlett, “the key to understanding Calhoun’s political behavior and thinking from 1825 through 1828 may be found in the peculiar conditions under which the election of 1824 occurred.”¹   The same can be said of John Quincy Adams. Fellow cabinet members John Quincy Adams, who served as President Monroe’s Secretary of State, and John C. Calhoun, who served as Secretary of War, entered the fray along with Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and newly elected senator, Andrew Jackson.  Calhoun soon realized he lacked adequate support to be elected president and withdrew from the race after Pennsylvania nominated Andrew Jackson. Accepting the vice-presidential nomination, and aligning himself with Jackson, Calhoun was elected by a large majority. 

In the presidential contest, none of the four remaining candidates won either an electoral or a popular majority. Jackson garnered 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. It then fell to the House of Representatives, where Jackson’s nemesis Clay was speaker, to choose between the top three candidates. In an unusual series of events, Clay came to Adams's aid, with the House vote securing the election for Adams and giving the country a president and vice-president who were political rivals. The president-elect proceeded to appoint Clay as Secretary of State; the office that had become a stepping-stone to the presidency. 

The more popular Andrew Jackson thought he had been robbed and immediately began preparing for 1828. Though the charge has never been proven, many Americans, including Calhoun, agreed with Jackson and considered the supposed arrangement between Clay and Adams a "corrupt bargain.” Neither Adams nor Calhoun was in a comfortable situation. Adams was a minority president, who many believed had stolen the office, and was saddled with a vice president allied with the opposition. Calhoun had been elected independently of the president whose republican virtue he questioned and whose policies he opposed.   

The emerging personal and philosophical dispute between Vice-President John C. Calhoun and President John Quincy Adams prompted the "Patrick Henry"/"Onslow" debate and their subsequent disengagement from each other. Adams's early initiatives alarmed Calhoun, who feared the "principles of '98" were threatened by this proposed dramatic increase of the general government's power and the erosion of constitutional integrity. On the other hand, Calhoun's lack of support for the administration's programs was a source of great and legitimate concern to Adams. Having been unjustly accused of striking a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay to win the presidency, Adams was especially sensitive to any hint of disloyalty.

Continue reading at Arator: A Journal of Southern History, Thought, and Culture.

Recovering the Declaration

by Sean R. Busick and 
H. Lee Cheek Jr.

As Americans prepare to celebrate July 4th, and enter into an election cycle in which politicians of every stripe are apt to misappropriate the Founders’ legacy, there has never been a better time for us to reflect on the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Contrary to popular misconceptions, July 4, 1776 was neither the beginning of the War of Independence nor the date on which our independence was secured. American patriots had already been fighting the British and their Loyalist allies for over a year when the delegates in Philadelphia signed the Declaration, and it would be another five years before our independence was won on the battlefield at Yorktown.

If the Declaration did not establish our independence, what did it do? Jefferson drafted, and Congress ratified, a declaration of “the causes which impel them to the separation.” They carefully explained to the world the grievances they had endured and set forth the theoretical justification for an independent American republic that would better protect our liberties than the British Empire had. It is in the Declaration of Independence that we see best how the Founders envisioned state and federal authority uniting to form a national union. Contrary to the now-popular view that regards the Declaration as Holy Writ, the Founders viewed the great document as illuminating and explaining the foundations of the American republic as resting upon a political compact. Such an agreement formed a republic in which there existed the same equality of rights among the states composing the union as existed among the citizens composing the states themselves. The Declaration claimed legitimacy for a political compact that had developed with “time and experience” into a model of political and social stability. The Declaration preserved the center of authority within each individual state, and it allowed for secession when government “becomes destructive of these ends,” for then “it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” While the Declaration appropriately described the status of “Free and Independent States” as essential to the republic, the document also confirmed the true story of the creation of the country: the states “ordained” or created the republic.

The Declaration introduced—or rather, officially recognized—the original design of the republic. The Articles of Confederation—the first American constitution—incorporated this design into the fundamental law of the regime. For the Founders, the provisions and language of the Articles served as an authentic guide to the American Constitution. The Constitution of 1787 cannot be understood without first understanding the defense of local authority contained in the Articles. Drafted in stages from 1776 to 1777, the Articles extended and revised the Declaration’s defense of local and state authority, and the delineation of state autonomy, while establishing popular rule based upon the deliberative, decentralized, community-centered participation of the citizenry. As with the Declaration, the Articles recognized the original design for a union of liberty—a republic of independent and sovereign states.

So, while charlatans seek to revise Paul Revere’s ride or to diminish the accomplishments of Washington and Jefferson, let us pause to reflect on the true significance of our founding. We should rightly celebrate the Declaration as a beginning of our political principles, not the final word. Often abused by politicians and scholars of every ilk, the grand document remains a fundamental American defense of diffused power that our leaders in Washington and the professorate cannot ignore. 
 __________________________________________________________________________
H. Lee Cheek Jr., Ph.D. is Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science and Religion at Gainesville State College, in Gainesville, GA. He is the author of, among other books, Calhoun and Popular Rule (University of Missouri Press, 2001). http://www.drleecheek.com/

Sean R. Busick, Ph.D. is a professor of history at Athens State University in Athens, AL, and President of the William Gilmore Simms Society. He is the author of, among other books, A Sober Desire for History: William Gilmore Simms as Historian (University of South Carolina Press, 2005). http://athens.academia.edu/SeanBusick