Mt. Vernon Statement
The confusion of conservative fusionism
Here’s my oped on the Mount Vernon Statement in the Christian Science Monitor:
Have you heard the one where Ron Paul, Pat Robertson, and John Bolton walk into a bar? According to the “Mount Vernon Statement,” the declaration of first principles signed yesterday at part of George Washington’s estate by conservatives of varied persuasions, the punch line would be “Constitutional conservativism.” Led by Edwin Meese, President Reagan’s attorney general, the collection of prominent economic, social, and “national security” conservatives aimed to clarify and recommit themselves to conservativism’s bedrock political philosophy.
They modeled the project self-consciously on the 1960 Sharon Statement that ushered in “new conservativism” when the Young Americans for Freedom signed it at William F. Buckley Jr.’s estate in Sharon, Conn. Like those young activists, Frank Meyer’s and Mr. Buckley’s vision of a theory able to “fuse” disparate American conservative ideologies inspired Meese and Co. The resulting mix of pabulum, historical revisionism, and internal inconsistency sheds light on enduring and contemporary tensions within American conservativism.
First, their argument. The main nugget of “Constitutional conservatism” is that America needs to return to the “limited government based on the rule of law” ideals of the Founders, who “sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.”
In “recent decades,” the statement continues “America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities, and our politics,” while the ““selfevident [sic] truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist.” The signatories demand that the federal government respect Constitutional limits and apply the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
They round out their philosophy by arguing that these ideals, embodied in the “conservatism of the Declaration,” connect with the natural law tradition. Without this natural morality, the free market cannot operate; but with too big a government, “moral self-government” fails. Thus the connection between libertarians and social conservatives.
Thomas Jefferson would scoff at the characterization of the Declaration as “conservative.” American conservatives have always had a difficult ideological road to travel. They have to be conservative about the historically radical ideas of democracy, liberty, and individual rights. The result here is an odd reading of the Founders, federalism, and the Constitution.
The signatories call for a small federal government for the sake of small government, but the Founders were more concerned with small federal government for the sake of small central government, leaving the states broad authority to govern and grow as they wish. Dispersion of authority, arguably more than the size of the authority, was the point of the constitutional limits and the 10th Amendment, with its reservation to the states or the people any powers not expressly delegated to the federal government by Constitution.
As America grew more complex and interconnected, however, federal regulation made increasingly more sense as a means of securing national coordination and public goods, as exemplified in The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. But if the federal government and federal taxes shrunk down dramatically as Mt. Vernon supporters envision, most state and local governments – with the exception of Texas and a few of its conservative friends – would likely metastasize to fill in the regulatory and welfare gap, and we are left at square one. And the constitution, especially on their strict reading, would have little to say about this.
More important, the signatories imply that the limits of the Constitution present historical and political, rather than legal questions. The judiciary, however, is empowered to interpret the constitution. And from Chief Justice John Marshall on down, the Supreme Court has broadly interpreted the Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to “regulate Commerce … among the several States.”
The federal government can rule on almost any issue that mildly affects interstate commerce, including, as we learned in Gonzales v. Raich, the home cultivation of marijuana for personal use. Healthcare, representing 1/6 of the economy, would be an even easier case of constitutional regulation. If we are to respect “the rule of law” above all, as the signatories admonish, well-established Supreme Court precedent is a good place to start.
Just because big government is constitutional, however, does not mean government must be big. What constitutes good political theory is a separate issue. On this point, the Mount Vernoners miss more directly, at least in terms of consistency. There’s a reason conservatives feel the urgent need to reassert fusionist principles: earlier efforts to braid the various threads of conservatism have repeatedly unraveled.
The inherent tensions of conservatism are more glaring today than in 1960. Christian Right domestic policies and neoconservative foreign policy have little to do with small, unobtrusive government. The former’s mission is to use the government to curtail individual cultural and lifestyle choices. And an aggressive belief in the ability of the federal government to create gigantic institutions abroad – indeed, new governments – founds the latter.
The hard-core cold warriors involved with the Sharon Statement, with their opposition to illiberal totalitarianism, were more obvious bedfellows for a libertarian conservativism than neoconservatives. And as to the libertarians, why should they be enmeshed with a conservative cause that sees Christian morality as the basis for economic development, when China and Singapore show that a free market can thrive in countries hostile to religion?
One reasonable response to this is that ideology is a process, these groups do identify with one another in some sense, and this presents a step in the direction of discovering potentially shared values. Fair enough. Burkean conservativism, however, and its commitment to organic social growth, rather than limited government based on the rule of law, might present more fertile common ground.
This statement, in the end, is really about Presidents Bush and Obama. Its lamentations of the values of “recent decades” includes Mr. Bush’s eight momentous years and reveals the right’s now desperate attempt to find a way around that history, and return to Reagan.
As for Mr. Obama, the statement says, “Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception? The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles.”
Obama is at an ideological breaking point. Whether his promised reforms represented new American values, as opposed to merely new American policies, was always the lingering question.
He attempted to sidestep the philosophy debate under the cover of “pragmatism.” But that has failed politically.
Even if it’s mildly incoherent and historically inaccurate, the right has thrown down the ideological gauntlet. It is time Obama and the left clarify their own values.
-Jake
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3 Responses to “Mt. Vernon Statement”
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The Declaration is essentially a conservative document, using the term in its current meaning. Jefferson would scoff because the term ‘conservative’ 200 years ago meant someone who was pro-monarchy; while ‘liberal’ 200 years ago meant someone who believed in as Locke did in ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.’
Over the last 80 years, a liberal in everyday parlance is someone in favor of a large Federal govenment. Even founders who wanted a strong Federal system (Hamilton) would be repulsed by modern Liberalism.
Wow. That was a poorly argued piece. I’m on his side (conservatives have NO concept of history, their own or the country’s), but the second half of the piece makes no sense.
According to the piece, conservatives have no argument, but liberals must make one. Liberals have already made one, “Saying no is not a philosophy.”
Republicans, the new nihilists. Vote for nothing, get, well, nothing.
Libertarians should be given their own island where they can use their own “informed self-interest” to build schools, roads, and other infrastructures.
Otherwise, if you don’t want to pay taxes, get off my road, and my electrical system, and my sewage system, and my school system, and my health system (medicare), and my retirement system (ss), etc. , etc., etc.
If you don’t want to pay, and I do, I own it, and I want you GONE!
Dear John,
I think that with the Mount Vernon statement out and on-line as of 17 February, now is the time to open a real discussion regarding the principles of the Founders, among conservatives, and among Americans in general. I was very interested in reading the text of the document, and in seeing who the principle signers of the statement were. You can read the statement below, and then I follow each section with a few comments, because I agreed with some of their statements of the founding principles of the United States, but while you are reading, if you are familiar with the lives of the founders, the debates in the Federalist Papers and in the early Congress, and with regards to the writing of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,reflect carefully on everything that the statement says.
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
Up to here we have some wishful thinking. The Founders created excellent founding documents, the best in history I would say. Whether they have been enduring or not is answered by the facts of our present situation. We now have a system with nearly unlimited government, the system of checks and balances were debilitated throughout the 20th century. Both parties contributed to this, with some of the most spectacular and flagrant attempts to destroy the ‘framework of limited government’ occurring with the presidency of FDR, when he attempted to pack the Supreme Court, and during the ‘Imperial Presidency’ of Richard M. Nixon. No President has truly handed back many of the powers that were won by the power-grabs of his predecessors. George W. Bush and Obama are simply the culmination of more than a hundred years of government expansion. The Founders did indeed seek to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government. Since then, the edifice has come crashing down, as Edmund Burke might say.
These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.
Here again we cross the line from defining ideals, to becoming idealistic. We all know that the journey down van Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ is well underway, and conservatives especially should be aware of this fact. In the second sentence the statement slides into nationalism. We are prosperous, there is no doubt about that, some would even say decadent. However, profligate spending at every level has put our prosperity in serious danger, and has established an unsustainable, structurally unsound economy. Our judicial system is rife with flaws, the basic individual liberties defined in the Bill of Rights are scarcely holding on. In the name of the war against terrorism, many so-called ‘conservatives’ have justified all sorts of reductions in the right to due process, the right to a trial by jury, the right against unreasonable search and seizure. Yes, who is to interpret what is reasonable those on the other side will say? Fewer and fewer, as the government finds it in its interest to systematically expand its justification for every act it commits. And insofar as being warnings for tyrants and despots, how much more power will we concentrate in the Executive branch before it becomes nothing more than a 4-year license to decree by divine will? Rather, our current system, in my point of view, is a model for tyrants and despots who want to justify their rule by terms in office. Who wants to be ruler for life anyway nowadays?
Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.
The fact that the Founder’s ideas are under attack is irrefutable. The problem I see is that the statement refuses to recognize that there are those within the conservative ranks who are doing exactly this. Whether the justification be war against foreign powers and sustained occupation on foreign soils, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the tripartite war party in the conservative wing has expanded government in equal proportion as has the ‘social welfare state’ on the socialist side of the aisle. On the other hand, so-called social conservatives have justified limiting the individual rights of gays, have tried to expand the role of religion (going beyond the Founder’s call for religious liberty) in public schools and have joined ranks in empowering the police state due to the fear stoked among them regarding the dangers of drugs, gangs and other supposed ‘external’ threats to society. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have hooked on to and adored big government over the past several decades. It has given them the power to turn to their constituents and ask them, ‘what would you do without us?’.
Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?
America changed long, long ago, with respect to its views on the Founding principles. To recover the Founder’s ideal requires a refounding of the Republic, casting out years of precedents, and reforging the expectation of the people regarding what government should and should not do.
The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
We need a refounding.
The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.
I found it interesting the use of the term, ‘nature’s God’. Jefferson and many of the founders were dualists. They did not believe in the Christian God, but did believe in religious freedom. They were also witness to the great dangers inherent in religious persecution. In all truth, the Founders were not conservatives, they were liberals, classical liberals. They believed in the ideals of the Enlightenment. They made common cause frequently with such atheists as the eloquent Thomas Paine. There can be no doubt that the hedonistic and brilliant Benjamin Franklin was anything but conservative, either in his personal or public life. These leaders put ideas ahead of all, they were, simply put, revolutionaries. Edmund Burke, although he is a classical conservative in every sense of the word, admired the American Revolutionaries and defended their cause. He saw the Constitution as a sound and prudent document. While all this is true, we have to recognize that the Founder’s ideals are not and were not conservative per se. A realization of the Founder’s ideals today would be just as, if not more, revolutionary than in the past. With the expansion of government over the past hundred plus years, who can really argue that a new Declaration of Independence would even be possible by a new republic that wanted to break away from a despot in a distant land? How could groups of scraggly militiamen possibly defeat the massive, well-paid and sophisticated armies of modernity? Where is there even an insurgent group with any power left in the world? Let us hope that such a Revolution will be possible without force of arms, but it is a fact that the Founders had to take up arms to secure their rights. Aside from being revolutionaries, they were warriors for a just cause.
The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.
What is government’s job? Perhaps this is where the statement needs to be clearer… is it government’s job to continue to construct a nuclear arsenal which can already destroy the world several times over? Is it government’s job to defend Israel, Taiwan and South Korea? Is it government’s job to provide social security and medicare? Is it government’s job to police the individual use of illegal drugs such as marihuana or cocaine? or legal drugs such as methadone or valium? Is it government’s job to create an FCC and divvy up the airwaves, and then prosecute people for saying fuck on-air? Is it government’s job to rescue banks? I pick these topics since conservatives typically fall on the ‘big government’ side of the answers. However, if you are going to restate the Founder’s principles, the answers are clearly no..no..no..no..no and ..no. Thomas Hobbes gave a basic answer as to what government should do, basically provide police protection, of ourselves from other members of society (ie., not police our actions as they pertain to our own actions). The issue is, society would appear to accept and invite big government to provide ‘protection’, from others, but also from themselves, even casting their longing eyes towards government to protect it from….OBESITY!
A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.
Ok, first of all I would need to have explained to me what the ‘natural fusion’ is that is provided by American principles. I am utterly lost on this idea. If it means that naturally all conservatives, big and small government alike, suddenly fuse together in favor of the Founding principles, I would venture to say that that fusion would suddenly dissolve the first vote there is held to cut the US military budget, with the so-called ‘national security conservatives’, or when there is a vote to not teach creationism in the schools, since it has no basis in science, despite the Mount Vernon statement’s observation, which I agree with, that ‘unlimited’ government is a threat to moral self-government. What I think is interesting about the mention of ‘moral self-government’ is that it implies that we should make our own decisions, I wonder if some of the people at Family Research Council and Christian Coalition who signed understand what self-government implies in terms of their legislation? I imagine that they thought when they used the word ‘moral’, it implied that everyone was going to use the morals embraced by their religions and organizations to self-govern though. If they weren’t, I would imagine that that would be ample justification to expand government to remove this capacity from the immoral.
A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.
* It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
* It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.
* It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
* It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
* It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.
I think it would be interesting, were some of the signers to agree to it (although not all would I am certain), to have candidates sign an oath to vote no on any proposal to expand government from its current state, or to extend the ‘unconstitutional state of things’. Even more clearly, you could also propose that all candidates refuse to raise the debt ceiling, or vote for an unbalanced budget. These are practical measures. Leaving a lot of unclear mumbo-jumbo about opposing tyranny everywhere (did the Founders go off on some war against the Russian tsar that I was not told about back in 1790?) or informing a ‘firm defense of family, neighborhood, etc’ whatever that means (should Ben Franklin have been prohibited from hiring the services of prostitutes?), leaves me with no actionable precepts to apply to legislation. Everything is still left open to interpretation, with no clear commitments on the table.
If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.
We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.
Or, rather, the supposed high ground which has yet to be staked out, but which the Mount Vernon statement makes an unconvincing argument that it has claimed.