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Shine, Perishing Republic

In the current issue of The New York Review of Books (cover date: October 20), a letter from Gary Hart (of all people) opines that “republics are based on civic virtue, popular sovereignty, resistance to corruption (by special interests), and a sense of the commonwealth.  By any measure,” Hart concludes, “early-twenty-first century America is a republic in name only.”

To which Tony Judt responds:

“I believe that Gary Hart is right.  Of course, one should not idealize ‘republics’; over the centuries they have taken a variety of forms.  An emphasis upon the ‘civic virtues,’ and a grounding in ‘popular sovereignty’ are not inherently incompatible with the abuse of power, as the French revolutionaries and others could attest.  But whatever their attendant virtues and defects, republics appear to decline in much the same way: their institutions atrophy, their elites become mediocre and corrupt, their citizens lose interest in political freedom and public debate or are bludgeoned into acquiescence by the specter of war or disorder.  The American republic is robust and distinctive (not least in its longevity); but it is not invulnerable.  Indeed, the illusion of invulnerability is perhaps its greatest weakness and may prove its undoing.”

I don’t endorse Judt’s comment entirely.  I am especially skeptical of generalizations across very different times and involving very different places.  But the sentiment expressed in his last sentence haunts me.  We, as a nation, seem to me to be selling—or pissing—away our democratic heritage (or our republican one, if you prefer) without the slightest sense of what we are doing, as if our daily actions in the public sphere, in our legislative bodies and executive agencies, and on the world stage are completely without consequences.

I am also aware that lots of previous doom-sayers have declared that the sky is falling—and yet here we are.  My title for this post, after all, comes from a poem written in 1925 by that world-class pessimist and misanthrope Robinson Jeffers, a poem that begins:

“While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens . . .”

I wouldn’t defend a position that claims it has all been downhill since 1925.  Our history is more up and down than that. There are various moments of renewal—and progress on some fronts even as there is lamentable decline on others.  But I do believe that the general trend of the past thirty years has been downward and that the need for renewal is immense. Where will renewal come from?  That’s the question I am charging myself to address. So you are warned: I feel a series of posts coming. (John)

Posted by on 10/06 at 08:30 AM

  1. John, doesn’t this narrative of decline romanticize the previous state of the republic?  You say “for the last 30 years”, but shortly before that, many adults in out republic didn’t even have the universal rights that supposedly defined it.  I wonder how many people really read the Langston Hughes poem that Kerry chose.  It’s possible to read this as a message of hope, of course, that since things were bad in the past, maybe they aren’t so comparatively bad now. 

    Anyway, here’s another poem.  Before I get flamed, it represents a particular mood, not a considered judgement (though if anyone wants to flame its quality, go ahead.)

    After Langston Hughes

    Some swear “America will be!”
    Yet what has America been to me?
    My parent’s parents came here bereft
    To find a better place than those they left
    And here for almost a century
    We’ve lingered – yet eventually
    We will move on.  Is America a dream
    Greater, better than those we’ve seen?

    Should we have settled in Babylon?
    Made the Assyrian plain our home?
    Converted to the faith of Spain?
    Upheld the Tsar, never left again?

    Langston says we must redeem
    The stinking carcass of the dream
    That never fulfilled, hides in its bloom
    Our Leader and our own rape rooms
    Can the dream of America be made real?
    If it hasn’t by now, it never will
    It’s always ahead, but you know what I’ve heard:
    What happens to a dream deferred?

    America’s virtue is only a hope
    Well, it’s been fun, I’m glad we eloped
    But better pastures call to us clear
    If we’d died for dreams, we wouldn’t be here

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  10:09 AM

  2. But Rich, “universal rights” ≠ republicanism; republics have always had a citizenry defined by exclusion (even now, people under 18, not really citizens).

    In some moods I’d go for an argument from strict republicanism that runs something like, it’s all been downhill since the Civil War.  To wit:  the real-live, self-governing republic failed, dramatically, to reckon with the problem of slavery.  It imploded, necessarily and rightly. 

    Getting rid of slavery required the exercise of enormous government authority, via the world’s then-most-modern military waging warfare destructive of economies and civil society—and again I say, rightly so.  The suspension of habeas corpus, and the draft—which assumes (again, rightly) that citizens will not be virtuous enough to volunteer for service—meant the republic was in abeyance.

    Had Lincoln not been killed, perhaps he would have been able to restore something like prewar republicanism.  But as it was, Andrew Johnson sent a signal to the South that it would be allowed to near-about reenslave its labor force; Congress reacted by drafting the Civil Rights Act in 1866, which empowered an executive arm to investigate, try, and punish offenders—again, I would say, there was moral right and justice in this gesture, just not republicanism.

    From that point forward you have an unsteady but definite increase of national authority, augmenting centralized power—mostly in the name, truly and honestly, of right and justice, sometimes economic and sometimes racial.  The people who fought against the increase of national authority were, like Andrew Johnson, usually doing it because they didn’t like people of color.

    In other words, I might argue that Americans made a choice, and I think it was the unavoidable and morally right one, to give up their republic in the name of establishing a more-just country.  Those Americans had the benefit of some reasonably benevolent Caesars—Lincoln and the Roosevelts, let’s say, and perhaps a few others.

    Again, and again, I’d say, this was the morally right choice.  That does not make it costless.  Americans of the past surrendered piecemeal the power of their republican institutions—particularly, the Senate and the state legislatures—augmenting the power of the national executive, in the name—and again I say truly—of justice.

    The problem comes of course when you run out of benevolent Caesars.

    </Vidal>

    As I say, in some moods I’d go for this argument.

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  12:29 PM

  3. I mostly agree with slolernr above.  The successes and failures of the American Republic are a huge and fascinating subject--I’m looking forward to the posts.

    That said, I will find the posts more thought-provoking if you include this question: were the changes in American society between 1955 and 1975 mostly good, or mostly bad?  You see the last 30 years as downhill; many libertarian/federalist observers, like myself, see the last 50 or 70 years as downhill.  And any consideration of possible remedies is largely premised on which would you rather reverse--the 60’s or the 80’s?

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  12:48 PM

  4. which would you rather reverse--the 60’s or the 80’s?

    The eighties, in a heartbeat; and a lot of the nineties, and virtually all of the ‘naughts.’ 1975 was a turning point, from which we turned the wrong way as a nation (corporate counterattack, foreclosing of any change in foreign policy, hard right alliance backing ‘grassroots’ social reaction).

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  01:31 PM

  5. I miss Jimmy Carter.

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  02:10 PM

  6. "completely without consequences”

    Consequences are soooo 20th century.

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  02:31 PM

  7. The problem is the lack of understanding about the role of government in a democractic republic.

    For too long the right-wing and libertarians have been deriding government and trying their best to reduce its size and scope. However, by reducing the role and power of government in our society, we are reducing the power of the citizenry; this is the danger to our republic.

    Candadian philosopher John Ralston Saul said it best about the role of government:

    The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. Or governments, because a multiplicity of levels means a multiplicity of strengths.

    The individual has no other large organized mechanism that he can call his own. There are other mechanisms, but they reduce the citizen to the status of a subject. Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good. Without this greater interest the individual is reduced to a lesser, narrower being limited to immediate needs. He will then be subject to other, larger forces, which will necessarily come forward to fill the void left by the withering of the public good. Those forces will fill it with some other directing interest that will serve their purposes, not the larger purposes of the citizen. It would be naïve to blame them for occupying abandoned territory.

    How then could individuals possibly replace government? In a democracy they are government.

    […]Individuals do not beat large companies or defeat large armies. Why would one expect them to replace governments? The point is there will be a government as there always has been. People ask: What kind of government? How much government? I think the primary question is: Whose government? If individuals do not occupy their legitimate position, then it will be occupied by a god or king or a coalition of interest groups. If citizens do not exercise the powers conferred by their legitimacy, others will do so.

    That’s my fear of what will hapopen to our republic. It will be ruled by corportist structures and organizations rather than citizen-based ones.

    Posted by mat  on  10/06  at  02:46 PM

  8. Very thought provoking post and comments. I think we’ve had our ups and downs throughout our history. And a lot depends on your particular perspective. But the trend has been an expansion of inclusion. Not even, certainly we’ve slid back at times, but generally forward. For those of us on the left, not fast enough. For those on the right, much too fast.

    Having said that, and even though I’m by nature an optimistic fellow, the history of the past 10 years gives me pause. First, the insane hatred of the right towards the Clintons, and by implication anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh. Then everything since the “election” of Bush. It doesn’t feel like a slight retrograde movement, but wholesale decline to celebrating mendacity, incompetence, and arrogance.

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  04:33 PM

  9. To say that the 1955-75 period is downhill, is to reject:
    civil rights
    women’s rights
    gay rights
    the environmental movement
    reforms in the labor movement
    scepticism about wars abroad

    Nope; can’t buy it; these are the best things, the most AMERICAN things, America had done since the New Deal.

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  05:08 PM

  10. I’m with lefty and orangemike, which will surprise few of you.  I am half bemused, half amused by SamChevre’s comment.  What fedearlism/libertarianism?  Except for cutting taxes, and gutting business regulations and civil rights initiatives, the Republicans have been all about increasing the power of the federal government in the name of either national security or values.  Oregon citizen’s vote twice for assisted suicide; Congress refuses to interfere.  Is that good enough for the Bush Administration and its allies?  Watch Scalia, the federalist, do his usual intellectual tricks to justify a decision that goes against all of his stated principles.

    More generally, I think procedures are important and so are the forms of government, but I don’t think they can ever be the sole focus of any political battle--or that procedural and/or institutional reform can alone secure victory.  There are always questions of substance, and they must always be adressed case by case.  Federalism in and of itself is neither necessarily progressive or not. Similarly, a republic isn’t a guarantee of anything; it helps, but more still matters on how it is enacted and lived day by day, policy by policy, decision by decision.

    Posted by mcgowan  on  10/06  at  05:25 PM

  11. A Fable

    Once upon a time there was a shining city on a hill, let’s call it Jrri. It was a very shiny city, on that hill, and it had very shiny citizens, on that hill. All these citizens were very happy with their city and they liked it so much they decided to build a new city on the next hill, that one over there. There was nobody to speak of on that other hill, over there, so it was all good. So now the shining city of Jrri had a colony, a new shining city on a hill too, which they decided to call Krrl.

    Now Jrri and Krrl were good cities - very good cities, and their peoples were happy; very happy peoples. So they decided that they should continue on to the next hill and build a third shining city on a hill. And again there were no people to speak of on this third hill, so they bulldozed their way to a new third city on the third shiny hill, and they called it Hrrl.

    Except there were a few people that had lived on Hrrl and they had homes on Hrrl and they called their home Rialto. These few people, nobody to speak of, on Rialto were not happy about having their homes bulldozed into the ground, so they spoke up to their new overlords. And then there were some people on Krrl who also had lived there before the new shiny city and they had lived peacefully for years at wars with many other nations and they called their home before it had been overrun, Lido. And so the original inhabitants of Lido and Rialto shouted out for their freedom, which the helpful people of Jrri had brought to them but it wasn’t good enough. They wanted their old homes back. So the shiny people of Jrri killed them all, for the greater good.

    And now there were three peaceful cities on hills. And in the winter the kids would ride their sleds down the hills together in peace and harmony forever and ever.

    Posted by Bob Davis  on  10/06  at  05:27 PM

  12. "Where will renewal come from?”

    Let’s start with an agrarian populist movement that will provide locally grown, non-corporate sustainable & organic food and water resources to their own communities and regions.  Reducing the need for a dependence upon refined petroleum distribution networks, and increasing the interdependence of local agents of civil virtues(if we use that as a positive) will recreate the tapestry of what “constitutionally” the vision of our ‘enlightened’ founders would have encouraged. 

    Of course, what hold such a reinvestment in commonweal from reemerging is the overt collapse of the ecosystem that once sustained the slacking of our thirst and empty stomachs.  The efforts by corporate giants to control the food stocks (monsanto and ADM et al with their GMF & GE seeds) rather than encouraging locally grown seasonally appropriate soil enhancing farming will not be overcome if we continue to be forced to accept them.  If libertarians were so anti-regulation then they would further need to support the complete removal of all subsidies, tax breaks, research funding and other tax payer funded efforts to enhance and support the corporate structure.  Can they do that/?

    Posted by  on  10/06  at  05:33 PM

  13. I’m kind of with orangemike. I think the slow expansion of the rights practicum is an inspiring thing.

    But I can’t get past a little niggling fact. Yes, a progressive minority of citizens of the republic may have forced the expansion of the definition of citizenship to include people who aren’t rich white staight property-owning men. But the behavior of that republic toward other nations started out murderous and has in the main gotten steadily worse.

    In any event, I think we reify too much to attribute gains to the republic that were actually won despite the best efforts of the republic to squelch, harass, and murder the people making the changes. It’s akin to the libertarian economists who say wealthy nations necessarily place a greater emphasis on environmental protection, ignoring the fact that environmental activists in those wealthy countries fought and occasionally died for those gains. We do a great disservice to the people who actually do the work of making things better by ascribing their work to some fictive “republic.”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/06  at  06:01 PM

  14. All the republics I’ve ever heard of were more or less corrupt. Hart and Judt are defining the ideal type in its best form, not some historically existing state or state. But belief in the ideal type of the Republic us probably the thing which keeps republics from going fatally over to the “more corrupt” side.

    Posted by John Emerson  on  10/06  at  08:01 PM

  15. I am also aware that lots of previous doom-sayers have declared that the sky is falling—and yet here we are.

    The sky may not be falling, but the polar ice caps sure are melting, and our “illusion of invulnerability” may indeed be our undoing:

    Bill Moyers weighs in, as eloquently as ever.

    Posted by  on  10/07  at  02:47 PM

  16. May I express a deep exhaustion with the idea our troubles can be traced to having made a “wrong turn” on some date, whether it’s 1975 or 1865 or 4004 BC?  It creates a fun intellectual argument, but doesn’t it also reek of a nostalgic air that will motivate earnest passivity rather than innovation?  Don’t these terms invite us—on a subconscious level—to become the railroad-museum curators of our own demise?

    Just asking.

    Posted by Jarrett  on  10/07  at  04:25 PM

  17. Jarrett --

    OTOH, it might be said that knowing where we went wrong might be a useful piece of information in figuring out how to make things right - or at least better.

    Ted

    Posted by  on  10/07  at  09:08 PM

  18. the railroad-museum curators of our own demise?

    Brilliant line, Jarrett.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/10  at  11:59 AM

  19. The country is in the toilet--Penn State and its lions excepted.

    It turns out that greed gets you only so far. I know it wasn’t supposed to work that way--your greed . my greed was supposed to add up to the common good...but it don’t--your greed winds up in your pocket and so does mine and the public school down the road is out of chalk. so it goes.

    So Adam Smith was full of shit and the country is going down the tubes and even the Nittany Lions can’t help us.

    so who’s up next? Could be the Muslims or the French or even real lions.

    Remember, it was New Orleans that was the tipping point

    Peace up, y’all.

    Posted by  on  10/10  at  06:08 PM

  20. Another sign of the Apocalpse???
    http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/10/10/131502.shtml
    Bono and rock band U2 are SANTORUM fans?

    Posted by  on  10/11  at  09:19 AM

  21. Oh, Jesus on a breakaway, I can’t take any more signs of the apocalypse.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/11  at  09:53 AM

  22. Newsmax was lying! See: http://joetrippi.com/?p=1494

    Posted by Ann Bartow  on  10/11  at  09:22 PM

  23. Newsmax lying!  That’s even worse.  Now I just don’t know who to believe anymore.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/11  at  11:56 PM

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