If we want to know why we can never again replicate the extraordinary generation of the founders, there is a simple answer: the growth of what we today presumably value most about American society and culture, egalitarian democracy. In the early nineteenth century the voice of ordinary people, at least ordinary white people, began to be heard as never before in history, and they soon overwhelmed the high-minded desires and aims of the revolutionary leaders who had brought them into being. The founders had succeeded only too well in promoting democracy and equality among ordinary people; indeed, they succeeded in preventing any duplication of themselves.
That is from Gordon Wood’s new and excellent Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. It is in my view the best introduction to the lives and thoughts of the Founders.
I don’t, by the way, agree with the above quotation. The Founders were not the smartest Americans to have come down the pike. Instead they a) were extremely wise, and b) had a unique chance to be both great and famous because they were first. It has not exactly been a string of mediocrities since then, and of course there is more to American life besides the Presidency.
The good news for you, Tyler, is that you’re right. The bad news is that Gordon Wood is also right.
The fundamental features of a liberal republic–institutions, norms, habits, values–were themselves fashioned by pre-liberal values.
Egalitarian liberalism can sustain itself as a modus vivendi but it does not create a cadre of disciples. Most Americans support suppression of unpopular speech (e.g., flag-burning) and would be happy to deliberate on the what sort of church the government should establish, if only we would let them. (We won’t, praise Allah.)
So Tyler, your point that by definition, the founders had opportunities to be the first that will never come again, is correct and not nearly as trivial as it seems. (It is only just barely an exaggeration to say that constitutional construction and institutional arrangement are the whole of statecraft.) But it is not the whole story. Values matter, too.
We have what we have because they lived thru it and didn’t want to make
the same mistakes.
James Lileks had a conversation Christmastime last year or the year or so before
w/a European and it was scary.
Of course the gov’t would never want to take your home…..
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