The media and pundits treat politics like a sport. The significance of the recent agreement to postpone the debt crisis until January, for instance, is really about which party won and which lost, which party\u2019s tactics are liable to be more successful in the next election, and which politician is a winner and which a loser. But politics rightly understood is not about the contest of policies or politicians. It\u2019s about the philosophical principles and ideas that create one policy rather than another\u2014that\u2019s what it should be about, at least.![\"imgres\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/imgres.jpg?resize=183%2C275&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
From that point of view, the conflict between Democrats and Republicans concerns the size and role of the federal government, which is no surprise to anyone who even casually follows politics. But more important are the ideas that ground arguments for or against limited government. These ideas include our notions of human nature, and what motivates citizens when they make political decisions. Our political conflicts today reflect the two major ways Americans have answered these questions.<\/p>\n
The framing of the Constitution itself was predicated on one answer, best expressed by Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli: \u201cIt is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity.\u201d Throughout the debates during the Constitutional convention, the state ratifying conventions, and the essays in the\u00a0Federalist<\/em>, the basis of the Constitution was the view that human nature is flawed.<\/p>\n As Alexander Hamilton wrote in\u00a0Federalist\u00a0<\/em>6,men are \u201cambitious, vindictive and rapacious,\u201d and are motivated by what James Madison called \u201cpassions and interests.\u201d These destructive passions and selfish interests were particularly predominant among the masses, whose ignorance of political theory and history left them vulnerable to demagogues. Hence the people \u201care daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men,\u201d as Elbridge Gerry said during the Constitutional convention debates.<\/p>\n This low estimation of the people partly explains the \u201cdemocracy deficit\u201d in the original Constitution, which allowed the people to elect directly only the House of Representatives. But unlike Plato, who proposed an elite with superior wisdom to run the state justly and efficiently, early Americans believed the flaws of human nature were universal, and all men, no matter their wealth or intelligence, were corruptible. More important, they were firm believers in the tendency of concentrated power to corrupt, for power is \u201cof an encroaching nature,\u201d as George Washington and James Madison said, and is ever striving to increase its scope. Vanity, greed, pride, and selfishness, John Adams wrote, \u201care the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.\u201d<\/p>\n Universal human depravity thus precluded any simple form of government whether democratic, monarchical, or aristocratic. The solution of the framers was the mixed government in which the democratic House of Representatives, the aristocratic Senate, (chosen by the state legislatures), and the monarchical president (chosen by the Electoral College) would along with the judiciary divide the powers and functions of government and thus check and balance the tendency of each branch to maximize its power at the expense of the people\u2019s freedom. As James Madison explained in\u00a0Federalist<\/em>\u00a051, the \u201cseparate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government\u201d would allow each branch \u201cto resist the encroachment of the others,\u201d for \u201cambition must be made to counteract ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n Equally important was the principle of federalism, the protection of the power of the states evident in giving state legislatures the responsibility for selecting Senators and the presidential electors. Given the variety of conflicting interests among the states, Madison wrote in\u00a0Federalist<\/em>\u00a010, there will be a \u201cgreater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest,\u201d and \u201cgreater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority.\u201d Any selfish interest or violent passion \u201cwill be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states,\u201d and \u201cthe variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it [the nation] must secure the national Councils against any danger from that source.\u201d Just as the variety of interests and passions among the people will check and balance each other, so too will the variety of state interests check and balance the power of the federal government.<\/p>\n Starting in the late nineteenth century, a different view of human nature and its motivations developed. The Progressive movement rejected the Founders\u2019 assumption of the universal depravity of human nature. Progressives believed human nature could be improved under the environmental pressures of technological, scientific, and economic changes. New \u201csciences\u201d like sociology and psychology had developed that were discovering the material causes of human behavior whether social, economic, or political. From this knowledge came the technical means of alleviating the social and economic disruptions attending these changes. Masters of this new knowledge and the techniques for applying them, if given power, could apply these insights into governing and managing the state, and solving the new problems that had arisen from industrialization and technological change.<\/p>\n From the Progressive perspective, the Constitution and its structure of checks and balances were outmoded. Industrialization and technological development had created new problems that required a different form of federal government. According to Progressive president Theodore Roosevelt in his 1901 State of the Union speech, \u201cThe old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n Woodrow Wilson made the same argument. Politics must now be understood as a Darwinian process, and the Constitution must evolve to meet new circumstances. \u201cAll that progressives ask or desire,\u201d Wilson wrote in 1913 inThe New Freedom<\/em>, \u201cis permission\u2014in an era when \u2018development,\u2019 \u2018evolution,\u2019 is the scientific word\u2014to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.\u201d<\/p>\n The limited government of the Founders, then, was incapable of effective government given the developments in economic and social life that were changing human nature. The national interest could no longer be served by the state governments, the free market, or civil society A bigger and more powerful national government was necessary to control big business and corporations, and to more equitably distribute wealth and improve the general welfare. The clash of the various interests and passions of individuals and factions must be neutralized, and national unity must be created through a national government and its technocratic administration. The individual rights enshrined in the Constitution had to be redefined in terms of the larger society and its welfare.<\/p>\n The right to property, for example, so crucial for the framers, now must be \u201csubject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it,\u201d as Theodore Roosevelt said in his famous \u201cNew Nationalism\u201d speech delivered during the 1912 presidential campaign. Enforcing this concern for the \u201cgeneral right of the community\u201d required a \u201cpolicy of a far more active government interference with social and economic conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n In his last State of the Union speech Roosevelt said, \u201cThe danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands. It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated\u201d to serve the unified interests of the collective people. Woodrow Wilson concurred. Imagining in\u00a0The New Freedom<\/em>\u00a0the progressive utopia that would come into being once the existing politico-social order had been rebuilt by what Wilson calls political \u201carchitects\u201d and \u201cengineers,\u201d he describes it as a structure \u201cwhere men can live as a single community, co-operative as in a perfected, coordinated beehive.\u201d<\/p>\n To achieve these aims, the federal government had to grow, with agencies and bureaus created to administer the laws and regulations presumably made necessary by new economic and social conditions. \u201cThere is scarcely a single duty of government which was once simple which is not now complex,\u201d Woodrow Wilson wrote in his essay \u201cThe Study of Administration.\u201d He went on to write: \u201cThe functions of government are every day becoming more complex and difficult, they are also vastly multiplying in number. Administration is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings . . . Whatever holds of authority state or federal governments are to take upon corporations, there must follow cares and responsibilities which will require not a little wisdom, knowledge, and experience.\u201d<\/p>\n This wisdom, knowledge, and experience will be the purview of those schooled in the new sciences, not the traditional wisdom and practical experience of the people pursuing their various and conflicting interests. As Progressive journalist Walter Lippmann wrote in 1914, \u201cWe can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. We break up routines, make decisions, choose our ends, select means,\u201d which we can do because \u201cthe great triumph of modern psychology is its growing capacity for penetrating to the desires that govern our thought.\u201d The instrument of this process necessarily must be the federal government, now enriched by the Sixteenth Amendment, which in 1913 instituted a national income tax.<\/p>\n The Progressives, then, discarded the Founders\u2019 vision of an eternally flawed human nature, and the Constitutional architecture that balanced and checked the tendency for people and factions to pursue their interests and maximize their power at the expense of others. Now a more powerful federal government\u2013\u2013currently comprising over 500 agencies and offices, with 2.3 million employees costing $200 billion annually\u2013\u2013 armed with new knowledge and backed by coercive federal power, will organize, regulate, and manage social and economic conditions to improve life and create a more just and equitable society.<\/p>\n But the Founders\u2019 main motive in crafting the government they did was not to create utopia, but to protect the freedom of all from the dangers of concentrated power, whether this power was embodied in the majority or in a minority. As Alexander Hamilton said in\u00a0Federalist\u00a0<\/em>85, \u201cI never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed.\u201d A powerful minority of federal technocrats unaccountable to the people is no exception to the maxim that \u201cpower is of an encroaching nature,\u201d its growth always coming at the expense of freedom.<\/p>\n These are the two visions behind the politics of debt and government spending that are necessary for financing a technocratic big government. The outcome of the budget negotiations next January and February will reflect which idea triumphs: that of government limited to protect the autonomy and freedom of flawed humans, or that of big government creating a better world for perfectible humans through entitlement spending financed by taxes and debt. That is the debate we need to be having.<\/p>\n Bruce S. Thornton is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his BA in Latin in 1975 and his PhD in comparative literature\u2013Greek, Latin, and English\u2013in 1983, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. Thornton is currently a professor of classics and humanities at California State University in Fresno, California. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays and reviews on Greek culture and civilization and their influence on Western civilization. His latest book, published in March 2011, is titled\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, we treat politics as a sport, but it’s really a conflict of ideologies between federalists and technocrats. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Defining Ideas\u00a0 The media and pundits treat politics like a sport. The significance of the recent agreement to postpone the debt crisis until January, for instance, is really about which party won and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,49,117],"tags":[66,42,624,1028,693],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Kp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moral-equivalence-is-moral-evasion\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":0},"title":"Moral Equivalence Is Moral Evasion","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The failure of the Congressional budget \u201csuper-committee\u201d to address our geometrically expanding debt and deficits should surprise no one. From the beginning the committee was political theater designed to create the illusion of action when the will to act is missing. Unfortunately, this perennial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2482,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/principle-and-the-possible\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":1},"title":"Principle and the Possible","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The continuing stalemate over raising the debt ceiling is provoking a lot of voters into Mercutio\u2019s \u201ca pox on both your houses\u201d response. \u201cThey\u2019re acting like 6-year-olds pretty much on both sides,\u201d one woman told the\u00a0New York Times. \u201cI think it\u2019s stunning\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/appeasement-bode-war-not-peace\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":2},"title":"Appeasement Bode War Not Peace","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America\u00a0by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Winston Churchill famously said, \"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.\" In\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2437,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/taking-our-eye-off-the-jihadist-ball\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":3},"title":"Taking Our Eye Off the Jihadist Ball","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Given our economic doldrums and the still metastasizing debt, the legislation raising the debt ceiling won\u2019t keep the economy from dominating the nation\u2019s attention until next year\u2019s election.This means foreign affairs will continue to be an afterthought, at a time when dangerous developments in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5701,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tin-drum-progressive-boomers\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":4},"title":"The Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Like the hero of Gunter Grass\u2019 novel\u00a0The Tin Drum, America\u2019s progressive Baby Boomers chose not to grow up. Why should they? They decided that their development was complete when they graduated from college. All they needed to do was affirm their magnificent, world-historical identity. No\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2446,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/do-we-need-politicians-who-are-smart-or-virtuous\/","url_meta":{"origin":6721,"position":5},"title":"Do We Need Politicians Who Are Smart or Virtuous?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society \u201cThe president isn\u2019t very bright,\u201d Bret Stephens writes in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal, an assessment that raises an important question: Is \u201cintelligence\u201d necessary in a president? That we raise the question at all is a testimony to how thoroughly progressive ideas about governing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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