A PARTNERSHIP, NOT AN ORGANIC WHOLE
If the late 1700s through the early 1800s are known for anything it is for the political disruptions overtaking America and the European continent. Â As a foretaste, the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain nearly a hundred years earlier (1688-1689) stirred the demands of non-royals/nobility to have seats at the table of national politics. Â
With that, the American experience began by instituting some form of representative governance in its colonial days. Â But once there, this movement took on its own steam that ended with the iconic accomplishments of first, independence, and then of a national compact formed among a national people. Â This was by no means a smooth development, but one can easily detect various themes building as Americans found their way to a constitutional foundation.
     But in gaining a full appreciation of this development, one can look at the European version and understand how that experience was different.  And there, the attention shifts to France â which this blog already focused on when describing the French collectivist formula, upon which their revolution relied.  A closer look at the Jacobins, the leaders of the French effort, is necessary if one is to gauge how similar yet different the French experience was (with its effects lasting till today) from the American experience.
     As sort of a rule of thumb or a symbolic representation by which each revolution can be represented, one can â without any formality or finality â compare what custom has ascribed to the colors of their respective flags â since both boast of their same tri colors, red, white, and blue (which the French list as blue, white, and red). Â
By custom, the American rendition states that red stands for hardiness and valor, white for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice.[1] Â Each is a value or a character trait, elements that each American holds or strives to hold within him/herself. Â By contrast, the French version cites that blue represents the nobility, white the clergy (the priests), and the red stands for the bourgeois (and eventually the workers and small farmers).[2] Â
This writer, among many, can see that the American form reflects a national union made up of free-willed individuals agreeing to a resulting polity. Â On the other hand, the French promote through their symbols, an organic whole made up of types of people who function to meet the needs of that organic whole. Â This variance is profound in how each view influenced â and continues to influence â the formulation of the resulting polities.
Daniel Elazar addresses the dissimilarity.[3] And here the role of the Jacobins is central. Â Whereas, similar to the Americans, the French confronted the challenge of devising a democratic formula for governance, they rejected central assumptions Americans grabbed unto in figuring out not only how to form a national structure, but their state structures as well. Â
To the French, the American solution was simply too pessimistic about human nature. They saw the American model as undervaluing the ability of the common man and woman to avoid being corrupted. Americans made it central to guard not only the corruption of leaders in public office, but also of the people. For the French, a new set up needed to merely protect against autocratic despotism, but not against popular despotism.
To them, checks and balances merely subverted the âgeneral will,â a central attribute of what they perceived as an organic unity. Â They ascribed a general will to constituting the French society and that that handily trumped the relatively insignificant interests of individuals. Â Being short of such guarantees for the collective whole was/is tantamount to being anti-democratic. Â According to Elazar, such a view of individuals, Americans felt, was subversive of liberty. Â He writes,
 By retaining notions of the organic society, the Jacobins and their revolutionary heirs were forced to rely upon transient majorities to establish consensus or to concentrate power in the hands of an elite that claimed to do the same thing.  The first course invariably led to anarchy and the second to the kind of totalitarian democracy which has become the essence of modern dictatorship. While the âgeneral willâ was undoubtedly a more democratic concept than the âwill of the monarch,â in the last analysis it has proved to be no less despotic and usually even more subversive of liberty.[4]
 And one can see this distinction being played out in both countries, the French went through a string of ârepublicsâ before hitting on a lasting formula.  As for the Americans, not all was smooth after the writing of the proposed constitution took place back 1787.
     Central to the argument posed by the Anti-federalists â those who opposed the new constitution in America â was the loss of power the states were to suffer if this new basic law were to be ratified.  And initially, this concern was shared by a majority of the American people.  Along with perceiving the loss of power to this central entity, Americans were concerned with higher taxes (by this far off government), potentially over-powered central government, and, therefore, a loss of liberty.
     Central to their concerns was to fight for the retention of statesâ power or rights.  This was ameliorated by the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 but would quickly spring to the fore as the nation marched toward the Civil War sixty years later. And that war did not end that story as the nation maintained the relative power of the states to be relatively more vibrant until the eventual prominence of the central government through the New Deal.  It took a world-wide depression to finally allow the central government to address national problems on an ongoing, institutionalized basis.
      One sign this writer cites as reflecting the basic notion of how undominant federalist values remain is how often these days he hears of statesâ rights.  Currently, the principle is being heard concerning voting rights as state legislatures in âredâ states have passed or are considering passing new laws to restrict their voting processes. Â
The motivation, of course, varies according to the rhetoric of each side of that debate. Â Those defending the new laws argue that the laws are meant to protect against unauthorized voting and those against them say they are meant to keep Democratic voters from voting or having their votes count. Â
Congress is considering passing a law that would undo the effects of the new or proposed state laws, but with little hope of passing. Â Consequently, those who favor the new state laws complain that the federal government is encroaching on statesâ rights to run their elections. This more recent claim has reinserted this issue after not being heard of in decades. Â It was a recurring claim until the sixties by mostly southern states and had to do with civil rights â which is not too far off the current debate. Â
In both cases, opposition to states exerting their âpowerâ has been perceived as efforts by âstatesâ rightistsâ to deprive African Americans of some rights such as voting, or a set of rights of which they have been deprived. Â But the point here is to state that this âfederalistâ argument has not been heard for some time. Â
And one cannot help think that both today and in its prior use, these âfederalistâ arguments amount to being rationalizations utilized to defend unfederated positions. Â In both cases one can see the ultimate goal is to deprive citizens of equal standing â such standing being a central federalist value.
Elazar argues that Americans seem to find their way back to true federalist policies. The road can be long and hazardous, but the destination cannot be denied. Â To some extent, this blogger agrees but ultimately in the give and take of daily politics, this nation holds federalist values in the back domains of its collective memory. Â Up front, it is the transactional factors that the various players in the political arena hold prominent and bring to bear. Â
And with that final thought, this blog will proceed to trace the history of this nationâs political thinking in an episodic fashion now that the reader has been led to the Constitution writing years (and even on to the election of Jefferson as the nationâs third president). Â The aim will be to share the various experiences the American republic had prior to the late 1940s to test the assertion that Americans were prominently guided by a federalist view in their governance and politics.
[1] âWhat Do the Colors of the Flag Mean?,â The American Legion (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.legion.org/flag/questions-answers/91471/what-do-colors-flag-mean .
[2] âWhy Is the French Flag Blue, White, Red?,â Institut Linguistque Adenet (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.ila-france.com/blog/why-is-the-french-flag-blue-white-red .
[3] Daniel J. Elazar, âHow Federal Is the Constitution? Thoroughly,â in a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar, prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1994), 1-30.