Flawed Foundings

By George Tomezsko

Flawed Foundings should interest students of government who are curious to learn how healthy republics can be set up and maintained. It should also appeal to conservatives concerned about the decline of manners and morals, and the growth of government, here in the United States. The book offers a unique prescription on how to tackle these problems. Lastly, and most importantly, the work is intended to be wider than that, and posits a possible solution to the political problems of modern man in general. As such, it serves as a nice introduction into the study of political philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469100623

George Tomezsko

George Tomezsko is a writer, essayist and historian with several previous books to his credit. His major interest in history is the War Between the States. The war in the Shenandoah attracted his attention when he wrote an earlier book, An Afternoon in May, that told the story of the Corps of Cadets from the Virginia Military Institute at the Battle of New Market in 1864. He wrote the present book to ensure the real significance of the military drama then being played out in the Shenandoah Valley is not forgotten.

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Copyright © 2005 by George Tomezsko.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

THE GOVERNMENT OF

THE UNITED STATES

I

II

III

THE GOVERNMENT

OF RUSSIA

I

II

III

IV

V

POSTLOGUE

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MARXISM AND SCIENTIFIC LIBERALISM

PROLOGUE

Herein I have gathered some remarks on two modern governments: that of the United States of America and that of Soviet Russia. Both were founded by revolution, and the philosophical ideals that motivated the revolutionaries, while different in each case, sprouted from the soil of the Enlightenment. This issue alone is worthy of consideration because the philosophical ideals upon which both states rested seek the allegiance of all mankind. Both governments became, partly for this reason, rival world powers that, had they come into actual conflict, might well have destroyed all mankind.

I state that these two foundings, because they rested upon a flawed view of the nature of things, were like seeds that fell upon poor ground, for what grew up was either stunted or monstrously deformed, and soon needed to be reformed or replaced by something more durable and lifegiving. This soon became very evident in the case of Soviet Russia; nevertheless, it took more than seventy years for that rotten tree to fall, and the survival of the young republican sapling that replaced it is in some real doubt.

Meanwhile, the old republican oak that is America has become sere and enervated in that same interval of time, because fashionable opinion, which daily celebrates vulgarity and decadence, has steadily eroded the topsoil upon which republics flourish. That the architects of those revolutions were sincere cannot be doubted, but posterity and experience have taught sober thinkers that some healthier compost is now needed.

THE GOVERNMENT OF

THE UNITED STATES

Some Thoughts on the New Constitution

The subtitle of this essay is derived from the subtitle to the Federalist Papers, that magnificent collection of essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to persuade the people of New York, and ultimately the American people at large, to accept the new Constitution, which was written to replace the Articles of Confederation. We should point out here that the American Constitution, even though it has remained in use for more than two centuries, is by no means the oldest constitution in use throughout the world. The British Constitution, for example, dates to the tenth century. Our Constitution, by comparison, can still be called new.

The term constitution refers throughout both essays to the fundamental laws, customs, and practices by which each branch of government is organized, which determine how each branch is to be staffed, and which set the responsibilities of each branch. The term republic refers to that form of government in which the people are sovereign, and in which they exercise their sovereignty through elected representatives as opposed to direct popular rule. And, most importantly, I use the word virtue to indicate qualities of character that modify and reduce our selfishness, and chief among those virtues are wisdom, justice, moderation, and courage. To this list I wholeheartedly add the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

I

These few remarks have been gathered here by a self-admitted lover of his country. It is hoped that all such lovers may, upon reading them, take heart in the face of those who call such a love illegitimate. You and I, in whose hearts there still remains more than a trace of love of country, share the same love that drew together those who met in Philadelphia in 1787 to design our Constitution. It is love of country that will determine the future of republican government on earth; an excess or a deficiency of this love among the peoples of the world could end it forever. It is love of country, and the virtues that such a love gives birth to, that insure the survival and well-being of a republic.

We who understand the nature of man and government, and what conditions are required to cohere together a political community, argue, unlike the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, that a small republic offers the best hope for the emergence and growth of the virtues upon which republican life flourishes, and for the emergence of the bonds of communal affection, which alone dispose the citizens of a republic to serve the common good. The size of a republic is no substitute for the virtue of the citizen, and is, therefore, no guarantee of permanence. We appeal to history first to make our case. It is well known how Christianity undermined the Roman Empire by transforming Roman culture from one which held up the warrior as the model of virtue into one in which the pious man was revered. Love of God came to replace love of the empire, and after long centuries, the Cross stood triumphant over the grave of the Eagle. Christianity succeeded because Roman culture offered only luxury and hedonism to the sundry peoples of the empire, and nothing to nurture the soul. Tormented by the lack of peace within oneself that the desire for luxury and pleasure bring, those who embraced what the empire had to offer became susceptible to a much more intriguing desire, namely the desire to find peace through worldly renunciation. And this empire, after absorbing all the riches of the world, fell prey to peoples who, if Rousseau is to be believed, did not know what riches were ("A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences, part 2").

The greatest debt all partisans of small republics (it may be appropriate to call such political animals republican Rightists, a term which, I believe, is more descriptive than either word used alone, for a republican is simply a partisan of that form of government, while a rightist is one whose concern is with the proper definition of the term Right, or in locating the boundary between the natural and legal rights of citizens. Anyone who is therefore concerned about the definitions of individual rights within a republic can be properly called a republican Rightist) owe Christianity is that it showed that size and diversity will not guarantee the permanence of a state, let alone republican principles.

But it should be noted here that the children of the Enlightenment, perhaps taking their cue from the belief that all souls were equal before God, helped found modern cosmopolitanism and the modern passion for absolute equality, and the corresponding interest in maintaining large republics, which seek to encompass numerous and diverse peoples. However, those who teach worldly renunciation create a general and benign apathy toward political life that mitigates the affects of that passion. Republican government is always in danger from those who are loyal only to themselves, and is therefore threatened by the tempo of modern life. A modern man defines himself by selecting agreeable components from a smorgasbord of modern music, art, literature, and philosophy. He has no faith except the creed of the entrepreneur; he has no national credo, for he is loyal to no one and loves no fatherland except the fatherland of self. His community with those around him extends no further than the giving and receiving of cash and his concern with government and politics begins and ends with their impact on his income. This development is, in fact, the great-grandchild of the Enlightenment, whose first offspring was modern science, which intended to overthrow all faiths, and, we may add, all true and genuine loves, for science leaves room only for empirical knowledge and arithmetically quantifiable material objects. Science is also the friend of those who value equality more than life, for someone who loves thinks of others as unequal (any jilted lover understands that).

Once men began to think of the world in purely empirical and mathematical terms, beginning well more than three hundred years ago, they became fascinated with the idea that reality can be understood as a dynamic process, or as a series of processes, of which man and his works are naught but extensions. This fascination with process and the analysis of process literally created a new way of understanding reality. Under its impact, nature as a source of art and inspiration died; no longer was it to be viewed as a source and inspiration for virtue as it had been in ages past, but as a string of processes to be subjected to dispassionate dissection. Nature was now thought of in bourgeois terms: a source of raw material to be exploited; its workings were not the manifestations of a hidden Intelligence, but only chance happenings that were malevolent at worst and at best neutral with respect to men. God died too (if only in progressive or scientific minds, for He could not be verified by experimentation or counted like quantities of atoms), and death became man’s greatest enemy. King Death, who sets the length of our lives, also sets the limits for all earthly strivings and concerns, and therefore had to be defeated by scientific progress. This new understanding of reality captivated the intellectual classes during the period 1600 to 1900 to the extent that, at least in their lives, faith in process replaced faith in God. Even human nature itself came to be viewed as a process that could also be improved when understood scientifically. We live today very largely under this spell.

And from this it was but an easy step to view government itself as a process; it was this latter thought that gave America its Constitution, the Founding Fathers apparently believing that the processes of government could be so arranged that its very operation would produce freedom and civic peace. The Constitution should be thought of, then, as a scientific experiment in government whose purpose is to harness the clash of competing self-interests let loose by this new scientific world to produce civic peace and prosperity.

And two generations later, history itself came to be viewed as a process, an idea that formed the basis of scientific socialism. In that instant, the victory of process over both God and nature became total and complete, for the individual actions of individual humans were now subordinate to the very mechanisms of history, which would deliver on their own accord a worldly paradise in which government itself would disappear. This new faith in history found many converts among those calling themselves progressive, and in short order the intellectual classes throughout the Western world became as intoxicated with belief in historical evolution as with a new wine. But these historical charmers with their promise of a paradise to be enjoyed in temporal time merely imparted to history an interpretation to support their case. There have always been those who prejudge history with the yardstick of personal vanity or idealistic impulse, but this was perhaps the first time such a prejudgment became the foundation of a new faith. If the intellectual can call religion the opium of the people, we can call history (that is, history as understood in some quarters as the unfolding of irresistible economic tides) the opium of the intellectual. But this new opium proved too heady for all but the truest of believers, and it was tried in practice not in capitalist Western Europe but in feudal Russia.

But prior to Marx, political Leftists had founded another ideological faith, which we may call scientific liberalism for want of a more descriptive noun (a thorough description of the connection between this ideology and Marxism can be found at the end of this work). It can be summed up as follows: since science and the scientific way of thinking have redefined truth or knowledge as empirical, religion and philosophy have been cast into the realm of superstition. Pleasure and its pursuit is now called the highest good, the only pinnacle we should climb, and human conduct, now freed from the so-called tyranny of religion and the virtue of the philosopher, is limited only by the imagination. In sum, the effect was the creation of a worldly political religion that promised a worldly paradise for those who take delight in the human body and who glory in its pleasures. Our common Revelation—now deemed an otherworldly superstition or evidence of a mind closed by prejudice, was to be driven out of public life—is being daily driven out of public life. The Bolsheviks of Russia were by no means the first moderns to actively persecute the Church, nor were they any more ruthless or more open about their intentions. The people of the Vendee in 1793 are my witnesses on this score.

Although the beliefs of the old church are still clung to here and there, those who are willing to defend the classical virtues seldom poke their heads above the waters and tides of public opinion. The net effect is that progressive men stake their lives firmly upon a hedonistic foundation, in America and across the democratic republics of Europe. This scientific faith has long roots; it borrowed its view on the living of our earthly lives from the conventionalists of the ancient world. This new faith, in its only positive contributions, renounces anarchy and historical evolutionism taught by Marx, and recognizes the value of republican government. The size and diversity of these new liberal republics was to be limited only by the imagination of their Founders and succeeding generations of their rulers, and the rights of individuals expanded by a like proportion. And these rights are not to be safeguarded by reliance upon religious appeals or a firm moral education, but by the bland arguments of those lawyers whose self-appointed task is to guide our constitutional machinery.

Scientific liberalism actually spalled off the intellectual cliff erected by the Enlightenment and the corresponding modern scientific view of reality; the resulting rock-fall created the rubble from which those calling themselves progressives built the rhetorical foundation for the motley, egalitarian, materialistic republics of our time. The cornerstone for these crooked republics lay three-quarters hidden in the Federalist Papers and perhaps should have remained so buried; we republican Rightists consequently owe our liberal friends a vast debt, for their construction work has (and it must be stated, entirely unintentionally) revealed the fundamental problem of current republican theory, which we may state in simple terms as an excessive and exclusive concern with the expansion of individual rights. Such is the result of the social and political amalgam hammered out by the exponents of scientific liberalism. But their amalgam, proceeding as it does from questionable premises, represents at best a pale, pallid, watered-down version of republicanism. One cannot help but wonder whether a genuine and sure freedom can endure much longer, considering the poor plasterwork upon which it stands today.

Men of sound judgment understand that conventional opinion defines freedom as freedom for the expression of passion, desire, appetite, in sum, for the freedom to yield to the moment. That world offers hope only to impulse yielders and gratification seekers, in one word, hope to the libertine. Sound, sober judgment also reveals that freedom cannot exist without virtue, that self indulgence eventually leads to severe control of conduct imposed by others. Freedom really means, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche, that one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself ("Twilight of the Idols, section 38"). Freedom is really lived whenever you exercise this responsibility. At this point, some room is now opened in one’s soul for the expansion of judgment, and when once established, judgment points away from action based purely on instincts and desires. In that moment, in that dialectically internal moment, one achieves victory over desire and passion; in essence, one has learned to rule oneself. Not all souls, however, can achieve this mastery. If anyone doubts the truth of this, we call as a witness one of history’s greatest libertines, the Roman poet Ovid. He tells us