Spring 2010 - Interpretation

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I n t e r p r e t a t i o n
collapse is nothing less than stunning. It constitutes an intellectual call to
arms, reanimating the question of the meaning of self-government.
Throughout the founding era we encounter one theme:
namely, that the idea of building a nation within the United States requires
processes of self-government working hand-in-glove with a specific conception
of justice (or an expectation of virtue), without at the same time lodging
somewhere within the community a specific power to form individuals in
virtue. That is the key. The specific conception of justice grows out of the fact
that the government is put in motion by the clamant interests of the society.
The political process turns upon the multiplicity of interests, though only
in the sense that those interests and their demands set the political agenda.
They set it under certain restrictions, namely, that they can virtually never
accomplish their ends without coming to terms with numerous other such
interests, and then only through representatives, never directly. Accordingly,
one protects minorities within the society only by restraining the majority to
just pursuits (the aim of Lincoln’s labors). This is the antithesis of the “stewardship”
view of majority rule.
Consider: virtuous human beings conduct themselves by
their own lights—self-government. What happens when one cedes to someone
else the putative authority to compel virtuous conduct? The subjects of such
power lose occasion to conduct themselves by their own lights. Accordingly
the Founders’ gamble was necessary, consistent with the objective of virtue.
Washington thought the Constitution created the best government,
and Morrisey’s works take that conclusion seriously. But there is
a proviso: the self-government that was framed by the Constitution of the
United States endures only so long as private morality (even moralism?) characterizes
the people of the United States. There is an implicit and necessary
connection between the two. If the people cease to be decent in ordinary
ways, the Constitution ceases to be benign. As Madison avers in Federalist
63, a popular lapse from the rule of prudent deliberation will seldom if ever
be recoverable.