Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: The Dilemma of Progressivism 3 2 9
understanding of the American regime—as a practical political reality—
therefore, is that it sponsors efforts in virtue.
The Founders’ improved science of politics was unspoiled by
the affectation that ancient regimes actually had virtue for their goal (Federalist
9, 18, and 37). The notion that their politics focused exclusively on the
low or base derived from a fundamental misapprehension.
When elected to the presidency, Washington planned
initially to say what America was about. His first impulse was to give a comprehensive
treatise. He ultimately decided not to deliver it and put aside the
lengthy draft, which revealed his own judgment of political principles and
objectives. The remaining snippets of that draft constitute approximately
sixty percent of the total. In them a pregnant statement describes the Constitution,
observing, “I presume now to assert that better still may not be
devised.” This statement approached as nearly as Washington ever could to
saying that it was the best, simply.
Washington’s judgment rests on a few simple considerations,
some of which are elucidated in the draft inaugural but others of which appear
in prior and subsequent documents. Most important, surely, is what he had
originally set out as the objective for the founding, namely, to provide for that
peace and prosperity, that stability, which were conditions for the attainment
of the fundamental objective, self-government.
Self-government does not mean majority rule—for any of
the American Founders. While it includes the processes of majority rule, that
is only a mechanism, a means. Self-government was a moral conception, as
expressed in the Farewell, when Washington eulogized the people as “now”
loving to be “one people” governing themselves.
Washington meant in this precisely what he meant in the
delivered First Inaugural address, namely, that “private morality” is the foundation
of “national happiness.” This claim may not strike a contemporary
soul as extraordinary, but most philosophers would demand to know what
he meant. Did he mean that everyone has his own opinion and does what
he wishes? No. He meant that this was a government in which not only the
authority to govern oneself fell upon the shoulders of each, but also the success
of the general government derived from placing that authority on the
shoulders of each.