Throughout our nation’s history, zealous left-wing crusades have gradually but invariably lost ground because, sooner or later, the practical and immediate demands of commerce reasserted themselves in the face of abstract utopian promises.
The below remarks were delivered at the Bradley Impact Fund winter retreat in Naples, Fla., last week.
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As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth, many of us who admire our Founding Fathers are likely to feel a bit … ashamed. Not ashamed of them, certainly. That’s how the left wants us to feel. But we might feel ashamed of ourselves. We will hear many conservative commentators say that we really, really let the Founders down. We seemingly turned out to be not at all the kind of people they hoped we would be.
I’ve got a different message for you today. I would argue instead that we turned out to be exactly the sort of people they had hoped for, and aimed at producing through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
But surely, you’re thinking, that can’t be true. After all, didn’t the Founders expect us to be a deeply moral and spiritual people, always willing to put the public interest above our own petty personal interests? That was certainly John Adams’ view. He said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
If that’s true, if our political system requires a thoroughly moral and religious people to survive, then it’s pretty clear that we must indeed be a disappointment to the Founders. And we must be very much in danger as a nation.
Adams’ opinion was in fact widely shared at the time of the Founding. The prevailing view was that democracy can only work if the people are unified around a strongly held and rigorous moral or religious belief, and that government had a role in cultivating that belief. That’s why a number of the colonies had official state religions.
This was the argument of a group called the “small republicans.” Not because they were physically small, though pretty much everybody was at the Founding—James Madison only weighed 100 pounds. They were small republicans because they believed that a morally unified republic could only exist in a small territory. If the territory is too extensive and complex, they believed, it’s much more difficult to preserve that moral unity.
The problem for the small republicans was that every one of the individual colonies in 1776 was already too large, too diverse, to be a genuine small republic, to say nothing of the 13 colonies put together. That didn’t prevent them from fighting for the preservation of the states, where something like small republics might survive alongside the national government. And that had important consequences, as we shall see.
A large, commercial republic
But happily for us, our founding was shaped by a very different view of democracy. Political figures like George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—who became known as Federalists—argued that to establish a decent and stable democracy, you need to extend, not shrink, its sphere. You need a large, commercial republic, built upon a vast, national common market.
They believed that small, non-commercial democracies had always torn themselves apart in the past, because morality and religion weren’t enough to hold people together, and in fact usually became the source of bitter political division. Recall that the founding period came fast upon the heels of centuries of bloody religious wars in Europe, which testified to the dangers of trying to impose religious uniformity in the face of radically divergent spiritual persuasions.
But the Federalists believed that, if Americans were engaged in commerce, rather than intense religious devotion, they would still be divided, but now into countless small contending economic interests. Those interests would pursue concrete and limited material gains through the endless variety of jobs and professions created by a free market. That contention would be mild compared to the kind of conflict stoked by morality or religion. As Samuel Johnson put it in 1775: “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.”
And so the Federalists designed a republic in which business would be our principal business. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution together were designed to unleash the commercial energies of free and equal citizens, for whom prosperity would be the chief aim of the pursuit of happiness.
One rather important result of this unleashing of commerce was to be hitherto unimaginable prosperity, of course. What economists call the “Great Enrichment” took off just a few years after the Declaration was signed. Global wealth, which had been stagnant for all human history prior to 1800, suddenly shot straight up and is still climbing. In fact, there has been a 3,000% increase in real income per person over the past three centuries.
Now the ideological left, and even some on the right, have denounced the commercial republic. They say that it cultivates nothing but crass, petty, self-centered materialists, without any moral grounding. By saying that, they’re actually echoing the small republicans, who objected to the large commercial republic precisely because they thought prosperity and material pursuits would destroy the moral foundations needed for democracy.
Common and easily attainable virtues
But this critique overlooks a critical fact. Commerce doesn’t destroy virtue, though it certainly de-emphasizes moral or religious virtue in its most rigorous forms. Commerce necessarily generates its own forms of virtue, much humbler and less demanding perhaps, but more common and more easily attainable for precisely that reason.
In order to be successful at business, as you all well know, you have to establish a reputation as a decent, honest, hard-working, and responsible citizen, who will reliably deliver goods and services as promised.
Baron de Montesquieu, one of the sources of inspiration for the Founders, put it this way in his book The Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748. “When democracy is founded on commerce, private people may acquire vast riches without a corruption of morals. This is because the spirit of commerce is naturally attended with that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, prudence, tranquility, order, and rule of law.”
Alexis de Tocqueville had a similar approach to the spirit of commerce, which he described in his magisterial book Democracy in America as the doctrine of “self-interest properly understood.” Writing in 1835 after visiting our new republic, he noted that “the doctrine of self-interest properly understood does not inspire great sacrifices, but every day it prompts some small ones …. Its discipline shapes orderly, temperate, moderate, careful and self-controlled citizens.”
I’m indebted to one of your account-holders, Michael Maibach, for reminding me about those two quotes. He studied with the same scholars I studied with in graduate school. I should add he delivers a terrific lecture on the virtues generated by commerce, though his current interest is trying to preserve the Electoral College. He spends a lot of his time here in Naples, so if you’re local, see him about possible presentations on those issues.
Now, this is where the good news comes in for us today, I think. If the Founders designed a system that relied on widespread and intense morality or religious conviction, on this 250th anniversary, we’ve fallen well short of that. And imagine just how much work would be required to set things right.
But if the Founders expected us instead to be a commercial people, I would say we’re doing pretty well. This room today is full of citizens who are precisely what the Founders hoped for and expected.
Your lives may not be driven by grand, self-sacrificial spiritual visions. But by your everyday commercial labors, you have not only contributed to the Great Enrichment, you also, in your lives and communities, embody the commercial virtues, like frugality, economy, moderation, prudence, lawfulness, and self-control. These may not be exalted and demanding moral virtues, but we learn them almost instinctively, as we seek to build and maintain the sound reputations that are essential to business success.
Now, if the centerpiece of the Founding was the large commercial republic, it’s important to note that the Federalists didn’t have it all their way. The small republicans, who became the Anti-Federalists during the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, fought hard, as I noted earlier, to preserve an important role for the states and localities, by reserving for them many governmental powers, and by making them central in the construction of the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College.
The fact that many powers were left to states and localities means that we can still, within these narrower boundaries, design the sorts of communities that we wish to see, including potent moral and religious communities. They can live side-by-side with other communities governed by quite different visions.
Lifting us out of narrow conceptions of self-interest
Recall that Las Vegas is only 421 miles from Salt Lake City. Their cultures couldn’t be more different, but so far they’ve left each other alone. You’ve heard many times the Tocqueville quote about Americans forever forming associations. Associations and local governments are critical devices for lifting us out of the narrowest conceptions of self-interest, into more robust forms of community-mindedness.
Here, once again, the people in this room embody the wisdom bequeathed us by the small republicans and by de Tocqueville. You’re here today because you’ve established donor-advised funds that support, among other things, a great variety of local civic institutions. Within those associations—in schools, houses of worship, and voluntary groups—it’s still possible for you and those you support to build communities around compelling and rigorous moral or religious visions, that may even be at odds with the larger culture.
When I was a program officer at the Bradley Foundation back in the ’90s, the work I enjoyed most was our support for a vast range of local private and parochial schools in Milwaukee. They were established and supported by civically engaged parents seeking not just better academic training for their children, but also the kind of moral and religious instruction that had been driven out of public schools.
After consulting with Bob Woodson, we also funded many small, local nonprofits that similarly created the powerful spiritual communities needed to draw people out of poverty and drug addiction and despair. The Bradley Foundation is still doing this work, and so, I know, are many of you.
So the Founders’ vision for America was a combination of two things: the large commercial republic preferred by the Federalists, plus a great variety of smaller communities embodying strong moral and religious principles, of the sort envisioned by the Anti-Federalists. People engaged in commerce primarily, but also engaged in community-building, on a local scale.
Now, let’s acknowledge there’s a tension here. It’s difficult to maintain strong moral communities in the face of the allurements of commerce, as every failed utopian commune in our history attests. But it’s not impossible, as an array of powerful religious communities in America like the Amish and the Mormons prove.
On the other hand, it’s often difficult to confine the demands of an intense moral community to one particular place. It’s tempting to think that if we can build a healthy and life-sustaining community in this one location, if only in our imagination, why can’t we just expand it to the nation as a whole? You might think of this as the enduring but distorted appeal of the small republican ideal.
That’s certainly the left’s project today: establishing a sweeping quasi-religious code for the nation, holding us to impossible standards of moral purity and political correctness. It might seem that the only way to defeat that project is an equally sweeping vision of our own. Indeed, some elements of conservatism today have lost faith in the Founders’ vision of the commercial republic and want to establish instead a powerfully unified religious nation.
Slow but relentless workings
But I would say that the left’s utopian project will decline and ultimately fail not because we out-argue it, but rather through the slow but relentless workings of the commercial regime.
Take San Francisco. Its long-term progressive politics has become a bit more practical in recent years. Not because conservatives have made compelling arguments, though. Rather, the radical vision for the city was destroying commerce and everyday civic life. The chaos in the streets drove businesses out of
the city—as you know, whole sections of it have been stripped of commercial activity—which has enabled moderate political leaders to reclaim some ground.
In just this way, throughout our nation’s history, zealous left-wing crusades have gradually but invariably lost ground not because conservatives won arguments, but because, sooner or later, the practical and immediate demands of commerce reasserted themselves in the face of abstract utopian promises. It does take time, and that’s frustrating, but it does happen.
Happily, commerce and community continue to jostle and contend with each other in America today, as evidenced by the citizens in this room, at once products of commerce and builders of community.
In spite of the efforts by so many to shame us on the occasion of our 250th anniversary, telling us that we’ve fallen so far short of the Founders’ vision for us, I would say again that we’re pretty much exactly the sort of people they intended us to be. We should celebrate both their wisdom and our ability to embody it in our everyday lives.
