There also is an assumption throughout Hartz that a proclivity in the direction of laissez faire
effectively breeds atomism when it actually engenders association. Both Adam Smith and Peshine Smith
(together with Carey and Raymond) are built on this argument, if in varied degrees. But the central theme
in Hartz involves the alleged tyranny which this creates, another flaw in his system. Not only was the
constitutional regime structured to preclude factional majorities from a tyranny of majority through the
system of checks and balances but also in the protection of minority rights. The very tyrannical conformity
he argues may not be that at all. The community of values of the middling classes may be another source
of the liberation of creative powers. That it would reject either class ethos or particular 'values' sprung out
of such ethos does not make it tyrannical. It has, at times, been susceptible to both. The psychopathic
paranoia of McCarthy should hardly be elevated to this point. Then too, the recognition in our system of a
positive role of governance in avoiding or handling the 'tyranny of the market' further specifies the
differentiation. And yet, Hartz wants to frame the American ideology in those terms:

"Richard Hildreth, writing after the leveling impact of the Jacksonian revolution
had made this point far more obvious, put his finger directly on it. He denounced
feudal Europe, where 'half a dozen different codes of morals,' often in flagrant
contradiction with one another, flourished 'in the same community,' and celebrated
the fact that America was producing 'one code, moral standard, by which the actions
of all are to be judged ...' Hildreth knew that America was a marvelous mixture of many
people and many religions, but he also knew that it was characterized by something
more marvelous even than that: the power of the liberal mores to penetrate them all." (31)

Perhaps, but not the liberal norm as it becomes in Hartz, any more than Jacksonian policies effected
'leveling.' The 'sense of community' may be deceptive, but to conclude that because "the sober faith that its
norms are self-evident" makes it "one of the most powerful absolutisms in the world," that it can lead to
"Rousseauan tide" of "conformitarianism." If, at particular junctures, it appears to enforce a clone-like
conformity, that is much too superficial an observation This ethos in Hartz, like the "other-directedness"
in Lipset and Marcuse's "one-dimensional man" does not explain the tolerance for diversity that, if at
times repressed, has managed always to blossom in American life, even if somewhat altered. Nor does that
reject the commonalities which are essential. Indeed, the 'association' requisite for achievement of the
categorical imperative described here renders it mandatory. What Hartz does do is construct a
foundational argument for the civil religion invention toward that end without, in any event, an actual
intent to do that. But that construct in Hartz is identifiably differentiated from the essence of that taken
here, and that distinction identifies further the liberal strand which Hartz is building in several variations.
Indeed, it is against republican thinking that much of his effort seems directed. His discussions of the
Federalists and Whigs, for example, virtually uses democratic beliefs as a battering ran against them, or
rather, 'liberalism' as his paradigm of America as opposed to and in opposition of republicanism.
Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism made use of the rhetoric of liberalism as the bludgeoning tool to
undermine Federalism and the republican order. Especially with Jackson, what was accomplished was to
secure, it not create, a real American aristocracy devoted to its precepts, in the Southern gentility and New
York banking houses, and one which would cultivate liberal rhetoric as an acceptable cost of a benefit of
magnified economic hegemony. This was, in Marxian terms, a petty bourgeois doing the bidding of an
incipient aristocracy or bourgeoisie, at least, too, in incipient form. Hartz goes to some length to establish
the expansion of the franchise as a hallmark of Jacksonianism, and this has been a typical assertion, but
one which completely fogs the issue. The road toward universal male suffrage had been well trodden
before Jackson's shenanigans were able to capture the Presidency. The he benefited from it is perhaps less
questionable than whether he aided its spread, and is as problematic as is the validity of the vote that won
him the White House. His election is probably as much attributable to the personality and political manner
of Quincy Adams as to anything else.

'Extension of the suffrage' is also a relative term, such citizenship expansion not reaching to either
slaves or Indians or women. Indeed, they were to catch the brunt of Jackson's boot heel, but no more than
the country did generally as the Democrats destroyed the symbol of the supposed aristocracy, the Bank,
and turned over the U. S. economy to privateering finance capital, and 'local energy,' their cronies
throughout the land. And this was the genuine beginning of a real, not a 'natural,' aristocracy in this
country. The struggle which culminated from there (aided by the appointment of Taney to the Court) had
been a central one in the early years of the Republic. It had pitted Hamilton against Jefferson and even
moreso, Burr and his Manhattan Bank, and would fuel the fires that would inflame the country until it
was engulfed in Civil War. And rather to the contrary of Hartz in his assessment that 'American
Whiggery' failed to take advantage of its opportunity by developing a programmatic initiative
emphasizing American unity (32), that is precisely what the 'American System' did and was. This was the
essential character of the Whig Party.

Hartz also toils with 'the speedy triumph of democracy in America.' He finds Turner's thesis wanting
"because frontiers can be found in other lands." Urban industrialization also breaks down as an
explanation since England and France did not achieve it (democracy) so readily though that characteristic
was even more developed, and earlier, there than here. His conclusion is:

" ... that the quick emergence of democracy was inherent in the American
liberal community," (33)

a proposition he sees as not falsifiable. That may in and of itself create theoretical problems, but the
emergence which seems so troublesome to him is even more adequately explained by the fact that the
Republic was really a continuation of the long established civic culture of the country, a point he almost
makes himself in explication of the Revolution, but fails to connect with here. That culture was inclusive
of a republican and capitalist ethos cultivated by a growing republican or civic virtue. It is also the case
that about the time of the War of 1812, a sense of nation-hood and nationality was developing in the
country, replete with at least some of the basic rudiments in symbol and substance of the civil religion.

What Hartz argues is "the atropy of Whig Progressivism," (34) apparently on the reasoning that its
republican character was not liberal in the sense of being 'democratic.' Although he phrases this in the
same kind of language he uses to typify Hamilton as anti-democratic and lacking in faith in the people, it
is not anything of the sort. Hartz claims that there was no 'mob' for the Whigs to fear because to the extent
that there was any such thing, it was as liberal and democratic as they were, but this ignores the
underlying fundamental character of the republic as a form of governance especially in a limited
government state where the creative forces of the people are unleashed in myriad pursuits, but also such
that they can scarcely 'pay' the information costs required for 'democratic participation.' Central to that is
the concept of republican virtue. Nor does he seem to grasp the distinguishing characteristics of a natural
aristocracy of merit based on education and such virtue. And the 'community' of 'local energy' was a ruse
in reality turned against the evolving community of the Republic.

The dilemna that needs consideration is not that of the Whigs so much as it is that of Jefferson. He
wants to make him liberal, democratic, and capitalist, when such terminology is hardly appropriate. But
the real 'agenda' of Hartz may be betrayed in the interchangability with which he makes use of the terms
liberal, democratic, and progressive. Hamilton was on firm ground to be "frightened of democracy," (35)
especially that of Jackson (which ultimately developed out of what he feared). The market revolution
which has been, for example, associated with the Democracy was actually, like the suffrage, well in place
at least in incipient form, well before General Jackson assumed power. If anything, both developments
were stymied by it, markets by its initiatives being largely surrendered to emergent aristocratic interests
under its gimmickry. Here is jacobinism clearly manifest, virtual 'window-dressing' of political power
devoid of competent political economic perspective, and his discussion of the 'atropy' identifies it. (36)

Hartz lays much of our jurisprudence system at the feet of Alexander Hamilton, who, having been
denied the "anchor of aristocracy" which his "hatred" for the people seemed to require, got a modified
variation of nobility in the courts and legal system:

"Denied the rock of aristocracy, confronted with a Constitution that was a
constantly moving set of wheels and mechanisms, he seized upon the one
thing in the situation that did not move at all: the Constitution itself. Nor was
this a purely metaphysical enterprise ..." (37)

Although Hartz' view of Hamilton is rather typically skewed, the ability of the United States to continue
"all of the same estate" (38) is testimony to the degree of achievement his programs brought about.
Terming his 'nationalism' as 'legal rather than social.' it did not embrace:

"... in any Rousseauan sense -- as, ironically enough, Jefferson's 'anti-nationalism'
did -- the American popular community," (39)

a firm testimony to the poverty of political economy in the analysis. A rudimentary fallacy of THE
LIBERAL TRADITION lies in the inability of Hartz to find a term for his 'American democrat.' (40) It is
there, and it is 'republican.' A quotation taken from John Taylor, entered by him by way of complaint,
however, specifies that a "multitude of proprietors" has made American "irretrievably republican," and so
much so that "aristocracy cannot exist." (41) But this also gives rise to a question as to what it is Hartz
means by liberal democracy. It is not always clear. In fact, his analysis seems to blur the lines of
differentiation as both democracy and republican government in America became variations of the liberal
tradition. But that is hardly sufficient explanation, either. A partial reframing of the Hamilton/Jefferson
dichotomy proceeds from this. For Jefferson, virtue and goodness flow from the cultivation of land
whereas "industrial cities are dangerous things." At the same time, in Hamilton, agrarian fixation such as
this is wasteful and counter-productive, while industrial forms represent liberating potentials for the
developments in ethos and economics necessary for human existence in their connection to democracy.
And here we arrive back once more at the categorical imperative which encompasses capitalism and
republican virtue cultivation. But Hartz wants at different points to connect liberalism to the towns and to
rural culture. (42) He seems to be actually be referring in each instance to different variations of liberalism
by his hybrid standard. Republicanism, however, transcends the categories, referring as it does to an ethic
of civic virtue or civic competence which Hartz twists into Whiggish aristocracy. In fact, as has been
pointed out here, it is the only ethic with functional practicality, and therefore is the only practicable
'liberal' form, the costs of information, again, running too high for 'purer' democracy. But the liberalism in
Hartz clearly runs in the opposite direction. Ronald Reagan, like so many leaders across the political
spectrum frequently referenced the rhetoric of Jefferson (he scarcely would want to draw on much of
Jefferson's practice, such as regards military preparedness), but always doing so in a greater context of
building a 'shining city on a hill.' The economics of the matter are crucial for understanding. Jefferson's
model of self-dependent independent agrarian virtue could not possibly produce the wealth requisite for
human sustenance (though self-reliance within a developing capitalist society would be enhanced by
wealth generation of it), trapping it in a Malthusian quagmire. This, in addition to the actuality that the
sophisticated complexity of the mutually dependent association necessary for not only such sustenance but
expanded reproduction levels could not function as liberal democracy, except as it is defined as
republican. And, as Tocqueville argues, it was the development of market economies which produced the
industrial revolution and the progressively higher living standards which have ensued.
To be fair to Hartz, he does take Jefferson to task on these matters:

" ... what seems to me the important thing is ... the nature of the error Jefferson
made. For what Jefferson was doing when he assailed the industrial worker was
overlooking the magical alchemy of American life which was responsible for the
very small liberal farmers that he loved. That alchemy, in addition to transforming
bitter peasants into dynamic liberal farmers, was going to transform bitter
proletarians into incipient entrepreneurs. Jefferson emphasized the concrete fact
of the ownership of property, which to be sure was not a characteristic of the
industrial worker ... the liberation of the American farmer was largely a psychological
matter, a product of the spirit of Locke implanted in a new and nonfeudal world; and
this spirit, freed as it was of the concept of class and the tyranny of ancient tradition,
could infect the factory as well as it infected the land." (43)

He further emphasizes such spirit, not merely among this 'proletariat,' but in schemes of the
workingmen's group's cadre leadership like Skidmore and Orestes Brownson promoting capital
accumulation and entrepreneurship. (44) Yet, no sooner has Hartz done this than he falls back into his
democrat vs aristocrat polemic grumbling, as if, for example, he never heard of Martin Van Buren. He
does develop the tension which developed between what he terms capitalist and aristocratic interests and
something of the conflicting evolution of private banking and currency expansion counterposed over and
against what took place with Biddle's Bank, (45) but as the new Whig Party positions itself to further its
American System agenda, it is posed as what almost amounts to an amelioration of the differences
between the two liberal strands of democracy and republicanism, wanting them to converge
programmatically. (46)

In point of fact, even when the plans of the Democracy took on forms reminiscent of Whig policies,
such as with internal improvements, they were usually fundamentally different, serving parochial needs or
interests or agenda, as, for example, slave-holding or pet bank standpoints. More often, what the
American democrat was about was class-baiting, attacking the rising capitalists:

"The result was that a theory of class war which in the first instance was overdrawn
became further confounded by a theory of class causality which cannot be defended." (47)

Hartz was referring in that passage specifically to limited liability but more generally to the idea that
'political action of legislatures' was the source of impetus to capitalist success. But what it could more
appropriately be branded would be Henry Carey's 'supply side' economics. Hartz proffers, however, that
the country's liberal unanimity was the reason that:

" ... the entire nation, in the end, fell for ... its capitalist dreams." (48)

There are points like this one where Hartz' commentary strips away all pretense and lays bare to the
bone his prejudices. Discussing the chronic lust and appetite of capitalists for profit, he bemoans the
'hidden hunger' of "the dream of new and greater wealth" (49) which he also ties to Hamilton, betraying
an obvious anti-profit bias even though development comes out of capital accumulation. Hamilton, of
course, as Whiggery in general, is repeatedly belittled for an effort to "conjure up a tumultuous populace,"
(50) when there was, despite the protestations of Hartz, an incipient 'mob' inherent in the Democracy.
There was both tumult and the potential for it, as the Civil War attests.

Unifying forces were present in the country, but they were weak and under assault. Hartz talks about
"Hildreth's point about 'sympathy,'" (51) but acknowledges how it does not function "in all cases ... [but]
... only when groups have enough in common to identify with each other." (52) What Hartz calls "a false
American fear" of the mob, he claims:

" ... has produced a fantastic American system of checks, and the falsity
of the fear, the liberal unity of the nation, has permitted those checks to
survive." (53)

It was, of course, somewhat more complicated than that, as with the entire American System strategy of
common interest cultivation. But the phenomenon of unity was buttressed by the legal system overall and
judicial review specifically, and:

" ... in the end the work of Marshall flourished and the symbolism of the Court
and Constitution became a national fetish." (54)

And Hartz tells us that there was, in fact, at least a patron saint of this Republic:

"But throughout it all the liberal temper of American theory is vividly apparent.
Locke dominates American political thought, as no thinker anywhere dominates
the political thought of a nation. He is a massive national clich�'." (55)

For Hartz, this 'Middle Period' between Revolution and Civil War was, again, marked by a unanimity of
an "absence of opposing principles" and by:

" ... the fact that beneath its political heroics the nation was of the 'same mind'
on the liberal formula ... [and this] ... settled in advance the philosophic question." (56)

Can that be 'settled' as in Civil War? Historians have posited both consensus and conflict theories of
our history. In that juxtaposition, Hartz holds a somewhat curious if precarious position. A nation already
being rent asunder had 'settled' on a liberal unanimity, political factional alignments (incipient parties)
converged programmatically, a society of equals was battling capitalist vs aristocrat, urban vs rural, et al,
and above it all, the sainted Jefferson was admired as the proponent of unity, but whose basic theme
overall was "one of conflict." (57) Clearly, the forces of 'unity' arranged around republicanism were the
twine that held it together. Liberal democracy could not incorporate such heterogeneity whereas checks
and balances, economic development, cultivation of civic competence and republican virtue, all of which
were held together by the glue of civic religion, could accomplish the feat -- except, that is, for the Civil
War, for which liberal democratic propensities very nearly did in the Republic. This American
Thermidore Louis Hartz seeks to portray as conservative reaction -- even a reactionary enlightenment --
but always in the context of perhaps flawed but nonetheless liberal thinking. But ranging through a
number of voices from Fitzhugh to Calhoun, what it actually comes down to is the Confederacy as liberal
democracy poised against republicanism. His view, however, is that what the South represented was not
feudalism, as it could not be that (58), but "a simple fraud," a self-deluding kind of liberalism. It was
indeed a fraud, that the popular sovereignty of the Confederacy was not liberal democracy, that slavery
was not a tyranny of the majority. Hartz describes the South as it "began to break with their Jefferson
past." (59) but it might more accurately be seen as the lawful fulfillment of it, from slavery itself to the
inevitable consequence of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. If he rejects Parrington's attempt to
characterize the Confederacy as a version of 'Greek democracy,' (60) in the sense of popular sovereignty,
it was much closer to that than he is willing to concede. There was an internal inconsistency in Southern
political thought according to his interpretation that left the Confederate mind in a quandary (61), but
nothing in the discussion brings the region's thinking our out of the box it is trapped in of slavery as this
tyranny of the majority in a liberal democratic regime. And while that in many ways fits the larger theory
of American society portrayed in THE LIBERAL TRADITION, he seems to try to argue out of that
application (62), though he comes back to the argument that the South was more liberal than feudal (63).

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