XVIII  GEIST AND ANTI-GEIST

     There is, after all, a substantive distinction between what is promulgated under the guise of liberalism
in the late 20th century in the United States and the 'classical' form. Indeed, in an almost curious
juxtaposition, the contemporary form of conservatism actually coheres much more closely with classical
varieties of liberalism. A fundamental point of differentiation involves the vision held of the human
species. Modern liberal doctrine manifests little faith in the competence of individuals, politically,
socially, or economically, while the conservative philosophy frames such matters in the potential for
rational thought. Clearly, there must be checks and safeguards against failure of the power of will, for free
choice carries with it the prospect of harmful decisions, and information costs can be prohibitive. That has
the basic spirit of Madison inherent in it, and forms one of the operative purposes of government, but the
rudimentary rationality and goodness of man is what limited government is all about. And especially
given the lapse in such limitedness in the contemporary America, the concomitant expectation of flaws in
the general will make such protections all the more vital, but the aim of conservative 'liberalism' centers
on diminishment of such usurpation through renewed delimitation of authority and the cultivation of the
general will. That is the reason that the entire construct of civil religion is so critical to the conservative
vision. It is 'conservative' of republican virtue.

     Contemporary liberalism will likely object. What they seek, after all, will probably be said to be the
empowerment of people. But such empowerment negates the basic notion of rights which stem from our
humanity, not from the largess of the state an entitlements do. Not only that, but the liberal agenda is
largely focused on group rights, not those of individuals. The invisible hand can not be permitted to
function unabated for it can only be abusive. And yet such a viewpoint is in fundamental conflict with the
concept of pursuit of self-interest, as Rawls theory of redistributive justice is quite clear about. The more
unfettered capitalism is, the more injustice will be done. Government is perceived as a necessary element
of social control, as is all religion, and certainly the civil form of it, and hence the 'new covenant.'

     This leads the liberal mind to yet another paradox. Since human beings cannot be relied upon to
behave rationally, the regime must oversee them. The collective of man will somehow function rationally
where the individual cannot be trusted to do so. Hence, the basis for planning. And yet, it seems at least a
bit bizarre to assure that what the individual is largely incapable of, the collective will be able to achieve.
The collective is better identifying self-interest and rationally determining its operation than is any
individual. Aside from the logistical impossibility of such micromanagement, it does great violence to the
individual. And here, the notions of the Framers that it is government which must be constrained to
permit the flowering of the individual is reversed to the opposite idea that government must constrain
individuals and that only through its manipulations will they be able to function. The government as a
corrupting force of individuals is made into a restraint system against the corrupt individual, who, in any
event, can not function on its own and, corrupted by nature, cannot exercise any free will but is
determined by its environment. Instead of being a liberating force, social construction becomes a prison
which must be guarded by authority. 

     The attempt in Louis Hartz to rationalize the contemporary liberalism as classical represents exactly
this sort of contortion. It also is a representation that superimposes the political on the social and
economic. Democratic politics must involve the democratization by fiat of society and the economy by the
constraint of the counter-democratic inevitabilities inherent in them. Never mind the failure of such
conceptualizations in economic terms for the moment, it also assumes that a Lockean polity cannot be a
Lockean society or economy. If the difficulties of transition in central Europe and the former Soviet Union
demonstrate anything, it is the falsehood of such a philosophy. Political 'democracy' means very little
without the social and economic freedom of markets, and cannot 'produce' them. In fact, quite the opposite
is the case. The only secure foundation for political democratic forms is a republican society and market
economy.

     Hartz may have written in part at least in response to McCarthyism, but the liberal tradition he
identifies as having given rise to it, is, in his vision of the resolution of its intolerance, actually the source
of a much more repressive order. And the superimposing of such a liberal politics on a fettered society and
economy becomes a jaded jacobinism which should have been clearly seen in France two centuries ago. It
may have been to the Framers, to whatever extent they were 'liberals;' it obviously has been lost to Hartz
and contemporary liberals.

     The effort throughout Hartz to effectively identify the anti-Geist as the Geist leads to some strange
observations. The idea of a certain exceptional case for America to the contrary notwithstanding, it is
simply not true that there was, for example, no 'Alger myth' in either Germany or England. Not only, for
instance, was WILLIAM TELL very much in that spirit, but Schiller generally is just that. So is much in
the work of Mozart and Beethoven, in their music and its operatic and other verbal accompaniment as
well. Liebniz may embody it even more. In the case of Britain, Shakespeare exudes it, and he is in this
aspect, at least, not unique. Certainly, there were characteristics in both of these cultures which actually
subverted the process, and in the United States, Alger perhaps, much as Paine wrote, was uniquely and
perhaps peculiarly 'plain' in its statement -- some might even say 'democratized' though others might term
it somewhat 'vulgarized' and naked in its imagery and message, unlike the exemplars identified for the
Continent. On the other hand, the Horatio Alger 'myth' is much more pervasive of American literary
endeavors than such a representation might infer. So Hartz is quite off the mark where he contends:

	"Or take the explanation from capitalist growth of the national Alger ideology
	after the Civil War. Capitalism was surely related to Alger, but if it produced
	him, why did it not do so in Germany where it was booming at the same time
	or in England where it boomed earlier? Actually the Alger spirit is  the peculiar
	instinct of a Lockean world ... " (1)

It may be Lockean in some sense, but as it is, its presence in some form should also be anticipated in
England especially as well as Germany. The feudal factor in Europe and the absence of much of the feudal
ethos in America may help account for the difference, in form and in degree, or such exhibitions of the
spirit as this represents, and may offer fertile ground for comparative analysis to be sure, as Hartz
suggests, (2) but that should not serve to blind us. Hartz has simply misspecified the problem on this
score. 

     In a similar vein, Hartz errs in his seeing Beard, for example, as an example of analysis which is
uniquely American (3). Quite to the contrary is actually the case. Hartz does assert, without
characterization, the group orientation of his liberal vision of America, (4) and he incorrectly assumes a
class orientation for positions taken on the issue of Smoot-Hawley. It is much more than a lacking of
'piety' which he holds marked the 'patriotic' historians. At this point he also virtually equates the modern
and classical forms of liberalism (5) in what becomes a 'unity of opposites.' The 'irrational liberalism' he
purports for America (6) may well apply to the modern but not the classical variations. The dilemna
which the paradox poses, for Hartz and liberals generally alike, is very apparent in his reference to
Tocqueville:

	"We find in him a series of deep insights into the American liberal community.
	And yet while American students have lavished unlimited praise on Tocqueville
	... they have deserted him when they have come to serious work, gladly substituting
	the Beardian notion of social conflict for his famous notion of equality. (7)

His contrasting of Progressivism and the liberal society is equally dismaying:

	"The Progressives, for one thing, always had an American hero available to match
	any American villain they found, a Jefferson for every Hamilton. Which meant that
	in their demonology the nation never really sinned; only its inferior self did, its
	particular will, to use the language of Rousseau." (8)

     On this, contemporary American conservatives may be just as subject to the flawed vision of liberal
society as contemporary liberals. Jefferson was hardly an hero to contrasted to a villainous Hamilton.
There has been some problem with historical analysis. His concluding thoughts to the first part of his book
betray his purpose, as well as lay bare the soul of modern liberalism. We do not need to recapture our past,
but to transcend it and ourselves on his view(9). "There is," Hartz claims, "no going home again for
America." Preposterous is not too strong a word. A better analogy would be that we cannot cut off our
roots, or that, as we do, we sever the wellsprings of our national life, and this seems quite literally what
contemporary liberalism would do to the Constitution today. A favorite hymn of the civil rights movement
which was an adaptation of a 'Negro' spiritual in some respects reminiscent of African influence answers
him:

	"We're marchin' on to freedom land
	Marchin' on to freedom land
	God's our strength from day to day
	As we walk the narrow way
	We're goin' home
	We're goin' home
	One day we're gonna be free."

     Hartz puts great emphasis on the absence on a need for a democratic revolution in America and the
advantages which that gave us. Corollary to this was the non-existence of any feudal order here and a
similar advantage attached to that. In fact, they are really the same argument. This fact also "shaped every
fact of their social thought," (10) and the fact of being born free has also meant that we have been born
'sober.' Hartz insists, too, upon:

	"The fact that the Americans did not share the crusading spirit of the French 
	and the Russians ... [and] that spirit was directly related to the 'civil religion'
	of Europe and is quite unthinkable without it." (11)

     Although in bringing up the term civil religion, Hartz is probably lending support to the value of the
type of analysis this undertaking represents, it is quite difficult to comprehend his characterization of the
American spirit as absent of missionary enthusiasm. Perhaps it was less so before the last forty years of
Cold War crusading, but then there were the two world wars. In fact, there has always been such a sense
in the nation's spirit right down from the days of Franklin. The fact that we were quite preoccupied with
matters in this half of this hemisphere and through that time before this century rather unprepared and
unable militarily to advance any cause, a reality further reinforced by distance and water, should scarcely
read isolationism to the degree he wants to read it. The Monroe Doctrine is testimony (though he might
answer that it meant little for its first century and may have relied on British or other power for support,
and was, in any event, limited in geographical scope to our region), but so too are Lincoln's alliances and
earlier Whig efforts at trade and influence establishment especially with the East. Further, if 'isolationism'
marks much of our pre-World War II Era, it can probably be associated much more closely with the
Democracy than it can the Whig tradition in politics. Hartz has mentioned Washington's Farewell
Address (12) but falls into the oversimplification trap usually accompanying it. The urge to steer clear of
'entangling alliances' was not an absolute rule of thumb. In particular it specifically was oriented to the
struggle among European Empires and most especially Britain. Alliances outside of that class were clearly
not to be avoided. Hamilton, who wrote the Address, was quite specific on this point in other contexts.
Some of the greatest blunders of our foreign relations stemmed from the isolationist fancies of the
Democracy. Objection to this on account of Wilson does not realize his aberrational character on this as a
Democrat. He, at any rate, does seem to violate Washington and Hamiltons' entanglement caveats, and at
a decided risk to our national sovereignty. And, even if the point is less relevant, the attribution of a
singular civil religion for 'Europe' profoundly misrepresents the situation there (although it may exist in
some incipient fashion). Even more peculiar is his characterization of the 'shining optimism of Europe' as
opposed to quite the opposite in America (13). It is valid to see complete corruption of man in Marx and
perhaps in Rousseau, but the corruption in the vision of Sam Adams was, as Hartz sort of intimates but
drops, very different with potential a key aspect of differentiation.

     As Hartz brings the discussion to elaboration on the American spirit, he opines:

	"Thus the American liberals, instead of being forced to pull the Christian heaven
	down to earth, were glad to let it remain where it was. They did not need to make
	a religion out of the revolution because religion was already revolutionary." (14)

The fact that they did precisely this seems at this juncture at least to allude him. This also bespeaks of a
flawed concept of 'perfection' as earlier discussed as pervasive in Hartz. And this is all strange, located as
it is in a section which begins with the assertion of an American notion of a 'chosen people,' and one
grounded in a vision of itself as a 'beacon' and a 'city on a hill.' And yet, Hartz proceeds, turning an ounce
of truth into a pound of misunderstanding, but in doing so, he characterizes, if toward erroneous
conclusions, at least the secular religious nature of the American spirit, its 'prophets,' its 'sober reason and
reflection [that] have done the work of enthusiasm and performed the miracles of God." (15) The
'messianic spirit' he cannot see as having arisen here at the Revolution is, further, an incredible lapse in
this analysis.

     THE LIBERAL TRADITION IN AMERICA then returns to the question of an absence of feudal forms
in North America and the impact that had here:

	"Sir William Ashley, discussing the origins of the 'American spirit,' once
	remarked that 'as feudalism was not transplanted to the New World, there
	was no need for the strong arm of central power to destroy it." (16)

The neglected truth Hartz sees in this perspective is, of course, a useful point. He does acknowledge that
there were some semblances of feudalism in this country, but they were clearly not of the substance of
European forms, and it may therefore be reasonable to draw on this a different theory of power in this
country (17) And yet, the claim that European liberals in order to smash feudalism need central power
where Americans did not is to neglect some rather obvious discrepancies.

     While America's exceptional situation in this regard, making it exceptional compared to other nations,
may differentiate it from Europe in any necessity of strong central government, there are a number of
examples of other countries where the comparison suffers greatly. It may be that Australia and Canada are
arguably similarly exceptional and developed without a strong central authority because none was needed
to crush feudalism there, either, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the Americas. These countries,
too, lacked feudal regimes, unless perhaps the latifunda qualify as such, and to accept them as that one
would have to also accept patroons and slave-holding as much stronger pseudo-feudal forms than Hartz is
willing to do. By and large, however, the state systems they developed were decidedly marked by much
stronger central order. And this occurred not in any context of smashing any form of aristocratic order,
but rather, in anything, toward their more secure establishment. Another approximately similar situation
can be seen in South Africa which lacked the feudal ethos but sought strong central power. And here, a
further possible differentiation seems to break down because like Canada, Australia to a lesser extent, and
the United States, it was far less homogeneous than the Latin states, heterogeneity being another plausible
rationale for decentralized authority, though quite an arguable one. Of the three purest examples of
exceptional regimes, only America evolved the strongly centralist device of judicial review, although, to
be fair, that could be construed as a delimiting instrument, as Hartz apparently does. America is also
unique, not only among the three, but among the entire set of non-feudal new states, with a tradition of
written principles of order, as he does demonstrate. This argument does not fare well, either, as
explanatory of the eventual development of stronger central authority which the United States has
experienced. Even with the multiple problems in Hartz, he does convey a real sense of the religiousity and
spirit that animates America, misspecified as it may be as to the substance of that spirit, as he unveils:

	" ... one of the enduring secrets of the American character is a capacity
	to combine rock-ribbed traditionalism with high inventiveness, ancestor-
	worship with ardent optimism." (18)


     The project of  Hartz seems determined to constrain the nation's development through Marxian
conceptualizations and terminology in its effort at rationalizing its non-Marxist direction. Americans are
said to be "a kind of national embodiment of the concept of the bourgeoisie," (19) and while that concept
is rare in American social thinking, we are the 'most bourgeois' nation on earth (20). Franklin is described
in terms of his 'bourgeois self-satisfaction.' We were saved from 'class obsession' by what Jay termed the
'free air' of life here, but the misinterpretation of the American mind such analysis is grounded in shows
itself in the suggestion that what was "reputedly, the most 'laissez faire' country in the world" (21) has
been more recently better characterized by the 'mass of early economic legislation' and related 'business
controls.' (22) The exercise is tantamount to ascribing 'socialist' to supply side economics. But then, Hartz
never really gets around to describing just what he means by socialism. It is one thing to identify "the
mentality of a victorious middle class," (23) and quite another to brand it bourgeois. Marxian usages of
such concepts are at best problematic. Generalized use of them creates grave misrepresentations. Hartz is
at considerable pain in rejecting the idea of the existence here of any real aristocracy, so even contorted
versions of a 'middle class' when there was no nobility or peasantry to be 'between' cannot stand, but the
whole mischaracterization of bourgeois as a middle class of artisans and merchants or shop-keepers fails,
at least in reference to Marxian usages. The emphasis Hartz places on feudal ethos and relics should have
propelled him to a more suitable expression which delineated this problem of language, but he seems to
fall into step with the usage. The term in Marx undergoes quite a twist between the renaissance and
industrial periods. There may, in fact, exist in contemporary America, a genuine bourgeoisie, but the
Rockefellers who typify it are scarcely 'middle class' as the term has come to used. The use of the term
proletariat fares no better in common utilization or here.  It may be plausible that socialism grew in fertile
soil in Europe out of its feudal past and the relics of it which persisted, and that it never took root in
America due to its absence. That is not to accept any inevitability to its existence in Europe. In fact, it is
possible that the mentality here transcended socialism, and that socialism represents a step back toward
feudal forms. The philosophy here was one geared to wealth generation and capital formation as the basis
for development, a problem which socialism generally is quite unable to explain.

     For all the problems inherent in Hartz' analysis, he does at points, again, make some pertinent
observations as to the American spirit. He makes reference to Crane Britton's  description of an American
conception of "business [as] a noble life," (24) but seems puzzled by the "peculiar sense of community"
which marks America:

	" ... man began to be held together, not by the knowledge that they were different
	parts of a corporate whole, but by the knowledge that they were similar participants
	in a uniform way of life -- by that 'pleasing uniformity of decent competence' which 
	Crevacour loved so much." (25)

And he wants to attribute much of the American mind to a deeply embedded sense of natural law (26)
although this for him is paradoxical for "Unchallenged men of business ... [who] ... did not have to equate
morality with it." (27) The 'morality' of capitalism was precisely the point. Hartz builds the peculiar 
community spirit of America into an authoritarian drive for conformity which he later identifies as the
basis for McCarthyism. This conformity he locates in the middle class mentality, much as Lipset and
Marcuse would later do, and it becomes a form of authoritarian tyranny.  Hartz wanders off-base in
respect to the success and perseverance of the Constitution, as well (28). Instead of demonstrating the
weakness inherent in it when faced with "fundamental value struggles," the Civil War may actually
demonstrate its strength. Perhaps  it relies on the 'mutual dependence' of Americans, but it may, more, be
a conscious endeavor to cultivate just that. The assertion that the "complicated scheme of checks and
balances" can only work in a "highly unified nation" fundamentally begs the question for a society the
hallmark of which has always and increasingly been a heterogeneous population. It is very important that
such a system which entails:

	"Delay and deliberate confusion in government ... [will become] ... intolerable in communities
	where men have decisive social programs that they want to execute." (29)

     The 'happy accident' was the design, and it was a "scheme to deal with conflict that would only survive
in a land of solidarity." The contortion of liberalism which is inherent in Hartz is demonstrably apparent
when he describes how the way that design functioned in our history would necessitate that:

	"The American liberal would pursue its own objective course behind the ideological
	smoke and flame that Federalism generates." (30)

Continue