Did the Framers Work to Avoid "Hypertrophy" of National Government?

I'm looking at yet another book by conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet, The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America, based upon his 1988 Jefferson Lecture to the National Council of Humanities for which he was invited in the Reagan era by the then Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Dr. Lynne V. Cheney (yes that Lynne Cheney--this gives an idea how the ideological right got such a foothold in the Reagan-Bush 12 years). In this book Nisbet is imagining what would most strike the Framers if they could see the America of today. His imagination leads him to guess they would be most struck by the "prominence of war in American life", "the Leviathan-like...national government", and how "loosely attached to groups" of kinship and community instead of by "the cash nexus."

This list gives an idea why I tend to see Nisbet as in many ways a genuine conservative but one whose analytic powers were blunted by his recognition by and association with modern right-wingers like Reagan and Lynne Cheney. His analysis is suggestive of the themes of a genuine conservatism but he fails to really draw the conclusions an authentic conservative like Peter Viereck would draw because he was too busy consciously or unconsciously protecting his modern sponsors. His mention of "the cash nexus" as the main glue of contemporary America should have led him to oppose someone like Reagan who absolutely glorified business and the search for profit, indeed, the 1980s were dubbed the era of 'greed'. A genuine Burkean conservative would have to be a thorough-going critic of America's devotion to revolutionary industrial capitalism which was the prime force that destroyed local face-to-face groups and made the 'cash nexus' one of the sole social connectors in modern America. If one is worried about the prominence of war in modern America who is more to blame than super-patriotic, hyper-nationalistic Ronald Reagan who devoted so much money to the 'defense' and 'security' establishment? And it is probably the growth of the power of 'defense' and 'security' that have contributed most to the growth of our "Leviathan-like" national government.

Here I want to stress just one point that Nisbet made which I think is flawed: in writing about the "hypertrophy" of our national government (p. xi) he said: "The Framers had worked most diligently to prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government." Having done a lot of reading lately about the Constitutional period this strikes me as a rather partial and inaccurate generalization. The very purpose of the Constitution was to create a more powerful federal government because of the disatisfaction of 'the Framers' with the perceived decentralization of the Articles of Confederation. Many, if not most, of the arguments at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were over just how strong and centralized the federal government would be. Recall that it was "Federalist" centralizers vs. "Anti-Federalist" decentralizers that marked the parties of that era and it was the "Federalist" centralizers, with a lot of help from 'republicans' like James Madison who won out. In Leonard D. White's The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History he wrote (pp. 13-4):

The event which was seldom absent from memory [in the minds of the Framers at the Constitutional Convention] was Shays' rebellion. The ruling consideration was not the revolutionary ardor of the 1770's but the sober necessity of order, commercial recovery, and fiscal rehabilitation.... A strong executive was attained in the Convention only by the hardest and most persistent fighting. At the outset Edmund Randolph had proposed an executive of three, in order to represent the major geographical divisions and to put the "remote parts" on an equal footing with the center.

As we know this proposal of a three person executive was defeated because the Federalists believed that conflicts and animosities between the three would make for too much conflict and result in inaction. James Wilson "preferred a single magistrate, as giving most energy, despatch, and responsibility to the office [White, p. 14]." Roger Sherman of Connecticut argued (p. 14) "An independence of the executive on the supreme legislature was, in his opinion, the very essence of tyrrany...."

In other words, many at the Constitutional Convention argued against a single executive who would be too independent of the legislature because they feared that would lead to "hypertrophy" of central power and to "tyranny". The power and relative independence and "energy" with which the President might act were precisely the issues fought over at the Constitutional Convention and, as we know, the relatively more centralizing views of the "Federalists" prevailed. This history, it seems to me, cannot support Nisbet's careless generalization that: "The Framers had worked most diligently to prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government." If they had been diligent about hypertrophy they would have kept the Articles of Confederation or at most amended them (which is actually what the Convention's original instructions requested; they decided themselves to write a whole new Constitution). Or they could have accepted some of the many suggestions made at the Convention which would have weakened the executive and truly tried to "prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government."

"Pseudo-Conservative": Origins of the Term, Part 2

In my "Pseudo-Conservative": An Update on the Origins of the Term I wrote: "As far as my etymological researches are concerned 'pseudo-conservative' may have first been used in a rather famous book, The Authoritarian Personality, written by Theodore Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford in 1950." My learned correspondent, Bill Christensen, tells me his etymological researches show usages of "pseudo-conservative" going back at least to 1863. Mr. Christensen advises: "For example, in a 1936 Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, we find this notation: 'We need to know more about the pseudo-conservative revolt against the very spirit of modernity which animates the members of these right-wing groups... ' In a 1914 issue of The New Republic, we read: 'The pseudo-conservative would object that such a program offers no relief from the taxation that now absorbs much of the funds needed to provide capital for industry. The true conservative would also be solicitous about capital for industry, but...' In a book on William Seward's foreign correspondence from the year 1862 (published in 1863), we find this gem: '...the leader, in conjunction with the kindred spirits who have always clustered round him, in a new Pseudo-Conservative party, who imagine they can restore to life the Union which they have stabbed, and the Constitution they have violated.'"

The 1936 Menninger Clinic reference is interesting for two reasons: 1) the Menninger Clinic was a psychoanalytic institution and the authors of The Authoritarian Personality were psychoanalytic in orientation; 2) the Menninger Clinic quote used the phrase "the pseudo-conservative revolt", and this was the title of historian Richard Hofstadter's very widely read 1955 article. Hofstadter cited The Authoritarian Personality and his thinking was influenced by psychoanalytic ideas at that time.

Many thanks to Bill Christensen who is the developer of two excellent websites: The Site Doctor.com, for increasing your website's usability and Technovelgy.com, "Where Science Meets Fiction."

"Pseudo-Conservative": An Update on the Origins of the Term

For previous posts on this topic see Why Pseudo-Conservatives are not "Conservative" and Recognition of the Need for the Term "Pseudo-Conservative".

As far as my etymological researches are concerned "pseudo-conservative" may have first been used in a rather famous book, The Authoritarian Personality, written by Theodore Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford in 1950. The authors wrote that the pseudo-conservative "in the name of upholding traditional American values... and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aim at their abolition." I find it difficult to improve on that definition fifty-six years later. Our pseudo-conservatives of today are also fighting "more or less fictitious dangers" such as "Islamo-Fascism" and "International Terrorism" in the "name of upholding traditional American values", and in this very struggle are "consciously or unconsciously" threatening the abolition of these very American values. (From previous posts I've made it clear I do consider "terrorism", properly understood, as our biggest current foreign threat, see What is a Progressive Foreign Policy?).

After The Authoritarian Personality appeared it was rather savagely attacked for methodological and other alleged shortcomings and was assigned to the social science slag heap. What is quite unusual is that it has undergone rediscovery, improvement and validation over the last 25 years. At least two psychologists have contributed to this rebirth: Bob Altemeyer of University of Manitoba and John Jost of New York University. Altemeyer has overcome many methodological shortcomings reported in books like Right-Wing Authoritarianism (1981), Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism (1988), and The Authoritarian Specter (1996). Jost has done a long series of studies finding support for the concept. Jost recently published a summary article in the American Psychologist entitled "The End of the End of Ideology".

Jost sums up the "end of ideology" well: "The end of ideology was declared more than a generation ago by sociologists and political scientists who—after the titanic struggle between the ideological extremes of fascism and communism in the middle of the 20th century—were more than glad to see it go. The work of Edward Shils..., Raymond Aron..., Daniel Bell..., Seymour Lipset..., and Philip Converse... was extremely influential in the social and behavioral sciences, including psychology. The general thesis of these authors was that in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, both the right and the left had been equally discredited and that “a kind of exhaustion of political ideas” had taken place in the West.... Ideological distinctions, it was suggested, were devoid of social and psychological significance for most people, especially in the United States."

Shils in particular demonstrated that his predictions regarding "conservatism" were more a reflection of his wishes than anything else. In 1958 Shils opined: "The conservative revival, though genuine, is moderate. People take Burke in their stride. They have become “natural Burkeans” without making a noise about it. The National Review, despite its clamor, is isolated and unnoticed, and the effort to create a “conservative ideology” which would stand for more than moderation, reasonableness, and prudence has not been successful." A worse social science assessment might be difficult to find. The only other that occurs to me is economist Irving Fisher's prediction on October 16th, 1929: "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanent plateau...I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."

Commenting upon what this "end of ideology" era did to The Authoritarian Personality Jost wrote: "Adorno et al.’s [book] is one of the most influential—and also one of the most badly caricatured—books in the history of social science. One Web site claims that Adorno and colleagues “attacked the ‘authoritarian character’ of the American nuclear family, the ‘problem’ of the American people’s belief in a transcendent monotheistic God, the underlying ‘fascist’ character of all forms of American patriotism, and American culture’s excessive reliance on science, reason, and ‘abstract ideas.’” Another lists it as one of the “most harmful” books of the last two centuries. Roiser and Willig... noted that even in academic circles, “The Authoritarian Personality has been the victim of several determined attempts at psychological and political assassinations”." Hmmmm. Sounds like The Authoritarian Personality may have hit a nerve with pseudo-conservatives.

Jost continued: "There are signs that Adorno et al.’s... work is gaining new appreciation, at least in part because of the current political climate.... Many of the fundamental ideas of the theory of right-wing authoritarianism have resurfaced in contemporary accounts of the “culture wars".... There is now sufficient evidence to conclude that Adorno et al... were correct that conservatives are, on average, more rigid and closed-minded than liberals. My colleagues and I published a meta-analysis that identified several psychological variables that predicted, to varying degrees, adherence to politically conservative (vs. liberal) opinions.... The original studies, which were conducted over a 44-year period that included the end-of-ideology era, made use of 88 research samples involving 22,818 individual cases and were carried out in 12 different countries: Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. The results,.. show a clear tendency for conservatives to score higher on measures of dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, needs for order, structure, and closure and to be lower in openness to experience and integrative complexity than moderates and liberals. Several studies demonstrate that in a variety of perceptual and aesthetic domains, conservatism is associated with preferences for relatively simple, unambiguous, and familiar stimuli, whether they are paintings, poems, or songs."

I believe these findings that pseudo-conservatives are likely to share characteristics of an authoritarian right-wing personality is at least a step toward solving my problem of understanding what is so compelling to some leaders and some followers about "toughness" in foreign policy (See What Are the Assumptions Underlying "Tough" Foreign Policy? and Why are Pseudo-Conservatives Addicted to "Toughness"?). However, it is not the whole answer and I will continue my researches upon this question.