Leftism

The Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans were certainly neither democrats nor liberals. John Winthrop declared that democracy was “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.” The best part of the people he considered always the least, and of the best part the wiser again always the lesser. John Cotton was equally blunt: “Democracy, I do not conceyve that God did ever ordeyne as a fitt government either for the church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? As for the monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approved and directed in scripture.”

The Dutch establishment in New Amsterdam (New York) had no democratic character either. The Constitution of Pennsylvania (William Penn’s Concessions) had a somewhat democratic character, but freemen and proprietors alone could vote. On the other hand, only the Constitution of Pennsylvania could be called liberal, and it remained so. (Religious tolerance in Maryland, shaken in 1692, came to an end in 1715 when Catholics were disenfranchised.) Democracy certainly had no appeal south of the Potomac, and after Independence was achieved by the Thirteen Colonies there was only one state which had an egalitarian franchise—Vermont, a state admitted to the Union only in 1791.

And yet it is undoubtedly the American War of Independence (which was not a revolution!) that provided the main psychological momentum for the French Revolution. Of course there were also other intellectual and political currents contributing to the French Revolution. First of all, there was the “example” of England, frequently and tirelessly cited by Voltaire, who owed so much to this northern neighbor of France. Then there was the example of Switzerland, which fitted in so well with the romantic temper of the time: the beautiful, rustic, well-regulated, republican, progressive community on the doorstep of France. There were the Encyclopedists. There was Rousseau (from Geneva!), and last but not least, the Marquis de Sade, the Grandfather of modern democracy.

Yet we must remember that the picture of England, as seen and understood by Voltaire, and the sentimental portrait of Switzerland, had very little to do with the reality of these two countries. The Swiss Federation became a democracy only thanks to her Constitution of 1878, and it can be argued that certain Swiss cantons remained oligarchic-aristocratic units until the dawn of this century. No wonder, therefore, the third Image d’Epinal, the United States, is the most fascinating temptation of them all, because, due to its geographical remoteness, it is even more of a lure to the revolutionists than France’s immediate neighbors. The interpreting of a foreign country, a foreign culture and civilization, and, above all, of a foreign political movement, is always full of pitfalls.

In other words, the filiation between the American War of Independence and the French Revolution exists in a technical sense, but as far as ideas and content are concerned, we are faced with a tremendous and catastrophic misunderstanding.

So far, so good. Yet we would delude ourselves if we were to assume that there existed no strong antimonarchical or even leftist sentiment in the Thirteen Colonies. Earlier we mentioned religious and political traditions in the colonies which clearly stem from British independentism. The civil war in Britain and the Jacobite-Hanoverian antagonism also left their imprint on North America. And so did the political crystallization of British parliamentary life with its two factions: the Tories and the Whigs. The term Whig had originally a Scottish and Presbyterian connotation with republican undertones and also implied toleration of the Dissenters. The word Tory was Irish and denoted loyalty to the Stuarts as well as “Popish” inclinations. These were originally nicknames and they underwent a certain evolution. The Whigs, moreover, were related to the Roundheads and the Tories to the Cavaliers.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, it was evident that the Tories were the party of royal privileges, of the small nobility with aulic leanings, of the clergy of the Established Church; while the Whigs stood for the big, independent-minded, rich, landed nobility. Thus the Whigs, not the Tories, represented the aristocratic spirit. The French Revolution has somewhat obscured the real state of affairs by creating a curious alliance between the Crown and the nobility, who were opponents and competitors throughout most of European history. It is evident that a genuine aristocracy is never in favor of an absolute or an excessively strong monarchy unless the monarch, as a primus inter pares, is merely the executor of the will of the nobility. Und der König àbsolut, wenn er unsren Willen tut!” (The king may be absolute as long as he does our will!) Aristocrats are often downright republican in spirit: In a monarchy the nobility can only play second fiddle to the king’s first, while republics often have been exclusively aristocratic in character. This is especially true of ancient Venice and Genoa as well as of a number of Swiss city-cantons. In this connection remember that monarchs, by their power to nobilitate, are (or rather were) constantly able to foster the process of social mobility and, in fact, were acting against aristocratic exclusiveness. The aristocratic republics (sometimes dominated by a patriciate without titles and even more exclusive than many a titled aristocracy!) were therefore often highly static and conservative states. Old Geneva was, needless to say, a far more hidebound city than, let us say, Munich, Berlin, or even St. Petersburg.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century we witness in Britain the split between the New Whigs and the Old Whigs, an evolution that did not take place in North America. It is obvious that in the Western Hemisphere the Whigs were the ones who were critical of the Crown and, therefore, of the tie with Britain. The Tories were again the “Loyalists” as they were in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ireland. The Whigs are those frequently inspired by certain republican notions: they felt that they were “just as good as the King” and they were the ones who made the War of Independence against Britain, against the Tories . . . against the Tories abroad and at home.

We owe it to the pen of Kenneth Roberts, who not only was a good novelist but also a first-rate amateur historian, that we have in his Oliver Wiswell a very “live” picture of the civil war aspect of the American War of Independence—a civil war between Whigs and Tories. This struggle as was to be expected, also had its analogies and repercussions in England where Whigs, quite unpatriotically, could not suppress a feeling of elation over the victory of their political coreligionists in America.

Thus the foundations of the American republic are aristocratic and whiggish. As we have pointed out, this does not stand in contradiction to an antimonarchic sentiment, however. The antimonarchical tradition of the United States, moreover, has long roots. It has probably increased rather than decreased over the years and has affected American foreign policy in the most fatal way—fatal to those on the receiving end, fatal also for American self-interest. Antimonarchism, as we shall see, has cost untold billions of dollars and, what is far more depressing, thousands upon thousands of American lives, victims of a piece of American folklore activated and accentuated by leftist prejudices and propaganda.

If Gallic Papists have the right
To worship their own way,
Then farewell to the liberties
Of poor Americay.

The suspicion arose that George III (who had so stoutly resisted the emancipation of Catholics) had secretly become a Catholic: kings, after all, must admire popes, and popes will support kings. John Trumbull in his satirical poem McFingal accused the King in these terms:

Struck bargains with the Romish churches
Infallibility to purchase.
Set wide for popery the door,
Made friends with Babel’s scarlet whore.

While we have to bear in mind that there existed in the Thirteen Colonies an antimonarchical sentiment and occasionally feelings which even might be styled egalitarian, we have to see in the young American Republic a polity which was deeply whiggish or, in other words, aristocratic in character. One should never forget the term “democratic” appears neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution, and that even the noun “republic” can be found in neither of these two documents. The Constitution merely insists that the member states of the Union should have a “republican” form of government. And actually, if we analyze the Constitution of the United States, we find that, in its original form, it can be considered a serious attempt to establish a mixed government with democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical elements, a government of checks and balances. If these three elements would derive their power from different sources, the attempt could be called successful. As it was, the Constitution provided for a republic (polity) rather than for a regimen mixtum, but ever since its inception the American Republic has been exposed constitutionally to democratizing influences, the dependence of the electors upon the voters, the direct election of senators, even the two-term amendment, the impending direct election of the President, etc. The older republican (and more strongly democratic) constitutions do not provide for a president—neither for a head of state nor for a head of the government. The Swiss “President,” for instance, is merely the chairman of the council of cabinet ministers, (the seven Federal Councillors) elected by both Houses of Parliament. He is elected for one year only. His portrait is not found in public buildings, but that of the commanding colonel’s. (Only in times of mobilization does Switzerland have a general).

In the same work he wrote that “we may appeal to every page of history . . . for proofs irrefragable that the people, when they have been unchecked have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king or senate possessed by an uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally and without any one exception usurped over the rights of the minority.” And he added in another passage, “All projects of government formed upon a supposition of continual vigilance, sagacity, virtue, and firmness of the people, when possessed of the exercise of supreme power, are cheats and delusions.” This tallies with his remark, “The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all: they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body. Individuals have conquered themselves: nations and large bodies never.” Adams fired his heaviest artillery at democracy in the same work when he advanced twelve points, of which we quote only a few:

4. That no love of equality, at least since Adam’s fall, ever existed.

5. That no love of frugality ever existed as a passion, but always as a virtue.

6. That therefore the democracy of Montesquieu . . . [is] all mere fragments of the brain, a delusive imagination.

7. That his passion of love for democracy would be in the members of the majority only a love of the majority. . . .

11. That in reality, the word democracy signifies nothing more nor less than a nation or people without any government at all. . . .

So much about the alleged intrinsically leftist nature of nascent America.