Principles of American Democracy

Why American Democracy Has Failed and Why the Anti Federalists were Right
Introduction
The Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, asserted that “all men are created equal.”[endnoteRef:2] It was an Enlightenment notion: Thomas Paine, an avid follower of the Enlightenment Movement in Europe, had written the Rights of Man to support and promote the ideas of the philosophical revolution that had gotten underway decades prior with Rousseau’s Social Contract and the latter’s pursuit of naturalism in opposition to the Old World values, virtues and order.[endnoteRef:3] The problem that occurred in America was that the Founding Fathers were not of the same mind as Thomas Paine, though they readily used his words and ideas in their Declaration of Independence. Paine truly believed in the equality of all men and he was whole-heartedly opposed to the institution of slavery. The Founding Fathers were not, and the equality they expressed in the Declaration of Independence was meant primarily to be limited to the rights of the propertied class, i.e., themselves. Thus, the original Constitution of the US did not even address the issue of rights of blacks or women. As far as the framers of the Constitution were concerned, blacks, women and those without property were not to be afforded the same rights as the landed class. The individual states gave voting rights only to those individuals who owned property. It was not until the 15th Amendment of 1870 that the Constitution was amended and voting rights were ensured for all men regardless of race. Women, still, would have to wait another half century before they would receive suffrage. And that only came about as a result of an agreement between Carrie Chapman, leader of the Women’s Movement in the early 1900s, and President Wilson, who wanted support from the public for entry into WW1. The Women’s Movement had been opposed to war but it also wanted Congressional support for suffrage. Wilson promised that if Chapman threw support behind the war, he would move Congress to support an amendment to the Constitution to grant women the right to vote.[endnoteRef:4] In this manner, through backroom dealings and questionable reversals of principle, human rights were gradually protected by the US Constitution. What this shows, however, is that the ideal of American Democracy was not always in alignment with the reality of democracy in America. [2: Declaration of Independence. (1776). Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript] [3: Rousseau, J. (2018). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/] [4: Van Voris, J. (1996). Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York City: Feminist Press at CUNY.]
Human Rights and the Dignity of the Individual Person
In the 18th century, the rights of man were not a matter to be taken lightly or even something that one took for granted. As Lynn Hunt points out, one of the big questions over right was the issue of voting—the distinction between political and civil rights: “Political rights guaranteed equal participation; civil rights guaranteed equal treatment before the law in matters concerning marriage, property, and inheritance.”[endnoteRef:5] Today, the assumption is that people should have both civil and political rights and that these are part of their basic human rights—but such was not the notion in France. Certainly it was not the notion in America, where the test run for the French Revolution was conducted via the Declaration of Independence and the War that followed. [5: Hunt, L. (2016). \\\"Introduction: The Revolutionary Origins of Human Rights.\\\" In The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd Edition, edited by Lynn Hunt, 1-31 (Boston: Bedford), 1.]
Rousseau had helped to champion the idea of these rights, but he never moved beyond a vague, romantic idea of emancipation and freedom. Liberty was like an 18th century intellectual drug that fueled many a heady debate in many a salon. It was not necessarily something that anyone expected or foresaw needing to be writ down in fine, well-examined terms. Rousseau’s doctrines had helped to inspire the surge in Revolutionary ardor, but had done little in terms of developing a scholastic-like approach to the problem of governance. Those with a more scholastic-like mind, men like Abbe Sieyes, for example, demonstrated a bit more restraint in their approach to the rights of man than did Robespierre, who pushed for total equality and saw it as one of the noblest virtues of the revolution.
Natural law as summarized by Diderot in the middle of the 18th century in France had done enough to provoke outcry among the Old World political and religious classes. Like most of the Enlightenment thinkers, the idea of Original Sin was rejected, and naturalism like what Rousseau envisioned was viewed as wholly appropriate and acceptable and something that the Old World institutions blocked and opposed on principle because the leaders of the Old World knew if naturalism ever got a toehold in society, society would reject the Old World institutions out of hand.[endnoteRef:6] That was the belief of the Romantics and Revolutionaries, of Rousseau and his offspring, at any rate. Sieyes, who had become a Catholic priest (though his actual belief in the tenets of Catholicism is another matter), had a more reserved opinion on the matter, which came forward in his own arguments on how the rights of man should be observed by the new French Republic being created on the corpse of the monarchy. [6: Hunt, L. (2016). \\\"Introduction: The Revolutionary Origins of Human Rights.\\\" In The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd Edition, edited by Lynn Hunt, 1-31 (Boston: Bedford), 5.]
If there was any commonality among the Revolutionaries, however, it was at least on the matter of liberty. When the revolutionaries took over in France, the first principle they put forward was an echo of Rousseau’s doctrine in The Social Contract. Rousseau had written that man is born free and everywhere he is in chains in The Social Contract. The National Assembly in France in 1789 wrote: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.”[endnoteRef:7] In reality, the idea did not play out quite as practically as the revolutionaries envisioned. Political enemies were slaughtered by the thousands. Freedom and equality could not abide, it turned out, criticism or objection. In spite of the inherent contradictions in the doctrines of the Revolutions, their Social Contract succeeded in becoming the grounds for Social Action in the Modern World. However, many of their doctrines were materialistic, anti-God, and liberal and thus were a danger to Catholic morals and faith. Thus, the Church, beginning mainly with Leo XIII and Rerum novarum, began to assess and discuss the social issues that Christians faced, particularly in America, where naturalism and the doctrine of the Rights of Man as an ideal had been institutionalized, at least theoretically. [7: National Assembly. “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 26 August 1789.” Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/exhibits/show/liberty--equality--fraternity/item/3216]
The Dignity of the Human Person highlights the intrinsic value and goodness of life. It is an idea that has been embraced by the Old World as well as the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment eras. The notion of equality has been met with some resistance in America, however. The Founding Fathers initially did not see blacks, women, the non-propertied class or young people as deserving of the same rights as they wanted for themselves. Essentially, they wanted to be the governors of the New World. Yet, they installed the framework for human rights that became the nexus for change. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution was the first step in 1870 and granted blacks the right to vote. The 19th Amendment was the second step in 1920, which granted women the right to vote. The 26th Amendment was the third step in 1971, which granted young people the right to vote by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 in America. The rights of man, the dignity of the human person, and basic human rights were not instituted overnight in America. It was more of a process that took two centuries to work out.
The Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists
Voting rights in America was a major issue that shaped the country’s approach to the adoption of the Constitution. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, wanted a strong central government. The Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and others, wanted strong individual states. The conflict would not be settled with the passing of the Constitution. It would continue on and erupt in violence in the 1860s with the Civil War, fought over whether states had the right to secede from the Union. The Southern states believed they had that right. The Union, led by the newly-elected President Lincoln, believed otherwise. Jefferson Davis wanted the mattered settled in court, where due process could be had. Lincoln did not want to use the courts for fear they might rule against the Union and side with the secessionists, thus destroying the Union.[endnoteRef:8] The outcome of war reflected the problematic nature at the heart of American democracy: its practice did not align with the ideal. The ideal was that democracy must have a specific focus geared towards the role of decision making about the rules and policies for any group, association or society as a whole with a distinctive conception of citizens as bearers of rights and responsibilities; the people living in a democracy must be active participants in the collective bargaining decisions and policies which affect their lives. America had erected a democratic republic, meaning that the country had a representative government. The people would vote to elect a representative who would legislate, lead and judge with an eye towards the views and values of the people they represented. This in itself was an idealistic venture. America became an increasingly diverse nation from its birth onward. The control of government by the Founding Fathers was challenged by the flood of immigrants from Europe, whose beliefs were often Old World. Then there was the diversity among the population in terms of men, women, youths, and the various ethnicities. There was diversity in background: farmers, city workers, financiers, business owners, shippers and so on. Representative government was a difficult concept to make a reality in such an increasingly diverse nation. [8: Foote, S. (1958). The Civil War: Ft. Sumter to Perryville. NY: Random House.]
The Anti-Federalists believed it would be better if government was small, locally controlled and mainly at the state-level. If America was going to be a democratic republic it ought to be one that the people could have a sense of being in touch with. The Federalists viewed this idea as a threat to centralized control and power, which is what they sought. Though the American Revolutionaries had fought the War of Independence against the English Crown in order to have autonomy and control over their own lives and states, the Federalists did not want a loose confederation; they wanted control by way of a central, federal government. The Constitution was framed by the Federalists in such a way that it guaranteed the Bill of Rights to placate the Anti-Federalists. Embedded within the Constitution, however, was the seed for a strong central government.
If the main principle of democracy is that the people have a right to a controlling influence over public decisions and decision-makers, and that they should be treated with equal respect in the context of such decisions, the institution of American Democracy from the beginning only partially pursued these rights. The principles of popular control and political equality were not fundamentally present in the early days of American democracy. The Founding Fathers were not “little men” but rather businessmen looking out for their best interests and using the catch phrases and popular philosophy of the Enlightenment Era to rationalize and justify their war against the Crown. They no more believed in the equality that Thomas Paine preached than they did in the “rights of man,” since they only permitted most rights to the propertied class like themselves. Native Americans, slaves, women and Asians (who helped lay the railroad) received no rights or almost no rights. Even Lincoln only partially freed the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation, which today is popularly thought of as the moment that slavery ended. Lincoln had little use for democracy: he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and instead of allowing Jefferson Davis to contest the issue of secession and whether states had a Constitutional right to withdraw from the Union by taking it to the Courts, Lincoln baited the South into firing the first shot and then launched an all-out war on his fellow countrymen in the South. Lincoln’s so-called “pioneer democracy” as Turner calls it is little more than a mythical story told through rose-colored glasses. President Jackson sent the Cherokee in the South on the Trail of Tears that resulted in the deaths of thousands of human beings—all because it was easier for the ruling class to get what it wanted in Cherokee Nation by getting rid of the Cherokee than it was to respect the rights of these human beings. Frontiersman Davy Crockett accused Jackson and his vice-president Martin Van Buren of killing freedom with their assault on the Cherokee. It was not just the black population that was marginalized and oppressed under American democracy: it was any ethnic minority that stood in the way of the political class.
The Anti-Federalists had a sense that having a federal government would restrict the rights of the governed to have a say in their government. The Anti-Federalist argument was that the Constitution would enable a small group of people to “possess absolute and uncontrollable power, legislative, executive and judicial” and that the “intervention of the state governments” would be next to impossible once that happened.[endnoteRef:9] The Anti-Federalists further urged that “one man, or a few men, cannot possibly represent the feelings, opinions, and characters of a great multitude. In this respect, the new constitution is radically defective.”[endnoteRef:10] (Brutus No. 3, 1787). To have a truly representative government, the Anti-Federalists argued that government had to be small and essentially local—controlled at the state level. For the average person to have control in the decision-making process and for the average person to exert influence in the public arena, local government had to be the norm—that was the argument of the Anti-Federalists. The Federalists argued, on the other hand, was that the Constitution and a strong, central government would prevent “domestic factions and convulsions.”[endnoteRef:11] Hamilton stated in Federalist No. 7 that “America, if not connected at all, or only by the feeble tie of a simple league, offensive and defensive, would, by the operation of such jarring alliances, be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars.”[endnoteRef:12] Thus, it was the view of the Federalists that the Constitution afforded the nation the means of control required lest individual states led by individual people lead to too much dissension or lure the nation into foreign wars. Of course, it is the central government that has led the nation into war after war since the Civil War. In this matter, it appears the Anti-Federalists were more aligned with the ideals of American Democracy. [9: Brutus No. 1. (1787). http://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus01.htm] [10: Brutus No. 3. (1787). http://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus03.htm] [11: Federalist No. 6 (1787). http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed06.asp] [12: Federalist No. 7. (1787). http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed07.asp]
The Ideal
The reality may have fallen short of the ideal as America came to define itself, but the ideals nonetheless existed and were used by others to advocate for change and to push the nation towards the adoption of the kind of rights that seemed to be the basis of the founding of the country. The Bill of Rights, for instance, ensured that people had the right to assembly, the right to practice whatever religion they chose, the right to bear arms, the right to free speech, the right to be free from undue searches and seizures, the right to a fair trial, the right to due process. The Bill of Rights, incorporated into the Constitution, would be interpreted differently by succeeding generations of lawyers, politicians and judges, but the essence of the document showed that an ideal did lead and direct the Founding Fathers in many ways. Though they may have been blinded on the matter of equality, failing to understand that which Paine preached, they did have a clear sense of the need for a guarantee that individual freedoms would be protected by the government.
The idea that the people would be decision makers in the government was a popular one. Anyone could rise up to be in Congress, whether at the state or federal levels. Anyone could potentially be president—and the election of Lincoln showed as much. He had held no political status of much worth prior to his election. He was a country lawyer who won enough support among the electorate at the head of a new party to gain the White House at a particularly turbulent time in America. Lincoln has long been seen as a symbol of anyone being able to become president. Barack Obama is a more recent symbol of that same idea. The ideal of equality, of equal rights among all people, and of collective bargaining still exists in America. The ideals of American Democracy are always being pursued in some form or another. It is the reality of governance that tends to present the problems and the difficulties. Athenian democracy was a different matter altogether as the ancient city-state was smaller by an order of magnitude: it was essentially the type of government that the Anti-Federalists envisioned for themselves.
Yet, equal respect in the context of public decisions is nonetheless a hallmark of American Democracy as far as the ideals go. Today, the practice of equal respect has been somewhat destroyed by partisan politics in Washington. Whether it is Republicans attempting to drag President Clinton through a sordid impeachment process focusing on his sexual relations with an intern, or Democrats attempting to drag President Trump through a charade of collusion and various other accusations, the process of demonstrating equal respect seems lost on today’s political representatives. They engage in virtual signaling, bending the knee to the mob, kowtowing to big media, submitting to big pharma, and advocating on behalf of The Lobby. In short, there is very little respect shown to constituents. The seizure of power by governors even at the state level in response to a flu overly-hyped by big media as the next Black Death shows the extent to which today’s representatives view themselves as mini-dictators. In a nation that was meant to facilitate collective bargaining decisions and the establishment of policies that would cater to freedom and equality, the current turn of events bodes nothing good and in fact seems indicative of the path once taken by China a century ago as it descended into Communism.
Conclusion
Are the ideals of American Democracy closer today or are they further away than ever before? Equality under the law appears to be present on paper, but complaints of systemic racism still rage and the rise of Black Lives Matter is an indication that people feel disenfranchised and oppressed even still. Voting rights have been granted to all people, including women and young people, yet few people actually go out and vote. This indicates that there is little belief or trust in the democratic process. What does it mean, therefore, for the ideals to be pursued by some while the vast majority steer clear of the system altogether, seeking only to be left alone? Perhaps it means that the ideals of American Democracy are no longer something that many believe in, that many aspire to achieve, or that many want anything to do with.