Hamilton on Faction

Regarding yesterday’s post, it would happen, of course, that the next thing I read, that evening, was an essay by Alexander Hamilton entitled “The Numerous Advantages of the Union.” It is essay No. X in The Federalist, written by Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in the late 1780s. My own yellowing copy came out in 1901. Herewith some quotes:

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interestd and overbearing majority.

It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our government; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administration.

By faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

These quotes from the first two pages of the essay. Hamilton goes on and succinctly but precisely describes the causes of faction. To entice the reader to pick up the book, I’ll provide these hints. Faction arises from liberty, inequality, and property. After that Hamilton argues why the U.S. Constitution curbs the effects of faction although it cannot eliminate it. If the crick don’t rise I’ll return to this subject and argue that changes since 1787 have made Hamilton’s own arguments much weaker today.
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Image from Wikipedia here.

Pressure

Rapid and efficient means of communication, especially coupled with sufficient leisure to use it, have increased what these days is known as “pressure.” The word occurs so often and so casually, it struck me that a closer look might be worthwhile. The thought floated into my mind while we listened to a reading of Lincoln first inaugural address. March 4th marked the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s swearing in. In that address the President gave an interesting tutorial on the meaning of “faithfully [to] execute the Office of President,” and this in the context of “pressure” on the government that soon after his oath had been rendered took the most extreme form of all: war. The Civil War began a mere thirty-nine days after Lincoln’s inauguration, on April 12, 1861.

The contrast between the nature of pressure and the President’s exposition of the meaning of constitutional government is interesting. What Lincoln said in essence was that no element of the Constitution had been violated by the government, hence any action that fell outside the constitutional rules represented a fundamental breach of law and of the union. The secession had commenced February 4 of that fateful year; thus the Constitution had been already been broken, de facto. But no violence had yet taken place. That happened with the attack at Fort Sumner.

Now my present intent is to examined the milder meanings of that concept, “pressure,” in order to examine how to understand that word in a political context. It certainly means something other than “providing information” or “engaging in debate.” When someone corrects my spelling or hands me the right tool when I’ve grabbed the wrong one, when someone reasons with me calmly to show me another way of seeing things—such things surely aren’t pressure—although they might produce annoyance. When people complain of “high pressure sales tactics,” the line has been crossed. Polite persuasion has descended a step and is now attempting to engage my emotions which (why else complain) I view as inappropriate in a selling situation.

Pressure tactics of whatever kind, therefore, involve a kind of force that, viewed soberly, falls outside the reasonable arrangement of a situation where restraint is required instead. President Lincoln argued for orderly behavior within the rules—while agreeing that, had the rules really been violated, revolution would be legitimate. He pointed out that that frequent elections give the people legitimate ways to change the government if the public is disappointed—especially under rules where minorities are protected.

Government under laws or government under pressure. Or, what the actual situation is today, government under laws but also under great pressure. The job of the President is not to lead but to execute the laws. The job of legislators is to make laws, not to drum up popular support, read generate pressure, to overcome legislators who would vote the other way. It was oddly refreshing to hear Lincoln's speech—attempting to persuade, without a threat in sight—in a day and age where the exertion of pressure through endless mechanisms of the Information Age is politics—by way of polls, pundits, press releases, talk shows, focus groups, conferences, demonstrations, and on. Very interesting. So pervasive is pressure, in our times, that those engaged in politics barely have time to remember what their actual job description is, never mind getting down to business. And the public, similarly, embraces pressure when it emanates from groups it favors—and only critiques it when it emanates from the opposite side. Can I think of recent demonstrations I don’t disapprove of? Yes, I can. No sooner have we elected representatives than we rally to undo the will of the majority. By pressure. But pressure is always the use of illegitimate force—at least as viewed from the highest human level. Yes. We’re all in this together, as it were. Force against reason. Not doing—once our representatives have been elected—is acutely painful after all.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane!

Having stayed out of the water for quite a while, at least two months—meaning that I’ve watched SyFy, cartoons, or Light Classical Music instead of wading in the stream of news commentary—listening to a perfectly sensible pundits’ circle like Washington Week, presided over these days by Gwen Ifill, produced a brief, temporary shock—until my old habits kicked in and the whole thing sounded normal again. The program last night focused on the President’s televised speech about Iraq; thus the talk was all about the President and how now, having “turned the page” on Iraq, he was bending all of his attention onto the economy. And there was more along these lines.

I knew the answers in advance, but I looked at the U.S. Constitution anyway to see if what I’d heard the pundits say had any relationship to the founding document—fully expecting to be in quite another world. I was right, of course—because memory serves, as they say. The word “economy” does not appear in the Constitution. To be sure, that word did not mean what it does today; it was applied to the household; “political economy,” meaning political arrangements, existed at the time, but isn’t used in the document either. The closest word in the eighteenth century to describe the reality we now call an economy was “commonwealth”; it signified public welfare and the general good. That word does not appear in the Constitution either. And it makes sense that it did not. The founding document was practical and down-to-earth. The last thing our founders imagined was that the executive power, which they vested in the President (Art. II, Section 1), was of such a nature as to manage the vast range of private exchanges between individuals. The President’s duties, as spelled out in the referenced article and section, include being commander in chief of the Army and the Navy, the power to make treaties (limited by advice and consent), powers to appoint officials and judges (advice and consent at the highest levels only), the power to make recess appointments, the duty to make a State of the Union report, the power to convene Congress in cases of emergency; and he “shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers.” His general duties are stated in this oft repeated but totally ignored sentence: “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.” And that’s it.

The original president, carrying these duties, was also chosen by elected officials by means of a curious mixture of elections, appointments, and elections. Elected state legislatures appointed electors; electors so chosen would vote for presidential candidates; the candidate getting the majority of the electors’ votes became the president. The twelfth amendment changed all this, and with that change we set out on the road to the present. Elected officials were presumably smart enough to know that a man with the powers assigned to him, and these have never been changed, could not possibly be Superman. But the general voting public—and today that means anybody 18 or over—cannot be so presumed to think and—thus—that public will exercise its punitive powers on anyone who fails to be the Caped Crusader. Oh, look: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman.

This development, all in the name of empowering the citizenry, has produced—by means of vast public communications which are not, themselves, under any kind of constraint—a vast fantasy of what is possible. We act as if this fantasy had real grounding in powers. It does not. But we are so very sophisticated that we can make all this sound deadly serious. Presidential powers as they are versus what they are perceived to be—and the change in how presidents are chosen—are the factual underpinnings for saying the sorts of things I said yesterday, namely that politics is more like weather than human endeavors. That probably sounded airy-fairy, but you can trace it backward to actual changes in the Constitution.

Washington Week used to be called Washington Week in Review. Remember? I said yesterday that in the Media the trend is toward contraction, greater speed, less reading, for Zeus’s sake. This is a tiny example of that.