American nationalists, Part 1
American nationalists, Part 1
Reflections on Chapter 2, Parts 1-5, of Hazony's Conservatism: A Rediscovery
Chapter 2 lays out Hazony’s argument that the English conservative tradition crossed the pond and took root in the fledgling American nation, finding especially good soil in the Federalist party of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jay, and later-Chief Justice John Marshall. Hazony seeks to demonstrate that American government, and particularly its Federalist expression, wasn’t a radical break from the British constitutional tradition, but a continuation and refinement of it. And last chapter’s contrast between Burkean conservatism and Lockean liberalism plays out here as a clash between Hamiltonian nationalism and Jeffersonian republicanism. (The “Cabinet Battles” in Hamilton actually capture this pretty well!)
Nation builders
Hazony contrasts the Federalists who “wished to see America become a unified nation and an industrial, commercial, and military power—in effect, a republican version of Britain”—with Democratic Republicans like Jefferson and Thomas Paine who “regarded the American Revolution as having been fought not only against British monarchy and aristocracy, but more generally against Britain’s centralized government, established religion, and financial system” (p.38). Hazony’s key move here is to reframe these early debates in terms of nationalism. The Founders weren’t just fighting over policy proposals. They were contesting more fundamentally what it means, and what it takes, to be a nation.
Hazony never really explains what he means by American “nationalists.” He assumes, I think, familiarity with VoN. For Hazony, nationalism is neither “nativism” nor statist authoritarianism. It is national self-determination, a principle that puts the nation-state at the center of political order. Contrast nationalism with two other forms: tribal anarchy, involving no central government (like the American states pre-1787); and supranational empire, where order is enforced through the artificial “machinery” of ideology rather than natural bonds of loyalty (family, language, shared national heritage, etc.).
Contract, creed, and covenant
Hazony argues that the Founders were self-consciously building a nation, not upon abstract “self-evident truths” and ideology, but with the well-hewn institutional materials they inherited from the British constitutional tradition—a “system of dispersed power, with a strong executive balanced by a bicameral legislature,” “an independent court system,” taxation by representation, and individual rights, including due process of law (pp.47-48). In the words of the historian Gordon Wood, the Americans “revolted not against the English constitution but on behalf of it.”
But how much explanatory power does this argument hold? Hazony is surely right about continuity with the English system as key to America’s success as a nation. But isn’t there something more to America? We are more than the sum-total of these political institutions, important as they are. We are, at our core, a nation that seeks to embody an idea. Consider the following:
Abraham Lincoln: America is a nation “conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to [a] proposition,” namely, the equality of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville: The “character” of America is “the product … of two perfectly distinct elements”: “the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom…. Far from harming each other, these two tendencies, apparently so opposed, advance in accord and seem to lend each other a mutual support.” | “Religion, which, among Americans, never mixes directly in the government of society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates their use of it.”
G.K. Chesterton: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed,” one set forth with “theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.”
Gordon Wood: Republicanism—“[t]he sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good”—“meant more for Americans than simply the elimination of a king and the institution of an elective system. It added a moral dimension, a utopian depth, to the political separation from England.” “To make the people’s welfare—the public good—the exclusive end of government became for the Americans … a central tenet of the [political] faith,” shared even “by Hamilton and Paine at opposite ends of the [political] spectrum.” (Creation of the American Republic, pp.47,53,55.)
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: “[A] covenant is about neither wealth nor power, but about the bonds of belonging and of collective responsibility…. [T]he social contract creates a state, but the social covenant creates a society…. America understands more clearly than any other Western nation that freedom requires not just a state but also and even more importantly a society, a society built of strong covenantal institutions, of marriages, families, congregations, communities, charities, and voluntary associations.” (Renew the American Covenant, pp.6-8.)
Hazony, as far as I can tell, never invokes the concept of “covenant,” but perhaps it holds the key to his thought. For covenant implies both the natural bonds of loyalty, which Hazony extols, and the ideological commitments necessary to good government, which Hazony tends to downplay. Tocqueville’s insight that religion is the steward of freedom, and Rabbi Sacks’ insistence on “bonds of belonging” coupled with “collective responsibility,” are useful insights.
Marshalling the evidence
Chief Justice Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), establishing the power of judicial review, is a cornerstone of American law and a foundational case for every American law student and lawyer. Yet it’s often regarded as a kind of jurisprudential Athena, as though it sprang fully formed from Marshall’s forehead. Hazony explains that it did not, that the lead-up to Marbury was a series of early Federalist decisions that helped cement the country into a nation (pp.57-62). This is a fresh and original account of the Supreme Court’s incunabula.
Lest we overemphasize the lawyers, Hazony also stresses the importance of the unitary American executive, national(ist) immigration policy, the alliance with Britain, established religion, and opposition to slavery. Some of these are the subject of our next reflection.