Morality & Foreign Policy
Imperialism Destroys
The Constitutional Republic
By Michael P. Federici
Because of its sober and realistic assumptions about human nature
and the human condition, the American republic of the Constitution of
1789 is not designed to do the big things typical of empires. It is
especially not designed to do that which has most characterized empire:
conquer. When America does pursue empire, it undermines the very fabric
of its constitutional government. Imperial expansion pulls at the
threads of constitutionalism, ripping away the supports of limited
government: separated powers, federalism, and checks and balances. More
importantly, the quest for empire, even in the modern ideological form
of spreading democracy, liberty, and equality around the globe, diverts
the American imagination from the center of constitutional politics and
life. The unwritten constitution, the cultural foundation for
constitutional government, ceases to concentrate its attention on what
is primary to a modest republic: the soul, the family, the
neighborhood, the school, the church, the community. It directs the
imagination to a distant abstract world in which virtue becomes
synonymous with global humanitarian crusading. It makes a spectacle of
politics. The place of modest republicanism, by contrast, is local; its
scale is proportionate to its modest objectives; it is threatened by
the vulgarity of empire, which poisons the sensibilities of those who
struggle to possess republican virtue.
To follow the path of empire is to transform American identity and
self-understanding; it is to transform the constitutional regime
itself. To borrow the language of Walter McDougall, in doing so,
America ceases to be a promised land and becomes a crusader state.1
American crusaders like Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Croly recognized
the inadequacy of the Framers' constitutional system for the work of
political religion. They insisted that the cumbersome American
constitutional system be reformed to empower government for the
challenge of social and global transformation. Ironically, the more
successful the Progressives have been in centralizing power, the less
great by traditional standards America has become. The Framers did not
design the American republic for imperial greatness, but when it
functions as intended, it produces something even greater than empire:
a free society with limited government and the rule of law.
But there is more to the special kind of American greatness
bequeathed by the Framers. Due in large part to their variegated
circumstances, Americans have been sensitive to the value of human
diversity, appreciating that it may play a part in pursuing
universality. The American motto, e pluribus unum, and the
federal and decentralized character of American political institutions
testify to this aspect of the American genealogy and character. In
America, local communities and groups have been free, within limits, to
find their own way to the good life. The kind of uniformity that
stifles diversity, more common to unitary systems of government, is
incompatible with America's historical past. Unity is found through diversity, because there is more than one road to the common human ground.2
From the early days of America's formation, a contrary tendency has
been present in the American imagination, one that looks disparagingly
upon decentralized power and a multiplicity of communities. This view
pushes toward uniformity as represented in Rousseau's notion of the
general will. It insists on a monistic, allegedly virtuous uniformity
that divides society and world into stark categories of good and evil.
According to this view, Americanism is the best possible way of life
for all people.3 A recent form of this creed is reflected in
the idea of Francis Fukuyama that history has "ended" in the sense that
it is inconceivable that any society could surpass the American/Western
achievement.4 This ideology asks: Who wouldn't welcome
American democracy, liberty, and equality? Isn't it obvious that so
many people in the world live lives that are inferior to those of
Americans? Why not spread the virtues of America? Why not globalize
America? If we were not tone-deaf to the vulgarity of empire, we should
hear the hubris that animates questions like these. We should hear it
as well in statements by David Frum and Richard Perle in their book An End to Evil:
"A world at peace; a world governed by law; a world in which all
peoples are free to find their own destinies: That dream has not yet
come true, it will not come true soon, but if ever it does come true,
it will be brought into being by American armed might and defended by
American might too."5
Alexander Hamilton knew that the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 had
done something rare in the annals of history; it had produced, as he
noted in Federalist 1, "good government from reflection and
choice." Such governments have been rare because they require the
presence of modest men and women who can keep their desires within
constitutional limits. Hamilton and other Framers noted the historical
and international significance of their work. Did this boast imply an
American mission to govern the world, an empire of some sort? No,
Hamilton made it clear that it would be American "conduct and example,"
not force, that convinced the world that governments could be
established from reflection and choice. It would undermine that very
point to suggest that America, once she had established her own
government by reflection and choice, should then impose by force
similar governments on others. Nor did Hamilton and the Framers
suggest, as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson might have done, that
reflection and choice always lead to the same form of government. The
Framers understood, as Orestes Brownson would put it much later, that
"Forms of government are like the forms of shoes-those are best which
best fit the feet that are to wear them."6
The proponents of ideological Empire measure the success or
greatness of their own regime by the extent to which the universal
values of the state ideology are spread. The missionary zeal of this
endeavor is present, for example, in David Gelernter's argument for
Americanism as the fourth great Western religion.7 Gelernter
argues that World War I illustrates America's "democratic chivalry" and
"the worldwide realization of the American Creed"—liberty, equality,
and democracy for all mankind. This globalization of the American Way
required a "global statement of faith and hope." And what is this
statement? "I believe in America." This notion of the savior nation
emerged in earnest with the Civil War and Lincoln's reshaping of the
American identity. Gelernter adds, "America's participation in World
War I was her attempt to act like the new chosen people, to set forth
on a chivalrous quest to perfect the world; to spread
liberty, equality, and democracy to all mankind." America is a global
humanitarian cause. According to Gelernter, America is a world religion
"for the oppressed, the persecuted, and the simply idealistic all over
the globe."8
It is difficult to imagine a more romantic, utopian, and
ideologically imperial conception of America than this one. The
objective of Americanizing the world is closely connected with modern
war, and its mass destruction of human life, property, and humanity is
telling. Gelernter states that the U.S. "must use the evil of war to
spread the good of liberty, equality, democracy."9 His
ideological passion "to perfect the world" blinds him to the reality of
war and its failure to perfect so much as one human being, never mind
the world. America, in this conception of its role, is the new messiah
with the ability to do what the Christian savior did not attempt,
transform the order of being in history. This vision, permeated by
nationalistic vanity, is repugnant to moral realists who understand the
limits of politics and human nature.
Frum, Perle, and Gelernter represent a way of thinking that clashes
with the American Framers' classical and Christian realism. Unlike the
Framers, they believe that evil can be eradicated. James Madison
reminds us in Federalist 10 that some evils are "sown into
the nature of man." Rather than eliminating them, the best we can hope
to do is control their effects.
An ideological aspiration to Empire results from an obsession with
politics, an attempt to subordinate all things to the political. There
is more than a hint of imperial obsession in Walter Berns's book Making Patriots.
Berns argues that the American Founders, following Locke, created a
regime in which "we are first of all citizens, and only secondarily
Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other religious persuasion."10
If this be true, then in America the ethical ground for civil
disobedience or moral opposition to the state has been lost. That Berns
is intent on placing the things of Caesar above the things of God is
odd given the enormous suffering produced by similar efforts in the
twentieth century. But this is a project typical of the Enlightenment
mind: Devotion to God runs the risk of creating irrational spiritedness
that engenders social and political conflict. Defuse religion, remove
it from political life, and toleration and peace will follow. The work
of Eric Voegelin suggests, however, that despiritualizing political and
social life does not lead to toleration and peace but to the
totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Berns and Gelernter are
confident that ideological devotion to abstract principles like
democracy, equality, and liberty can only have a civilizing effect on
America and the world. Yet in this effort to eliminate political
violence they inspire just what they claim to be combating by
suggesting that world peace is gained by the forcible spread of
American ideology. Moreover, the transformed world that they envision
does not require spiritual work; it requires the creation of the right
political institutions animated by the right political ideology. This
notion brings to mind T. S. Eliot's refrain in Choruses from the Rock:
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
Eliot's insight is followed by the admonishing line:
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.
There are many reasons for parting company with the pretentious
advocates of American empire, but, first and foremost, one must object
to their romantic dreaming of a world in which Jacobin or
quasi-Jeffersonian notions of equality, liberty, and democracy are
realized. In short, they are not moral realists. They envision a world
in which individuals and governments will do all that is necessary to
uphold natural rights without persons' needing to pay much attention to
their own ethical life. They fail to take account of the depravity that
is never absent from the human condition. They assume the possibility
of a world without evil.
What is at issue is the meaning of greatness. According to one view,
of which the Framers were representative, personal moral character is
an essential attribute of a certain kind of greatness. Dictators may be
great in the sense that they have attained great power. But power for
its own sake is not the proper measure of greatness. Plato's Republic
makes this clear: Thrasymachus is not a philosopher; he is a
philodoxer. Using power to promote the common good and lead men to
virtue makes it consistent with true greatness. George Washington is a
great man because he, unlike most rulers, did not lust for power as an
end in itself and was willing to share it and use it for the common
good. George III is said to have called Washington "the greatest man in
the world" because he put down the Newburgh Conspiracy; he refused
great power because he knew it would be destructive to republicanism in
America.11 He chose the modest path, a different kind of
greatness, the greatness of Cicero and Cato and other men who risked
their lives in efforts to save the republic from empire.
Greatness in this sense does not require that one live in a powerful
regime that occupies center stage in world politics. In fact, such
greatness is not the monopoly of any one nation, race, or epoch.
Greatness is the product of conquering the self rather than nations,
their armies, or nature.
Subduing totalitarian regimes does not in itself constitute
greatness. Stalin not only helped to subdue Hitler, but, if John Lukacs
is correct, Nazi Germany would not have been defeated without the
contribution of the Soviet Union. If Hitler had won the war, that would
not have made Nazi Germany a great nation. Neither Nazi Germany nor the
Soviet Union were great nations in any meaningful sense of greatness.
They may have been colossal, but they were not great. Thrasymachus and
Protagoras would have us believe that human success and power in
themselves are the measure of greatness, but Plato and Aristotle knew
better. Greatness is measured by conquering and knowing oneself.
Buddha's Dhammapada captures the essence of greatness in the
succinct statement that, "If one man conquer in battle a thousand times
a thousand men, and if another conquers himself, he is the greatest of
conquerors."
America's primary challenge of greatness in the twentieth century
was not that of winning the world wars or the Cold War but of
maintaining fidelity to the spirit of modest republicanism out of which
she was born, this at a time when she was tempted by her economic and
military strength to reach for empire and dominate the world. America's
challenge in the post-Cold War era is not to subdue the world and
spread her values. The challenge is rather to subdue the will to
empire, a desire that, if gratified, will mean the end of American
republican government.
Fortunately, there is growing intellectual opposition, much of it
philosophically and historically grounded, to the imperial trend in
American politics and culture. It is reinforcing doubts in the American
public regarding the tendency to see the world as America's business
and America as the model for changing the world. Most generally, this
intellectual opposition is exposing the romantic understanding of
democracy and human nature and the nationalistic hubris is that animate the desire to have America dominate the world.
Whatever may be new in what has been argued here, its moral and
philosophical substance is old. The modest republic is inspired by
thinkers as diverse in time and place as Aristotle, who defined and
counseled moderation in his conception of both politics and personal
life, and C. S. Lewis, who understood that pride is the undoing of
individuals as well as nations.
The American Constitution, to reiterate, was not made for empire but
for modest republicanism. In fact, the United States were born in
opposition to empire. As Robert Nisbet has noted, "the American
Constitution was designed for a people more interested in governing
itself than in helping to govern the rest of the world."12
To argue for American empire is to argue against the American
constitutional heritage; it is to import a pedigree of thinking,
politics, and government that is alien to and destructive of America's
constitutional order.
Empire is also contrary to American interests. Empire means
conquest, and conquest means tensions, violence, and war. International
conflict becomes more likely with each step toward empire. It is not
surprising that in the wake of late nineteenth and early twentieth
century calls for global crusades for democracy the U.S. was engaged in
war for nearly seventy-five continuous years. Empire breeds the war
state, and the war state is ultimately incompatible with constitutional
government.
Empire is destructive to the very self-restraint that makes
republican government possible. It is inspired by the pride that
animates C. S. Lewis's "man-moulders" in their efforts to remake human
nature and the world. But it might be asked: Is it not the work of
great men and women to mold the citizenry—and of great nations to mold
the world? Are they not, like Plato's philosopher-kings, aware of
universal forms of good and beauty that should shape the souls of
malleable masses at home and abroad? These are not the aspirations of
the advocates of republican virtue. Even the more subtle sound of
imperialism grates on republican sensibilities. The world is not the
plaything of Americans.
In view of the constant talk today of the virtue of greatness, who
can possibly be against it? But greatness can mean radically different
things. The greatness that sends Americans across the globe crusading
for democracy is the Trojan horse of America's constitutional regime.
The allure of a powerful state seduces many into believing that it has
only altruistic motives. The sweet sound of spreading liberty,
democracy, and equality is in reality the mask for the will to power.
The emergence of the American constitutional order cannot be
understood apart from its growing out of opposition to empire. The
American republic brought to life a system of government with modest
ends. A central part and purpose of the constitutional structure was
decentralized power, something that is anathema to empire and its
vortex of centralizing power.
Empire undermines the autonomy of sectional interests and local
communities, putting it at loggerheads with the very core of the
American political and social order. Those who argue for American
empire push centralized power far beyond the scale of what was intended
by the Framers and of what is prudent given American interests in the
twenty-first century.
What, then, drives the quest for American empire? On the surface it
is first and foremost the belief that American values are universal and
appropriate to all historical and cultural circumstances. Given the
outcome of the Cold War, the United States has it within its power to
reshape the world in accordance with its values of democracy, equality,
and freedom. But are these Jacobin-sounding principles universal, or
even American? And do they not in their desire to remake human nature
and the world merely mask a will to power?
The American Framers intended a modest republic that would allow
individuals and communities to enjoy the fruits of liberty. For liberty
to flourish it was necessary that power remain limited and
decentralized. By contrast, the consolidation and centralization of
power that comes with the movement toward American empire means the
demise of republican government and the local communities that are its
foundation. Those who favor the promised land must oppose the crusader
state.
Notes
1. Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997).
2. See Claes G. Ryn, A Common Human Ground: Universality and Particularity in a Multicultural World (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2003).
3. For an early example of this tendency, which exists in tension
with the spirit of constitutionalism, to view America as the "favorite
land of heaven," see Richard M. Gamble, "'The Last and Brightest Empire
of Time': Timothy Dwight and America as Voegelin's 'Authoritative
Present,' 1771-1787," Humanitas 20:1&2 (2007), 13-25.
4. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
5. David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), 239.
6. Orestes Brownson, "Constitutional Guarantees," in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, ed. Henry F. Brownson (Detroit: H. F. Brownson, Publisher, 1905), vol. XVIII, 260.
7. David Gelernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
8. Ibid., 147, 156.
9. Ibid., 156.
10. Walter Berns, Making Patriots (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 31.
11. See Joseph Ellis, His Excellency George Washington (New York: Kopf, 2004), 139.
12. Robert Nisbet, The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Harper & Row, 1988), 1.
Michael P. Federici is Professor of Political
Science at Mercyhurst College and Director of the National Humanities
Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. This article appears in Humanitas 20:1&2 (2007).
