Among the books recently to occupy my bedtable (they serve as my sleeping pills) was First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks. Many of the political disputes that exercise passions today have eerie parallels in the early years of the Republic, and there is value in revisiting that history.
Today the Greco-Roman classics for most students are an educational side note, often with scarcely more attention paid to them than an assignment of a (totally out of context) bad translation of Aristophanes’ The Frogs in high school. In the 18th century they were the core of education above the elementary level. All of the Founders were deeply familiar with them – more so than with the literature of their own time. The classical authors strongly influenced their philosophical and political thought both directly from the original sources and indirectly via Locke, Montesquieu et al. Hence there was an oft-voiced disdain for democracy (a dirty word until the 1820s) because Aristotle regarded it as a “perversion” of a constitutional republic just as oligarchy was a perversion of aristocracy and tyranny of monarchy. The favorable description of the Roman Republic (Consulship, Senate, Assembly) by Polybius was commonly referenced in debates over state constitutions as well as the federal one. Also influential was Cicero: “Statuo esse optime constitutam rempublicam quae, ex tribus qeneribus illis regali, optimo, et populari modice confuse” [I maintain that the best constitution for a State is that which, out of the three general types, is a balanced mix of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy]. 18th century politicians weren’t subtle about it either: they regularly referenced classical authors and ancient precedents in their speeches. Jefferson admired Epicurus, which helps explain the “pursuit of happiness” line. Other authors who figured prominently in the debates were Plutarch, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Sallust, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Livy. Conspicuous for his absence was Plato. Elbridge Gerry, who sufficiently mastered republicanism to devise the gerrymander, voiced the general opinion by stating, "Plato was not a republican." Ricks explores how this pervasively classical way of looking at things (so often overlooked by modern historians) affected the Revolution and the Early Republic.
The book caught my eye in no small part because I wrote about the same thing – far, far less ambitiously at only 14 pages – as long ago as college. Yes, I still have some of those old papers including such page-turners as The Impact of a Vulnerable Grain Supply on the Imperialism of Fifth Century Athens, The Historical Writings of Procopius of Caesarea, and A History of Land Use in the Township of Mendham though I can't imagine who'd ever want to read them.
Ricks has done his research and presents it well. He is not oblivious to the glaring blind spots in the vision of the Founders (the failure to address slavery being the blindest of all), but nonetheless credits them for putting into practice a theory of rights and governance that made their hypocrisy ultimately untenable – an unmatched achievement in the 18th century. He rightly notes the importance of the 1800 election. There have been other fateful elections (1860 most obviously) but without the precedent of 1800 the others wouldn’t even have taken place. With Jefferson’s victory, for the first time there was a peaceful transition of power to an opposition party that the losing Federalists truly believed was a threat to the nation. The event showed such a transition was possible and that the result, while consequential, needn’t be the end of the world.
The author closes with an epilogue of ten present-day recommendations that he says are informed by lessons from the Founders and, through them, from the Greeks and Romans they chose as their mentors. Some of the points are unexceptionable but others simply don’t follow from his history of founding principles – or at least one could use similar sophistry to argue just the reverse. That is not to say his modern-day views on health care funding and the like are wrong, just that they are not derivable from Constitutional first principles. They are perhaps not incompatible with them (well, a couple actually might be) but then neither are opposite positions (well, a couple actually might be). There is a tendency (also dating to the Early Republic) to try to achieve by Constitutional interpretation what cannot be achieved by legislation; this often requires reading words into the text that simply aren’t there. It’s a political maneuver used by any side that thinks it has a shot of winning a court decision, but it should be recognized as such rather than as a dispassionate analysis of Constitutional principles, classically derived or otherwise.
What Ricks doesn’t mention is another takeaway from classical history, particularly of the Roman Republic, which many of the Founders were so keen to emulate. Extreme factionalism in the Republic, fueled by ambitious politicians exploiting class fears and grievances, led to civil war: not once but repeatedly. An end was put to this only by Augustus Caesar, and then only to be replaced by non-ideological internal wars among generals. (Rome under the Principate never did adequately solve the peaceful succession problem.) Americans emulated such factionalism down the path to civil war once. It would be best not to do so again.
Mason Williams – Classical Gas
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