Practical History

In Further Defense of the Classics

Andrew Sullivan expansively responds to Rush Limbaugh’s studied ignorance. Rush:

Tell me, any of you at random listening all across the fruited plain, what the hell is Classical Studies?  What classics are studied?  Or, is it learning how to study in a classical way?  Or is it learning how to study in a classy as opposed to unclassy way?  And what about unClassical Studies?  Why does nobody care about the unclassics?  What are the classics?  And how are the classics studied?  Oh, cause you’re gonna become an expert in Dickens?  You’re assuming it’s literature.  See, you’re assuming we’re talking classical literature here.  What if it’s classical women’s studies?  What if it’s classical feminism?  Who the hell knows what it is?  One thing I do know is that she, the brain-dead student, doesn’t know what it is, after she’s got a major in it.  Because all she knows to do with it is go down to Occupy Wall Street and complain and write a note for the cameras.

Andrew:

But the main reason for a classical education is precisely its uselessness. True learning is practically useless; and it should be. It is not about deploying knowledge to master the world, it is about the pursuit of truth for the sake of nothing else. It is about the highest things. How is a life worth living if it ignores them?

And me: there certainly is an enjoyable and beneficial uselessness to the classical education. It’s “impractical,” in that it doesn’t translate quickly to a professional career track, or to an applied science. But not until recently have we conceived of the world of higher education so narrowly. It was the British who, at the height of their empire, most recently viewed the classics as an ideal training platform for their colonial officers and functionaries, both because impractical, non-manual degrees were seen as mark of status — consider John Adams, to his wife:

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain

– And because a healthy background in the rise and fall of other Western empires provides a sense of the impermanence of power. Lessons on the transience of empire are precisely those that any hegemon should hope to impart to its statesmen. Better that than a concept of imperial “exceptionalism,” translated as “infallibility,” deployed to excuse even the possibility of international misconduct. Fagles, again, on the Aeneid:

The price of empire is very steep, but Virgil shows how it is to be earned, if it’s to be earned at all. The poem can be read as an exhortation for us to behave ourselves, which is a horse of relevance that ought to be ridden.

Further, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 — what is organized religion but a very specific classical education?). New problems can often by answered by old solutions. Our separation of powers theory, for example, descends from Locke, who descended from Montesquieu, who in turn claimed descent from Rome:

A fifth error in policy hath been this, viz. A permitting of the legislative and executive powers of a state, to rest in one and the same hands and persons. By the legislative power, we understand the power of making, altering, or repealing laws, which in all well-ordered governments, hath ever been lodged in a succession of the supreme councils of assemblies of a nation.

In many cases, we’ve built ourselves on the errors, rather than the examples of Rome, which are not without serious instructive value. If we’re to approach government as anything like a science (cf. this terrible article from the abysmal Post), the foundation of that approach must lie in consideration of the trials and errors of the past, not in reliance on “feckless know-nothings” like Limbaugh and his increasingly depressing slate of candidates. And that starts with a respect for earned knowledge, in all its forms. Except perhaps for puppetry.

We Need a New Metonym

Earlier this year, Duane Reade, the New York pharmacy/convenience store chain, opened its “flagship” store at 40 Wall Street, just east of the Stock Exchange, and slightly west of a set of skyscrapers formerly owned by financial giants like J.P. Morgan Chase, now upscale apartments. The banks that used to occupy these buildings long since left the Financial District. Shortly before Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, that institution moved its headquarters far uptown, to 51st and Broadway. Others had their headquarters in or around the World Trade Center, and simply never returned after 9/11. In the picture below, both of the skyscrapers are apartments. The remaining buildings, high end boutiques.

This is all to say, the “Financial District” no longer lies at New York’s economic heart. When we talk about reforming “Wall Street,” we’re recalling a piece of the past, which no longer describes the new neighborhood. And while I’m normally the first to encourage historically-based descriptors, this one isn’t without its drawbacks. The idea that New York, and a particularly small part of New York, controls the nation’s financial destiny is inaccurate, encourages the kind of culture war tropes that “leaders” like Sarah Palin exploit to set us against ourselves, and fosters a misunderstanding of how structured transactions, and the other types of instruments involved in modern finance, actually operate.

To our other problems with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, then, add this: they’re playing off an outdated definition. Though I suppose it does make the NYPD mounted brigades tasked with “holding” the entrance of Wall Street strangely appropriate — an outdated symbol of state power to defend an outdated symbol of the financial sector.

Profiles in Corporate Responsibility: Triangle Shirtwaist a Century Later

Today’s New York Times ran, as the site’s cover story, a series of pieces on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, an industrial tragedy that killed or injured over 200 workers, and lent urgency to both the organized labor and Progressive movements.

The facts of the disaster remain remarkable: a small fire broke out on the eighth floor and, because the factory owners had not installed alarms, reached the ninth and tenth floors without warning. Women ran to the exits, but found them locked to prevent theft, and to ensure that they could not leave without the foreman’s knowledge. The only key was in the hands of that foreman who, of course, had left at the first sign of trouble, consigning his workers to their wholly unnecessary deaths.

Desperate to escape, 62 women tried to jump to safety from the burning ninth floor. None survived.

In the wake of the tragedy, New York’s legislature, until then held at bay by corporate lobbyists and a conservative court, finally modernized its labor laws. Today’s tea party would destroy that legacy, because to them, “Progressives,” “unions,” and “regulation” are dirty words. How many of us have to die or suffer until we learn, again, that corporations can’t be trusted to look to the public welfare? That’s not their job. It is the government’s.

Our Sharia

Although the protections afforded Jews and Christians by Islamic law were, in many ways, ahead of their time, this grace, such as it was, had its limits. According to the Pact of Umar, which defined the relationship between the Peoples of the Book,

[Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians] shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.

This strict limit was not absolute, in practice. But how interesting that the very groups that oppose Sharia law as a looming threat to the American way of life would now duplicate it, to repress Muslims.

“Clothe Yourselves in the Morals of the Toga”

After the fall of Rome — but before Justinian could sweep away her people and her infrastructure — Theoderic the Ostrogoth used this line, and reference to Roman foundational values generally, to prop up his reign as an invader-king. It strains credulity to think the heroes of Rome’s past would’ve easily suborned a foreign presence, or a king, much less the combination of the two. Nevertheless, Theoderic’s over-the-top affiliation with Rome’s past — to the point of adopting a Roman nomen (Flāvius Theodericus), minting solidi in the old fashion, etc. — indicates that he believed, rationally, that defining himself by foundational values would help solidify his hold over Gothic Rome.

Theoderic understood what today’s tea part movement seems to understand, too: foundational myths are abnormally squishy, potent, and steady-state, or regressive. One is rarely asked to honor his forbears by disturbing the status quo. For our example, look no farther than Glenn Beck’s conscious attempt to co-opt the history of America’s founding at this past weekend’s “Restoring Honor” rally.

The remarkable line that defines his overarching thesis is this:

We’ve got to start at the beginning and look at the patterns [in early history]… the first thing they did was pray together.

This is probably true, actually. But while the Founders built a culture permeated by God, they built a government in which He had no official place. Jefferson, exemplifying the Founders’ views towards the blending of church and state, refused to offer prayers ex cathedra for fear that future generations would read his example as a mandate. These men may have invoked divine favor in their ventures, by praying together, but they did not invoke it to write their laws. This is not a trivial distinction.

But it’s one that Beck can easily elide, without drawing too much criticism, because of the traits that make founding myths unique. Due to their importance, the events surrounding them are abnormally well attested. This same importance gives rise to a need to mythologize. Particulars are created and destroyed in the collective memory, for their ability to add to, or detract from, a compelling narrative, one that supports the State.

The result, naturally, is prismatic. Depending on how deep you want to look — only superficially, at the story that emerged, or to the details, first those emphasized, then those discarded — you can create a different story, one that supports your reading of the history. Here, Beck emphasizes particular points from the cultural history of the era, but omits the background and depth that give them meaning. You might as well photograph a shadow.

We — Democrats, liberals, non-theocrats, what have you — are quick to blame the right, and usurpers like Beck, for their acts of historical theft. But we should be quicker to offer our own version of events. In our quest to build a better world — one where gays can marry, where Muslims aren’t blamed for the crimes of terrorists who share their faith in name only, etc. – too often, we succumb to the temptation to treat history as an enemy. Because our forbears enslaved, discriminated and excluded, what can they possibly teach us? But this avoidance accepts as true the right’s narrow premise, that the Founders gave us a static nation. To the contrary, our founding story, unique in human history, is meant to challenge us to build a better future, rather than comfort us with memories of a better past.

We need to be more honest and forceful about what we believe and why. We trust in a “living Constitution,” not because some law professors dreamed it up as a way to legitimize gay rights, but because the document is explicitly a charter of expanding liberty. The liberal account of the founding supports our modern causes, makes a good story, and has the virtue of being a truer account. If we are honest with ourselves, Theoderic’s trick shouldn’t work here. But it will, if we let it.

Glenn Beck’s Roman Maneuver

After scheduling a pro-theocracy rally on the date & site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech, Glenn Beck provides the following:

Press already comparing my speech to MLK. What? I’m not MLK. most of speech will be off bullet points. The rest ad-lib. MLK genius.Me? Not.

The trick — disclaiming an elder’s mantle, or a high title, just as you set yourself up to assume it — is deft, and ancient. Suetonius describes how Augustus repeatedly denied all titles, taking only that of “first citizen,” though he was a king in all but name:

When the people did their best to force the dictatorship upon him, he knelt down, threw off his toga from his shoulders and with bare breast begged them not to insist.

Suetonius, De Vita Caesarium, “Divi Augustus,” LII; cf. id. at LVIII.

While Glenn Beck has surely come upon this ruse by instinct rather than by learning, the result is the same. This man is scripted to high heaven.

Make No Mistake: Nullification Effects Disunion

First as tragedy, now as farce.

RedState is advertising and otherwise boosting a new book by Thomas Woods: “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.”

In the wake of the Fourth of July, it’s only proper to ask: what pale spectre of patriotism is this, that (here and otherwise) dishonors the legacy of our Founders by perpetuating a hopelessly flawed equivalence between those who rail against the actions of a duly constituted government, and those who shed blood against true tyranny? And what cruel mockery is it to, in the same breath, invoke their sacrifices in defense of a concept whose very nature rebuts union?

I’d be tempted to pick up this book, if only for a good laugh, but as noted, the author’s gracious enough to provide a free chapter. Let’s have a look (download here so you don’t have to get on his listserv to read it).

Blissfully, our free chapter provides a fair preview of the author’s argument: nullification, as he imagines it, is a form of judicial review, but without the judicial review. The states decide what laws are unconstitutional, and then ignore them (p. 3). Woods imagines collusion between the three branches of government, and so interposes into the federal separation of powers scheme a fourth actor: states, with an unwritten and absolute veto over the other branches. In support of this power, Woods drafts the entire originalist argument for judicial review (Federalist #78, etc.), but omits the careful balance within which that power is permitted to exist, and which figures prominently in Hamilton’s defense of it. To defend this selective reading, he points us to unattested, unsourced historical counterfactuals (If only Adams hadn’t appointed Marshall! [p. 6.] But he did. Move on.). This isn’t constitutional theory; it’s historical fiction.

Armed with this knowledge, the rest of Woods’ book can be safely ignored, because there are vital questions it cannot (and doesn’t attempt to) answer. Imagine a situation where nullification produces a live, justiciable controversy: Congress constructs a statutory regime creating otherwise valid, constitutional duties, perhaps flowing from state citizens qua their states, or from the state itself, but in either case to the federal government. “SOCIALISM!!!!”, you say. Just so! A state legislature “nullifies” the law, citing constitutional objections, and the state, or its citizens, refuse payment accordingly. The Attorney General sues to collect on the “nullified” obligation. How does a federal court rule? What’s the legal “test” for nullification? When can a state nullify a “bad” law? What makes a law “bad”?

There’s no answer. Nullification is the rare case of a true slippery slope: one cannot draw a principled line, based on objective factors, historical or otherwise, between isolated nullification, and nullification run amok, the import of which is disunion, or at least a shadow of union, at odds with everything we’ve built over the last 234 years. Woods doesn’t even try to solve this lurking problem; in fact, the absence of meaningful review of state decisions seems to be the point. In exchange for the loss of judicial review — which conservatives regularly tell us is its own form of tyranny, due to the awesome, uncheckable power of unelected judges (?) — Woods would give us 50 truly uncheckable supreme courts, lacking any connection to the constitutional text or its history, and bereft of those limits the Founders put on the federal bench, in plain black and white. All because healthcare reform is scary.

I’ll never understand a patriotism that rushes to the flag anytime the state directs her guns outwards, to prosecute enemies real or imagined, but abjures all notions of national fidelity when she turns her attention inwards, to improve the lives of her citizens, just because it might cost a buck or two. At the end of the day, isn’t nationalism at least as much about what we build together, as whom we tear apart?

Well, it should be.

The 17th Amendment: What’s (Surprisingly) Up For Grabs

One of the tea party movement’s more radical ideas — the termination of the direct election of Senators, effected by the outright repeal of the 17th Amendment — is easy enough to mock. It’s not every day one of the defining elements of modern democracy comes into question. But perhaps curiously, the argument for a return to the days of a state-appointed Senate gets some support, even among the educated classes. Why?

We can accept, for the sake of argument, that democracy for its own sake is not necessarily a virtue, and therefore not on its own a reason to prefer direct election. We are not, after all, a direct democracy, and with good cause. By vesting lawmaking authority in representatives, we impose a desirable filter between the people and the government, thus mediating conflict and facilitating simpler decisionmaking.  Sometimes, when sound policy calls for it, we even further sever the link between the people and their functionaries, by requiring that one set of representatives appoint another. But in almost all of those cases, the elimination of a democratic influence is the point, not a by-product of some other structural concern — as is the case in the selection of federal judges. Why relegate federal Senators to the same undemocratic status as federal judges, a condition that conservatives elsewhere bemoan?

The argument must depend on the notion that, when federal Senators are selected by a state’s legislature, and thus by its people only secondarily, some undesirable influence is somehow excised, and some structural interest somehow validated. But contra Glenn Beck –

– it’s not clear the Founders actually gave much thought to this position. Madison-as-Publius defends the initial procedure for selecting Senators only in passing. Beck magnifies Madison’s argument about the desirability of a strong interaction between the federal legislature and state counterparts to suggest that a Senator with a legislature as his constituency will be more mindful of state problems than one accountable to actual people. Maybe — though that’s by no means clear — but to what end? The elimination of any federal laws that disproportionately advantage one state over another? That may be politically advantageous to the conservative movement, as further fulfillment of its antiregulatory dream, but it’s systemically disastrous, fostering fractious sectionalism and the piecemeal resolution of truly national problems. Neither of those are goals supported by the text or structure of the Constitution.

The notion that the legislative appointment process is less susceptible to interest group capture than direct democracy, too, is nowhere supported by the evidence. Although any direct election creates the potential for a lobbyist to “buy” a representative by disproportionately funding the candidate’s war chest, that’s just the point: any election entails that risk. State legislators are just as easily corruptible, and perhaps more so, because their foibles are less publicized. Letting state legislatures appoint federal Senators would kick corruption down the chain, but not eliminate it. If “tea party” conservatives were actually serious about cutting down on lobbyist influence, they’d support contribution caps, publicly funded elections, and other meaningful campaign finance reforms. But just the opposite is true, and it’s about to get worse.

Finally, state legislatures suffer from a myriad of grave problems that would only be magnified by repealing the 17th Amendment. The political composition of the New York Senate, for example, is massively distorted by shocking gerrymandering and bizarre population-counting rules, two factors that, together, produce a gridlocked body substantially more conservative in character than the state’s actual population. Such distortion isn’t unique to New York, and isn’t unique to state legislatures, either — gerrymandering is rampant in federal Congressional elections, too — but because Senators are elected statewide, they’re somewhat insulated from these negative influences. Repeal would compound such problems, and provide another avenue for corruption to influence federal elections.

Tea party conservatives might win the originalist argument against the 17th Amendment. I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. 18th century America was a very different place, and at the end of the day, arguments about changing the fundamental structure of our democracy should be won or lost based on the way our country has actually fared, not how the founding generation expected it to fare. Originalism has its use in interpreting passages of the Constitution, but has is starkly silent on the question of how it could be improved.

Erick Erickson Gets Blow[back]; Issues Epic Disclaimer

SHOCKING.

Elena Kagan wrote her college thesis on the history of the New York socialist party. It’s kind of interesting (pdf), but never makes a value judgment about the movement.

Scholars will know that studying a topic doesn’t mean you’re a fan of it. My Criminal Law professor was a rape scholar who did not in fact rape people, and my favorite college professor, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, once told me and several friends that, like Procopius, he thought Justinian was “kind of a dick.” True story.

Acknowledging this, Erickson conditions his statement that “the woman [!!!!! -Ed.] declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates,” adding:

I’m getting blowback on this statement. When you couple Kagan’s thesis with her op-eds in the 80’s and her later work, I think it is a complete and fair statement. Look at the forest, not the trees.

In other words, ignore the individual facts on the ground and, instead, roll together thirty years of Kagan’s life, make generalizations, trust your gut, and run with it, all the way to CNN.

The key paragraph, most amenable to distortion, is below the line: Continue reading »

Thomas Jefferson on Financial Regulation

From his correspondence:

Your idea of the moral obligations of governments are perfectly correct. The man who is dishonest as a statesman would be a dishonest man in any station. It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings collected together are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately. [. . . .]

I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Present me respectfully to Mrs. Logan and accept yourself my friendly and respectful salutations.

- Thomas Jefferson; November 16, 1816.

Lest we, again, let the “tea parties” quote our history out of context, we must remember that this nation was built as a haven for men, not corporations, and distrust of the latter is as much  a part of our history as distrust of centralized government. Perhaps more.