Summer of Political Conflict?

Let’s look at our political system. How bad are things in Washington, D.C. today? No one gets along, name calling seems to be the norm, corruption is investigated everywhere and all of the time, money is spent excessively, and nothing ever seems to get done. If you think the system is broken today, you have to look at our history. You do remember your history lessons, don’t you! Well, you will be surprised at what Robert Freer exposes in his article below.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

Fred Benson, one of the more astute of the Washington commentators recently described our political system in the following terms:

“The American political system is badly bent. Not broken, but misshapen. For starters, our political system has been described by various observers, including some members of Congress themselves, as: self-centered, irresolute, money-hungry, fractious, gutless, disingenuous, and recently, corrupt. On that latter point, it is unnerving that the U.S. stands in 17th place on an international rating of clean government well behind Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.”

A similar lament has crept into a number of my columns in the last few months, and more columnists are treating this summer of discontent as being more than a matter of thermometric concern. I think it is time we put into perspective the source of our angst.

There is nothing wrong with our country or our countrymen. We are a true melting pot of nationalities, races and religions, and we are free. Protected by the best Constitution yet devised by man, we are free to pursue our own happiness as one of our constitutionally protected rights. Though life today is a lot more complex for all of us than it was when the nation was founded, feelings are no less strong. It is important to understand that strong counter currents in our national direction have been with us since soon after our independence. Strong opinion is basic to our social intercourse, and given our diversity and our enshrinement of free speech, it is surprising our discontent isn’t worse.

It has been worse at several points in our history, and we shouldn’t forget that. Remember, no one has been caned in the U.S. Senate chamber since Congressman Preston Brooks from the Palmetto State caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856 for slandering his uncle during debate about the expansion of slavery to the Western states. Recall that dueling was legal at that time, but Congressman Brooks considered himself a gentleman and dueling was done between gentlemen, which was not what Mr. Brooks considered this “damn Yankee,” Senator Charles Sumner. Hence, Congressman Brooks chose a cane to inflict damage in the same way he would have treated a biting dog. Those are serious divisions; yes, it has been much worse.

Our national crankiness first reared its head after the adoption of the Constitution. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the two primary advocates and allies in its adoption had vastly different visions of the republic they were creating. Madison never dreamed that he was signing onto a Republic with the strength in its central government that Hamilton knew to be essential if the new country was to hold its own among the wolves that surrounded us from Canada, Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi.

Both men worshipped national independence, but for Madison it was the freedom of an Arcadian dreamer dependent on vast lands dedicated to a few crops and on slavery for its economic viability. Many of the planter class also had a very jaundiced view of the English mercantile class to whom they were indebted and to whom they must look for the financial lifeline that kept their lives in a precarious financial balance.

To his credit, George Washington, early in his husbandry of Mount Vernon broke this chain of dependence by diversifying his crops and breaking the lands into smaller operating farms supporting local agricultural needs. Hamilton, a product of an urban environment and a region representative of shopkeepers, smaller farms, and manufacturers felt very comfortable in the world of commerce He understood the need for a seamless financial backbone including ready credit for the growing nation, saw the English as our most compatible trading partner and was comfortable with a strong central government to create the structure binding thirteen economies often at odds into one dynamic whole.

Hamilton’s energy and genius itself became an issue as he tirelessly produced reports on public credit and manufacturing and with their adoption in bruising battles in Congress, the system that energized the new government evolved. The result of the adoption of Hamilton’s proposals was as he predicted and brought a real boost to commerce. To the planter class the aggregation of power in the central government and “the class of money changers” that came with it smacked of English rule; hence Hamilton was lambasted as Royalist and conniving to substitute a monarchy for the freedom they had so ardently fought to achieve.

Let’s be clear about this dispute. This was no Marquis of Queensberry ruled contest. Hamilton, because of his ability and energy overwhelmed those who opposed his views and was vilified at every turn. Also, much as today, his moral lapse in what became known as “le Affaire Reynolds” involving his falling into the clutches of a blackmailing seductress was the scandal of the age and was used to weaken his proposals. His ultimate death at the hands of a political rival in the famous duel of 1804 also gives you some feeling how bitterly the divisions were contested.

These differences, based in an economic worldview in which slavery was the most visible mote, would consume much of the 19th century until the Civil War completed the war of independence by settling the issue of federal preeminence in a perpetual union once and for all and further setting the notion of individual rights on the track we still are pursuing 140 years later.

If the War Between the States settled one issue of national governance, the social struggle to define and refine the issue of social and economic equality of opportunity continues. Industrialization and its ills followed as a source of discontent, and urbanization followed that. With the closing of the frontier and completion of the great immigration, economic angst replaced the issues of a prior age, and in different clothes we continue that national contest.

What has changed as we have debated and agonized is what I call the digital divide. Before digital convergence, there was some sense of locality to our lives that has been banished with 24-hour trumpeting of even the personal misfortunes of celebrities a nation’s expanse away.

The information age has brought with it almost infinite information about everything and everyone. Couple that with the emphasis in our society to break us into camps and to get us as riled up as possible to sell products including political candidates like soda pop, and we end up with a stew of our own devising, and it isn’t tasty. We are assaulted 24/7 with data individualized to the most personal level based upon what “the watchers” know about us. The purpose of all this information is to make the sale. Whatever sells magazines, diapers, movies, political candidates, beer and social causes, whatever!

Our commercial barons have decided that to fill the infinite need for programming on the expanded broadcast spectrum and to pay the bill getting it to us, the “product” has to grab us as it informs. It draws more favorable ABC/Nielsen numbers if it makes you feel and that pays the bills. Only by appealing in successive quick kicks to the gut do the media achieve their corporate numbers, and their lives are largely determined by those numbers.

In the political realm, those numbers are voters turned on and turned out on Election Day. The process has become as professionalized as the TV networks can make it. Very little in our society is built to encourage us to broadly agree. Natural differences are encouraged, as is a tendency to demonize those with who we are not in lockstep.

Though it would be a very dull life if we all were in lockstep and a certain amount of controversy is good for the circulation, we have gone too far, and it is for us the consumers to do two things: 1. Let our entertainment and information providers know: “We have had enough, and we aren’t going to put up with it anymore.” Give us encouragement to find agreement not discord. And, 2. We must watch our own words and our own conduct. Words do hurt more than we know. Words can uplift us to new heights, and they can coarsen our lives. Know that we share the planet. Preserve your independent thought, but guard your words that they not intentionally injure. Disagree if you must but be not disagreeable.

As for the media, give us nuanced news coverage that understands and accurately presents that many problems out there are just not going away no matter what we do. To prevail in a disorderly planet, we need to treasure that which is good in our society, stick together and accept we will have to absorb many blows to the head and body no matter what we do. We are not living a sitcom.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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