The Historical Roots of Statism in America

Opposing Statism: The Incomplete Conservative Argument 

Until recently, I had never been satisfied with with conventional explanations of the steady rise of American statism.  Within the conservative pundit class there seems to be general agreement (or, at least, emphasis) that beginnings lay in the presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson and the rise of the Progressives.  To be sure, anti-Jeffersonian policies flourished in their administrations as it later did with F.D.R., Lyndon Johnson.  But the nagging question for me was how, after the Founding period, did this trend -- more or less suddenly -- emerge?  Say with Theodore Roosevelt...?  So recent?  What about the Hamiltonians, the Federalist Party?  Some of our conservative voices, Glenn Beck, for example, will talk about Alexander Hamilton (a good start), but then they seem compelled to leap over a big chunk of history to the late Nineteenth Century.  Why is that?  What are they avoiding?



Now, at this point, let me say that statism -- centralization of power, tyranny itself -- is about control and power, and, as such, is as old as human nature.  But there are discernible currents in political and intellectual history.  Marxism, Fascism for example.  Older still, though, in American history is mercantilism.  Now commonly called "crony capitalism", mercantilism is a system in which government resources are allocated to selected industries to achieve political and economic ends favored by government. [1]  For those industries that prosper (political entrepreneurs) the world is seen as a beautiful place; for those who are put at a disadvantage (market entrepreneurs and, ultimately taxpayers) and suffering from distortions of the free market, the world is seen as a less happy place. Winners and losers.  But it every case the government will win the day, increasing in size and power at the expense of private citizens who lose liberty, the competitive pricing of goods and wealth lost to taxation. If I have made my point here, it would seem clear that mercantilism, as an engine of the growth and centralization of government, would run directly counter to the principles of the Founders (enumerated powers) and would be an integral part -- if not the centerpiece -- of the conservative arguments for small government.  But it is not.  Why?

Political Correctness: Power and Fear

Political correctness (as I have often said) is cowardice in the righteous guise of comity and good will.  It is self-censorship born out of the very real (and realistic) fear of harsh sanctions -- social, economic and political.  Not new under the sun, of course, but today's iteration is quite different from the natural fear that, say, a serf might have had towards the possibility of offending his lord -- either directly or from his fellows who might carry tales.  What is new (aside from the phrase itself in current usage) is that our contemporary form of political correctness is  now largely unified throughout the West, and it has been carefully and deliberately designed to control the "masses" (in appropriately Marxist language); moreover it is largely self-enforcing.  What is important to understand is that political correctness in every form is about the exercise of power through the instrument of fear.  More important to this argument is the fact that the American Founders designed a political system that limited the power of government and guaranteed the protection of free speech.  And that for a short period the system worked.  What changed? how did it change?  What does all this have to do with the timid conservative analysis to the rise of American statism?

Owing to a combination of political correctness and concerted attempts to justify a mercantilist-driven, big-government war fought to preserve the political and economic status quo of the Northeast, establishment historians, media and academia have sacrificed truth on the altar of self-serving mythology.  Few now question the received version of the Civil War era.  With the exception of a handful of off-the-reservation historians and a few Libertarians, the facts of the time and the actual character of the Sixteenth President, are studiously avoided at best and deliberately suppressed at worst. [2] 

Overturning the Founders' Republic
What I have described as mercantilism was an outgrowth of Alexander Hamilton's vision of a powerful, centralized general government. [3]  It was the agenda of the Federalist Party, which in time yielded to the then-dominant Jeffersonian view of a republic with strictly limited powers.  Though the Federalist Party went away after a time, Hamiltonian ideas did not, and they re-emerged with great vigor in the person of Henry Clay and the party of the Whigs.  Leader of the Whig Party and mentor to Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay was the chief advocate of the American System which aggressively  promoted the protection of high tariffs and central banking and extra-constitutional internal improvements.

America's Sacred Icons: Father Abraham and The Civil War

The importance (especially. for Conservatives) of understanding the real Lincoln and his role in the destruction of Jeffersonian principles cannot be overstated.  Dancing around the Civil War period makes a reasoned analysis of the roots of big government weak if not unintelligible.  There is a need for a coherent explanation and assignment of responsibility as to how government came to be big, corrupt and tyrannical.  Lincoln's conduct as president leading up to and during the Civil War established the template for today's statists.  With his exercise of dictatorial power Lincoln and his new party -- the Republican Party -- formed the most corrupt and tyrannical government America has known.  [4]

By this assertion, readers are likely to be shocked and appalled.  Given the glossing of history, how could they be otherwise.  I have written elsewhere about my views on Lincoln, and I will let that essay stand or fall under scrutiny.  For now I will add only a few facts that are well-documented (if whitewashed) in association with the war period.  Even many establishment historians expressly concede that Lincoln was a dictator, hastily adding that he was a "benevolent" dictator; he only did what was necessary in the pursuit of noble objectives -- abolishing slavery, preserving the union....

Since public criticism of Lincoln and the Civil war are so heavily freighted with racial sensitivities, it seems appropriate to begin by noting (political correctness aside) a fundamental fact -- that Abraham was a racist. Not in the overblown sense of the word as it is now commonly used, but in the strict lexical meaning of the term.  He stated the fact in his own words.  Further support is given by the fact that he was outspoken in his support of colonizing blacks outside the country.  I should add that (though he pledged in his First Inaugural Address that he would never interfere in the matter of  Southern slavery) he seems to have been genuinely opposed to slavery, though not out of scruples in regard to equality.  Like most unionists in his time he wanted the North (and the expanding West) to remain white.  He did not want competition with free labor.

As in the case of contemporary statists (read, current administration), Lincoln, in light of his actions, held the Constitution in contempt, seeing the law-of-the-land as an obstruction to his purposes.  By deliberately provoking the firing on Fort Sumter, he in effect prosecuted a war against his own people.  He suspended not only writ of habeas corpus but the First Amendment by having Federal troops raid and destroy newspapers opposed to his actions and had them imprisoned.  Similarly he stifled dissent in Congress.  The most egregious case was his order to have Rep. Clement L. Vallandigham (who had spoken out against a taxation proposal) deported, clearly sending a message to others who might oppose him.  There was virtually nothing to limit the President's power; he ignored the courts, and with the South no longer represented in Congress, he could do as he pleased.

I don't mean, here, to catalog government abuses during the Civil War era (and afterwards) but rather to mention a few in aid of making the point that Lincoln's presidency amounts to the missing historical link between Hamilton and the Progressive movement.  Jefferson's vision as a guiding principle of American government barely outlived him.  It lasted from 1791, when the Bill of Rights went into effect, until the rise of mercantilism in the time of Henry Clay; it was undone by Lincoln and his party who wrote the script for modern statism.  Here, it is worth noting that, according to Thomas Herndon (Lincoln's law partner) "Mr. Lincoln hated Jefferson..." [5]

Summary
Along with the great majority of Americans, persons who subscribe to conservatism seem unable to question -- let alone challenge -- the PC memes that cast Lincoln in the role of demi-god and the big-government mercantilist Northeast as inherently the moral superiors of the free-market South.  Among some conservatives -- if any -- who agree with my arguments, it may be that they are simply afraid to speak in anticipation of punishing public hostility.  Or perhaps they accept that in an environment of political correctness men who know the song and sings it in perfect pitch will be rewarded.


Many conservative writers I generally admire -- Mark Levin, for example, and -- more guardedly -- Glenn Beck consistently disappoint me for their failure to overcome the burden of government education (indoctrination) and deal impartially with the facts surrounding the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.  That requires the ability to distinguish hagiography from history and the application of common sense and experience to the facts of the case.  In my view, that ability is wanting.  More disturbing still is that -- for both writers -- Lincoln is embraced as a cultic figure, as a heroic and enlightened leader in the great American experiment.

Still, there are some encouraging signs.  During the 90's up to the present more books are being published that confront the Lincoln/Civil War orthodoxy.  One can hope that the day will come when these matters can be raised in civil discourse.

When I doubt my own opinion (after all, I too, am a product of government education) I take courage in the writings of a man whom I admire far more than Levin or Beck -- Lord Acton.  In his letter to R.E. Lee I find vindication and peace:

[snip] I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. [snip]

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1.  More accurately crony capitalism in "neo-mercantilism", since tariffs were the chief bulwark of mercantilism.  Free-trade, to the extent it is practiced, has brought about a system relying more heavily on the distribution of government largess through awarding contracts and making policies that favor certain industries.  The net effect is not different.  In return for government preferment businesses are expected to support whichever party is in office.
2.  This troubles me on several levels, but mostly because the narrative of the rise of state power is incomplete and dishonest.  It is a corruption of historiography and intellectual integrity, and it interrupts the chain of events leaving a lacuna that renders it nearly impossible to form a coherent picture of the rise of statism.
3.  Because this essay is narrowly drawn regarding the relationship between liberty and economics, I may seem to characterize Alexander Hamilton harshly in contrast to Thomas Jefferson.  In fact, I hold Hamilton in high esteem, considering him one of the greatest men among our Founders.  In my view, time has shown that Jefferson's principles of limited government and free-market economics inevitably lead to greater liberty and efficiency with less corruption than Hamilton's centralized model.  In this context I can hardly fault him for being less prescient than Jefferson.
4.  Following Reconstruction, government's abuse of power moderated greatly, but the die had been cast.
5.  This quotation and the basis for much of the content in this essay is taken from Thomas DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln.

Recommended reading (articles, excerpts, video):
Modern political correctness and the Marxist "Critical Theory" of the Frankfurt School - video
 (already linked above) also: this PJM article
Lincoln, the Great Centralizer (DiLorenzo) 

The connection between war and statism (Higgs):
Big business, government and liberty cf., BRS 102 (Roy Childs):

Periodic checks on statism in American history