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The Daily Utah Chronicle

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The Daily Utah Chronicle

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The Republican vision of a better life for Americans

By William Pingree

With the Iowa Caucuses held last Monday, the four-year ritual of choosing a new president has begun. Each candidate in the opposition party wants “to take the country back” from candidates of the party in power and start the country down a new path of renewal that will eventually lead to a better life for our citizens. Voters are asked to choose between competing visions of the future championed by many candidates who look with eagerness to the time when their visions, undergirded by “vox populi,” will have legitimacy and be implemented.

As we examine the views of the various candidates, it is important to note that there have been two fundamental visions of America since the founding of the Republic and with some notable exceptions, these visions continue to be offered to voters today.

The two competing visions of American life were given to us by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton as the governance of America commenced. Jefferson was indeed an extreme Republican who feared large government and abuse of power that was natural to it. He was concerned that the national government would grow too large and trample on the rights of individuals and smaller municipalities.

His view of our new civil society was one of balance in which individual virtue was found on the farm and close to home.Jefferson loved the principles of the French Revolution and sought to implement them within the framework of the American Revolution.He was a founder of the Democratic Republicans, a party to which James Madison and James Monroe gave yeoman service and which was opposed to a large national government.

So when Hamilton and other Federalists desired a strong national government with power to create a national bank, the followers of Jefferson were in strong opposition.

It was Hamilton who supported the Jay Treaty and convinced George Washington also to support it. This treaty clearly committed the American Republic to the British side and not the French in the balance of power struggle then at hand.The treaty further adopted the British view of world trade and national interest, which reflected Hamilton’s view and was similar to that of other Federalists.

Washington had embraced the Hamiltonian view and so did the Federalist party.Because of this, Jefferson and Washington fell out of each others’ favor and were not reconciled during the rest of Washington’s life.As Washington decided to leave office after his second term-a custom that was followed by all succeeding presidents until Franklin D. Roosevelt-the Federalist vision of the future of the American Republic was outlined in Washington’s Farewell Address. Washington specifically suggested that his departure from the national scene would require the enlargement, not the diminution, of the powers of the federal government in order to compensate for his absence.He recommended that Congress undertake a whole new wave of federal initiatives: a new program to encourage domestic manufactures; a similar program to subsidize agriculture improvements; the creation of a national university and a national military academy; an expanded navy to protect American shipping; and finally, increased compensation for federal officials in order to ensure that public service was not dependent on private wealth.

It was the most expansive presidential program for enlarged federal power until John Quincy Adams proposed a similar vision in his inaugural address of 1825.

It was the tradition that the Whig party of Henry Clay and the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln sustained in the 19th century and that the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson rejected.The Democratic Party follows in the Jefferson-Jackson image in that it still does champion the rights of individuals.The Democratic Party of today still believes in the basic vision of Jefferson and champions the cause of individual rights.Every Democratic candidate for president believes in the need for more individual rights. In the tradition of Democratic administrations of the past, rights have exploded from the right to abortion to the right for welfare and the right to health care.Classical democratic liberalism-taking care of the “little guy” and watching out for the less-advantaged-has now been transformed into Rawlsian welfare liberalism in which priorities can be skewed to help the less fortunate at the expense of others.

The Republican vision of the future has been co-opted by the far right in many respects.This libertarian view of extremely limited government is in fact a departure by some in the party and is offered up as the 20th century Republican Party’s vision.While there is no doubt that the Republican Party does not embrace the Rawlsian view of welfare liberalism and is based on a more Lockean view of limited government, the Republican Party has always championed a larger role for government than the far right of its party wants to accept.Even from the days of Adam Smith and laissez-faire capitalism-which does not mean “hands-off,” but in fact means “enough is enough”-the Republican Party carries on as the successor to the Hamiltonian view of government’s role as articulated by Washington in his famous Farewell Address.

While the explosion of rights championed by Democrats today is feared by Republicans-as seen in the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and others-let us be clear that the far-right libertarian view is not consistent with the Hamiltonian/Washington vision held for so long by the Republican Party itself. For Republicans, it seems that the primary role of government for the Democratic Party is to promote the general welfare of Americans by making sure that the desserts of our society are distributed on a level playing field and that the disadvantaged have a right to become advantaged at the expense of those whose lot in life is simply better.This is consistent with the philosophy of John Rawls and other welfare liberals.

Republicans fear such a government so empowered because such a government is not consistent with the Republican view articulated so long ago by Washington.

Republicans also believe in a vigorous role for government.

For all of the rhetoric during the Reagan administration by the far right of a more limited role, government grew during his administration to achieve its primary goal of defeating the Soviet Union and providing an environment that would, in Washington’s words, “encourage domestic manufactures, subsidize agriculture improvements,” and provide for “an expanded navy [military] to protect American shipping [interests].”The far right has repeatedly tried to capture the Republican Party and turn it into a party that undergirds fundamental Christian evangelism and enthrones these values as the only ones that are truly American.This is not consistent with the great vision articulated by Washington and Hamilton, embraced by Lincoln and articulated by Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have been captured by parochial interests in the past, which has led to their defeat at the ballot box.America has always enjoyed having a fundamental choice, a choice between two great founding fathers.Great leaders in both parties have been artful and passionate about bringing their respective visions of America to the voters.Both the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian visions are valid today and both have made America great.

My fear for Republicans today is that an extremely parochial and narrow view will change the fundamental vision so long championed by great party leaders of the past.I appreciate that President Bush will “not seek a permission slip” to defend America’s interests.

In fairness, Democratic presidents wouldn’t do so either.

The long-term vision of the Republican Party is in danger of being co-opted by a narrow view that will lead to a smugness and consequently to a dangerous self-interested approach to both foreign and domestic policy that Jefferson feared so long ago.To date, the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian positions
have provided a healthy check on each other by being both broad and visionary.

Within this balance, the American dream has been realized by many for more than two centuries.One of the great beauties of the Republic is that these visions coexist.Leaders of both parties need to be vigilant-in a fiduciary capacity to their respective progenitors-to the broad hope these competing visions give to all Americans.

Let all in each party take care to vouchsafe these visions so that an ever-increasing divergent American population can continue to benefit from them as we have in the past.

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