Congress and the American Tradition

James Burnham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351313186
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Most Americans would probably be surprised to hear that, in 1959, James Burnham, a leading political thinker questioned whether Congress would survive, and whether the Executive Branch of the American government would become a dictatorship. In the last decade, members of Congress have impeached a president, rejected or refused to consider presidential nominees, and appear in the media criticizing the chief executive. Congress does not exactly appear to be at risk of expiring. Regardless of how we perceive Congress today, more than forty years after Congress and the American Tradition was written, Burnham's questions, arguments, and political analysis still have much to tell us about freedom and political order.Burnham originally intended Congress and the American Tradition as a response to liberal critics of Senator McCarthy's investigations of communist influence in the United States. He developed it into a detailed analysis of the history and functioning of Congress, its changing relationship with the Executive Branch, and the danger of despotism, even in a democratic society. The book is organized into three distinct parts. "The American System of Government, " analyzes the concept of government, ideology and tradition, power, and the place and function of Congress within the American government. "The Present Position of Congress, " explores its law-making power, Congressional commissions, treaties, investigatory power, and proposals for Congressional reform. "The Future of Congress, " discusses democracy and liberty, and ultimately asks, "Can Congress Survive?" Michael Henry's new introduction sheds much insight into Burnham's writings and worldview, combining biography and penetrating scholarly analysis. He makes it clear why this work is of continuing importance to political theoreticians, historians, philosophers, and those interested in American government.James Burnham (1905-1987) began his career as a professor of philosophy at New York University. He co-founded, with William F. Buckley, Jr., The National Review. His books include The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, and Suicide of the West. Michael Henry received his advanced degree in political theory. He has been teaching philosophy at St. John's University in New York since 1977.

PART ONE
The American System of Government

When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence; and before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may, at least, conjecture where we now are.

DANIEL WEBSTER, Reply to Hayne

I

_____________________

THE MIRACLE OF GOVERNMENT

IN ANCIENT TIMES, before the illusions of science had corrupted traditional wisdom, the founders of Cities were known to be gods or demigods. Minos, author of the Cretan constitution and of the navy through which Crete ruled the Aegean world, was the son of Zeus and Europa, and husband of the moon goddess, Pasiphaë. On his death he was made one of the three judges of the underworld, at the entrance to which—in Dante’s description—he sits “horrific, and grins; examines the crimes upon the entrance; judges, and sends” each soul to its due punishment.

The half human, half dragon Cecrops, first king of Athens, who numbered its tribes, established its laws of marriage, property and worship, and taught it writing, was reputed to be the secret husband of Athena, whom he chose as guardian of his City. Minos, doubting whether Theseus, who was later to bring the rest of Attica under Athenian command, was indeed the son of Poseidon, flung a ring into the sea, and was answered when Theseus, plunging into his father’s realm, brought back not only the ring but the golden crown of Amphitrite.

It was the pious Aeneas, son of Venus, who led to Italy those Trojans whose descendants were to transform a village into a world empire. The local king, Evander, told him of the old days:

These woods were first the seat of sylvan pow’rs,

Of Nymphs and Fauns, and savage men, who took Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oak.

Nor laws they knew, nor manners, nor the care Of lab’ring oxen, or the shining share,

Nor arts of gain, nor what they gain’d to spare.

Their exercise the chase; the running flood Supplied their thirst, the trees supplied their food.

Then Saturn came, who fled the pow’r of Jove,

Robb’d of his realms, and banish’d from above.

The men, dispers’d on hills, to towns he brought,

And laws ordain’d, and civil customs taught,

And Latium call’d the land where safe he lay

From his unduteous son, and his usurping sway.¹

The seven hills were linked as one city through the exploits of the child of Mars, Romulus, suckled by a wolf and fed by a woodpecker, metamorphosed after death into the god, Quirinus.

Our own John Adams, in spite of his distaste for such modes of explanation, recognized that “it was the general opinion of ancient nations that the Divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men.… The laws of Lacedaemon were communicated by Apollo to Lycurgus; and, lest the meaning of the deity should not have been perfectly comprehended or correctly expressed, they were afterwards confirmed by his oracle at Delphos. Among the Romans Numa was indebted for those laws which procured the prosperity of his country to his conversations with [the fountain nymph] Egeria. … Woden and Thor were divinities too; and their posterity ruled a thousand years in the north. … Manco Capac was the child of the sun, the visible deity of the Peruvians, and transmitted his divinity, as well as his earthly dignity and authority, through a line of Incas.... There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous.”²

The great principles upon which our own civilization is founded are traced to the commands issued on a mountain top by God Himself to the man who was at once His prophet and His people’s chief, to be confirmed and amplified by His Son.

John Adams—though destined to become himself almost a demigod—was inclined to our modern agreement that these old tales are “prejudice,” “popular delusion” and “superstitious chimeras.” He suggested also one of the favored scientific explanations of their persistent recurrence:

Is it that obedience to the laws can be obtained from mankind in no other manner? Are the jealousy of power and the envy of superiority so strong in all men that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice?³

Or, rephrased as statement instead of question: A superstitious belief in the superhuman origin of government is foisted by rulers on their subjects as one of the devices by which the subjects are kept in line.

A rival and also widespread scientific account stresses a kind of imaginative play rather than political deceit as source of the superstitions. As example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica in comment on the story of Romulus:

The whole story [of Romulus and Remus]… is artificial and shows strong Greek influence. The birth, exposure, rescue, and subsequent adventures of the twins are a Greek tale of familiar type. Mars and his sacred beast, the wolf, are introduced on account of the great importance of this cult. The localities described are ancient sacred places; the Lupercal, near the ficus ruminalis, was naturally explained as the she-wolfs den Another Greek touch is the deification of an eponymous [name-giving] hero. The rape of the Sabine women is clearly aetiological, invented to account for the custom of simulated capture in marriage; these women and also Titus Tatius represent the Sabine element in the Roman population. The name Romulus (=Romanus) means simply “Roman.”⁴

In short: the story of the founding of the City is a set of poetic variations on the City’s name.

2

There is no need to reject such explanations by modern science, viewed in their own frame, in order to suggest from another perspective that the ancient peoples, who were not notably more foolish than we, were perhaps also communicating truths by their accounts of the origin of Cities, though admittedly they used a rhetorical system quite other than that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The central truth is the insight that there is no adequate rational explanation for the existence and effective working of government, much less for good or fairly good government. (I rule out of the definition of “government” a dominion exercised directly and exclusively by physical strength—a social form which by the nature of the case cannot exist in a group that contains more than three or four human beings.) The universality of this insight is really attested by the scientific writers on society as much as by the ancients. Without exception they too introduce a myth in order to explain the origin of the City. The only difference is that post-Renaissance scientists use a less picturesque language. Instead of Cecrops or Minos or Romulus, they write of a “state of nature” (benign or horrific), an isolated Island with first one and then more than one resident, “primitive communism,” the Dialectic, “challenge and response,” the Zeitgeist, and a host of other mythic entities that have no substantial reality outside of the scientists’ own lively but shamefaced imaginations.

Moreover, apart from a few gross and almost self-evident cases, no one has found a purely rational theory to explain why some governments, though very different from each other, do well, whereas others, though closely similar, do badly. When you drop scientist ideology, it becomes clear that you cannot explain the success of some and the failure of other governments without including a non-rational factor that we call, according to our metaphysical habits, chance, luck, accident, magic, or Providence.

Government is then in part, though only in part, non-rational. Neither the source nor the justification of government can be put in wholly rational terms. This is and must be so because the problem of government is, strictly speaking, insoluble; and yet it is solved. The double fact, though real and part of historical life, is a paradox.

Consider the problem of government from the point of view of the reflective individual. I, as an individual, do in fact submit myself (at least within certain limits) to the rule of another—to government. But suppose that I ask myself: why should I do so? why should I submit to the rule of another? what justifies his rule? To these questions there are no objectively convincing answers in rational terms alone.

Is he physically stronger than I? Granted that his strength might enable him actually to rule me (though I might of course outsmart him), does it give him the right to do so? Is he taller, fairer, swifter than I? Is one or the other of these a political credential? He is more intelligent? Very well; but in government may not character or experience or faith be more relevant than brains? And who decides the degree of his possession of any of these fluid qualities? He is rich? But do not riches corrupt? He is poor, then. If so, will he not be tempted the more?

Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of the body, and mind; as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machinations, or by confederacy with others. . . . And as to the faculties of the mind …, prudence is but experience; which equal time equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve.⁵

Is there a sign that the gods have chosen this man as ruler? Is he the first-born of a certain father? or named ruler by the voice of one-half plus one of the adults, or a designated class of the adults, of the City? We begin to reach, it will seem, arguments of more weight. “Arguments?” Axioms or sentiments, rather, which can indeed settle the problem of rule, if by an act of prior faith we share them: one of them, that is, and reject the others, because believing simultaneously in more than one might plunge us into contradiction. These are what Gugliemo Ferrero called “principles of legitimacy,” belief in which can “legitimize” rule or government: the theocratic principle, the hereditary principle, and the democratic principle are respectively implicit in the three questions at the start of this paragraph. These principles are the Guardians of the City, which make it possible, when one of them is accepted by the community, for government to be something other than mere brute force.

But why should I accept the hereditary or democratic or any other principle of legitimacy? Why should such a principle justify the rule of that man over me? Does it prove him better than I because he had his father instead of my father, his color skin in place of mine, because his arts can win more votes than mine? I accept the principle, well . . . because I do, because that is the way it is and has been. This may be a sufficient and proper argument, but it is certainly not a rational one.

Ferrero’s countryman, Gaetano Mosca, used the term “political formula” for “principle of legitimacy,” and explained in this way:

According to the level of civilization in the peoples among whom they are current, the various political formulas may be based either upon supernatural beliefs or upon concepts which, if they do not correspond to positive realities, at least appear to be rational. We shall not say that they correspond in either case to scientific truths. A conscientious observer would be obliged to confess that, if no one has ever seen the authentic document by which the Lord empowered certain privileged persons or families to rule his people on his behalf, neither can it be maintained that a popular election, however liberal the suffrage may be, is ordinarily the expression of the will of a people, or even of the will of the majority of a people.

And yet that does not mean that political formulas are mere quackeries aptly invented to trick the masses into obedience. Anyone who viewed them in that light would fall into grave error. The truth is that they answer a real need in man’s social nature; and this need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing that one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but on the basis of moral principle, has beyond any doubt a practical and real importance.⁶

A familiar sophistry is often brought up to close the logical breach. By rational argument I can prove it desirable that there should be government in human society. I can in fact prove that government is essential for the satisfying of human interests and values that are all but universal. And if government is necessary, then there must be someone, or some group, to govern. Therefore.. .. Well, therefore just what? My rational argument is non-specific, and thus non-historical. I establish the rational necessity of government in general, in the abstract; I prove that there must be governors, rulers. But I have proved nothing what-ever about this particular government here and now, nor that this particular man—myself or another—should be the one who rules.

This impasse is not mere theory. In historical fact we find that groups which do not accept a principle of legitimacy derived from tradition, custom or faith always undergo a crisis in trying to solve the problem of succession, no matter how rational their pretensions. When the leader of such a group dies (normally by assassination), either the group disintegrates or a new leader must establish his position by unadorned force.

The death of Stalin provoked a grandiose recent test of this general law. The Soviet Empire is a revolutionary and nihilist society, which in establishing its own existence abandoned all the principles that had formerly legitimized the governments of Russia and the ancillary nations. The new regime has not, however, replaced these principles with any other. First the Bolshevik Party and then Stalin gained de facto rule simply by force, direct and roundabout; nor, with power consolidated, did they succeed—or even seriously attempt—to construct a new political formula. At Stalin’s death in 1953, which was probably hastened by his colleagues, the Soviet regime faced the logical impasse sketched above.

The members of the Soviet elite have studied the problems of power more seriously than any other men have ever done. Each communist in the leading stratum understood that the Soviet governmental structure was built as a pyramid with a single leader at the apex, and that its stability depended on installing an accepted replacement for the dead chief. Delay in finding a successor was bound to lead—and in the event did lead—to mounting conflicts and a weakening of the entire Soviet system.

The need for a successor and the damaging consequences of the failure to name one were rationally demonstrable. None of the principal communists (the members of the Presidium, for example) doubted the demonstration. But this did not at all solve the specific historical problem. Granted that there must be an accepted successor, a new No. 1, who is it to be, who is the man? Do not I (Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev,... Suslov) have as good a claim as any other? To the specific question there was no rational answer; and there was no shared faith in a non-rational principle (inheritance, election under prescribed rules, drawing lots or whatever) that would have jumped the logical gap. Therefore the answer, if they were ever to find it, could only be obtained from the ultimate non-rational test of force.

Let me restate the argument of this section, so that it will not seem to say more than I intend.

Both the theory and the practice of government are incomplete without the introduction of a non-rational element. Without some allowance for magic, luck or divine favor, we cannot give convincing explanations why this government does so much better than that, why this one succeeds and endures, and that one fails. Without acceptance by habit, tradition or faith of a principle which completes the justification for government, government dissolves, or falls back wholly on force—which is itself, of course, non-rational.

3

I have been referring without definition to “good,” “worse,” and “better” governments, to governments th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE American System of Government
• PART TWO The Present Position of Congress
• PART THREE The Future of Congress