Reimagining Our American Republic

A Commonsense Vision for Uncommon Times

Peter W. Frey

• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781626346031
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Gobierno estadounidense

Are you concerned about the current political polarization and serious economic and social uncertainty in the United States today? Peter Frey's powerful, fresh, and fair-minded book, Reimagining Our American Republic: A Commonsense Vision for Uncommon Times, provides solid reasons for hope and a clear direction forward. After educating readers on the background of the issues affecting America today and examining political problems passed down from previous generations, Frey offers detailed, thoughtful proposals—both practical and provocative—on how we can alter the way we govern ourselves and restructure our government in areas from education and voting rights to healthcare and defense—all while staying true to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. Frey's book is a call to action to the growing number of Americans—including young people—who are ready to understand and face the critical complexities of the present-day situation and take action to move our country beyond them. Frey presents straightforward and optimistic proof that there are judicious solutions at hand. The book will energize readers, encourage discussion, and inspire anyone who is eager for new ideas, honest change, and making a positive impact on our country during these historictimes. As Frey asks in the book, "If not now, when?" Frey is a published author, research scientist, and professor emeritus at Northwestern University.

Chapter 1

THE EMERGENCE OF AN AMERICAN NATION

People move forward into the future in the way they comprehend the past. When we don’t understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled.

—NORMAN MAILER

The history of our country has much to tell us about why our current political and economic situations are so disturbing. In trying to understand who we are and where we are going, it is helpful to examine where we have been. Our current political disagreements are often based on mythology rather than on a realistic knowledge of the past. Discord and dysfunction are not a recent part of our nation’s history.

Our country was founded by immigrants who had no desire to replace the restrictions and taxes imposed by a European monarch with similar limitations. The individuals that emigrated from Europe to the United States were fiercely independent, quarrelsome, and contrary. They were not a random sample of the European population. They were younger, healthier, and more courageous than the typical European. Leaving the country where one was born and sailing across a mighty ocean to start a new life is not something that most people attempted. The settlers who came to North America were hearty folk who were traveling into the unknown to escape religious intolerance and to find economic opportunity.

The early settlers represented a diverse set of cultures. The new arrivals in Jamestown and Plymouth had little in common. Some immigrants were wealthy; most were not. Some were extremely religious; some were not. The glue that held the colonists together was a desire for a fresh start. They all wished to escape from intolerable situations in Europe. This combination of cultural diversity and a strong desire for independence produced small enclaves of people who were happy to be geographically separated to do their own thing. Unfortunately, this mixture did not provide an incentive to form a central government that could draw the colonists together to form a nation.

New England was settled by radical Calvinists and other groups who focused on local political control and the creation of homogeneous communities centered on strong religious beliefs.¹ Settled by stable, educated families, New Englanders believed that government could improve individual lives and that tight, well-regulated communities were essential. Aristocratic social arrangements were unwanted. These immigrants were eager to proselytize their beliefs to anyone willing to join them.

The geographic area that is now greater New York City was settled by the Dutch in the seventeenth century. These immigrants were interested in commerce with the intention of founding a global trading society.² They were more pragmatic than their New England neighbors, balancing their business interests with their Protestant religious beliefs. They welcomed other ethnic groups who had an interest in trade and introduced their neighbors to the Dutch practices of free speech and tolerance of racial diversity.

English Quakers settled in the area that is now Delaware, southern New Jersey, and southeastern Pennsylvania.³ These colonists also believed in a pluralistic society. They welcomed others, including German immigrants, who shared their desire for community independence and freedom from governmental intrusions. Along with their Dutch neighbors, they demonstrated little interest in being involved in a disagreement with the British monarch.

Virginia and its surrounding areas were occupied by the children of English gentry. They came to America because England could not provide the land needed to follow their parents’ way of life. Their intention was to re-create a semifeudal manorial society like that in the English countryside. They wished to import the aristocratic traditions they had left behind in England. They envisioned a society in which the political and social affairs were controlled by an elite group of land owners.⁴ Initially their land holdings were worked by indentured servants, and somewhat later by slaves. Ideals such as equality of opportunity or public participation in governmental decisions were not part of their heritage.

Immigrants from Ireland, northern England, and Scotland settled in what is now western Virginia and the country beyond through the Cumberland Gap. Many of these people had come to America as indentured servants and had moved farther west after fulfilling their obligations.⁵ Many were escaping the strife in the British Isles and seeking an opportunity for a better life. As a group, they prized individual liberty and personal sovereignty and disliked the communal restrictions that typified the fresh arrivals in New England.

Georgia and South Carolina became the new home of slave lords from Barbados in the West Indies. They brought with them white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a political system that served to maintain the status quo.⁶ Their cruelty and lack of concern for their slaves stood in strong contrast to the egalitarian principles of their northern neighbors. Their descendants maintained a system of racial injustice.

These regional cultures have maintained their identity for several centuries. It seems that the habits and lessons learned in one generation’s childhood are passed on to each succeeding generation. The arrival of immigrants from multiple geographic regions often has little impact on these established cultures. The influx of new residents usually reinforces rather than alters the original social and political attitudes. Newly arrived settlers who are troubled by the existing social structure seldom stay.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD A NATION

Our war for independence from Britain was a temporary partnership against a common threat. The only factor that united the American colonists was their hatred for a distant king who was attempting to control and tax his former subjects. The British Redcoats were unwelcome intruders. The individual cultural regions of the country, however, had no interest in replacing the king of England with an American central government that would reestablish the same restrictions they were fighting to remove.⁷

The Dutch in New York City and their neighbors, the Quakers, had little enthusiasm for fighting the British and acted as neutral third parties during the war. Many colonists seemed ambivalent about engaging in combat.⁸ Pro-independence participants demanded loyalty oaths from neighbors suspected of loyalty to the king. In many instances, British sympathizers were ostracized and, on occasion, tarred and feathered. Anglican churches were damaged, and several priests were killed. The battle of King’s Mountain was fought between American loyalists and their neighbors who advocated independence. Benjamin Franklin and his son, William, the colonial governor of New Jersey, assisted opposite sides.

Washington took control of the Continental army but had great difficulty obtaining financial support from the individual states. He also found that many state legislatures gave verbal support to his effort but kept their militias at home rather than sending soldiers to fight the British.⁹ Most of the American army came from New England and Appalachia. They were a threadbare group often lacking food and military supplies.

In the early years of the hostilities, Washington’s forces were easily defeated by the British, the most formidable army and navy in the world. Washington was forced to change his strategy from direct confrontation to a rear-guard, guerrilla-warfare approach. His troops attacked the British only occasionally, and then only at unexpected times and locations. His famous crossing of the Delaware was one of these occasions, routing enemy soldiers who were sleeping in their barracks.

The American victory in the Revolutionary War was not the result of its superior military force. The two major successful battles for the Americans occurred at Saratoga and Yorktown. In the North, the British had planned to consolidate two armies, one led by General Burgoyne in Canada and the other led by General Howe moving from New York City up the Hudson Valley.¹⁰ The plan was to trap an American army near Albany. Burgoyne underestimated the difficulty of moving his military forces south through the heavily timbered Champlain corridor. His trip from Canada became a disaster with the loss of equipment in rugged terrain and the loss of troops to illness and fatigue while trying to cut passage through an impenetrable forest. Distracted by Washington’s maneuvering in the New York area, Howe failed to move north to assist his colleague as planned.

At Saratoga, Burgoyne’s troops, deserted by their Huron warriors, were surrounded at Bemis Heights in an indefensible position by sixty-five hundred regular troops and fifteen hundred irregulars from the surrounding countryside. The forces were led by General Horatio Gates and General Benedict Arnold, Washington’s best infantry commander, along with Colonel Daniel Morgan and his crack regiment of Virginia riflemen. Colonel Thaddeus Kosciusko, a Polish engineer, directed the construction of strong field fortifications on ground overlooking the Hudson River. The American forces prevailed, and British control of the northern region was greatly diminished. This was a turning point in the war. With urging from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who were in France, King Louis decided to provide additional military aid to the Americans and authorized a powerful French naval fleet to join the conflict.

The British military effort in the South was also ill-fated. General Cornwallis placed his army on the Virginia shore near Yorktown.¹¹ Washington’s army, which had suffered terribly at Valley Forge, spending the winter without proper supplies or shelter, was invigorated when it learned that the French naval fleet had bottled up Cornwallis at Yorktown, preventing him from receiving supplies or departing. Washington’s requests for funding and militias from several states fell on deaf ears. He then appealed to Robert Morris, the wealthiest American at the time, for supplies to move his army south to Yorktown. Morris came through, fortunately, using his own credit to secure loans that rescued the Continental army. Washington also received reinforcements from a French military detachment led by Comte de Rochambeau. Washington moved south and laid siege to Cornwallis’s army, which was now surrounded on all sides. Without food or access to military reinforcements, Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781.

The British were frustrated with trying to engage an army that avoided direct confrontation. Britain was also involved in a conflict with France in Europe and was eager to recall its military forces from North America. King George determined that Americans were so cantankerous and uncontrollable that attempting to pacify them was not worth the effort. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ceded all of the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River to the colonists.

The Continental army was disbanded shortly thereafter, without being paid or honored. Washington was filled with despair: “To be disbanded . . . like a set of beggars, needy, distressed, and without prospect . . . will drive every man of Honor and Sensibility to the extreme Horrors of Despair.”¹² In the absence of any financial help from state legislatures, Robert Morris once again rose to the occasion and wrote personal checks to pay the soldiers, nearly bankrupting himself.

REPLACING THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

The Articles of Confederation that the colonists had created to oppose the British king, an arrangement more like today’s European Union than a centralized government, had failed to unite the colonists behind the Continental army. Washington and his aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, were convinced that the thirteen states, if they were ever to form a viable nation, needed a different, more centralized form of government.¹³ As a result of the Treaty of Paris, Americans had gained a huge landmass, greater in area than England, France, and Spain combined. If the colonists were to take advantage of this opportunity, members of the confederation would need to abandon parochial attitudes and unite to become a nation that could expand westward.

Following the war’s end, the representatives to the Confederation Congress were not concerned with building a nation. Instead, they revealed their mutual jealousies and their inability to think beyond the needs of their local communities. The loose organizational structures that had been adopted placed emphasis on local control and protection of provincial interests. James Madison realized that the diversity of political, economic, and religious cultures posed a significant problem for uniting the states into a coherent nation.

Despite the lack of interest in forming a federal government among the state legislatures and their constituents, Madison and John Jay implored Washington to join their effort to revise the loose confederation and create a governmental structure that could address the need for an effective national government. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were strong allies in initiating this endeavor.

The evidence for making major changes was obvious. The individual states had violated the terms of the Treaty of Paris, stolen land from Native Americans, and failed to cooperate in building roads and canals.¹⁴ Madison was convinced that the confederation was unworkable and destined for eventual collapse. He and Hamilton had little faith in the wisdom of “the people” and advocated a republican form of government in which ordinary citizens would elect local representatives, who in turn, would select individuals for state legislatures. State legislatures, in turn, would choose representatives for the national government. Madison believed this process of filtering would produce an educated and informed national legislature.

Washington was reluctant to become involved in another major undertaking but finally relented and joined the mission. His presence was influential in gaining support for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The absence of enthusiasm for the project provided an opening for Madison to dictate the agenda to be considered. Once the representatives congregated, they agreed that all issues would be decided by a one-state, one-vote process rather than by proportional representation. This was not what Madison had intended. Throughout the proceedings, the smaller states held a majority of votes over those with much larger populations, namely Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The distrust among the states and their disinterest in forming a powerful central government produced a convention in which states’ rights became a dominant theme.

Two legislative branches were created: the Senate, with equal representation from each state, and the House of Representatives, with proportional representation. The major controversy was the process for selecting a president, the chief executive officer. After much debate, the delegates invented a novel approach, the Electoral College, which was a compromise between one-state, one-vote and proportional representation.

The government conceived in 1787 encompassed unfortunate characteristics that haunt us today. The members of the House were to be elected by popular vote. The two senators from each state and the president were to be elected by delegates selected by the state legislatures. States with large populations—such as New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—had no more voting power in the Senate than states with small populations, such as Rhode Island, Georgia, and Delaware. The House of Representatives was the only legislative unit that involved direct election by the citizens. However, men without property, women, and slaves could not vote. Less than an eighth of the population older than eighteen years of age could cast a ballot. The Constitution also empowered state legislatures to control redistricting for the House of Representatives based on the results of a census to be cond...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Emergence of an American Nation
• Chapter 2: Interpreting the Law
• Chapter 3: One Citizen, One Vote
• Chapter 4: A Universal Safety Net
• Chapter 5: Market-Based Universal Health Care
• Chapter 6: Educational Opportunity
• Chapter 7: National Defense
• Chapter 8: Taxation and Resource Allocation
• Chapter 9: Government Regulations
• Chapter 10: Rejecting Partisan Tribalism
• Chapter 11: Two Americas
• Chapter 12: Facing Reality
• Chapter 13: Clean-Energy Technology
• Chapter 14: Enhancing Genetic Inheritance
• Chapter 15: A Comprehensive Plan
• Appendix
• Notes
• About the Author
• Index