Were the Founders Conservative or Liberal?

These days, a lot of pundits like to parse everything in neat terms of Left Wing and Right Wing. Both ends of the political spectrum (but especially the Right) like to base support for their positions from the wisdom of the “founding fathers,” and the American Constitution, a document that has been admired, placed on a very tall pedestal, and little amended in the three hundred years since its inception.

But what actually were the politics of our nation’s “founding fathers? Were they really similar to the positions and policies of the American leaders of today–those Congressmen and women who can’t seem to find common ground on even the most insignificant of issues and public policy?

The answer is less than complex. At the time of the writing of the document that would serve as the basis for “the American experiment” the founding fathers would have plainly been considered "progressive,"  even perhaps, what we now call “left wing.” The principles used to form the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were based on the not-so-conservative ideas of the time, and it was Thomas Jefferson who crafted and adapted these ideas to form the basis of the Declaration and subsequent documents.

On the other hand, like many Conservatives of the present era, taxation was the issue that brought out the fighting spirit in the Founders. It was an issue over which these gentle and thoughtful men were willing to take to the barricades. This was, after all, “taxation without representation” and it formed the basis and foundation for the American revolution.

But labels of Conservative and Liberalreally have no meaning where the Founders are concerned. These men were practicing a politics that was based on bothconcepts and they had no other interests other than the survival and success of the new country (a profound lesson for the current crop of “representatives” in Washington.) Policies that were designed to separate the nation were policies that would destroy it before it got its legs. That is the real lesson for today’s politicians, whose primary goal seems to be personal and professional aggrandizement at the expense of an old fashioned concept of “the common good.”

The terms “conservative” and “liberal” were not even in wide usage until the 1960’s when (as now) the nation was divided, more or less evenly, along idealogic lines. Those terms came into full flower because they were simple, easy labels–a short hand that could be used to tar and feather the opposition without needing to go deeper, or to examine the political realities and contexts of the time.

So it may be useful, the next time some talking-head uses the “founding fathers” as a tool to proffer political endorsement of this issue and that, to remember that those crusty old men up in Philadelphia were not, in fact, “conservative” or “liberal.” They were just “Americans.”

Stockman and the Trickle

I just came across a fascinating new book by David A. Stockman, who used to be Ronald Reagan’s director of the budget. Stockman is the man many hold responsible for Reagan’s adaptation of supply-side economics (trickle down economics that held that if the rich get richer, they’ll have so much, it’ll fall down to the poor and raise everyone’s ship).

Unfortunately, Stockman had a change of heart and decided that pretty much everything he’d been behind during the Reagan years was incorrect (he eventually quit–or was fired– by the Reagan administration and went to Wall Street, where he had a mixed career) and he wanted to set a few records straight.

Stockman attempts to do this in his book, The Great Deformation, and the results aren’t pretty. Stockman’s thesis is simple, although the book at over 700 pages, is sometimes a hard slog. He proposes that the massive bailouts issued to Wall Street by an anxious 2008 Fed were nothing more than a wholly unnecessary and borderline criminal plundering of the national treasury to benefit a few hundred millionaires and billionaires at the top of some of the nation's largest banking and monetary institutions. It was not, he argues very persuasively, a plan designed to help the hundreds of millions on Main Street and to save the American economy.

Stockman is believable precisely because he is the ultimate insider and because his viewpoint are basically Republican. This is no wild-eyed leftist. And his message is scary and sobering.

It takes a bit of effort to get through all the ideas and illustrations. Stockman is an academic and he writes like one, often forgetting that "regular" people don’t have advanced degrees in economics and history. A little less technicality and a bit more plain English guidance would have been welcome. But the basic material is there and it's discernible if you want to take the trouble.

Don’t read this book if you want to keep your cool.

Toward a New Republic

I am a lonely voice crying out in a wilderness of political waste and special interests; a tired voice that has watched the tone and tenor of public discourse sour over the years; an angry voice that has witnessed the disintegration and senseless devaluation of the special dream that transported whole generations through World Wars, economic collapse and personal travail. I was born in the center of the last century, at the edge of a new era, a new promise, a new challenge. That challenge, taken up by returning veterans of foreign conflicts and their families back home, was the challenge to improve on, and carry forward the dream of a secure, credibly functioning Republic that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–a Republic that offered the fulfillment of a promise to its citizens, and to the citizens of a world (who looked to it for leadership and direction).

The mechanism through which these dreams would continue to be effected was political process that political process had been stretched, tweaked and reworked for more than two hundred years. That mechanism has been a dedicated road map for public debate and legal recourse, a rough-hewn quilt of laws and directives that would guide three hundred million men, women and children–the next generation and the next generation, and the next, into new decades and new centuries. 

For many of these decades our democracy was known as “an imperfect Republic,” a work-in-progress wholly dependent on the wisdom of its citizens and the good behavior of its leaders and politicians. And there,  my friends, may be the heart of the problem we face as a nation.

These days, I look out onto that vast landscape on which the hopes and dreams of so many Americans have been invested, and I feel an aching loneliness, a special sorrow, a special disappointment, even, a fierce anger. The dream and promise of this country has seemingly been bartered away for the smallest of prices by the smallest of men and women–the entrenched political class that has taken over the debate and is taking its marching orders from the special interests whose only currency is it’s own political, financial and powerful wellbeing.

I weep for this land of Democrats and Republicans when I recognize that the average American citizen is no longer being fairly represented by either political party–and when I realize that so many voters have chosen to accept and simply go along with the blather and bombast spewed as a matter of course by each of the parties.

Americans are divided as never before in the long history of this nation–with one appalling exception (the Civil War). We are aligned along party lines that appear ever immovable and intractable. The reasonable conversation has left the room, gone out of our politics completely, and has been replaced by an angry, aggrieved wallowing wailing that has drowned out sensible debate and polite, respectful discussion.

Someone has got to provide a forum for moderate discussion and debate, a conversation conducted in restrained and temperate tones, an exploration of the political space into which we've landed as Americans–the landscape into which we’re headed. In the next weeks and months I will take a journey into the heart of America, into the heart of the American Dream–or whatever it’s being called these days. It promises to be thrilling, sometimes aggravating and infuriating but always fascinating, an eye-opening journey through the dazzling prism of American political life in this twenty-first century. I hope you decide to come along for the rough ride.

James Carville joins Fox News

James Carville, the "ragin' cajun" Democratic strategist, has signed on with Fox News, the network announced Thursday.

"James’ successful and storied career in politics over several decades is an enormous asset to Fox News," Bill Shine, Fox News's executive vice president of programming, said in a statement. "We are privileged to have him lend his breadth of experience, wit and dynamic perspective on the network."

Carville led Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and spent the last decade as a political commentator for CNN. He and his wife, Mary Matalin, a Republican strategist, ended their relationship with the network last year after Jeff Zucker took over as president.

Carville also served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and, last year, lent his name to the Ready for Hillary PAC, which has dedicated itself to Clinton's 2016 ambitions.
Carville's move comes just a few months after liberal commentator Sally Kohn left Fox News in October and joined CNN.