The Couger Report

ABOUT

E. L. Godkin was the founder and editor of The Nation. By the turn of the 20th Century, Godkin was concerned with the change in American political thought, a shift from “classical liberalism” to “progressivism.” Godkin believed that progressivism, which sought to disvalue the founding documents, would lead to increased bloodshed, imperialism and racial tension.

HISTORY

There was so much transformation during the final decades of the 19th Century that it would be impossible for me to encapsulate it in a single analysis. If nothing else, it is important to recognize that one form of liberalism (which I will refer to as “classical liberalism”) was replaced with a completely different form (which I will refer to as “progressivism”). Godkin was fascinated with this change, “Nationalism in the sense of national greed has supplanted Liberalism. It is an old foe under a new name.” Classical Liberals, like Carnegie and Jefferson, believed in the doctrine of natural rights, limited government, free markets and non-interventionism (sounds like Washington’s farewell, right?). Progressivism places the government as a provider and protector. Progressives also introduced an aggressive and imperialistic foreign policy.

MY ANALYSIS

“The whole phenomenon lies in these few words. An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted,” asserts Victor Hugo in Historie d’un Crime. That says it all. In the Beginning, the Founding Fathers created a nation based on reason and the Enlightenment. By 1900 those ideas were no longer of any political or intellectual merit, In Godkin’s words, “ The Declaration of Independence no longer arouses enthusiasm; it is an embarrassing instrument which requires to be explained away.”

In 1776, the political issue was not a matter of what the government could do, it was what the government should do. Godkin asserted that by the Founding, “Government, it was plainly seen, had become the vehicles of oppression; and the methods by which it could be subordinated to the needs of individual development, and could be made to foster liberty rather than to suppress it….” The theme so far has been simple: government’s purpose is to protect liberty. The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence was the fruit of the Enlightenment: “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” Federalist 10 explained away the destructive factions that could have infringed upon individual liberty. Federalist 84 established a simple, yet important, principle: laws tell people what they cannot do, and laws tell government what it can do. Washington’s speeches (the first inaugural and his farewell) offered advice for proper administration and execution of our government. Bastiat attacked public welfare as “legalized plunder,” while Carnegie offered a private, liberty-minded, approach to social problems. Tocqueville outlined the administrative state as a form of despotism that American republicanism had to fear; it was a fear because it meant the destruction of our liberties and natural rights. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address vindicated the Founders and proposed that we dedicate our lives to freedom, so that “the dead have not died in vain.” Early America was dedicated to the proposition that individual liberty is conduit for human development and social progress; that the greatest human achievements do not come from governments or coercion, but through the merits of individualism and man’s independent rational capability.

However, Godkin asserted that the focus was swept from the individual to the collective. Instead of letting individuals work in a symphony of progress, new liberalism put the “Country First.” The goal was to advance the state, as opposed to protecting the individual. “The Constitution is said to be ‘outgrown’….” With those words, Godkin has discarded the merits of every one of the documents we have read so far. “By making the aggrandizement of a particular nation a higher end than the welfare of mankind, it has sophisticated the moral sense of Christendom.” The goal of our nation, to this new liberalism, was to increase hegemony and influence: the United States was to become a world power.

An increase in power would only lead to one fateful result: an increase in bloodshed. Individual Liberty and limited government were conducive to peace. America’s only major war of the 19th Century was our Civil War. This contrasts sharply with 19th Century Europe, which at the time was substantially less liberalized than America. Britain alone was involved in dozens of wars: the Irish Rebellion, Anglo-Burmese War, Patriot War Rebellion, Afghan Wars, Napoleonic Wars, Chinese Opium Wars, Sikh Wars, Xhosa Wars, Zulu War, Boer wars, Mahdi War, and the Matabele War. Unfortunately, Godkin was correct in thinking that the 20th Century would be a much bloodier and oppressive century than the 19th. For the first time in history, the world had the opportunity to watch civilizations crumble at the hands of atheist and imperialistic nations.

The rebuttal of founding principles and the ascendancy of an imperialistic state could very well have been the root of many 20th Century global problems. Both parties, Republican and Democrat, led the United States into aggressive wars and, after 1945, risked “making the rubble bounce.” Had the turn of the 20th Century not brought a rebuttal of Washington’s advice to stay out of entangling foreign alliances, the world may be a very different (albeit more populated) place today.