On How America is Special

September 16, 2013September 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Much has been discussed in recent years about America’s specialness in history, especially with the advent of an administration that seems content to deny what makes us different from the rest of the world. In place of this outright humiliation and shame toward America’s exceptional accomplishments, these latest advocates of nihilism and pessimism would revert us all back to before a New World was known, to when tyrannical government and daily subsistence were the best for which anyone could hope. Such is the “fundamental transformation” Obama has had in mind since he said those words five years ago. It is the same throwback dreamed by Vladimir Putin who wishes we Americans would give up our arrogant adherence to individual rights and government by consent and just follow the dysfunctional frameworks of the rest of the world.

Our exceptionalism is not a claim to genetic superiority. It is not a boast that we are somehow better people of superior knowledge, ability, or social standing than everyone else. It is not even a claim that we are in some way closer to perfection than others.

What so many confuse with schoolyard pride, we understand as foundational principles of equality before God, liberty under law, freedom of the individual, and a limited government by consent. The norm all around the world has, and continues to be, one of oppressive government power by an elite few self-endowed with the right to rule over subjects. In this normal environment, the individual lives at the behest of the State. The inequality, warfare, lawlessness and crippling lack of opportunity all trace from the institutionalized denial that the individual possesses any liberties not granted by their masters, the Government. It is the same whatever era of time, whatever name it wears and wherever it is allowed to take root. Given the power, this normal rule strangles liberty and supplants an individual’s sacred freedoms.

America deliberately departed from that dominant system, enshrining — in the very foundation — protections for those God-given rights to individuals through a written constitution. Further defining, limiting, and curtailing what government could not do insulated those individual liberties from the erosion of time and corruption by human ambitions. It is the best attainable foundation ever built and the strongest basis upon which to construct an exception to the rule governing the rest of the world.

As usual, Coolidge said it best,

“The new country offered not only material opportunities, but possibilities of a spiritual and intellectual emancipation which they ardently wished their friends on the other side to share. Citizenship in the New World meant something that it had not meant in the Old. It was seen that the New World offered something new. There was increasing realization that many burdensome traditions and institutions had somehow been shed. Here at last the individual was lord of himself, master of his own destiny, keeper of his own sovereignty. Here he was free.”

Or again, when he said,

“The fundamental principles on which American institutions rest ought to be clearly understood. Being so understood, they can never lack for defenders. They had been thought out and fought out by the original settlers of the colonies, and whenever they have been in jeopardy they and their successors have not failed to rise and make whatever sacrifice was necessary for their preservation and, from time to time, for their extension. It would be idle to claim that our country has yet reached the goal toward which they plainly lead, but more idle still to deny that the path is open and that the people are continuing to make progress in that direction…”

Coolidge, reflecting on defeat of Spain and the rise of the Dutch and then the English, continues, “Despotism lost. The material power of the sword, of riches, and of arbitrary rule was vanquished. The spiritual power of freedom of conscience, of personal judgment, of personal responsibility, of religious and political liberty was victorious…”

But what about those bigoted, greedy, violent, ignorant whites who came to an already settled land to pollute and despoil it? As usual, recasting history through so biased a prism may serve the current political agenda but it does not serve truth. History is a study of the whole picture not merely selecting deviants. It searches for essentials, timeless truths and fundamental principles. To skip those in order to discredit them is neither honest nor instructive. Coolidge explains the real lessons that resulted when individuals lived up to America’s special ideals, “These settlements were at first trading-stations. They required little in the way of government and absolutely nothing in the way of protecting themselves against any infringement of their rights by the authorities at home. They needed no independent establishment to guard their liberties. They were not unmindful of religion. It is related that after holding a council of peace with the Indians, where the tomahawk was buried, the Dutch promised to build a church over it so that it could not be dug up, an evidence that, in their opinion, peace was supported by religion…Religion was followed by education.”

“…Joined to these Dutch and English defenders of liberty, differing from them in particulars but agreeing in the broad essentials of human freedom, were the French Huguenots. America became the common meeting-place of all those streams of people, great and small, who were undertaking to deliver themselves from all kinds of despotism and servitude, and to establish institutions of self-government and freedom.”

Ultimately, these ideas of “personal judgment” came to religious matters and “set the common people to reading the Bible. There came to them a new vision of the importance of the individual which brought him into direct contact with the Creator. It was this conception applied to affairs of government that made the people sovereign. It raised up the common man to the place which, heretofore, had been reserved for a privileged class in church and state. It ennobled the people. The logical result of this was the free man, educated in a free school, exercising a free conscience, maintaining a free government. The basis of it all, historically and logically, is religious belief. These are the fundamental principles on which American institutions rest…It was because religion gave the people a new importance and a new glory that they demanded a new freedom and a new government. We cannot in our generation reject the cause and retain the result.”

On Reverence

September 9, 2013September 9, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Few individuals had as remote a likelihood of reaching the highest position of leadership in America as Calvin Coolidge. He enjoyed none of the privileged connections of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had little of the physical charm of a John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. He never led armies to battle like Washington or Eisenhower did. Yet he understood that leadership is more than these. Leadership is not held by birthright. Leadership is not being served, but serving, as Christ made clear. Coolidge looked back over his public life and recognized that it was not his own greatness on display, for “[a]ny man who has been placed in the White House can not feel that it is the result of his own exertions or his own merit. Some power outside and beyond him becomes manifest through him. As he contemplates the workings of his office, he comes to realize with an increasing sense of humility that he is but an instrument in the hands of God” (The Autobiography, p.235).

To acknowledge such a truth is not the indication of weakness. Weakness is the hubris of far too many of our sitting politicians who have come back to their states and districts with something more dangerous than deluded self-importance. Passionately voicing our will, be it in phone calls, emails, or now in town halls is a personal affront to their superior ability and judgment. Senator McCain’s recent town hall comments about “not needing to be lectured to” (be it by the very people he is supposed to represent) reiterates the arrogance of the Washington culture. What is missing in nearly every area of culture is reverence. It is mocked and assaulted, but it anchors us to the solid foundation of our first principles.

Coolidge’s abiding sense of humble perspective is more than a cynical political calculation, it was a genuine attitude of reverence for the source of our nation’s power, success and future — none other than God Himself. Speaking to the Holy Name Society gathered in Washington eighty-nine years ago this September, a grateful President recognized something greater than he or the almighty establishment was there. He said, “The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon our basic religious convictions. Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the world, to whom we still appeal for their final justification…It seems to me perfectly plain that the authority of law, the right to equality, liberty and property, under American institutions, have for their foundation reverence for God. If we could imagine that to be swept away, these institutions of our American government could not long survive. But that reverence will not fail. It will abide…The institutions of our country stand justified both in reason and in experience. I am aware that they will continue to be assailed. But I know they will continue to stand. We may perish, but they will endure. They are founded on the Rock of Ages.”

On Labor

September 2, 2013September 3, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

In Robert A. Woods’ fascinating little book entitled, “The Preparation of Calvin Coolidge,” the author recounts the numerous ways Coolidge advanced American labor. Coolidge backed policies that improved conditions for everyone, not merely one interest group over that of another. Through cutting state executive government down from 120 agencies to 19, Coolidge enabled the people of Massachusetts to keep more of their wages every week for themselves instead of sending up increasing quantities in taxes to Boston. He supported the decrease of work hours because it helped those who worked…not simply those who led unions, even though, ironically, it originally had the firm opposition of organized manufacturers. Known for his principled stand for law and order, he not only backed Commissioner Curtis for refusing to reinstate 19 police officers after they led most of the department on strike in September 1919. Having become affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, in violation of long-standing department regulations, their duty to the public became secondary to an ideological allegiance that already brought them in conflict with their sworn obligation.

Any or all of these three instances could have alienated political friends, forced Coolidge out of office or worse, led to a violent series of repercussions around the state, even the country.

1919 was hardly a peaceful year, despite the War’s end. But this was not all he encountered since the Lawrence textile and phone operators strikes could have blown into larger conflicts as well. They did not spiral out of control principally because of sound leadership. It is through good leadership that complex and seemingly insurmountable obstacles are resolved with clear and consistently applied principles. Coolidge, known by everyone for his fairness, gave partiality to none. He adhered to the law, even when it might cost him personally or politically. As such, he gained the support of those who saw past the bias and political agendas of those calling for violence, social upheaval, nationwide strikes and economic change for its own sake.

He continually lauded the glory of work. As Coolidge would observe on Labor Day in 1919, “Workmen’s compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment. And employment can be had only if some one finds it profitable. The greater the profit, the greater the wages.” Such a truth needs no clearer illustration than where we stand in September 2013. If only the realization of Coolidge’s day, that “we can take from one class and give to another class” is never going to fix the problem. The problem only aggravates, as it did then, when class warfare rhetoric convinces Americans to expect fairness without freedom for all and benefits without the work to earn them.

Coolidge recognized the right to form unions by mutual agreement. Without consent, both unions and arbitration of disagreements were impossible to reconcile “with the right of individual freedom,” which could never be surrendered to any effort to equalize labor. He saw a clear distinction of responsibility when it came to those performing a service to the public, be it policemen, telephone operators or (in Reagan’s case) air traffic controllers.

This is why Coolidge told labor leaders on September 1, 1924, “Of course employment affecting public safety and public necessity is not private employment, and requires somewhat different treatment.” Those who work in public unions are not simply serving themselves, as Coolidge said on April 21, 1919, “There is another principle involved which has received very little attention, and that is the obligation that exists on those who enter the public service to continue to furnish such service even at some personal inconvenience. This obligation reaches to the highest officer or government official to the humblest employee. The public has rights which cannot be disregarded.” Such is why Coolidge endorsed resolution by peaceful arbitration — not the coercion of strikes, violence and disregard of law and orderly behavior — when disagreements occur. The “us” versus “them” rhetoric only proved increasingly hollow as tax reduction and constructive economy revealed the property owners and the laborer to be one and the same.

The emphasis on what one is entitled, rather than what one owes, misses both the importance and increased opportunity hard work affords to each person. No short cut exists. One cannot demand the fruits of toil without the effort to acquire them. The welfare of all, made clear from the earliest experiments in socialism by Plymouth colony, is never achieved by the many enjoying the rewards earned by a few. Work and the ability to keep its results have proven, through centuries of human experience, to be the means toward progress, the agency of mutual prosperity, and the continuance of civilization.

It is why Coolidge, in his address to the leaders of labor, said this,

“America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility. These American policies should be continued. We have outlawed all artificial privilege. We have had our revolution and our reforms. I do not favor a corporation government, a bank government, a farm government or a labor government. I am for a common-sense government by all the people according to the American policy and under the American Constitution. I want all the people to continue to be partakers in self government.”

With Coolidge, his actions matching his words, we can know that he meant it.