From Sharon to Mt. Vernon
Instead of signing on to another statement of principles, conservatives ought to rediscover George Washington’s.
By David Franke
The “revival of conservatism” is all the rage right now in the political media. We are told that the Tea Parties are sweeping the nation, that the Republican Party is being forced to the Right in its attempts to woo them, that they are either an independent populist force or (alternatively) controlled by the GOP and Beltway Conservatives. Pundits laugh at the lack of sophistication on the part of these tea partiers (they are inevitably compared to McCarthyites or John Birchers), but then ponder the Deeper Significance of this phenomenon.
Seeking to take advantage of this explosion of grassroots vigor – and to control it – dozens of top conservative muckamucks met on February 17 at an estate that was an original part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. There they signed “The Mount Vernon Statement” with the subtitle: “Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century.”
A companion statement issued to the press explained that “The Sharon Statement, signed at the home of William F. Buckley, Jr., in Sharon, Connecticut in September 1960, helped launch and define the conservative movement…” Now, 50 years later, “today’s leaders will unveil and sign [a new] declaration of leadership.”
As someone who was there at Sharon, and voted for adoption of the Sharon Statement, I urge you to read and compare the two documents. Then put the two documents into their historical perspectives.
First of all, though, I have to note that a statement written by one competent person will almost always outshine a committee document.
The Sharon Statement was written by one competent person – M. Stanton Evans, a gifted conservative journalist and leader then still in his twenties. Given the responsibility for bringing a statement of principles before the gathering, Carol Dawson and I made some minor cosmetic changes, but it was 99.9% Stan Evans. And it was a real statement, concise but comprehensive in its scope, listing 12 “eternal truths” that “we, as young conservatives, believe.” You could agree or disagree, but you knew where we stood.
While I was not present at the drafting and signing of the Mount Vernon Statement, I have to believe that it is the product of a committee. (You know, “if it quacks like a duck,” etc.) It certainly is not a series of precise principles in the spirit of the Sharon Statement. Rather it’s a short essay seeking to identify modern conservatism with the spirit of the Constitution and George Washington. It’s not bad, given what it attempts to do. It’s just that it’s vague and muddled compared to the Sharon Statement – sort of like the conservative movement itself.
The Sharon Statement in Historical Context
The Sharon Statement was adopted in 1960, when the “conservative movement” was in its infancy and was still defining itself as something apart from the Old Right of the World War II and post-World War II era. Bill Buckley and his National Review were trying to meld traditionalist, libertarian, and cold warrior elements into one movement – a tough assignment. This gathering-together of disparate elements was called “fusionism,” and its prophet was Frank S. Meyer, one of National Review’s senior editors. Stan Evans was a student of the prophet, and the Sharon Statement was Stan’s Fusionist Codice.
Fifty years later, the Sharon Statement has lost none of its brilliance – as a portrayal of what it was promoting. The defects we note are not in the statement itself but rather, informed by 50 years of history and conservative practice, defects in the movement it was defining.
To its credit, the Sharon Statement gave primacy to the Constitution (and especially the Tenth Amendment, all but forgotten today) and to “the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand.” “Market economy” is much superior to the Mount Vernon Statement’s homage to “free enterprise,” whatever that is. For one thing, a “market economy” (or “free market”) by definition excludes any government intervention. “Free enterprise,” and the even worse “capitalism,” tends to change meanings with whatever is being hawked at the moment.
The great failure of the early conservative movement, which led to even greater failures over the past 50 years, is its belief that the lamb can lie down with the wolf and not be eaten. Conservatives of the Sharon Statement era, including Bill Buckley himself, knew that we were making a deal with the devil – endorsing an interventionist foreign policy, which the Old Right had fought tooth and nail, as a “temporary” measure to “defeat world communism.” The Sharon Statement gives voice to this mentality with “eternal truths” 10 and 11:
“That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the single greatest threat to [American] liberties;
“That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace…”
Fifty years later, it’s obvious that the devil won that bet. International communism as a political force has been dead for 20 years – the “victory” cited as the goal in the Sharon Statement – and now we, the American Empire, are the enemy of the Constitution that conservatives swore obeisance to in 1960.
Which brings us to…
The Mount Vernon Statement in Historical Context
The great failure of the Mount Vernon Statement is not any literary shortcoming, but rather its utter failure to learn anything from the past 50 years, and to accept any responsibility for what has gone wrong over the past 50 years.
The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: “America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.” There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it. Apparently only liberals have committed these crimes against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.
Granted, documents like the Sharon Statement and the Mount Vernon Statement don’t usually name names, so we shouldn’t expect to see Bush and Cheney singled out for indictment in the latter. But there are disparaging references like “some insist that America must change” and “this idea of change.” Gee, whom could they be talking about? Anyone with an ounce of political savvy can figure out that this is not an indictment of changes brought about by Bush and Cheney, but by that scoundrel Barack Hussein Obama.
And there’s a reason why the signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are silent today about the decapitation of the Constitution in the Bush/Cheney era – almost 100 percent of them supported Bush and Cheney with their votes in 2000, 2004, and (by proxy McCain) 2008. Even if they uttered some criticisms from time to time, they ended up voting for the Republican every time because – horrors – otherwise a Democrat would win.
In short, they put allegiance to party above allegiance to the Constitution they claim to serve. And because they cannot acknowledge this, the Mount Vernon Statement has to be seen as just another partisan battle cry, not a statement of “conservative beliefs, values and principles.”
Back to George Washington
They were so close to Mount Vernon, and called this the Mount Vernon Statement. I wish they had taken the time to reflect on what George Washington had to say about political parties and partisanship.
From Washington’s lengthy Farewell Address in 1796 I have extracted some of the warnings he gave about “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” He was so much more prescient on foreign entanglements than those of us who signed the Sharon Statement in 1960, and so much more wise than the Republicans, posing as conservatives, who signed the Mount Vernon Statement this year.
David Franke [send him mail] was one of the founders of the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s, when Democrats and liberals were the ones who believed in big government, fiscal recklessness, and an imperial presidency. This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com.
[...] David Franke, who was there was the 1960 movement-defining "Sharon Statement" was issued, finds yesterday's "Mount Vernon Statement" intended to do the same for the movement today [...]
Thanks for that, to Daniel McCarthy, and to David Franke. Refreshing common sense.
My main point of departure from your observations start with the statement: “Pundits laugh at the lack of sophistication on the part of these tea partiers…”
Two observations: First, sometimes “elites” laugh at the “lack of sophistication” of what they don”t fully understand.
Secondly, any passionate collection of “single-issue” people will necessarily confound the “pundits”, who will ask inane questions like, “What do y’all think about other issues?” and “Who is your leader?”.
Look for such pundits to point out, “They can’t agree on the other issues”, and “No strong charismatic leader has emerged”, and “Many groups appear to be trying to coopt them, as they seem to be easily led”.
Tea partiers said, “Before we can trust you with large amounts of our money, we need to clean the rampant corruption in Washington DC. Your taking our money and using it dishonestly amounts to taxation without representation”.
How is that not simple (and clarion), except to the dishonest?
[...] more here: The American Conservative » From Sharon to Mt. Vernon Tags: from-the-old, identify-modern, its-infancy, sharon, sharon-statement, short-essay, spirit, [...]
Dear friends,
I think that with the Mount Vernon statement out and on-line as of 17 February, now is the time to open a real discussion regarding the principles of the Founders, among conservatives, and among Americans in general. I was very interested in reading the text of the document, and in seeing who the principle signers of the statement were. You can read the statement below, and then I follow each section with a few comments, because I agreed with some of their statements of the founding principles of the United States, but while you are reading, if you are familiar with the lives of the founders, the debates in the Federalist Papers and in the early Congress, and with regards to the writing of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,reflect carefully on everything that the statement says.
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
Up to here we have some wishful thinking. The Founders created excellent founding documents, the best in history I would say. Whether they have been enduring or not is answered by the facts of our present situation. We now have a system with nearly unlimited government, the system of checks and balances were debilitated throughout the 20th century. Both parties contributed to this, with some of the most spectacular and flagrant attempts to destroy the ‘framework of limited government’ occurring with the presidency of FDR, when he attempted to pack the Supreme Court, and during the ‘Imperial Presidency’ of Richard M. Nixon. No President has truly handed back many of the powers that were won by the power-grabs of his predecessors. George W. Bush and Obama are simply the culmination of more than a hundred years of government expansion. The Founders did indeed seek to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government. Since then, the edifice has come crashing down, as Edmund Burke might say.
These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.
Here again we cross the line from defining ideals, to becoming idealistic. We all know that the journey down van Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ is well underway, and conservatives especially should be aware of this fact. In the second sentence the statement slides into nationalism. We are prosperous, there is no doubt about that, some would even say decadent. However, profligate spending at every level has put our prosperity in serious danger, and has established an unsustainable, structurally unsound economy. Our judicial system is rife with flaws, the basic individual liberties defined in the Bill of Rights are scarcely holding on. In the name of the war against terrorism, many so-called ‘conservatives’ have justified all sorts of reductions in the right to due process, the right to a trial by jury, the right against unreasonable search and seizure. Yes, who is to interpret what is reasonable those on the other side will say? Fewer and fewer, as the government finds it in its interest to systematically expand its justification for every act it commits. And insofar as being warnings for tyrants and despots, how much more power will we concentrate in the Executive branch before it becomes nothing more than a 4-year license to decree by divine will? Rather, our current system, in my point of view, is a model for tyrants and despots who want to justify their rule by terms in office. Who wants to be ruler for life anyway nowadays?
Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.
The fact that the Founder’s ideas are under attack is irrefutable. The problem I see is that the statement refuses to recognize that there are those within the conservative ranks who are doing exactly this. Whether the justification be war against foreign powers and sustained occupation on foreign soils, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the tripartite war party in the conservative wing has expanded government in equal proportion as has the ‘social welfare state’ on the socialist side of the aisle. On the other hand, so-called social conservatives have justified limiting the individual rights of gays, have tried to expand the role of religion (going beyond the Founder’s call for religious liberty) in public schools and have joined ranks in empowering the police state due to the fear stoked among them regarding the dangers of drugs, gangs and other supposed ‘external’ threats to society. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have hooked on to and adored big government over the past several decades. It has given them the power to turn to their constituents and ask them, ‘what would you do without us?’.
Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?
America changed long, long ago, with respect to its views on the Founding principles. To recover the Founder’s ideal requires a refounding of the Republic, casting out years of precedents, and reforging the expectation of the people regarding what government should and should not do.
The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
We need a refounding.
The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.
I found it interesting the use of the term, ‘nature’s God’. Jefferson and many of the founders were dualists. They did not believe in the Christian God, but did believe in religious freedom. They were also witness to the great dangers inherent in religious persecution. In all truth, the Founders were not conservatives, they were liberals, classical liberals. They believed in the ideals of the Enlightenment. They made common cause frequently with such atheists as the eloquent Thomas Paine. There can be no doubt that the hedonistic and brilliant Benjamin Franklin was anything but conservative, either in his personal or public life. These leaders put ideas ahead of all, they were, simply put, revolutionaries. Edmund Burke, although he is a classical conservative in every sense of the word, admired the American Revolutionaries and defended their cause. He saw the Constitution as a sound and prudent document. While all this is true, we have to recognize that the Founder’s ideals are not and were not conservative per se. A realization of the Founder’s ideals today would be just as, if not more, revolutionary than in the past. With the expansion of government over the past hundred plus years, who can really argue that a new Declaration of Independence would even be possible by a new republic that wanted to break away from a despot in a distant land? How could groups of scraggly militiamen possibly defeat the massive, well-paid and sophisticated armies of modernity? Where is there even an insurgent group with any power left in the world? Let us hope that such a Revolution will be possible without force of arms, but it is a fact that the Founders had to take up arms to secure their rights. Aside from being revolutionaries, they were warriors for a just cause.
The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.
What is government’s job? Perhaps this is where the statement needs to be clearer… is it government’s job to continue to construct a nuclear arsenal which can already destroy the world several times over? Is it government’s job to defend Israel, Taiwan and South Korea? Is it government’s job to provide social security and medicare? Is it government’s job to police the individual use of illegal drugs such as marihuana or cocaine? or legal drugs such as methadone or valium? Is it government’s job to create an FCC and divvy up the airwaves, and then prosecute people for saying fuck on-air? Is it government’s job to rescue banks? I pick these topics since conservatives typically fall on the ‘big government’ side of the answers. However, if you are going to restate the Founder’s principles, the answers are clearly no..no..no..no..no and ..no. Thomas Hobbes gave a basic answer as to what government should do, basically provide police protection, of ourselves from other members of society (ie., not police our actions as they pertain to our own actions). The issue is, society would appear to accept and invite big government to provide ‘protection’, from others, but also from themselves, even casting their longing eyes towards government to protect it from….OBESITY!
A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.
Ok, first of all I would need to have explained to me what the ‘natural fusion’ is that is provided by American principles. I am utterly lost on this idea. If it means that naturally all conservatives, big and small government alike, suddenly fuse together in favor of the Founding principles, I would venture to say that that fusion would suddenly dissolve the first vote there is held to cut the US military budget, with the so-called ‘national security conservatives’, or when there is a vote to not teach creationism in the schools, since it has no basis in science, despite the Mount Vernon statement’s observation, which I agree with, that ‘unlimited’ government is a threat to moral self-government. What I think is interesting about the mention of ‘moral self-government’ is that it implies that we should make our own decisions, I wonder if some of the people at Family Research Council and Christian Coalition who signed understand what self-government implies in terms of their legislation? I imagine that they thought when they used the word ‘moral’, it implied that everyone was going to use the morals embraced by their religions and organizations to self-govern though. If they weren’t, I would imagine that that would be ample justification to expand government to remove this capacity from the immoral.
A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.
* It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
* It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.
* It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
* It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
* It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.
I think it would be interesting, were some of the signers to agree to it (although not all would I am certain), to have candidates sign an oath to vote no on any proposal to expand government from its current state, or to extend the ‘unconstitutional state of things’. Even more clearly, you could also propose that all candidates refuse to raise the debt ceiling, or vote for an unbalanced budget. These are practical measures. Leaving a lot of unclear mumbo-jumbo about opposing tyranny everywhere (did the Founders go off on some war against the Russian tsar that I was not told about back in 1790?) or informing a ‘firm defense of family, neighborhood, etc’ whatever that means (should Ben Franklin have been prohibited from hiring the services of prostitutes?), leaves me with no actionable precepts to apply to legislation. Everything is still left open to interpretation, with no clear commitments on the table.
If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.
We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.
Or, rather, the supposed high ground which has yet to be staked out, but which the Mount Vernon statement makes an unconvincing argument that it has claimed.
The Mt Vernon statement is vague, muddy, uninspiring. Lacks guts. Just like most of the people who drafted it.