Photo courtesy of University of Indiana via Wikimedia Commons

Picking up my copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, I little expected to be inspired, having forgotten the fiery invective he was capable of, but was thinking more of the availability of a contentious point from which to chart out an interesting debate.  I found both: an inspirational rhetorical figure who could stir the martial spirit with his printed words, seeming to draw a voice from the pages, and a distinct philosophical difference which may characterize revolutionary America but perhaps not the land that we know, post Abraham Lincoln.  

“Some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.”

In reading this opening position from his revolutionary tract, I was reoriented to something truly unique to the American founding documents and in this popular call to action, obviously living a rhetorical life in the late eighteenth century:  The clear-cut division of social life into the possibility of mutual benefit through association, or society, and the distinct function of government as the antidote to human vice.  Society is a sign of our success, government of our failure, one a jewel, the other a manacle.

“Society is produced by our wants, government by our wickedness.”  

This, one of a salvo of antithetical clauses, rips down the page, leaving no ambiguity in the proposition which will build the argument of Common Sense.  We read that a King is nothing more than an overgrown descendant of original ruffians, ones grown strong enough to subdue an otherwise peaceful society and perpetuate themselves by merely having children.  King George was the descendant of a Norman bully, and since a lion often gives birth to an ass in the royal line of succession, we can understand that a government that produces more vice than it prevents is an abomination.  Frequent elections then are the weed poison to keep this kind of crabgrass down.  We read these things from Paine, a sort of American Revolutionary folk hero.  Some think revolutionary thoughts today.  Are they like Paine?  But what of the basic proposition, further illuminated with:

 “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil . . .”

I have in my lifetime heard American politicians at every level and of every party speak of “reaching across the aisle” in order to produce prosperity in some way.  Would Paine think this was something that should even be done at the political level?  Perhaps on a deeper level, is there a society that responds to our wants? -- and what is our government restraining?  If we listed our wants, which would be the things we spend the most time and money on, and listed our vices, the things which we accuse each other of, would these fall cleanly into categories headed by society and government, respectively, or would they end up on the opposite side of the page?  Returning to the proposition, should they?  The hard part to think of finally might be, Why or why not?  

Dan Snyder, Instructor of Rhetoric, Classical School of Wichita

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Paine’s Pain is Mankind’s Blessing

Bob Love

Dan Snyder’s thoughts on Thomas Paine’s definition of and distinction between “society” and “government” provoke an important 2-part question:

• Which came first … society or government?

• And which does/should take priority in case of conflict?

Paine seems to believe that society came first followed by government as “a necessary evil” to address society’s occasional failure.

• But what if government came first and is the foundation for society?

• And if this is true, what does it imply about Paine’s [and our] notion of “liberty”?

In his 1958 speech examining, among other things, society and government titled “Liberty and Property”, Ludwig von Mises, using a method of analysis known as praxeology which is free from the partisan constraints of early American revolutionaries like Paine, argues as follows:

“Romantic philosophy labored under the illusion that in the early ages of history the individual was free and that the course of historical evolution deprived him of his primordial liberty. As Jean Jacques Rousseau saw it, nature accorded men freedom and society enslaved him. In fact, primeval man was at the mercy of every fellow who was stronger and therefore could snatch away from him the scarce means of subsistence. There is in nature nothing to which the name of liberty could be given. The concept of freedom always refers to social relations between men. True, society cannot realize the illusory concept of the individual’s absolute independence. Within society everyone depends on what other people are prepared to contribute to his well-being in return for his own contribution to their well-being. Society is essentially the mutual exchange of services. As far as individuals have the opportunity to choose, they are free; if they are forced by violence or threat of violence to surrender to the terms of an exchange, no matter how they feel about it, they lack freedom. This slave is unfree precisely because the master assigns him his tasks and determines what he has to receive if he fulfills it.

“As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government’s jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables. If the government operates a school or a hospital, the funds required are collected by taxes, i.e., by payments exacted from the citizens.

“If we take into account the fact that, as human nature is, there can neither be civilization nor peace without the functioning of the government apparatus of violent action, we may call government the most beneficial human institution. But the fact remains that government is repression not freedom. Freedom is to be found only in the sphere in which government does not interfere. Liberty is always freedom from the government. It is the restriction of the government’s interference. It prevails only in the fields in which the citizens have the opportunity to choose the way in which they want to proceed. Civil rights are the statutes that precisely circumscribe the sphere in which the men conducting the affairs of state are permitted to restrict the individuals’ freedom to act.”

For Paine, men have “natural rights” … including liberty … which form the basis for their “civil rights” which Mises claims are the only “rights” men really have. So “conservatives” like the “give me liberty or give me death” Paine-ians raise the cry for “primordial liberty” without worrying too much about “civil rights”. Indeed, Jefferson [and later Bastiat] claimed

• the individual’s “right to liberty” was “inalienable and self-evident”,

• derived solely and necessarily from the individual’s God-given “right to life” and

• followed by the individual’s “right to property” which Jefferson [deceitfully?]  euphemized as “the pursuit of happiness” to obscure the obvious contradiction that African humans had been “property” in America since 1619 … the year white American capitalists first imported black African slaves.

Accordingly Bastiat made crystal clear what Jefferson [and Paine] only [but still elegantly] implied … that individual liberty [and collective society] comes before and supports law [and government]:

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” Bastiat, The Law, 1850

So is Mises really questioning the sacrosanct [even religious] properly basic belief … that

• liberty is a natural right given by God directly to each individual

• which forms the only real basis for functioning society

• which then institutes government as a “necessary evil” to cover its short-comings

• implying “the lesser the better” when it comes to government?

It would seem so, but how can that be?

The key to understanding Paine’s [and most Americans’] logical fallacy may be quite simple:

• ecology [ie. Mises’ “nature”] precedes economy [Bastiat’s “labor/liberty/property”].

However, the practical consequences [sociological and ecological] to which this simple fallacy has led may be quite complex and serious … to the point of being fatal to American democracy and the republic itself.

To learn more about this vital issue, consider engaging in Northfield School’s annual spring lecture-discussion series titled: “In Search of Law and Order: Ecology as the Basis for Economy” … you might just be glad you did.

Postscript

• “Pride goes … before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18

• "What in the world has God done to us?" Gen 42:28

• “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good [a]nd what [is] require[d] of you:
  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

• "We’ve got to be humble in the face of nature.”
  Boris Johnson announcing 2nd virus lockdown in England. Oct 2020

Teachable moments are often accompanied by [local or even global] duress which evokes different emotions in different people … one of which is humility which alone transforms teachable moments into learnable moments.

• How are we reacting to what God/nature is doing to us?

• What will we learn … and when will we learn it?

The following thoughts were initially prepared after reading [at the prompting of a friend] this article on historian and author Christopher Lasch: Local Culture 2.2: Christopher Lasch, by Jason Peters - August 28, 2020, Front Porch Republic

I subsequently looked for a copy of Lasch’s last book which, I was told, he found the time to finish by deferring urgent cancer therapy. His choice resulted in his death from the cancer soon after his work on the book was finished. I thought I wanted to read a book that was more important to its author than modern science’s latest life-enhancing therapy, and so I looked for it … in vain.

Finally, the local Wichita public library found a loaner copy for me in the White Library at Emporia State University which [according to the “Due Date” slip] was checked out only 4 times … 1995 [the year it was published], 1997 [twice] and 2001. And so, during an October snow storm with green grass on the ground and green leaves in the trees all covered with snow and ice, I settled in to read what few apparently had … Lasch’s last thoughts.

The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy [TROTE] was a revised [I think] and edited collection of Lasch’s writings over the years which begins with this line

“Most of my recent work comes back in one way or another to the question of whether democracy has a future.”

… and ends with this one

“But now that we are beginning to grasp the limits of our control over the natural world, [mastery] is an illusion - to invoke Freud once again - the future of which is very much in doubt, an illusion more problematical, certainly, than the future of religion.”

The book is immense in scope but focused [even repetitive] in theme. It is timely and timeless, critical and affirming, repressive and liberating, complex and common. It is worth having for its bibliography alone, even if you never read it. I hope you encounter it soon.

Education is a recurrent theme throughout TROTE. Chap 4 presents a wide-ranging discussion of why Horace Mann's vision [in 1840-1850] for public education [which was generally implemented] has been followed by [if not actually producing] the very sociological curses which Mann feared would fall on American democracy if it failed to implement his vision … including “violence, misrule, licentiousness, debauchery, political profligacy and legalized perfidy [breach of trust].”

“[Horace Mann] would be horrified ... with our educational system as it exists today [1995].

• We have professionalized teaching by setting up elaborate requirements for certification, but we have not succeeded in institutionalizing Mann's appreciation of teaching as an honorable calling.

• We have set up a far-ranging educational bureaucracy without raising academic standards or improving the quality of teaching. The bureaucratization of education has ... substituted the judgment of administrators for that of teachers ... incidentally discouraging people with a gift for teaching from entering the profession at all.

• The periodic rediscovery that intellectual training has been sacrificed to "social skills" has led to a misplaced emphasis on the purely cognitive dimension of education, which lacks even Mann's redeeming awareness of its moral dimension.

If there is one lesson we might have been expected to learn in the 150 years since Mann ... it is that the schools can't save society. ... Meanwhile, our children, even as young adults, don’t know how to read and write. Maybe the time has come - if it hasn't already passed - to start all over again." TROTE, Chap 8: The Common Schools

In the chapter Lasch presents “education” as just another chapter in “life” which, although it occurs in the school instead of on the street, is subject to same tension between:

1. our understanding of ecology [nature] revealed in the interplay of

a. debatable standards of religion/morality/belief which impersonally differentiate and socially segregate us with

b. common dialogue via cognition/intellect/reason which personally equalize and socially integrate us and

2. our practice of economy [the state] revealed in the form of

a. unequal capacities/capabilities for achieving comfort and convenience which personally divide us into classes which

b. common markets nevertheless conjoin complementarily [even if exploitatively] but impersonally.

The controversy is over which approach [1a, 1b, 2a, 2b] prevails when.

• The extreme positions are 1a and 2b.

• The moderate positions are 1b and 2a.

• Mann preferred 1b in schools to achieve the personally equalized social integration [aka democracy] which he believed people need to flourish.

• In 2b life generally, the money not the individual is the basis for equality.

In TROTE, Lasch generally argues that

• “The elites” abandoned their progenitors’ pursuit of 1b in favor of 2b [what Mann called the replacement of morality with materialism] while simultaneously dismissing 1a as irrelevant/unhelpful and 2a as inevitable.

• But that without 1a, 1b stands alone and becomes meaningless and unusable, since “it is debate alone that gives rise to the desire for usable information [which permits us to] master the knowledge that makes us capable citizens”.

• This is a Lasch paradox that embracing our differences enhances our strength as people [demos-kratos = people-power].

• And finally, the unconditional embrace of 2b causes 2a to become increasingly exaggerated in the form of income and wealth inequality which leads to social collapse in what Mann called “the revenge of poverty.”

• For Lasch, we must embrace both 1a and 1b simultaneously … in our schools and in our lives … so that we are collectively willing and able to moderate the inevitably detrimental effects of growing 2a inequality in a will otherwise run solely on 2b. 

What Lasch seems to imply is that the failure of Mann’s model of education led the elites to revolt.  And although his TROTE chapter on “The Common Schools” is organized as a criticism of Mann and not a coherent statement of his own thoughts on education, we might infer that Lasch would agree that

• The institutional “bureaucratization” of education [ie. its formal, monopolistic [1] and public segregation from the rest of life including the family, the street/neighborhood and even the market] disturbed the wider natural “ecology of education” setting in motion multiple causes of deteriorating effects.

• The simultaneous pedagogical embrace of 1b AND the exclusion of 1a eventually starved 1b of the very source of its energy and vitality … dooming democracy.

• It was the starvation of 1b that led to the revolt of the elites who, still seeking meaning, turned to 2b [as noted above] as the only game in town setting in motion the  exaggeration of the destructive 2a forces unabated by either 1a or 1b.

• With 2a exaggeration set in motion, Mann’s prophesied “revenge of poverty” became inevitable but would take place in a society without the social stamina or skills of 1a or 1b … leading to civil violence, totalitarian suppression and collapse.

Although there is more that could and should be said … both about Lasch’s view of education and about the forces at work in this sociological tale, I hope this attempt to simplify Lasch’s wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion of education is helpful in framing some issue for further discussion.

Bob Love