American Government: Institutions and Policies

...In a society in which public sentiment ultimately governs, nothing could be more disastrous than the triumph of the belief that interest alone rules, because here the belief will make it so...

...American political institutions thus encourage diversity at the same time that they shape that diversity into a politically manageable form...

...In a far different time, this study consisted of the examination of those principles that inspired the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution...

...The remedies now imposed often apply to large groups and affect the circumstances under which thousands or even millions of persons work, study, or live...

...Political institutions, he suggests, are important in their own right, and are not merely arenas within which social and economic interests fight it out...

...One is reminded here of Burke's characteristically perceptive observation: "The nature of man is intricate...

...One wonders, is even building Xerox or IBM enough for ambition today...

...but it ought to be read, mainly by those who may still have misgivings about capital punishment...

...If all this poses a threat to our political institutions, and Wilson implies that it does, the remedy must come in the way we think about government...

...Amid the bluster it is easy to forget that this version of the equality principle is itself grounded on the rather 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 low foundation of i n t e r e s t . And though the proponents of this principle usually purport to be above material thinl~s, in reality they use them as the only standard by which to judge the society...

...While many continue to defend federalism in these terms, others attack it as an institution that protects local property interests against national majorities...

...Having decided to write a textbook, Wilson has proceeded to write a very good THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 33 moralizing and posturing...

...Smith's economics are doubtless sound, but his anger sounds like a confession of helplessness...

...Those who argue over who really rules the system do not fully understand that this confusion is encouraged by the very nature of the regime and is directed to larger political purposes...

...To order this book, or for a copy of our catalog, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...

...The ends of government are therefore never fully separable from the means of achieving them...

...Nor are they shown why they ought not to make it their interest to obliterate the entire structure of interest politics...

...For there is evidently a kinship between the conqueror of nature and the conqueror of man, just as t h e r e is a tension between that good, sane, and peaceable state of mind that has characterized Whiggism from John Somers to Orwelt and Thomas and that restless desire to b e t t e r o n e ' s condition which ultimately gave most men something to feel reasonably peaceable about...

...The murderers were largely veterans of the California prison system, where the " t h e r e is no such thing as a bad boy" principle has been the dominant philosophy, for a number of years...

...Academic purists, by now a rare breed, are never so upset as when they contemplate the expanding market for the textbook in the university, which they regard as the most tangible sign of the collapse of academic standards and the inevitable result of the triumph on the campus of democratic ideas...

...The attractions of the modern textbook are not difficult to grasp: It is comprehensive, it makes a point quickly and does not indulge subtleties, it has an understandable theme, and it is generally concerned with the processes rather than with the ends of government...

...Politics thus appears as a contest among i n t e r e s t s , all of which are accorded equal status, save for those which question the fundamental equality of interests and which invariably provoke savage outrage...

...To the first question, he answers that everyone governs in some sense but that no one governs in another...

...It is perhaps fitting that democratic principles should be taught with such a democratic instrument...

...accordingly, the past is found wanting...

...The idea of equality, as Tocqueville observed long ago, is i n h e r e n t l y centralizing, and it is therefore at odds with those institutions in the society, such as the parties and the state and local governments, which disperse political power...

...But does this say more than that what we call political success, the perpetuation of dull, moderately honest parliamentary democracies, is not of much interest here...

...Because teachers lack real authorigy, they are led unwittingly to adopt the strategems of the politician--appealing to a diverse constituency, eager to please and fearing to offend anyone, and excessively sensitive to the varied claims e n t e r t a i n e d by members of the audience...

...We pay postage, but require prepayment, on orders from individuals...

...They are as bad, Smith says, as those who encourage the young to enlist as soldiers and get themselves killed for dreams of glory...

...Hardcover $9.00, Paperback $4.00...

...At the same time, Americans now ask their governments to address a whole range of questions that were formerly left to private arrangements...

...From such a standpoint, "interest" appears as the safest unifying principle, and the lowest common denominator, according to which one can understand politics...

...To some extent, these claims may be encouraged by government in its search for clients and supporters...

...Wilson is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University and familiar to many through his earlier writings on city politics, political parties~ and public policy...

...one, far superior to any of the other American government texts currently on the market...

...The chapters that follow, though they contain all the minutiae of contemporary politics, never lose sight of these larger questions...

...The Evolution of Civilizations An Introduction to Historical Analysis By Carroll Quigley A comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations...

...Given this dependence, they are vulnerable to regulations continually being promulgated in Washington, many of which bear no relation whatever to the purposes for which the grants are given...

...He identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations - m i x t u r e , gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion - a n d tests his hypotheses with a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western...

...and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or the quality of his affairs...

...In the end, however, the nature of his enterprise keeps him from drawing all the conclusions that the careful reader might find warranted...

...By not taking these claims seriously, he deflates their pretensions...

...The Constitution in fact encourages confusion over who actually rules through federalism, the separation of powers, and political decentralization...

...thus, many talented lives are blighted...

...The American constitutional system encourages faction and coalition politics and the permanent search for a majority that is rarely found...

...This remedy, it is clear, must be a fundamental one, and it will require a deeper understanding than the one that is generally offered of what is necessary to preserve a liberal regime...

...In his chapter on federalism, Professor Wilson discusses the theory and practice of America's unique contribution to political organization...

...These changes, while obviously complex, may be understood from a couple of points of view...

...By raising the question in this way, Wilson asks us to think about these larger political purposes...

...At the same time, the federal courts have become agents of political reform, in their own right, inspiring changes in such areas as race relations, criminal procedure, legislative apportionment, church-state relations, and abortion...

...Democracy is held out as standard, but one searches in vain for a principled justification for it...

...The textbook is therefore indispensable when most students approach a subject as they might a cold shower--quickly in and quickly out again...

...A34 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 Zebra tells the story of 23 random, cold-blooded murders and attempted murders--chosen from an estimated total of 250--committed in San Francisco during the period 19731974 by a group of Black Muslims...

...He understands that history matters, and his chapters typically begin by showing how present arrangements have developed out of the past...

...Those who are in the business of knowing such things estimate that more than 200,000 students in colleges and u n i v e r s i t i e s around, the country will sit down this year to take their introductory course in American government...

...Though he never says so, he seems concerned with the modern tendency to elevate the narrowest prejudices into the most sublime political truths...

...The t e a c h e r often faces a large and diverse audience of students, a great number of whom would justly prefer a more productive adolescence...

...All have occurred in the recent past, and none has required a formal change in the Constitution itself...

...scope of its coverage, Wilson has included chapters on all the important institutions, processes, and programs which together make up the American sysiem...

...Wilson is at his best when he shows how the American political system has transformed itself over the past two centuries, and in particular over the past 30 years...

...Smith gets surprisingly sharp in condemning those who fund scholarships...

...Because this view is often richly elaborated to students, one is left wondering whether they are learning the most important things about government and politics...

...Please allow four to six weeks for delivery...

...During one of these sojourns they discovered the glories of Islam, in particular, the variety of Islam inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X. Taking the precepts of Malcolm X to their logical conclusion, the Zebra group decided to embark on a campaign of killing "blue-eyed devils" and rewarding individual killers with high scores Mike Partqsh lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana...

...Yet this solution is only provisional...

...As all principles were thought subject to corruption and heretical interpretations, teachers and political men were on their guard to maintain the true principles of republican liberty...

...His answers, given explicitly at the end of the book but implied throughout, are modest and provisional...

...The traditional course in American government, like the American university itself, may be understood as a victim of the modern corruption of democracy...

...It is at least ironic that the assertion of these excessively THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR jUNE 1980 ~5 democratic claims should have led to the decline of those institutions closest to the people--the parties and the state and local governments-and to the strengthening of two institutions very remote from them--the courts and the bureaucracy...

...It is incredible that the acts of savagery described in this book could happen anywhere in the civilized world, but less so that they took place in San Francisco, where American liberalism reigns triumphant...

...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR .JUNE 1980...

...The market cannot support all the ambitious young lawyers seeking fame and prestige...

...The experiment in representative government, which is Wiison's subject,'began out of an attempt to prove the doctrine false, but the nature of the enterprise presumes that it may eventually be proven true...

...Because it is a universal value, it must be addressed at the most inclusive political level...

...The advances of these institutions have been accompanied by a palpable decline in the vitality of the political p a r t i e s and a general fragmentation and individualization of the electoral process...

...errors men have made and Thomas does it c r e d i t a b l y . Those who took capitalism for granted and sought " h i g h e r moral v a l u e s " may have indeed paved the way for the stagnation of democracies, while those who gave themselves over to the intoxication of nationalisms or the phony eschatology of class-war t h e o r i e s have industriously c r e a t e d hell on earth...

...As the modern university was transformed into a "representative" institution, it increasingly required that teachers adopt the skills appropriate for the politician in a r e p r e s e n t a t i v e democracy...

...Refutation doesn't help when the taste is lacking for the goods reason can afford...

...In the end, though, it may not be fair to ask Thomas for something persuasive to say to people whose chief fun is ordering executions or attending them...

...Thus Goethe's aged Faust, after a career of devilish glamor, finds fulfillment in what he thinks is a public works project...

...Today, however, as Wilson points out, "judges design remedies that go far beyond what is required to do justice to the parties who actually appear in court...

...What he has done is to show us the whole course of human history in order to bring home vividly how rare has been the Opportunity for a life that is both decently comfortable and decently f r e e , and how t h e r e f o r e those of us who have it should be willing to defend it cheerfully, confidently, and without shame...

...A democratic system thus pursues many different ends because the ends of society are many and complex...

...He does not argue for moderation, but demonstrates it in his writing, which is always balanced and rigorous, and entirely free of A l l of this brings us to James Q Wilson's newly published textbook, American Government: Institutions and Policies...

...But he takes a large and detached view of affairs, his object being to show how the different parts of the system fit together into an intelligible whole...

...In celebrating the peaceable hero, the e n t r e p r e n e u r , or inventor who conquers nature r a t h e r than man, Thomas adopts the traditional liberal solution to the problem of glory...

...The teaching of principles was in this way directed to the ends of virtue, self-restraint, and patriotism...

...Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses...

...There most will encounter one of the more familiar landmarks of American higher education - - t h e textbook in American government, from which they will learn, chapter and verse, the dark secrets of American politics...

...Here, where the genius of Jim Jones and "General Field Marshal" Cinque reached fruition, the so-called Zebra murderers found their perfect milieu...

...As coalitions shift from issue to issue and from election to election, every group achieves some influence but none ultimately controls the system...

...In the past two decades the critics of federalism have found an indirect means of circumventing it through grant-in-aid programs which funnel federal dollars to states and localities under conditions and regulations formulated in Washington...

...The concern for the poor, the dispossessed, and the historically neglected, so noble from a certain standpoint and so evident in the American university, is doubly reinforced by the b e l i e f that these groups are left unrepresented in the combat among interests...

...The courts once confined themselves to adjudicating disputes between parties in a way that did not involve large classes of citizens...

...But the liberalism of Macaulay knew all about fanaticism and superstition...

...What is more, in contrast to most texts, which are about as inspiring and entertaining as a toilet lid, Wilson's book is surpi'isingly enjoyable to read...

...now they usually read a brief summary of their doctrines in a more comprehensive volume (the older writings are now called "original" sources...

...Similarly, Thomas is surely right, with Carlos Rangel, when he attributes the political failure of the Latin American republics to themselves and not to malevolent Yankee corporations...

...In so doing, he encourages his readers to take a broader view of their own interests...

...In 1950 federal grants made up about 10 percent of all state and local revenues, but by 1978 the figure had grown to more than 27 percent, so that many localities are now heavily dependent on the marginal contributions of federal grants to their budgets...

...A passage in The Wealth o f Nations illustrates the point...

...It is the lubricant that keeps the system together and the fuel that keeps it lurching along...

...Because he does not seem completely sympathetic with the more recent expressions of this national impulse, he is able to analyze the process with a clear and critical eye...

...Wilson shows that this does not arise from the perversity of public officials, but from the nature of democraqy itself operating within a pluralistic social system...

...What lies behind all these changes in the American system...

...If he were forced to identify a single cause, Wilson might point to the powerful influence of a set of ideas revolving around the concepts of equality and individual rights...

...It is not a pleasant book, and, suffering as it does from both a slight touch of sensationalism and the liabilities inherent in its "nonfiction novel" style, it is not even a particularly good book...

...The textbook, like it or not, has become an indispensable feature in such American government courses...

...Like Burke, Wilson has little patience either for the technocrat who thinks he can order human affairs according to some narrow principle of rationality or efficiency, or for the ideologue who thinks society can be ordered according to a simple abstract design...

...Faced with this, they quite naturally embrace the twin idols of democracy and equality, all other values being understood as mere disguises for i n t e r e s t or as appropriate only to limited times or places...

...Students are told to assert their interests, but they are not instructed as to what their iriterests ought to be...

...Since these ideas can never be fully realized, in part because they are continually being expanded and redefined, there is no end to the claims that can be pressed on government in their name...

...As the political process has become more fragmented and individualized, it has more and more fallen under the influence of these ideas, which both reinforce the process of fragmentation and provide a c o h e r e n t set of principles with which the system can be rebuilt...

...When Jefferson, with Madison's advice, formulated a course of study in government at the University of Virginia, he recommended a selective list of republican writings that could be used to combat the consolidationist principles then being taught in the New England colleges...

...In contrast, the older writings, drafted in a more leisurely era, are filled with hidden messages, make an identical point in several different ways, are seemingly concerned with obsolete issues, and require careful and patient study to understand fully...

...The study of American government has a long and honored history on the James Piereson teaches political science at the University of PennsyL vania...

...In an earlier era, students read The Federalist or Locke as their texts in government...

...Working hand-in-hand with this has been an expansion of the powers of the executive and judicial branches at the national level, and the decline of state and local political parties...

...He raises two questions at the beginning of the book: Who governs ? And to what ends...

...It encourages litigation in both the courts and bureaucracy because it provides an abstract standard according to which cases can be decided and it is sufficiently inclusive to justify almost any claim or complaint...

...It sustains a high level of discussion throughout, which is remarkable in an enterprise that requires one to know something about subjects as diverse as Marbut 3 vs...

...it did not expect it to reinherit the earth...

...On the one hand, they consist in the progressive nationalization of our politics and in the corresponding collapse of those institutions that once reinforced decentralization...

...Originally conceived as a means of protecting liberty against centralized power and of governing a large and diverse land area, federalism has been a source of continuing conflict and controversy in American politics...

...What can be done about the desire for honor and glory, that willful blindness to rational self-interest that destroys all calculations of mutual benefit...

...This peculiar version of the equality principle, which is of such recent origin, is also used as a standard by which to judge the past...

...Because the American system is democratic and thus open to any group that can get itself organized, the government must pursue many different objectives, some of which are in open conflict with one another...

...While the development of a national economy is connected to this process, and is usually held out as its chief explanation, Wilson s u g g e s t s that it has been strongly aided and abetted by political ideas and claims that require national responses...

...The book is written with all the grace, style, and intelligence that we have come to expect from its author...

...The teaching of principles, however, in addition to being highly political in intention, was also conn'ected to the formation of character, since a system of self-government was thought to depend on citizens who were themselves self-governing...

...Madison, the Electoral College, and the congressional committee system...

...the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity...

...The attempt to secure through the Supreme Court what cannot be secured through the legislative process leads directly to a contempt for public opinion and for those institutions which have traditionally represented it...

...campus, and it has never been separable from the larger political issues that have shaped the life of the Republic...

...He has reached sounder ground than has Arnold J. Toynbee "--Christian Sciem'e Monitor "Studies of this nature, rare in American historiography, should be welcomed" -American Historical Review...

...In the hands of those who are strongly predisposed to think well of themselves, this can be blown up into a high-sounding doctrine indeed...

...These developments are reflected in any number of current trends: the number of independents in the electorate, the recent upsurges in split-ticket voting, single-issue movements, and the ease with which i n s u r g e n t s like Jimmy C a r t e r can capture one of the parties...

...Liberalism is a difficult discipline, and we have seen in the modern era that the unreflective pursuit of liberal ends can undermine those institutions that are necessary to achieve them...

...As Wilson says: "Today, if one wants to know the objectives of government, the answer is 'practically everything.' The expan34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 sion of the scope of government has meant the proliferation of the goals of government...

...Although habitual criminals, they had been released after short terms in various correctional institutions...

...Wilson shows how the federal bureaucracy has expanded its political role through congressional delegations of power which permit it to pay subsidies to political groups and organizations, to funnel money to state and local governments, and to devise rules which collectively influence nearly every major social activity...

...As a textbook stands or falls on the...

...Wilson does not provide the remedy, but he clearly diagnoses the problem, and he forthrightly attacks in both speech and deed the idea that ideas do not matter...