America's Constitutional Soul
Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr.
Over the last quarter-century, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. has pursued a two-track career as a student of politics. On the one hand, he has addressed his fellow scholars and their students, publishing...
...As Mansfield puts it, "One does not see a smiling executive introduce `our new affirmative action appointment' to his fellow employees...
...Given the vicissitudes of the business cycle, politicians who invite voters to measure their accomplishments solely by economic performance will eventually be judged to have failed...
...To halt and reverse this drift, conservatives need only look to the Constitution, which respects and honors private individuals and groups and makes them largely responsible for their own welfare by guaranteeing their rights, by formally limiting the power and scope of government, and by leaving it up to them to exercise those rights as they so choose...
...He has translated (or collaborated on translations of) Machiavelli's The Prince and The Florentine Histories and provided penetrating introductions to them...
...that gives him the pride to defend his humanity...
...At the same time, Mansfield has produced occasional pieces for the larger public that apply philosophy to public policy...
...At the same time, it demonstrates an Aristotelian insight into the way that the distribution of public offices and honors gives shape to a political regime—for, through the separation of powers, the Constitution provides considerable scope for ambition and an ample field for the exercise of virtue...
...Above all, the Constitution formally embodies the doctrine of consent—"the crucial right that joins rights to government and makes itclear that although rights are secured by government, they are not created by government and do not exist merely at the convenience of government...
...In this way government spreads into society, looking for more private activities to equalize and, with decreasing reluctance, to exercise itself instead of, yet on behalf of, those it wishes to benefit...
...He should have known, indeed he surely knew, that to state the true purpose of his appointments was to render them useless...
...To bring about a political realignmentand end the deadlock between the Republican President and the Democratic Congress, conservatives will have to recognize that there is more to statesmanship than managerial competence: they must constantly remind Americans that our experiment in self-government is endangered by a propensity to wallow in compassion and self-pity...
...Passing voter disgruntlement will produce only short-lived political tremors...
...T o illustrate liberal paternalism at its most blatant, Mansfield recalls a famous faux pas regarding affirmative action...
...The result is that "liberalism, which began with the rejection of paternalism on behalf of religion and virtue, now has returned to paternalism to ensure safety and comfort...
...The Johns Hopkins University Press/236 pages/$25.95 reviewed by PAUL A. RAHE 74 The American Spectator January 1992 that he asks us to ponder is whether help that demeans is really help at all...
...In the manner of Hobbes, it reflects our recognition of the necessities that restrict choice...
...In making that fundamental right visible in our political institutions, the Constitution discourages Americans from thinking of themselves as victims in need of compensation, encourages them to assume responsibility for their own collective well-being, and teaches them "to take pride in seeing" their "interest in freedom...
...they do not have to be individually, much less responsibly, exercised...
...At the same time, Mansfield remarked that "it would be surprising if modern conservatism did not share some of the defects of present-day liberalism...
...they result from no actual or potential contribution by the entitled...
...and in Mansfield's judgment, this country's postmodern liberals, in imbibing from Marx and Nietzsche a contempt for the legal and constitutional forms of freedom, have given their opponents the opportunity to take up just such a cause...
...Mansfield concedes that the drift toward dependency is inherent in modern constitutionalism...
...In 1983, James Watt lost his position as secretary of the interior when, in public, he observed that he had appointed to a coal-leasing board "a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple...
...One cannot bring about a massive shift in political allegiances, however favorable the circumstances, simply by asking voters to ponder every two years whether they are better off now than they were in the past...
...The real question AMERICA'S CONSTITUTIONAL SOUL Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr...
...It is rooted in the assault on thumos and in the critique of all human claims to rule that Hobbes launched and Locke reinforced...
...In their unwillingness to admit that liberalism has enemies to the left and in their eagerness to achieve egalitarian results at all costs, today's liberals have abandoned the foundation of modern constitutional government—the doctrine of consent...
...As he puts it, "The connection between constitution and pride is through the formal: the formal, whether a trifling item of dress or an important instance of political conduct, shows what we would sacrifice our comfort to wear and our leisure to defend...
...If the Republicans failed to achieve a political realignment, Mansfield hints, it was because they did not earn it...
...In a nation of dependents, "society discovers its victims but forgets to make them citizens...
...Watt "should have appointed the same people and not said why...
...In his new collection, America's Constitutional Soul, Mansfield suggests that conservatives have grown too fond of basing their political calculations on interest, to the virtual exclusion of human-spiritedness and pride...
...On the one hand, he has addressed his fellow scholars and their students, publishing a distinguished monograph on Burke, Bolingbroke, and the origins of party government...
...He has edited a selection of Burke's letters and written a lucid introduction to that philosopher's thought...
...and an impressive array of articles on figures as diverse as Aristotle, Marsilius of Padua, Hobbes, Locke, and Karl Marx...
...a searching analysis of the origins and character of executive power...
...An affirmative action appointment does not serve its purpose unless one denies that it has been made for that purpose," for to admit what one is doing is "to hurt the pride of the beneficiary...
...A number of these articles, two of which first appeared in these pages, were reprinted fourteen years ago in The Spirit of Liberalism—in which Mansfield, presenting himself as "a friend of liberalism, as distinct from a liberal," warned liberals against "the deliberate provocations of the New Left...
...This last point is important, for in the new society of entitlements, "individuals and groups who can take pride in, and can boast of, their contributions to the common good do not receive political recognition as such...
...This means recognizing that there is more to life than bread alone, that "forms matter" as much if not more than material interests, and that self-government in a republic ultimately depends on the pride that human beings take in managing their own affairs, individually and collectively...
...Indeed, it "tends to confirm the idea of black inferiority in the minds of whites even while its purpose is to erase it...
...An equal right to seek a job," Mansfield explains, "becomes an entitlement to a job or rather to the proceeds of a job, which the government performs as it were instead of the worker...
...Mansfield's point is that affirmative action is not only unjust in that it penalizes innocent bystanders while compensating individuals who have not themselves suffered a loss...
...To rally their compatriots to their side, American conservatives must have an ennobling cause to pursue...
...Mansfield pays less attention to the tax cuts and other Reaganite programs than to the campaigns and elections of 1980-88...
...They have in effect embraced patriarchy, attempting not only to guarantee our rights but to ensure their exercise...
...It also encourages in whites "a patronizing, condescending attitude" toward blacks...
...Mansfield sums up the case against affirmative action and against entitlements in general in the following way: "They have no reference to the common good...
...He urged liberals to study the classical conservatism of Plato and Aristotle, to reflect on the qualities that distinguish the few who aspire to rule from the many who fear and resent being ruled, and to ponder the political importance of the phenomenon that the Greeks called thumos: "In the classical tradition," he wrote, "liberals would learn more about themselves for knowing what they lack because of what was once rejected in the name of liberty and now is needed in defense of liberty: a certain spirit in the soul of a human being Paul A. Rahe's book Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution will be published by the University of North Carolina Press next fall...
...As liberalism takes hold, citizenship withers and America becomes "a society of entitlements and a nation of dependents...
...Mansfield argues that American conservatives must justify their desire for realignment on constitutional grounds: they must ask what it means to be an American, and be prepared to defend the requisite qualities...
...a detailed commentary on Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy...
...and they deny past progress in rights while producing a static society of defensive special interests...
...They must show that the political health of the nation depends on the restoration of the limited, responsible government that Mansfield calls "America's constitutional soul...
...Affirmative action is the good deed that dare not speak its name...
...As Mansfield points out, though Watt's statement was "a remark of shameless cynicism, and deliberately subversive," it was "also true...
...He begins by asking why the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 failed to produce the political realignment that Mansfield and others thought possible and desirable...
...their strengths are forgotten" and, in effect, denied...
...At the same time, affirmative action encourages blacks "to think of themselves as victims, hence as essentially passive," and it thereby discourages them from devoting their attention and efforts to what they can do for themselves and for their countrymen...
...political earthquakes take place only when fundamental principles are at stake...
Vol. 25 • January 1992 • No. 1
