Dear Editor
Dear Editor Ultimate Politics How charming—a T-shirt if I guess who is Publius. Even more charming is the fact that your Publius, practically alone among all the zillions of writers on the...
...This is a propitious time for it, what with the Bicentennial, the renewed crisis of constitutional procedures in foreign policy, the continuing crisis of trade and currency relations, the growing frustration with NATO, and the debate over America's future role in the world...
...Or, more simply: With whom shall we be united in society and government...
...Four decades into the nuclear era, people must learn to think seriously about the constitutive question in international affairs...
...He (she) is right...
...Probably this is because each generation of Americans is taught to take its political identity from the Declaration of Independence, equating liberty with national independence and idealizing separation from the Old World, and from the line of blood drawn in the War of Independence—not from the Constitution and its more constructive (if also more complex) ideals of modern federalism, extended democracy, pluralism, and progress...
...Washington, D. C. Ira L. Straus Executive Director, Association to Unite the Democracies...
...Geographical-political boundaries often set off national economies as competing organisms when, from the standpoint of the interests of the people, they ought to be one common-wealth...
...Nothing could be more important in politics than the constitutive question: How shall relations among groups be constituted—on a foundation of diplomacy among separately constituted poliThe New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...And not only to control the multinational corporations, as your Publius writes somewhat lightheartedly, but to establish the framework for a common market, to regulate the economy in the common interest, to serve as an example and magnet for the growth of democracy elsewhere, and to secure an ever-wider realm of peace within which diplomacy, war and threat are replaced by law, legislation and democratic process...
...Federalist-minded economists have always argued that the main political task in the economy is to provide, plan and adapt the framework of the market, including the geographical extent of the market...
...ties, or on a foundation of a jointly constituted polity...
...It is doubly tragic that, even in the current Bicentennial Year of the Constitution, the vast bulk of Americans are proving unable to find their way to the constitutive question...
...The framework idea should be especially close to your hearts...
...Surprising or not, this is tragic...
...Robert Lekachman, a regular NL contributor, recently made love on William F. Buckley Jr.'s show Firing Line to a neoliberal economist supporting the theory that government and law are merely an adjustable framework for the marketplace of legitimate transactions...
...That means today, as your Publius makes clear: an international federal government, beginning among the Atlantic allies, extending across the Pacific, and aiming ultimately at a democratic world federation...
...Even more charming is the fact that your Publius, practically alone among all the zillions of writers on the Bicentennial of the Constitution, sees the living meaning of the document: to form a wider and more perfect Union—a wider sphere of mutual governance of mutual problems, interests and concerns...
...it means we are failing to make full use of our faculties to govern ourselves...
...The New Leader could make a valuable contribution to thinking in this area...
...The need is also great...
...I offer you our wholehearted collaboration on the series, and await—in place of your Publius T-shirt—your call and order for the next Federalist paper...
...Whatever the reasons for the usual failing, you have broken through it and reminded your readers of the most important of political truths...
...My intention in this letter, however, is not to dilate on theory, but to offer your Publius the highest of compliments...
...I think you should take the proposition of your Publius seriously and inaugurate a new Federalist series in The New Leader in the next month or so, and continue it through the remainder of the year at minimum...
...Your Publius suggests that a new series of Federalist papers is needed...
...Perhaps it is not surprising that the ultimate question of politics gets ignored in the rush of the struggle for power and influence within existing states...
Vol. 70 • September 1987 • No. 12
