The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition

VIII. Derailment and the Modern Crisis

CHAPTER VIII Derailment and the Modern Crisis We have in the foregoing pages talked about a "derailment" in our tradition. The derailment, as we have further remarked , has understandably caused a certain schizophrenia among us, We the People,so that we do not really know who we are and where we are going. To detail when all this came to pass is far beyond our purpose here. We can, however, say this much: The philosophical plants of derailment were seeded and began to grow full force sometime between the very early years of the Republic and the Civil War. This is precisely why Lincoln could speak in the manner he did at Gettysburg and get away with it. These plants were lavishly fed and nourished , sometimes unwittingly, after the Civil War, so that by the turn of the century the so-called progressivist historians and political scientists could burst forth with their notions about the central symbols of the American tradition. In the intellectual world their interpretations have subsequently enjoyed remarkable and frightening success. Today, by and large, in the average college classrooms across the nation, it is their recounting of the American tradition and symbols (the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights being their major sources) that is accepted pretty much as gospel truth, if we judge only by the texts that are most commonly used. Why two or more generations of presumed scholars fell under the spell of the "progressivists" is an intriguing matter. 137 138 THE BASIC SYMBOLS Perhaps this question can be answered once we discover precisely why it is that the academic community is so philosophically out of step with the more general community of which it is presumably a part. We can speak with a greater degree of certainty about the extent and causes of our derailment. Throughout, from our analysis of the Mayflower Compact to the Bill of Rights, we have emphasized that our supreme commitment and symbol has been self-government by a virtuous people. As we hope to have shown, the notion of legislative supremacy has been intimately linked with this symbol. We have, beyond any doubt, come a long way from any such self-interpretation. To show just how far we have come we need only reproduce a line of argument against our thesis well within the grasp of intelligent sophomores in our institutions of higher learning and most surely their instructors. One superficial but revealing manifestation of the derailment runs pretty much as follows: "You have told us that there is a continuity from the Mayflower Compact through even the Bill of Rights. By this we understand you to mean that our Constitution is a legislative supremacy document, which leaves the Congress free to do, without let or hindrance, pretty much anything and everything it chooses to do. But all of this is surely not true. Ours is, if anything, a constitution of judicial supremacy. We do not, we in America, think of Congress as having the last word about its own powers, and what is more, Congress does not think of itself as having the last word. We have been taught that our Constitution is built on the principle of balance of powers specifically designed to prevent Congress from being supreme. We have in America three nominally equal and coordinate branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with power to check and balance the other, none of them therefore supreme in constitutional theory, none of them possessing the last say as a matter of constitutional theory, al- OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION 139 though in practice one of them does end up having the last say, namely, the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, after all is said and done, finds itself called upon, year in and year out, to decide whether this or that act of Congress or of the President is or is not constitutional. In practice, it would seem, neither Congress nor the President ever talks back to the Supreme Court (very rarely, in any case) , so that both of these branches are very much in the habit of accepting Supreme Court decisions. Beyond this, the Court must be supreme among the branches of government because the Constitution is supreme, and it is within the province of the Court to tell us what the Constitution means. Congress cannot exceed the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution, and Congress cannot invade the...