The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition

I. What Is Traditional Amongst Us?

CHAPTER I What Is Traditional Amongst Us? The central theme of this book is one that few, if any, historians or political theorists would have chosen to explore as recently as fifteen years ago. Indeed, nobody could have chosen it prior to two developments in the course of those fifteen years that have assuredly taken most students of American politics completely by surprise. To begin with we want to examine these two developments, dealing first with the simpler and more familiar of the two. Up to a recent moment-just what moment we need not say precisely-the American political tradition did not constitute a problem, whereas today it does. Put otherwise: Up to a certain recent moment Americans did not raise questions about an American political tradition for the simple reason that everybody knew, or thought he knew, what the tradition was. In other words, everybody took it for granted that there was a traditional American way of self-government, a traditional American way of doing things politically, that reached back over the decades to the generation that produced the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights. Put otherwise again: everyone took it for granted that underlying our traditional way of doing things politically was a traditional set of political principles or political beliefs that Americans; back over the decades, had cherished both because they were correct political principles, 3 4 THE BASIC SYMBOLS that is, principles that Americans ought to cherish, and because they were ours, bequeathed to us by our forefathers. And, here again, everyone assumed that these principles could be fully articulated without difficulty if and when the occasion arose to do so. Hence, the task of identifying and spelling out our basic political principles was far from being deemed a problem of importance by scholars, statesmen, or even the ordinary citizen. For example, when our great waves of immigration descended upon us at the tum of the century, and we suddenly faced the challenge of the "greenhorn," the newly-arrived immigrant from, for example, Eastern Europe, the greenhorn who spoke no English and had had no experience with anything remotely resembling American political principles, everybody seemed to know what needed to be done: namely, teach the greenhorn the English language (English, curiously, not American) which constituted the first step toward his Americanization, and then teach him Americanism , that is, the principles of our political system. Everyone seemed to agree, in other words, that there was such a thing as Americanism (that is, an American political tradition ) and-a matter of great importance for us here-that Americanism ought to be inculcated upon the immigrants.1 More: It was the duty of those immigrants to understand and cherish our political principles, and our duty to see to it that they did. And certainly everyone agreed that there could be no question about what ought to be said in the textbooks used in the Americanization schools. So, new Americans like Edward Bok were duly Americanized-indeed, Bok could and 1 This is admittedly quite different from what we find today. Witness only the argument often encountered to this effect: "Because we don't know what Americanism is, who can tell us what is un-American?" In the groves of academe , of course, such reasoning was frequently used to assail the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. We suspect that this might well have been the reason the name of the Committee was changed. OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION 5 did call his autobiography The Americanization of Edward Bok.2 Today, by contrast, there certainly is a problem about the American political tradition, even though different commentators might differ in their formulations of that problem. One provisional formulation of the problem we can offer is this: Some amongst us are today saying things about the American political tradition, about the traditional American way of doing things politically, about the political principles that have the sanction of tradition in America, that others of us believe to be untrue. And this belief is bolstered because we have had, in the last few years, a sudden spate of books involving a kind of inquiry into the American political tradition that we had never before seen in America. Take, for example, Harold Hyman's To Try Men's Souls.s It concerns itself with the history of loyalty oaths in America, and the author arrives at...