Transcript 04 US Constitution & O`Sullivan

What is America?
Poli 110J 04
High and Holy Principle
Constitution of the United States of
America
• 1787
– Congress of the Confederation votes to begin plan
to revise/replace Articles of Confederation
– Invite states to send delegates to Philadelphia
Convention (only RI refuses)
– Contrary to Articles of Confederation, Art. VII says
that only 9 participating states need ratify the new
Constitution for it to go into effect
– Adopted September 17, 1787
Constitution of the United States of
America
• What does it mean to “constitute”?
• “We the People of the United States, in Order
to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.”
Constitution of the United States of
America
• Legislature (Article I)
– Broad powers over declaration of war, commerce
(foreign & interstate), law, currency, punishment,
etc.
Constitution of the United States of
America
• House of Representatives
• “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which may
be included within this Union, according to their
respective Numbers, which shall be determined
by adding to the whole Number of free Persons,
including those bound to Service for a Term of
Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all other Persons.”
– Changed by 13th & 14th amendment
Constitution of the United States of
America
• Senate
• The Senate of the United States shall be
composed of two Senators from each State,
chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six
Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote
– changed by 17th amendment to direct election
• Compromise between small and large states
Constitution of the United States of
America
• Executive
– Commander-in-chief of armed forces
– Appoint to offices
– Grant pardons
– Sees that laws are faithfully executed
– Veto
• Can be overridden by 2/3 majority of legislature
Constitution of the United States of
America
• Judiciary
• Congress creates lower courts, but there must
be a Supreme Court
• Lifetime appointment
• Constitutional review
– Constitution is “the supreme Law of the Land; and
the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State
to the Contrary notwithstanding” (Art. 6)
Constitution of the United States of
America
• No amendment may affect slavery until 1808
– Compromise to maintain unity
Bill of Rights
• Hamilton against, Jefferson in favor
• Madison proposes Bill of Rights during
ratification process for Constitution 1789,
ratified 1791
– A compromise to keep the Constitution from
being derailed
Bill of Rights
• The case against: Hamilton in Fed. #84
• “in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and
as they retain every thing they have no need of
particular reservations.”
• “bills of rights… are not only unnecessary in the
proposed Constitution, but would even be
dangerous. They would contain various
exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this
very account, would afford a colorable pretext to
claim more than were granted.”
Bill of Rights
• The case for: Brutus in AF #84:
• “The most important article in any Constitution may
therefore be repealed, even without a legislative act.
Ought not a government, vested with such extensive
and indefinite authority, to have been restricted by a
declaration of rights? It certainly ought.”
• “So clear a point is this, that I cannot help suspecting
that persons who attempt to persuade people that
such reservations were less necessary under this
Constitution than under those of the States, are
wilfully endeavoring to deceive, and to lead you into an
absolute state of vassalage.”
Bill of Rights
• Individualistic
• Restrictive of the powers of government
– Negative liberty
Bill of Rights
• 1. Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress
of grievances.
Bill of Rights
• 2. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State, the right of the
People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.
Bill of Rights
• 3 & 4: Security of property from the state
– Protection from the quartering soldiers
– Protection from unreasonable search & seizure
Bill of Rights
• 5-8 Governing arrest, trial, and punishment of
crimes
Bill of Rights
• 9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of
certain rights, shall not be construed to deny
or disparage others retained by the people.
• 10: The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
Authority
• The ability to speak finally
– The Constitution is at the foundation of the United
States
Jacksonian Democracy
• Andrew Jackson
– Hero of the Battle of New Orleans
– President 1829-1837
– Man of the [white] people
• Bowed to the crowd at inauguration
– Promoter of more direct democracy
– Removal of the Cherokee & Trail of Tears
– Favored strong states rights, Union
John L. O’Sullivan
• Defining the American community of belief
• Moral perfection and political exceptionality
of US national identity
• Expansion of US is expansion of liberty
• Liberty as a political good of the first order
• States’ rights & strong sense of national
mission and identity
John L. O’Sullivan
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1813-1895
Democratic party activist
Editor, literary critic, gov’t envoy to Portugal
Influential in van Buren, Pierce
administrations
• Founder, editor-in-Chief of United States
Magazine & Democratic Review
United States Magazine & Democratic
Review
• “Politico-literary” journal
• Nationalist project of culture
• Helped to launch Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville, Walt Whitman to
prominence
• Central to “Young America”
– Nationalism, democracy, expansion
The Nation as Crusade
• The “high and holy” democratic/voluntary
principle (“Introduction”)
– “the fundamental element of [America’s] new
social and political system”
• Defining America
– “The best government is that which governs least”
– “Let man be fettered by no duty, save
His brother’s right—like his, inviolable”
The Nation as Crusade
• A community of belief
– “full and free profession of the cardinal principles
of political faith on which we take our stand”
– “true and living faith”
The Nation as Crusade
• US exceptional, world-historical importance
• “All history has to be re-written; political
science and the whole scope of all moral truth
have to be considered and illustrated in the
light of the democratic principle. All old
subjects of thought and all new questions
arising, connected more or less directly with
human existence, have to be taken up again
and re-examined in this point of view.”
The Nation as Crusade
• The advent of the United States is a
discontinuous break with history
– Transforms not only the future, but also the past
– Forces reinterpretation of all that has come before
and that will come
– Analogous to birth of Christ
The Nation as Crusade
• The American interest = the universal interest
– Voluntary principle = democracy = United States =
“the cause of all mankind”
The Nation as Crusade
• Defining the community:
• What about slavery?
– Vague commitment to eventual extinction of
slavery
– slavery was “not a political” problem, “but a moral
and economic one, the decision of which must
rest, voluntarily, with the slave states themselves.”
– Matter of intrastate commerce, not rights
(Democratic Review 14, 4/44, p. 429)
The Nation as Crusade
• Defining the community:
• What about slavery?
– Union composed of states, not individuals
– Illegitimate to compel change in status quo
– Would violate democratic principle
The Nation as Crusade
• Liberty > Equality
– To be treated as an equal, one must be capable of selfrule.
– Some can, some can’t:
– “According to their knowledge of, and respect for, the
rights of a citizen, shall their freedom from
governmental restraints be measured out to them,
and every privilege which they learn to exercise
wisely, government will be forced to relinquish, until
each man becomes a law unto himself.” (“Territorial
Aggrandizement”)
The Nation as Crusade
• To be considered an equal, one must first become free
– Anglo-Saxon culture (not biology) makes whites most
capable of freedom
• Until then, it is fair to regard the un-free individual as
an inferior
– Slaves are made incapable of being free because the
brutality w/which they are treated has made them brute
– Natives cannot be free because of their savagery &
primitiveness
– Mexicans can’t be free because they are “semi-barbarous”,
have an aristocratic Spanish culture. They may one day be
educated enough that they can be free.
The Nation as Crusade
• To forcibly annex Mexico would make a
mockery of the voluntary principle
• It would also taint the US w/people who were
not prepared to rule themselves
• Thus, Mexico should be left alone (he changed
his mind)
The Nation as Crusade
• “The Great Nation of Futurity”
– “we have, in reality, but little connection with the
past history of any [other nations], and still less
with antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the
contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a
new history.”
• America is new, morally pure, and unstained by sins of
the past
• A radical break from the past
The Nation as Crusade
• “America is destined for better deeds. It is our
unparalleled glory that we have no reminisces
of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of
the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of
personal conscience, the rights of personal
enfranchisement.”
– America acts with pure motives, in the interest of
all mankind by definition
The Nation as Crusade
• “We have no interest in the scenes of
antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of
nearly all their examples. The expansive
future is our arena, and for our history. We are
entering on its untrodden space, with the
truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects
in our hearts, and with a clear conscience
unsullied by the past. “
The Nation as Crusade
• The old, the past is to be repudiated
• For Americans, the only history that matters is
future history
– It is not what we have been or what we have done
that makes us who we are, but what we will do
and who we will be
• Americans are a people who are unmarked by
sin
60 seconds of theology
• What is sin?
– Not being a bad person
– Not doing bad things (individual sins)
• In Christian thought, the taint of original sin is a
state of moral imperfection.
– A person can be very good and still be stained by sin.
– Makes forgiveness necessary
– Separates humans from God
• For O’Sullivan, America is beyond sin
The Nation as Crusade
• “We are the nation of human progress, and
who will, what can, set limits to our onward
march? Providence is with us, and no earthly
power can. We point to the everlasting truth
on the first page of our national declaration,
and we proclaim to the millions of other
lands, that ‘the gates of hell—the powers of
aristocracy and monarchy—’ shall not prevail
against it.”
The Nation as Crusade
• America’s purpose, its telos is to spread
democracy throughout the world
– Telos: A purpose that is part of a things nature,
forming what it is
• America is providentially destined to succeed
in this mission. Failure is impossible.
• Voluntary principle = democracy = United
States = “the cause of all mankind” = The
will of God
The Nation as Crusade
• The enemies of the United States and democracy
are enemies not only of all mankind, but of God
– They are intrinsically evil, satanic
• “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”
– Matthew 16:18
– Refers to the Christian church
– America, embodying the will of God, is the new
church
– By definition, the United States is a force of pure good
and its enemies agents of pure moral and religious evil
The Nation as Crusade
• Because the American interest is identical with
the universal human interest and the will of
God, everything done in the name of the
American interest is by definition good, acting
to promote freedom and democracy
• By the same token, every opponent of the
American interest is by definition an enemy of
God and all mankind
The Nation as Crusade
• “no lust for territory has stained our annals.
No nation has been despoiled by us, no
country laid desolate, no people overrun.”
– The indigenous would probably disagree.
– But, they cannot for O’Sullivan be free, and thus
are removed from consideration. Where they
were, democracy will be.
The Nation as Crusade
• New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845:
• “To state the truth at once in its neglected simplicity,
we are free to say that were the respective arguments
and cases of the two parties, as to all these points of
history and law, reversed—had England all ours, and
we nothing but hers—our claim to Oregon would still
be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of
our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the
whole of the continent which Providence has given us
for the development of the great experiment of liberty
and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
The Nation as Crusade
• Manifest Destiny: manifest here means “made
apparent, revealed, obvious”. Fated by
Providence (the will of God) to spread across
continent
• America’s moral & religious right and mission
are prior to any existing legal claim.
The Nation as Crusade
• “All this will be our future history, to establish on earth
the moral dignity and salvation of man—the
immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this
blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are
shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America
been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto
death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs,
and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where
myriads now endure an existence scarcely more
enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then,
can doubt that our country is destined to be the great
nation of futurity?” (Great Nation of Futurity)
The Nation as Crusade
• The US is chosen by God for “blessed mission
to spread the life-giving light of truth
(democracy) to the world
– America does not have a mission, it IS a mission. It
must redeem the world.
• Messianic Nation: Redeeming people of other
nations, raising them to dignity of humans
from bestial condition