RESIDUAL?:

Our Founders the Realists: The Constitution succeeded because its authors had a clear-eyed view of human nature. (Rich Lowry, 7/03/09, National Review)

The Revolution was institutionalized in the Constitution, an inspired exercise in leveraging human failings against one another — “ambition counteracts ambition” — to create a stable structure of liberty.

“It may be a reflection on human nature,” Madison wrote in a famous passage in Federalist No. 51, “that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

How did the Founders come to know man as they did? They had broad practical experience that exposed them to humanity in its glory and its folly: as lawyers, military officers, and — especially important — legislators. Some knew hardship. Try, like Alexander Hamilton, making your way as a penniless, orphaned bastard from the West Indies and see if you don’t pick up a few hard-boiled lessons about how the world works.

They read widely, knew the classics, and soaked up history. John Adams studied and wrote a book about the French civil wars of the 16th century, concluding of human affairs: “Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.” Madison undertook a yearlong study of the history of republics and confederacies prior to the writing of the Constitution. Believing “experience is the oracle of truth,” he endeavored to learn from this long, unrelieved record of failure.

They didn’t let their view of reality get obscured by abstruse theories or sunny abstractions of the sort that perverted the French Revolution. No philosophes need apply. Instead, a residual Calvinism tinged their worldview. They admired the “country” tradition in England, characterized by a deep distrust of the crown and support for republican reforms to preserve English liberties. In this tradition, the late historian Martin Malia writes, “men were neither rational nor naturally good,” and “human government therefore invariably tended toward corruption and despotism.”

What the Constitution institutionalizes is the Fall.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2009 7:26 AM