Will Power – I think George Will is one of the consistently most interesting and impressive columnists writing today, but occasionally his Hamiltonian pro-Federalist persuasion, reinforced no doubt by his imbibing of “Land of Lincoln” Republicanism from his upbringing in Illinois, clouds his vision and prevents his seeing any merit in the competing anti-Federalist, Jeffersonian tradition. Today’s column is a case in point.
Chief Justice Marshall, a great definer of American nationhood, was opposed by Jeffersonians, with their anti-nationalist vision of the nation as only a confederation produced by a compact (implicitly revocable; see 1861) among states. Today Bush’s defense of American national autonomy is opposed, among Americans, mainly by members of the party that traces its lineage to Jefferson.
Many Democrats have more than a merely banal political reason — they believe they prosper when focusing on domestic matters — for pushing this nation deeper into the tar baby’s embrace. Their desire is to avoid having to assert what many of them believe: that the use of U.S. force in preemptive self-defense requires permission from the not altogether savory collection of regimes that is misnamed the United Nations.
This could be the beginning of a very interesting argument, and I half expected Will to note the irony of liberals, who throughout most of the 20th century prided themselves on being internationalists, using their reliance on the UN and general “multilateralism” increasingly to become functional isolationists today. They oppose action in defense of our security unless sanctioned by the UN and/or we are accompanied by a grand coalition, which often means we should just stay home — which was the conclusion the old isolationists always preferred. But Will did not go that way.
I believe his Hamiltonian pro-federalism also prevented him from seeing another irony: that in many respects Bush’s argument for the pre-emptive defense of American national security, which Will favors, has much in common with the Jeffersonian Anti-Federalism that Will abhors. Anti-Federalists and Jeffersonians favored de-centralized local government (where government was necessary at all) over distant centralized government, in large part because they thought smaller local governments, being close to the people, were more responsive to them and larger, distant government more likely to come under the control of un-responsive elites.
In our current situation, a vigorous defense of American interests has more in common with Jeffersonian states rights (in part because they are both rooted in similar constitutional values) than it does with the Hamiltonian preference for more uniform and centralized power. Indeed, although there are exceptions — such as big city Democratic mayors who do not like to defer to state governments, particularly when the latter are dominated by Republicans — a pretty good argument can be made that beginning in the 20th Century it is the Democrats who have been the centripetal party, favoring the centralization of authority — whether in Washington or the U.N. — while the Republicans have been centrifugal, favoring decentralization — favoring power in the states as opposed to Washington, and in the nation state (at least our nation state) as opposed to the U.N.
