The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition

by Willmoore Kendall, George W. Carey

When it was first published twenty-five years ago, this classic work of political theory gained notoriety because neither its approach nor its interpretations readily fit into any of the major schools of thought dealing with the American political tradition. More significantly, its arguments challenged core tenets of what had become received wisdom concerning the roots of our political beliefs and institutions. Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey argue that a new, largely contrived political tradition has gained currency in many legal, academic, and political circles. This new tradition, set forth by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, holds that our fundamental political ideas are derived from the Bill of Rights and the "all men are created equal" clause of the Declaration of Independence. Proponents of this view not only champion individual rights but also believe that the achievement of a broadly defined equality represents a binding but as yet unfulfilled promise made by the American people in the Declaration.

In the present work, Kendall and Carey instead maintain that one must look to the founding era and its key documents in order to understand our indigenous political tradition. In so doing, one sees that the right of the people to govern themselves, rather than the concept of individual rights, is at the heart of the American political tradition.

Using the analytical approach developed by Eric Voegelin, the authors examine the documents that are vital to an understanding of our political the Mayflower Compact , the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut , the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the Virginia Bill of Rights, the Constitution itself, and the Federalist Papers . At the same time, they consider questions highly relevant to the subsequent course of American political development.

This thought-provoking book contributes important arguments to the fundamental debate over the place of equality in our political self-understanding. It will continue to be of immense interest to all serious students of American political thought.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1970

Reviews

[Mike Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using Voeglin's analysis of symbols or myths that identify us as a regime, Kendall (and Carey) reread our "scriptures" in very different way from most 20th Century theorists. They argue that Lincoln has derailed the American tradtion by placing the Declaration (and a minor part of that--"All men are created equal") at the center. I don't know if I buy their story (they seem to read John Locke out of the Declaration--see pp 63-65 , but it is well written. See Harry V. Jaffa's response to them--
http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/vie...

Here is the heart of the matter.

"Our Constitution, consistent with the basic symbols, is clearly nomocratic in character, largely concerned, that is, with providing rules and limits for the government through which the people express their will. Since the derailment, however, the Constitution is increasingly viewed from a teleocratic perspective, as an instrument designed to fulfill the ends, commitments, or promise of the Declaration. (xxii)

I think you have to read this book if you are interested in American political theory.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reasoning that one can't understand a society without first comprehending how it understands itself, Kendall aims to identify, using the framework developed by Eric Voegelin, what key myths inform American self-perception:

"All societies think of themselves, once they begin to think of themselves at all, as representing a truth, a meaning, about the nature and destiny of man, and thus about that which, in the constitution of being, is above and beyond man."

The trick, he writes, is deciding where to begin. Start too early (with the Magna Carta, say), and you dilute what makes the American political tradition distinctly American. Start too late (with, say, The Gettysburg Address), and you miss underlying beliefs that will tell you how to understand subsequent developments and the meanings of political symbols.

Kendall believes the best place to start is with early compacts and charters used by colonists in organizing themselves. What he sharply rejects--and this sets him apart from the majority who think about the American founding today--is the notion that our founding myth is captured by The Declaration of Independence. The DoI is, he argues, a divorce letter, not an articulation of the principles that will undergird the new government.

The reason he dwells on this is because he contends the DoI language about equality and inalienable rights has been contorted to justify massive government intervention in the lives of citizens, and the trampling of local self-determination. I suspect the reason he received such a harsh response from scholars like Harry Jaffa is because the DoI's language was made to serve an incredibly valuable end--emancipation of slaves and subsequent efforts to repair some of the damage wrought by that evil institution.

The strategic and rhetorical use of the DoI's language, however, doesn't negate Kendall's contention, which is that if we want to properly understand the intent of the American founders where it comes to state powers, what the Bill of Rights means, and limits on federal action, we'd best look to those early compacts, to state constitutions, and to the words of the Federalists, as well as existing state laws. All these mitigate against what he considered the latent destructive quality of the Lincolnian mindset, in which America is subjected to:

"... an endless series of Abraham Lincolns, each persuaded that he is superior in wisdom and virtue to the Fathers, each prepared to insist that those who oppose this or that new application of the equality standard are denying the possibility of self-government, each ultimately willing to plunge America into Civil War rather than concede his point..."

What I appreciate about Kendall is that he was willing to pursue a philosophical thread all the way to the end, without pausing to ask whether he likes the destination. That made him, in my view, intellectually far more honest than a Jaffa, who too often in his essays resorts to lawyerly rhetoric rather than philosophical reasoning. If only Kendall has lived longer, the two of them might have had any number of rollicking debates. Alas.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most Americans are not very familiar with the basic documents that have formed our political tradition. This book supplies a serious need by studying those documents and showing their importance. If American are not to be politically manipulated, they should be familiar with the ideas with which this book deals based on our formative political documents.

[Dave Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willmoore Kendall (1909-1967) offered a genuine American political philosophy. There is also both timeliness and timelessness in his thought. His sense of how divisions can happen in a polity is especially worth considering given today’s atmosphere. Kendall’s writings seem to converge on a single focus: how can a democracy work for the majority when centrifugal forces threaten to destroy a consensus or turn a majority toward tyranny.

A child prodigy, he graduated from college and published a book at 18. Kendall then attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship where he completed a B.A and a M.A. under the tutelage of R.G. Collingwood. Kendall completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois. His dissertation was a reinterpretation of Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government.” Kendall’s academic career—like the careers of many Americans -- was interrupted by war. With his knowledge of Spanish, he served at the State Department, the OSS, and then the CIA, before teaching at Yale.

George W. Carey began teaching at Georgetown University in 1961. An expert on American political thought, especially “The Federalist Papers” and the Constitution. His work was marked by a deep knowledge of the founding era. He is now celebrated and reviled for his vigorous defense of traditional approaches to the history of the Constitution.

In the “Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition,” Kendall and Carey, employ the groundbreaking work of Eric Voegelin – to contend that the symbols used by Americans to represent the truth of their political order was that of a virtuous people deliberating under God and natural law for the creation of an ordered liberty. With respect to symbolization, Kendall’s work is prescient. Since this volume was published we have seen the “New York Times” sponsor an effort to denigrate the American founding, claiming that America’s founders were nothing but slave running colonizers.

In a survey of the constitutional history in America, Kendall and Carey found that the north star guiding the deliberation of the people’s representatives was to build a civilization worthy of a Christian people who believed that reason, order, and purpose existed within creation.

Kendall and Carey’s view of our founding documents germane. Their vision of government is accentuated by a profound sense of the ‘constitution of being’ –a symbolism- that is not just a mere residue. To lose this, we may lose more than our history; we may lose both order and liberty. The founding documents—are symbols—they express the meaning of our attempt at self-government. The author’s analytical approach, following Voegelin, is highly relevant, hearkening back to the understanding we as a people once shared.

To this end, the authors examine early colonial attempts to articulate their intent and design: the “Mayflower Compact;” the “General Orders of Connecticut;” the “Body of Liberties of Massachusetts;” and the “Virginia Declaration of Rights.” The authors argue that these documents frame an outline that informed the “Declaration of Independence,” the “Constitution,” the “Federalist Papers,” and the Bill of Rights.

In essence, America’s basic symbols urge moderation. From the beginning, Americans attempted to create governments that reflected the will of the majority, respected the rights of minorities, and sought the common good. Although it took Virginia to remove theocratic coercion from the realm of governmental authority, the founders eventually got it right. The authors aptly describe this as the morality of the “Federalist Papers.”

In their summary, the authors discuss the derailment of our tradition. First, the exaltation of the judiciary has emasculated the deliberative sense of government that the founders sought to establish. Kendall noted that elites frequently use rights-talk to enlist their conceptions of truth against popular government. There is nothing virtuous about minority government when compared to the rule of legislative majorities. However, national majorities do not exist. Such a notion is an abstraction made on behalf of elites; mostly arguments made by the media and academics.

Another derailment is the tendency to absolutize certain symbols of our founding, such as the Bill of Rights. In defense of political communities, Kendall rejected the ‘open society’ thinking of Karl Popper and the absolutist skepticism of John Stuart Mill regarding truth and coercion. Mill famously argued that because no one has the truth in any argument, the state itself must surely refrain from imposing one set of beliefs on other persons. Thus, society should strive to be a discussion process whose highest good is absolute freedom of expression.

This is the source of much discord. Since Truth is elusive, we take shortcuts. However, this is dangerous: We need no citizenship or any idea of functionality.
Existing societies, Kendall noted, are reliant on truths which embody a way of life; its members, at least those who receive a civic education, will naturally, defend its principles.

When I worked in the Intelligence community, it didn’t matter; now it does.

[Desire · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy ready. Read this book for my masters degree. It had come in handy in a number of papers. I have it in hard copy as well. I think I will let this book as I transition into the field of government.

[Bauer Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When it was first published twenty-five years ago, this classic work of political theory gained notoriety because neither its approach nor its interpretations readily fit into any of the major schools of thought dealing with the American political tradition. More significantly, its arguments challenged core tenets of what had become received wisdom concerning the roots of our political beliefs and institutions. Wilmoore Kendall and George W. Carey argue that a new, largely contrived political tradition has gained currency in many legal, academic, and political circles. This new tradition, set forth by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, holds that our fundamental political ideas are derived from the Bill of Rights and the "all men are created equal" clause of the Declaration of Independence. Proponents of this view not only champion individual rights but also believe that the achievement of a broadly defined equality represents a binding but as yet unfulfilled promise made by the American people in the Declaration.In the present work, Kendall and Carey instead maintain that one must look to the founding era and its key documents in order to understand our indigenous political tradition. In so doing, one sees that the right of the people to govern themselves, rather than the concept of individual rights, is at the heart of the American political tradition." - Amazon Reviews

[Du · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intelligent and thoughtful review of the consistency in political thought between our founding documents. There is no getting around that this book is academic. That said, it should be, it's basically a text book. All in all, it is a sophisticated, well written, conservative, but not far right (really wasn't in vogue in 1990], and well worth it.