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Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics since Independence
Contention, argument, and power have always been the tradition in American political talk. Any country that began in a revolution was bound to have this history. But the language of argument uses particular words with particular, sometimes shifting, meanings and to know what they are and what they meant over time is a critical contribution to political history. It is true that politicians may act as though they are part of no particular ideological tradition, but history shows that, more often than not, they use an understood meaning to enhance their actions. As Daniel T. Rodgers shows in this book, rhetoric has consequences.
280 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 1987
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August 31, 2014
A. Prolog
1. Intent: To write a book about political words “an inquiry into the language of argument in the American past through a handful of keywords [3].” These words are important because words are what builds political coalitions and movements (unify and mobilize). Words are also power
2. Paradigms:
a) Liberalism: Individualistic, Lockean, private accumulation, held together by the ordinary hand of government
b) Republican: Public terms, public good, distrust the haggling individualism of the market (this view died out in favor of liberalism)
c) But, a paradigm shift from republicanism to liberalism is too simplistic.
3. Keywords
a) These words are just exemplars and there was no consensus about their meaning. They are the contested truths (no self-evident truths)
b) Yet these words allow us to see how Americans constructed the language of political authority
c) Utility: A story of failure after the 18th
d) Natural Rights: The central radical slogan of the revolution. It became a tool for those on the margins of power.
e) The People: Rose to prominence in the 1830s and 1840s
f) Government: Came during the Civil War
g) The State: Replaced Government and attempted to take power away from the people
h) Interests: By the 1930s it was realized that there was no common will, only interests groups looking out for their own advantage. This is still the way we talk about politics.
B. Utility
1. America, somewhat strangely, rejected the practical, useful philosophy.
2. Americans talked about RR’s, tobacco, and steam engines with practical emphasis. But they did not want their politics to be practical
3. Utilitarianism was viewed as cold, mechanistic, and was believed to be another name for selfishness
4. Americans preferred abstract, metaphysical, first principles which Bentham opposed (like self-evident truths)
C. Natural Rights
1. This was one of the key words that came out of the American Revolution
2. Natural Rights was a system of rights inherited from the original state of nature
3. What was so important and so volatile about Natural Rights was that it cut across all governmental and law institutions to what every man already possesses
4. Three uses of the term
a) The use of the word originally began with American unhappiness over Parliamentary taxes (1764-65). NR was a strong way to speak of natural ties between colonists and crown.
b) A second way was how colleges and philosophers used it. Rights founded in the law of God and nature. Kings were part of God’s creation so the taxes that the king implemented could also be argued for under natural rights
c) Finally was a description of rights as inherited from an original state of nature. This transcended king and was how the revolutionary radicals talked
5. After 1776 the Patriots turned away from natural rights. An American constitution and rights had to be drawn up. The words NR were not silenced but were defined and delimited.
6. The revival of NR talk again came from below and outside the mainstream of politics (slavery opponents, feminists, workingmen) 1825-50.
D. The People
1. In the 1820 government was seen as a piece of machinery (power checked and balanced) so that no faction, no t even the people could rule government
2. In the 1820s a new popular politics emerged (Jacksonian Democratic Party)
3. By the 1850 women and blacks used the term
E. Government
1. Post-revolutionary America: In such areas as New England Government was linked with God. It was Gods insistence that the government was an edict from his own hand.
2. Middle 1/3 of the 19th came counter-revolutionary thought. The government became a human contrivance for human wants. The counter-revolutionaries faded after the Civil War
3. Reconstruction forced political talk back onto rights and sovereignty. Yet the effects were more powerful the commonly realized.
F. The State
1. In mid 19th America the science of politics remained an arena of amateurs (long self-indulgent speeches, poetry, etc.)
2. When the property requirements were done away with in the 1830s many attempted a political grammar for the newly enfranchised. Yet, politics remained in the common voice
3. Only after the Civil War did the professionals undertake the task of formalizing politics. It was based on professional and not religious authority. The intent was to wrest away the language of political legitimacy from the people.
4. Lawyers: By the mid-1850s they started the courts and by the New Deal had left behind a jargon of legal constraints on popular rule.
5. Political scientists: The State was their construct. 1890s they became professionalized. The sovereign omnipotence of the state is now an embarrassment to contemporary political scientists. The political scientists pulled the vocabulary of politics away from day to day speech. The state was the antonym of the people and a barrier to popular claims of rights.
G. Interests (highbrow and lowbrow)
1. There was always a dichotomy in American language of politics (abstract, contested, theoretical, superstructure v. Practical base)
2. This chasm was never as sharp as it was in the opening years of the new century (university ethics and business ethics, good government and Tammany) Where was the common ground?
3. Younger students of politics created a behavioral political science. They replaced the highbrow words with a language of political realism (who gets what, when, and how). A number of interests groups fighting for power
4. Wilson claimed in 1912 that the business of government was to organize the common interest against the special interest. FDR said that the task was to lay aside the special interests.
1. Intent: To write a book about political words “an inquiry into the language of argument in the American past through a handful of keywords [3].” These words are important because words are what builds political coalitions and movements (unify and mobilize). Words are also power
2. Paradigms:
a) Liberalism: Individualistic, Lockean, private accumulation, held together by the ordinary hand of government
b) Republican: Public terms, public good, distrust the haggling individualism of the market (this view died out in favor of liberalism)
c) But, a paradigm shift from republicanism to liberalism is too simplistic.
3. Keywords
a) These words are just exemplars and there was no consensus about their meaning. They are the contested truths (no self-evident truths)
b) Yet these words allow us to see how Americans constructed the language of political authority
c) Utility: A story of failure after the 18th
d) Natural Rights: The central radical slogan of the revolution. It became a tool for those on the margins of power.
e) The People: Rose to prominence in the 1830s and 1840s
f) Government: Came during the Civil War
g) The State: Replaced Government and attempted to take power away from the people
h) Interests: By the 1930s it was realized that there was no common will, only interests groups looking out for their own advantage. This is still the way we talk about politics.
B. Utility
1. America, somewhat strangely, rejected the practical, useful philosophy.
2. Americans talked about RR’s, tobacco, and steam engines with practical emphasis. But they did not want their politics to be practical
3. Utilitarianism was viewed as cold, mechanistic, and was believed to be another name for selfishness
4. Americans preferred abstract, metaphysical, first principles which Bentham opposed (like self-evident truths)
C. Natural Rights
1. This was one of the key words that came out of the American Revolution
2. Natural Rights was a system of rights inherited from the original state of nature
3. What was so important and so volatile about Natural Rights was that it cut across all governmental and law institutions to what every man already possesses
4. Three uses of the term
a) The use of the word originally began with American unhappiness over Parliamentary taxes (1764-65). NR was a strong way to speak of natural ties between colonists and crown.
b) A second way was how colleges and philosophers used it. Rights founded in the law of God and nature. Kings were part of God’s creation so the taxes that the king implemented could also be argued for under natural rights
c) Finally was a description of rights as inherited from an original state of nature. This transcended king and was how the revolutionary radicals talked
5. After 1776 the Patriots turned away from natural rights. An American constitution and rights had to be drawn up. The words NR were not silenced but were defined and delimited.
6. The revival of NR talk again came from below and outside the mainstream of politics (slavery opponents, feminists, workingmen) 1825-50.
D. The People
1. In the 1820 government was seen as a piece of machinery (power checked and balanced) so that no faction, no t even the people could rule government
2. In the 1820s a new popular politics emerged (Jacksonian Democratic Party)
3. By the 1850 women and blacks used the term
E. Government
1. Post-revolutionary America: In such areas as New England Government was linked with God. It was Gods insistence that the government was an edict from his own hand.
2. Middle 1/3 of the 19th came counter-revolutionary thought. The government became a human contrivance for human wants. The counter-revolutionaries faded after the Civil War
3. Reconstruction forced political talk back onto rights and sovereignty. Yet the effects were more powerful the commonly realized.
F. The State
1. In mid 19th America the science of politics remained an arena of amateurs (long self-indulgent speeches, poetry, etc.)
2. When the property requirements were done away with in the 1830s many attempted a political grammar for the newly enfranchised. Yet, politics remained in the common voice
3. Only after the Civil War did the professionals undertake the task of formalizing politics. It was based on professional and not religious authority. The intent was to wrest away the language of political legitimacy from the people.
4. Lawyers: By the mid-1850s they started the courts and by the New Deal had left behind a jargon of legal constraints on popular rule.
5. Political scientists: The State was their construct. 1890s they became professionalized. The sovereign omnipotence of the state is now an embarrassment to contemporary political scientists. The political scientists pulled the vocabulary of politics away from day to day speech. The state was the antonym of the people and a barrier to popular claims of rights.
G. Interests (highbrow and lowbrow)
1. There was always a dichotomy in American language of politics (abstract, contested, theoretical, superstructure v. Practical base)
2. This chasm was never as sharp as it was in the opening years of the new century (university ethics and business ethics, good government and Tammany) Where was the common ground?
3. Younger students of politics created a behavioral political science. They replaced the highbrow words with a language of political realism (who gets what, when, and how). A number of interests groups fighting for power
4. Wilson claimed in 1912 that the business of government was to organize the common interest against the special interest. FDR said that the task was to lay aside the special interests.
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