VOLUME XVII, NUMBER 2, SPRING 2017

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship Yuval Christopher Levin: Caldwell: Why e Democracy? Globalization Swindle Allen C. Guelzo: Matthew J. Defending Franck: Reconstruction Patriotism Is Not Enough Ralph eodore Lerner: Dalrymple: e White Trash Enlightenment & in America Hillbilly Elegy

John David P. Derbyshire: Goldman: Weapons Walter of Math McDougall Destruction Gets Religion

Dana Gioia: Joseph Seamus Epstein: Heaney’s Evelyn Aeneid Waugh

A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Book Review by Matthew J. Franck Friends and Enemies Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism, by Steven F. Hayward. Encounter Books, 296 pages, $25.99

n his new book, steven hayward that they “redefined American conservatism,” more, in a standout chapter on “The Ad- sketches the larger-than-life careers, as the subtitle claims? That’s hard to say, ministrative State and the End of Constitu- Iachievements, and quarrels of Harry V. when the competition includes Russell Kirk, tional Government” (excerpted in the Winter Jaffa and Walter Berns, two early students of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Michael 2016/17 CRB), Hayward shows how the stu- , who were more than just gifted, Novak, William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard John dents of Jaffa, Berns, and others have expand- prolific scholars of the American Founding Neuhaus, Irving Kristol, and Norman Pod- ed their teachers’ arguments to grapple with and teachers of political philosophy. Lovers horetz—to name just a handful of intellec- modern America’s soft despotism. of country as well as of the truth—patriots tual figures, never mind the movement’s most who knew that Patriotism Is Not Enough, as noteworthy statesmen. eo strauss, who left germany in the title has it (the phrase comes from Jaffa)— Yet Hayward, a visiting scholar at U.C. 1932 and came to the United States Jaffa and Berns also took their talents into the Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Stud- Lfive years later, did not say much in public square as commentators on, and com- ies and the author of the superb two-volume print about his adopted country, but his stu- batants in, American political life. Friends study The Age of Reagan (2001-09), makes a dents (and their students) have had plenty to when they were young, bitterly divided in lat- good case that Jaffa and Berns—along with say, much of it truly groundbreaking. In the er years, but with that antipathy beginning (it others in the “Straussian” orbit over the past 1950s, when Jaffa and Berns were getting seems) to cool at the end, Jaffa and Berns died half century—deserve credit for reviving seri- started, the founders and Lincoln were out on the same day, January 10, 2015—remind- ous study, in and out of the academy, of the of fashion among political scientists and his- ing many people of the deaths on July 4, 1826, political thought of the American Founders torians alike—obsolete at best in a “progres- of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who and of . By doing so, these sive” age, retrograde at worst. The Constitu- similarly began as friends, became adversaries, scholars made American conservatism more tion was a ramshackle Newtonian machine, and finally reconciled. distinctively American by giving pride of place Woodrow Wilson had insisted, unsuited for a Will readers who knew little or nothing to the U.S. Constitution and its grounding streamlined Darwinian age. And it was made about these two men come away persuaded in the Declaration of Independence. What’s by anti-democratic oligarchs to boot, added

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Charles Beard, J. Allen Smith, and Vernon younger Straussians with the passage of time, ing; he was defending [their] original meaning” Parrington. For its part, the Declaration pro- and to some extent the disputes have died out (emphasis in the original). In other words, in claimed “truths” that no serious person in our altogether. But for the older generation repre- Hayward’s account, Jaffa eventually came relativist age could credit, Carl Becker assert- sented in Hayward’s book by Jaffa and Berns, to a richer, better understanding of Lincoln. ed. And according to James G. Randall, Av- the bitterness lingered because much was at That’s a subtle treatment that takes Jaffa’s ery Craven, Allan Nevins, and Richard Hof- stake personally as well as intellectually and thinking seriously. stadter, the Great Emancipator, who was just politically. And though he treads kindly and By contrast, when he takes up a shift over as much a racist as his opponents, had blun- gingerly, Hayward cannot really avoid con- time in Walter Berns’s thought, Hayward dered into America’s bloodiest war because ceding that Harry Jaffa was very good at pick- reaches for the purely psychological-political his reckless ambition and opportunism made ing fights, personalizing them, and persisting explanation instead of considering, as with him unwilling to compromise on what should in them. Jaffa, the possibility that Berns got better at have been a minor policy dispute over slavery his chosen craft, in this case, constitutional in the territories. ayward is well placed to write interpretation. Berns’s earliest professional Into this obtuse, sclerotic consensus this book, having known Jaffa and publication had been a journal article on the charged Strauss’s students. While Berns, HBerns very well—Jaffa was his grad- notorious 1927 eugenic sterilization case, Martin Diamond, , and oth- uate school mentor, Berns his colleague at Buck v. Bell, in which he embraced the idea of ers excavated the original understanding of the American Enterprise Institute for many substantive due process, which he later came the Constitution and the contributions to years—and his high regard for both of them to reject. “When asked later about his flirta- political thought of The Federalist and the is evident throughout. But Hayward was tion” with that idea, Hayward writes, “Berns Anti-Federalists, Jaffa revolutionized Lin- “more closely associated with Jaffa,” as he ad- said, ‘I changed my mind.’” Hayward then of- coln scholarship with his magisterial Cri- mits, than with Berns or anyone else he treats fers his “theory” that “the judicial predations sis of the House Divided (1959), a book that in the book, so it is not surprising that Berns of the Warren Court era” prompted Berns to every student of Lincoln’s words and deeds vanishes for stretches at a time while Jaffa is change course. Call it a “prudential judgment,” has had to reckon with ever since. These con- never absent for long. Hayward scruples to call it fear of the “Frankenstein’s monster” of tributions did much, too, to straighten out the “living Constitution”—call it anything, the nascent conservative movement’s under- apparently, but a considered conclusion about standing of America, which had been am- Hayward has laid out the meaning of the Constitution by a scholar bivalent toward the founders and, certainly, who improved his understanding over a life- toward Lincoln. Together, Strauss and his some of the most time of study. students also broke the stranglehold of the essential questions “behavioral revolution” on American political n fact, berns did more than simply science, restoring the connections between concerning what it is say, “I changed my mind.” In an essay the life of action and the life of the mind, and to be an American Ititled “Preserving a Living Constitution,” putting justice and statesmanship once again first published in 1993 and reprinted in his at the center of the study of politics. Any- and a conservative. last volume of collected essays, Democracy one lucky enough to study with a talented and the Constitution (2006), Berns discussed teacher of the Straussian school—and I had his 1953 article on Buck v. Bell and suggested five of them, none of them discussed in this be as fair as he can to the former and other that he had succumbed then to “the tempta- book—knows the heady experience of grap- erstwhile friends of Jaffa’s, but he comes down tion to go beyond the text of the Constitution.” pling with the wisdom of great books and the pretty decisively on his teacher’s side in the in- This, he said, “appears to be irresistible. It may actions of great men, and the lure of studying tellectual disputes he describes. Although he even be inevitable.” But, he argued, “the idea politics in the light they cast. makes vital questions of political philosophy that judges are entitled to rest their decisions accessible and engaging to a general reader- on the principles of ‘natural justice’—or any ut beginning in the late 1970s, as ship, Hayward is too close to Jaffa to take a of its modern synonyms—is incompatible anyone knows who has had a ringside sufficiently detached view of his work, and not with the Framers’ idea of a written constitu- Bseat at “Straussian fight club” (Hay- close enough to Berns and the others to take a tion.” Whether we accept this view or reject ward’s arch phrase), internecine warfare sufficiently sympathetic view of theirs. Thus it, Berns had more than fears and calcula- broke out among the first-generation Strauss- Jaffa’s views are favored by default, while tions about a runaway judiciary. He had ar- ians, and the hostilities rippled outward to Berns’s are most highly praised when they guments—formidable ones. their students, with battalions divided into most resemble Jaffa’s. Patriotism Is Not Enough is sprinkled with “West Coast Straussians”—so named because Consider, for example, the way Hayward other passing comments about Berns that will Jaffa taught at Claremont McKenna College describes Jaffa’s thought on Lincoln as go- puzzle anyone familiar with his work. Hay- in California—and “East Coast Straussians.” ing through “distinct phases of development ward tells us that “Berns had criticisms of the (The geography was never exact; “East Coast” over time.” Jaffa’s “initial interpretation” pre- Declaration,” but I am unaware of any, and usually included the , sented in Crisis of the House Divided, which Hayward doesn’t say what they might have for example.) In part the battle lines were “understands Lincoln as having completed or been. Later we are told that Willmoore Ken- drawn over the legacy of Strauss, who died revised the Founding,” “clearly has defects,” dall’s “skepticism of natural rights partially in 1973, and in part over differing interpreta- says Hayward. In later essays and, finally, aligned him again with Berns,” yet, whatever tions of the American regime. in his 2000 sequel, A New Birth of Freedom, might be said of Kendall, there is no evidence For the most part these battles have be- “Jaffa no longer saw Lincoln asmodifying the that Berns was ever skeptical of the Ameri- come formulaic and friendly among the Declaration of Independence and the Found- can political order’s being grounded in the

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doctrine of natural rights—as opposed to part, came in his later years to claim, rather The Declaration of Independence Revisited,” being skeptical of the place some would give dubiously, that the principles of the founding which later appeared in Jaffa’s collectionThe such rights in the exercise of judicial review. were, as he wrote in the Winter 2001 CRB, Conditions of Freedom (1975). When he at- (The distinction makes a large difference.) In “dominated by an Aristotelian Locke—or a tacked Diamond for making this argument, the passage quoted above about his response Lockean Aristotle.” Oddly, each in his own he said nothing of having made it earlier him- to the Warren Court, Hayward writes that way might have made too much of Locke and self, let alone of why he now took a different “Berns tilted toward Lockean legislative su- too little of the role of Christianity in the view. premacy.” This suggests that Berns inclined founding—or perhaps too little of Locke’s In 1982, in the pages of National Review, toward rejecting judicial review tout court, Christianity. Walter Berns said he still agreed with Jaffa’s which is plainly wrong. But on a particular point of dispute be- 1972 lecture; this was the last published re- Perhaps the difficulty is that for Hayward, tween them—whether the Declaration of In- ply he ever made to Jaffa as their deep freeze as for Jaffa, “a strict textual originalism is in- dependence insists on popular government or set in. Hayward suggests that Jaffa rethought distinguishable from positivism.” But this is is open to other forms as legitimately consis- and “substantially modif[ied]” his view on not necessarily true, and one example offered tent with its principles—Jaffa was responsible the “no guidance” thesis. But in 1984, in his from one bad lecture by the late Chief Justice for a wildly intemperate war on his old friends book American Conservatism & the American William Rehnquist does not make it so. Hay- Berns and (particularly) Diamond, making Founding, Jaffa claimed unpersuasively that ward seems to recognize this himself a little unwarranted charges of “Calhounian” sympa- Berns had “ignored the context” of what he’d later when he writes, “Neither [Antonin] Sca- thies and in general blowing the issue out of written in 1972, and said, “I do not believe I lia nor Robert Bork [denies or opposes] the all proportion to its importance in American contradicted what I had written earlier.” Of ideas of natural law or natural rights…; they politics. Hayward touches on this origin to course he had—as Hayward tacitly concedes. just think that it is a bad idea for the judiciary the “fight club,” but leaves some of the story to protect unenumerated rights or for judges untold. he fact is: the american found- to employ natural law as a jural tool.” More ers saw no form of government but a than just a “bad idea,” for these jurists, and affa began the fight in print with a Trepublic as suitable for their indepen- similarly for Berns, reaching for substan- lengthy assault on Diamond that he pub- dent new country. The question of whether tively just outcomes that cannot be plausibly Jlished in his 1978 book, How to Think About the Declaration is open to other forms of gov- grounded in the text of the Constitution is the American Revolution, just a year after Dia- ernment bears not at all on equality, liberty, anti-constitutional, an abuse of judicial power, mond’s untimely death (though it had circu- natural and civil rights, constitutional inter- not despite but because of a devotion to the lated among acquaintances as an unpublished pretation, the rule of law, or any of the other principles of the Declaration that undergird paper before then). This inexplicable attack left matters with which Jaffa, Berns, and their the Constitution. Diamond’s friends exasperated and, given Jaf- contemporaries grappled. fa’s rhetorical overkill, they took it personally. With Patriotism Is Not Enough, Steven his brings us to the crux of the Diamond had said in a widely read 1973 Hayward has rendered in a lively way a tre- argument between Jaffa and Berns bicentennial lecture, “The Revolution of So- mendous service—especially at the present Tregarding the Constitution, the Dec- ber Expectations,” that the Declaration pro- moment—by laying out some of the most es- laration, and the way the American Found- vided “no guidance” with respect to “forms sential questions concerning what it is to be ing relates to the longer history of political of government,” on which it was “neutral,” an American and a conservative. One can philosophy. In fairness, it must be said that although any establishment of a government only hope readers will turn next to his sub- both men were capable of rushed or conclu- must be by democratic choice. Jaffa unac- jects’ best books—in Jaffa’s case,Crisis of the sory arguments. Berns was prone to move countably inflated this by a string of non House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom; too quickly from equating the founders’ po- sequiturs into an argument Diamond had in Berns’s, The First Amendment and the Fu- litical thought with John Locke’s and Locke’s not made, that the Declaration “offered no ture of American Democracy (1976), Taking with Thomas Hobbes’s, and to erect an im- guidance to the Framers of the Constitu- the Constitution Seriously (1987; overlooked by penetrable “ancients vs. moderns” boundary tion”—about anything, apparently. From Hayward), and Making Patriots (2001). These between classical and Christian natural law, there, he unfairly linked Diamond with John great contributions to America’s understand- on the one hand, and modern natural rights, C. Calhoun’s attack on the Declaration root ing of itself will endure, long after memories on the other. Then he would throw in a by- and branch. of old quarrels fade away. the-way qualification that the founding was What made the attack all the more galling more complex than that, noting as he did in was that, in 1972—just a year before Dia- Matthew J. Franck is director of the Simon Cen- an article for Commentary that “the Ameri- mond’s lecture—Jaffa himself had made an ter on Religion and the Constitution at the With- can government was created by men whose indistinguishable argument about the Dec- erspoon Institute, professor emeritus of political characters had been formed under the laws of laration’s openness on forms of government science at Radford University, and visiting lec- an older and civilized politics.” Jaffa, for his in a lecture of his own, “What Is Equality? turer in politics at Princeton University.

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