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Community and Federalism in the American Political Tradition A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By Peter Daniel Haworth, M.A. Washington, D.C. December 11, 2008 Community and Federalism in the American Political Tradition Peter Daniel Haworth, M.A. Thesis Advisor: George W. Carey, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Aside from the various minor issues, there are two major questions that are addressed in this dissertation: (1) Can socially cohesive community be attributed to the local and/or federal levels of the American system in the colonial and founding periods? (2) How has the political centralization of the twentieth century affected socially cohesive community and public policy for “sensitive” issues, which require such cohesion to become settled? The author attempts to answer these questions via articulating and defending the following thesis: Socially cohesive community (i.e., a mode of intrinsically valuable friendship community that can develop around shared thick-level values and that is often associated with political activity and local interaction) was a possibility for local- level communities during the colonial and founding periods of American history; whereas, when the colonies/States were grouped together as an aggregate union, they did not constitute a true nation or single community of individuals. Hence, such “union” lacked a common good (and, a fortiori , it lacked a thick-level common good necessary for social cohesion). Through the course of American history, the political system has been centralized or transformed from a federal system into a de facto unitary system, and this change has undermined the possibility of social cohesion at the local level. Since centralization trends have redistributed significant political power to the federal level, ii which is inherently non-cohesive, and away from the local level (i.e., a combination of a State and its localities), “sensitive” policy issues such as the abortion issue, which require socially cohesive community for “a settled” resolution, have become increasingly difficult to resolve. Moreover, significant centralization of the American system has resulted in damaging social cohesion at the local level. This has somewhat, but not irreparably, diminished the efficacy of transferring “sensitive” policy issues back to the local level in order to realize “settled” resolutions. Although much of the United States today seems to lack local-level communities with thick-level moral and theological/philosophical agreement and social cohesion, there are some possibilities for re-establishing this through both re-federalizing the United States and implementing private initiatives to establish local communities among those with the same moral- theology. iii This dissertation is dedicated to Dr. George Carey. He has been my teacher, mentor, and friend. Without his patience and help, I never would have finished this work. Many Thanks and God’s Blessings, Peter Haworth iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………, 1-27 Chapter One, A theoretical examination of social cohesion………………………., 28-59 Chapter Two, Community and Religion: Reflections on the possibility of social cohesion within each of the American Colonies/States based on the religious-moral worldview that was dominant in each society………………………………………………………, 60-95 Chapter Three, ‘Free and Independent States’: Why the Declaration of Independence launched thirteen separate sovereign States and did not express a common thick-level national creed……………………………………………………………………..., 96-138 Chapter Four, Reflection on the States’ Constitutional Compact of 1787-1790: Why the States remained sovereign after they created the Constitution and why the United States were not a nation with a thick-level common good………………………….….., 139- 201 Chapter Five, Centralization and Its Negative Implications: The decline of social cohesion at the local level within the United States system…..............................., 202-246 Chapter Six, Reflections on the declining ability to resolve sensitive public policy, on subsidiarity, and on the natural law obligation to respect constitutional law……., 247-296 Chapter Seven, Conclusion………………………………………………………., 297-321 Appendix A………………………………………………………………………., 322-326 Appendix B…………………………………………………………………….…, 327-330 Appendix C…………………………………………………………………….…, 331-334 Appendix D………………………………………………………………………., 335-341 Appendix E………………………………………………………………………., 342-346 Bibliography………………………………………………………………….….., 347-364 v Introduction As suggested by the title, “Community and Federalism in the American Political Tradition”, a central problem addressed in this dissertation is the nature of community and its relation to federalism in the United States. Aside from the smaller issues also addressed, there are two major questions I seek to answer: (1) Can socially cohesive community be attributed to the local and/or federal levels of the American system during the colonial and founding periods? (2) How do the centralization trends of the twentieth century affect socially cohesive community and public policy on issues that require such cohesion? My dissertation will attempt to answer these questions via articulating and defending the following elaborated thesis: I argue that socially cohesive community (i.e., a mode of intrinsically valuable friendship community that can develop around shared thick-level values and that is often associated with political activity and local interaction) was a possibility for local-level communities during the colonial and founding periods of American history; whereas, when the colonies/States are viewed together as an aggregate union, they can not be considered to have been a true national community of individuals. Hence, such “union” lacked a common good (and, thus, it lacked a thick-level common good necessary for social cohesion). Through the course of American history, the political system has been centralized or transformed from a federal system to a de-facto unitary system, and this has undermined the possibility of social cohesion at the local-level. Since centralization trends redistributed significant political power to the federal level, which is 1 inherently non-cohesive, and away from the local level (i.e., a combination of a State and its localities), “sensitive” policy issues such as the abortion issue, which require socially cohesive community for “a settled” resolution, have become increasingly difficult to resolve. Moreover, significant centralization of the American system has resulted in damaging social cohesion at the local level, which has somewhat, but not irreparably, diminished the possibility of adequately resolving such “sensitive” public policy issues by transferring them back to the local-level. Much of the United States today seems to lack local-level communities with thick-level moral agreement and social cohesion. Nevertheless, there are some possibilities for re-establishing this through both re-federalizing the United States and implementing private initiatives to establish local communities among those with the same moral-theology. Relation of Thesis to Historography : The historical part of the above thesis runs counter to significant literature that attempts to conceptualize the United States as being founded with a normative identity. Bernard Baylin, Gordon Wood, J.G.A. Pocock, Michael Sandel, and others suggest that America had a republican identity at the founding. In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution , Bernard Baylin develops an early version of what has come to be the republican thesis. Although Baylin observes multiple “disparate strands of thought” (e.g., readings from “classical antiquity”, “Enlightenment rationalism”, “English common law”, and “New England Puritanism”) that were influential during the eighteenth century leading up to the Revolution, he argues 2 that “the radical social and political thought of the English Civil War and of the Commonwealth period” is what “brought” such diverse “strands of thought together.” 1 It was such republican theory that “dominated the colonists miscellaneous learning and shaped it into a coherent whole…”.2 This included seventeenth century writers such as John Milton, James Harrington, Henry Neville, Algernon Sidney. 3 However, it also included eighteenth century “publicists and intellectual middleman” such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who produced the Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters .4 In The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 , Gordon Wood argues that the republican transformation of America, which transpired during the Revolutionary period, was a whole-scale social revolution: the Americans self-developed an entirely new intellectual and cultural identity as a people. 5 In addition to the English republican theories (e.g., Sidney and Harrington), there was widespread study of republican ideas from the Renaissance (e.g., Machiavelli) and classical antiquity (e.g., Greek city states and Roman Republic). 6 There was an increased emphasis on sacrificing private interests for the public good, which was seen in reference to corporate (rather than individual) rights to self-rule and a lack of concern with mass tyranny due to the conception that all 1 Bernard Baylin, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 23-34 and

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