Thank you

Prof. Fox, you wrote: “On the contrary, you have always written with what I consider to be admirable clarity about the importance of cultural, moral and social authority in a decent polity. Well, surely you would agree that such authority must be funded, must have some set of procedures for expressing its will in the face of scofflaws, etc. If so, then are at the point where I am not sure why we should be confident that the “Robinarchy” wasn’t, in fact, at least in principle, a reasonable response to need for authority in an economically complex society. I suppose you might argue that there are very clear ways to identify how, for example, the Federalists went beyond a (legitimate?) need for national authority and on to what was in fact excessive centralization in the name of that authority, but I have to confess that to my mind, even Alexander Hamilton’s most extreme dreams for the national government are still categorically distinct from anything that could be properly called “tyranny.” ”

I don’t think we’re really all that far apart in basic assumptions. There does need to be public authority, it does need to be funded through some kind of tax revenue, and it should have mechanisms for enforcement of the laws and the resources to make that enforcement effective. No one, not even most “anarcho-traditionalists” outside of the Lew Rockwell school, opposes such public authority or rejects the necessity of government.

Three things the Federalists got wrong was 1) the kind of tasks envisioned as proper for government, 2) what the Constitution authorised the federal government to do and 3) the size of the general republic that the federal government would try to govern. One of the most prescient arguments against binding the states more closely together under the Constitution was that no republic so large could remain free of the corruption of concentrated power. By the standards of the Country tradition in which they were operating, they seem to have been entirely vindicated in their warnings against large republics, which is a longstanding element of both Aristotelian political philosophy and later Renaissance republicanism. To take the hard-core strict constructionist, Jeffersonian, and Country view, the usurpation of the Hamiltonians was first and foremost the Bank. First, to authorise it, the Federalists had to pretend (and I do mean pretend) that the Constitution could be interpreted through extremely broad interpretation, which leads us down the primrose path to destruction of “implied powers” and “inherent powers” that plague us even today. (Another evil of Federalist-inspired usurpation along these lines, though not Hamilton’s handiwork, was Marbury v. Madison and the invention of judicial review.) Second, by the creation of the Bank they were linking the forces of concentrated wealth and concentrated power in such a way that it immediately recalled the old Opposition arguments against Walpole and the moneyed interest. The Federalists represented the same kinds of interests and Hamilton considered it necessary to copy the British in their arrangements of finance. These two things together (broad construction, the alliance of concentrated wealth and power) represented usurpation and corruption, both of which would have appeared to anyone working in the Country tradition in the 1780s to be the beginnings of tyranny if not full-blown tyranny itself.

Bryan did appeal to the federal government on behalf of his constituents, and to the extent that he believed that the evils of the moneyed interest could be combated by using that interests’s tool (the federal government) against it he was badly mistaken. He did not embody most of the instincts of the later progressives who actively sought to grow the state; he did possess the deeply mistaken view that because the government was popular that it was somehow naturally going to work in the best interests of the people, that the functioning of representative government would prevent the increased power of government from simply being taken over once more by the very forces hostile to his constituents. He was simply wrong here, as I believe are most people who believe that the answer to the current oligopoly is more democracy, when mass democracy has only ever strengthened and shored up the mechanisms of power that the oligopoly uses to perpetuate its hold on power. It is very likely the case that there cannot be any decentralism within the present continental empire that would satisfactorily avoid this problem in the future; the continental nation-state would need to be broken up into regional or sub-regional polities (as in George Kennan’s proposal for decentralisation), to which the constituent states would belong and which those states would form voluntarily, and then decentralised from there.

“I use Robinarchy here as a shorthand for excessive concentrated state power. In my view, no one can give a tentative or cautious defense of it anymore than one can give a tentative or cautious defense of tyranny. Perhaps on this point we are speaking about two different things.”

We may be. I referred the “Robinarchy” in my comment partly out of contrariness, but partly also to make the point that what really matters in your definition of it is what you label here “excessive concentrated state power.” Easily defined in principle; not necessarily so easily done in practice. One of things I have long admired about your writings and those of other conservatives who share your perspective is how you do not blanche, as most of us Americans are I guess supposed to do so instinctively, at any mention of “authority.” On the contrary, you have always written with what I consider to be admirable clarity about the importance of cultural, moral and social authority in a decent polity. Well, surely you would agree that such authority must be funded, must have some set of procedures for expressing its will in the face of scofflaws, etc. If so, then are at the point where I am not sure why we should be confident that the “Robinarchy” wasn’t, in fact, at least in principle, a reasonable response to need for authority in an economically complex society. I suppose you might argue that there are very clear ways to identify how, for example, the Federalists went beyond a (legitimate?) need for national authority and on to what was in fact excessive centralization in the name of that authority, but I have to confess that to my mind, even Alexander Hamilton’s most extreme dreams for the national government are still categorically distinct from anything that could be properly called “tyranny.”

“Those of us who insist that the trade-offs are always unfair and unbalanced for almost everyone involved do not regard it as a redeeming feature of the work of the Federalists or Red Republicans that they were destroying existing political or constitutional arrangements for a ‘good cause,’ be it national unity, emancipation or what-have-you. Those who tend to benefit from making these ‘trade-offs’ are the would-be reformers themselves, who always seem convinced that the best way for them to help bring justice to their fellow man is to get themselves more power.”

Well, this is probably a bottom-line disagreement between us; I am moved enough by the (I know in some ways necessarily chimerical, but for me undeniable nonetheless) appeal of equality–an appeal that I think well-grounded in scripture as well as philosophy–to think that a few trade-offs will inevitably trump the virtues inscribed in “existing political and constitutional arrangements.” Not many trade-offs–in fact, I would say quite few. But there definitely are some, such as ending a humanitarian and moral disaster like slavery, for example. (Not that such puts to rest any questions about methods or prudence; I’ve learned my lesson from the Iraq war that satisfying one particular theoretical/moral model does not equal wholescale justification.) That certain elites are necessarily going to benefit from the destruction of existing arrangements does not, in itself, constitute a conclusive argument, since I think it obvious that other elites dominated previous arrangements, so it’s not as though we’re talking about the fall of Adam here. (Again–and I apologize for all the annoying qualifications; it’s just the way I think–not that such is a stand-alone excuse either; clearly, one can and should make arguments for the superiority of one set of elites over another, and maybe such arguments will be conclusive. But if the concern over the centralization of advantage alone is always reason to question action, neither is it I think necessarily enough to always condemn it.)

“(It isn’t entirely fair to lump Bryan in with this crowd, since he doesn’t really share their view of things.)”

Yes and no. It’s absolutely true that he wasn’t interested, as the Federalists and Lincoln and, to a degree, FDR were in altering the constitutional order for the sake of creating a new set of provisions and/or powers. But, as much research as he has done, I just disagree with people like Jeff Taylor that see Bryan as an opponent of centralization. He wanted the government to publicly own the railroads, for heavens sake. In the name of economic equality and popular control, he pushed to expand federal power within its existing parameters, making the democratic links between individual citizens and Washington DC that much stronger (he was a strong proponent of the direct election of senators as well). Part of the tryannical Robinarchy? Or, just trying to take governing and economic authority as it was being constituted in an emerging nationalized industrial economy out of the hands of one set of actors (the trusts) and put it into another (the farmers and their elected representatives)? Maybe a little bit of both.

Were the Anti-Federalists securing (or trying to secure) local public goods and freedoms “for all”? Absolutely. Insofar as they were opposing the usurpation of the Federalists of powers that they believed should not be vested in so few hands in a central state apparatus, they were the only ones in the debate trying to secure *local* public goods and freedoms for all, both Anti-Federalist and Federalist alike. The Federalists were not necessarily maliciously intent on destroying those things (I have some respect for the Federalists, and I am distantly related to some of them), but the effect of their plans was and has been to undermine and eventually destroy them bit by bit. I use Robinarchy here as a shorthand for excessive concentrated state power. In my view, no one can give a tentative or cautious defense of it anymore than one can give a tentative or cautious defense of tyranny. Perhaps on this point we are speaking about two different things.

Though Patrick Henry was fighting first and foremost for the liberty and rights of Virginians, and Elbridge Gerry was fighting for the rights of Massachusettsians in their opposition to the Constitution, the effect of their resistance was to better protect *all* localities and states from excessive concentration of power. The defenders of Notting Hill are helping the people of Baywater even if the Baywater folks don’t appreciate it. The Anti-Federalists were trying to teach the centralisers their understanding of patriotism, but unfortunately it didn’t take.

Had the Federalists had their way entirely, the Virginia Plan would have gone through and there would have been even greater centralisation and supremacy of the large states from the outset. To the extent that the Antis succeeded in anything in their resistance to the Constitution, they succeeded in making the Constitution a relatively better political settlement than it would have otherwise been (even though it was still too centralist in the end). Had they won the debate outright, American history might well have been the story of a confederation of numerous small republics crisscrossing the continent rather than a continental and then overseas empire. Maybe it would have degenerated into a series of internecine conflicts. That’s always a possibility, but that’s the chance that people should be able to take if they are, in fact, free and self-governing people in any sense.

You then wrote: “Was there no legitimacy whatsoever to the Federalists’ or to Lincoln’s (or to WJB’s or FDR’s) conviction that securing those goods and making them equally available was going to require, well, trade-offs? In other words, that maybe the Robinarchy isn’t just the default governmental creation of a world that had abandoned local places, but was perhaps, just a little bit, a sincere effort to secure those places, maybe even extend them to poor or oppressed groups who had lacked them in the past, by retranslating their social and economic into and through a changing world?”

No one denies that attempting to make anything “equally available” will require trade-offs, because we all know the enforcement of equality requires coercion and the more things the state attempts to provide or guarantee equally the greater its need for a coercive apparatus to make that happen. Those of us who insist that the trade-offs are always unfair and unbalanced *for almost everyone* involved do not regard it as a redeeming feature of the work of the Federalists or Red Republicans that they were destroying existing political or constitutional arrangements for a “good cause,” be it national unity, emancipation or what-have-you. Those who tend to benefit from making these “trade-offs” are the would-be reformers themselves, who always seem convinced that the best way for them to help bring justice to their fellow man is to get themselves more power (because they have to have to power to overcome all those “obstacles” of local and state resistance to their grand scheme). (It isn’t entirely fair to lump Bryan in with this crowd, since he doesn’t really share their view of things.) This is why liberty and equality are always antagonistic principles, and why egalitarian aspirations always go hand in hand with intrusions upon and destructions of local privileges and rights. Also, no matter how sincere and well-intentioned, egalitarian aspirations do not usually make men any more equal except as subjects of concentrated power, which is hardly a desirable state for anyone.

You then wrote: “But there does, sometimes, seem to be a willingness to take anarchism to believe that these goods and freedoms really can be maintained spontaneously.”

There are some people who were at the conference who might say favourable things about “spontaenous order” and the like, but I’m not one of them. I don’t know very many people who move in these circles who think that the goods of a local community and freedoms can be maintained spontaneously. They have to be reproduced and fought for every day, and they don’t just keep popping up out of the ground without constant cultivation. Perhaps I need to meet more of these people before I make declarations about what all of them believe, but if they think about these things as I do they think that the maintenance of these goods and freedoms is precisely the work that they and their neighbours are supposed to be doing. It is, in fact, their duty to do this work, and they wrongly abdicate that responsibility if they start pushing it off onto formal institutions in a farflung capital.

That latter bit is, I think, what people were responding to.

On anarchism, I am a bit perplexed by your idea that your brand of anarchist is fundamentally opposed to other anarchists on the basis of what they predict anarchy would produce. Anarchy is a system characterized the lack of the state. What happens then is certainly the object of speculation; but I don’t think anyone thinks that will make magically do away with the “creative destruction” of the market. Anyone who’s not an (idiot) left-anarchist, anyway. There should certainly be room in anarchy for all sorts of lifestyles, including back-to-the-land crunchy agrarianism. But that will hardly be the all of it.

Do you want libertarian anarchists as allies or not? And how would you oppose them, other than by demanding a state?

I don’t see anarchy as fundamentally changing the human psyche, and that’s the basis of the demand for cheap modern crap culture. Ugliness has always existed. I do think anarchy might eventually allow for splintering of culture much more than now, so that both high and low culture coexist peacefully.

You make a good point that “politics” is broader than the iron-clad, centralized options handed down to us by the two dominant parties; that any kind of enthusiasm and engagement for a political candidate or movement, even a crazy longshot one, is in the proper Arendtian sense a sign of taking seriously one’s local, communal, free public life. However, when you stylize that kind of political engagement as primarily being a matter of making “the ultimate choice [between] attempting to constrain and limit the corruption that comes from concentrated power …or acquiescing to various degrees in the monstrosity of the Robinarchy on the grounds that there has to be a government somewhere,” you go too far; you have now said that “politics,” at least insofar as it has anything to do with “principles of legitimacy, lawfulness and justice,” can’t really have anything to do with a defense of the Robinarchy. Which kind of assumes that there is no possible legitimate political principle–which, I agree, needs to be a matter of tending to one’s community and freedom–that could have been pursued by defenders of the Robinarchy, however careful or tentative their defenses may have been. And this, Daniel, is what Patrick (and I) consider possibly kind of sentimental–were local public goods and freedoms truly being secured for all by the Anti-Federalists? Was there no legitimacy whatsoever to the Federalists’ or to Lincoln’s (or to WJB’s or FDR’s) conviction that securing those goods and making them equally available was going to require, well, trade-offs? In other words, that maybe the Robinarchy isn’t just the default governmental creation of a world that had abandoned local places, but was perhaps, just a little bit, a sincere effort to secure those places, maybe even extend them to poor or oppressed groups who had lacked them in the past, by retranslating their social and economic into and through a changing world?

None of this, of course, is to suggest that the story is over and that the Federalists and Lincoln and WJB and FDR were right all along; there is much to attack there. But there does, sometimes, seem to be a willingness to take anarchism to believe that these goods and freedoms really can be maintained spontaneously. Fallen man suggests otherwise: that while we must, of course, struggle against the evil in the hearts of man to use government against each other, we must similarly recognize that without a government capable to responding to broad social, economic, and cultural changes, then these goods will be lost, or at least never be made available to any outside a lucky few.