American Populism in the Early Twenty-First Century: Constitutional Resistance to the New Class.

• Author: Frohnen, Bruce P.

Populism is defense of rule by and for the populace--that is, the common people. American constitutionalism was forged in response to the problem of maintaining ordered liberty in a democratic society. It succeeded admirably in this endeavor until relatively recently. A populist, self-governing spirit was essential to maintaining this constitutional order. That spirit was tied to local self-government. It required an independent citizenry steeped in faith, family, and local freedom. The corruption of this citizenry by a managerial elite that has largely succeeded in destroying the bases of independent character has called the latest iteration of populism into being; it also may well have doomed this populism and with it American constitutionalism.

The American Tradition

In explaining the U.S. Constitution's logic and structure in the late 1780s, Publius (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison) noted how ancient petty republics descended into self-interested factions and chaos. Republican government, to be successful, must bind both the general populace and those in political power through law and constitutional structure. But the machinery of our federal Constitution could not stand on its own. The written constitution by nature put great reliance on the people. It would be successful only if it fit with a particular kind of people--a people suited to self-rule (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison [1787-88] 2001, 37, 269).

The greatest difference between popular movements in America and those in Europe and elsewhere is an American people that historically has been democratic in a specific way. For decades, Louis Hartz's (1991) thesis that America is unique on account of having no genuine aristocratic class guided academic hand-wringing over our lack of a powerful socialist movement. But the most important missing element in the United States was not aristocracy--at least not directly. Aristocracy's absence was important in America chiefly because it was not there to create and subjugate a large peasant class dependent on their masters and incapable of self-rule.

This is not to dismiss the importance of chattel slavery or even of indentured servitude in early America. But those institutions, the first horrific, the second problematic, lacked the power to control the shape of society outside the Deep South. (1) The core and the mass of Americans were more educated, more financially independent, and more schooled in the ways of self-government than any large class in Europe or elsewhere. They were an unruly people, as shown by occasional spates of mob violence dating to before the revolution and undergirding substantial political changes (Prince 1985). But Americans were not ungovernable. Within a system of administrative decentralization, Americans governed themselves in their own communities, ceding authority only in pieces and usually to structures close to home (Tocqueville 1972, 1:159).

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s (Tocqueville 1972), Americans were shaped by equality. But that equality was not economic sameness. It was a common recognition of citizenship, of the irrelevance of economic distinctions in establishing public worth and the capacity for self-rule. Christopher Lasch points out that "[f]oreign observers used to marvel at the lack of snobbery, deference, and class feeling in America. There was 'nothing oppressed or submissive' about the American worker." Rather, there were many "public institutions" in which American citizens met as equals, regardless of the economic inequalities so hated by today's Left (1995, 19). Long practice of public life in such circumstances fostered the character of a free people--self-reliant, public-spirited, and determined to oppose infringements on established law and custom.

Americans' political equality had deep roots. The Separatist Pilgrims were "democratic" in that heads of households joined to forge their Mayflower Compact. In this constitutional document, they formed a people, a fundamental association whose members agreed to abide by the rules they would set for themselves so that they might walk in the ways of their Lord. They established a community that would help shape the covenantal tradition by which Americans practiced self-government under God (Lutz 1990, 23-24; Kendall and Carey 1995, ix).

American constitutionalism "worked" in that it preserved ordered liberty within American communities. America grew in size, population, and wealth, while its people led lives structured by faith, family, and local freedom. America had popular government--Publius had no doubt, according to George Carey, that the "deliberate sense of the community" would prevail over time (1994, xvi). But Americans were constantly reminded by their circumstances and institutions of the need for virtue, including the virtue of law-abidingness (Kendall and Carey 1995, ix).

New Class, New Regime

As originally understood and practiced, the American Constitution established a federal government designed to mediate among more natural, local associations rather than to command them into any specific form or set of policies. Within such a system, Americans acted as a nation only when their various self-governing communities joined for limited purposes such as self-defense and the maintenance of free trade among the states (Frohnen and Carey 2016, 52). Otherwise, Americans governed themselves in their own associations. This way of life survived the insidious public poison of slavery, the stress of territorial expansion, and even the scourge of the Civil War. It came under serious pressure in the aftermath of that war as states and communities renegotiated issues of local control in light of constitutional amendments aimed at guaranteeing freedmen's citizenship rights.

Reconstruction's tragic failure combined with increasing federal interference in economics and western settlement to nationalize issues crucial to local self-government. During the late nineteenth century, populists in America's West saw their way of life undermined by monopolistic institutions in transportation, banking, and communications that had been fostered by public subsidies (White 2011). Whether populists' sometimes-radical solutions would bring relief or tyranny was another matter, but they sought to defend the character of American life as one dominated by heads of households, including yeoman farmers, ranchers, merchants, and skilled laborers (Gilman 2018). (2)

The radicalization, decline, and absorption of populism into an increasingly progressive Democratic Party shows the continued stress under which traditional American norms and institutions have struggled. The trend ever since has been toward centralization. Progressive ideologues attacked the separation of powers for creating "gridlock" that stymied growth of federal programs. Decades of fitful consolidation stalled during the 1920s but in the face of the Great Depression were crucial to influencing the New Deal--a new social contract by which Americans would cede the rights and duties of self-government to an administrative state in exchange for security and such psychological benefits as might be derived from a feeling of individual equality.

The administrative state was born of progressive ideology and the ambitions of a then-forming managerial elite (Burnham 1941). Founded on the promise that it would merely administer the will of the people, this class has played the role of tyrant by ruling in defiance of the Constitution. Its "laws" are quasi-laws; they are products of mere delegations from Congress, with the actual rules of conduct written by administrators within and around the executive branch (Fiorina 1989; Frohnen and Carey 2016,183). Sometimes dubbed a "deep state," this class is no creature of conspiracy...