It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Thus Alexander Hamilton wrote in the very first of the series of articles that is known as The Federalist Papers. He called to his readers’ attention the “unequivocal experience of the inefficacy” of the weak government set up by the Articles of Confederation. The triumphant patriots had feared that any strong national government would inevitably find a way to grasp back power from the people and the peoples’ liberty would again be lost. Accordingly, the central government they established was weak. But after five years, many people felt that the government wasn’t working. The Constitution that Madison, Hamilton, and Jay defended in The Federalist was an attempt to remedy this and to make free government effective.
The antifederalists looked on this effort to form a constitutional federal union as an attempt to square the circle — a real impossibility. They believed that only by diffusing power sufficiently can a people stop the emergence of a governing class with different interests than those of the people, a class that would know best how to use any strong power to achieve their own interests.
One antifederalist, who signed himself only as “A Farmer,” wrote this in a Baltimore newspaper, arguing against ratifying the Constitution:
In proportion as the people lose their freedom, every gradation of distinction, between the Governors and governed obtains, until the former become masters, and the latter become slaves.
The antifederalist opposition had to be met, and the Bill of Rights is the result. What Madison thought should remain implicit had to be explicitly stated: near-absolute limitations on the power of the national government. Even after these rights were specified, there was an explicit acknowledgment that any power not specifically assigned to the federal authority was reserved to the states and the people.
The Constitution then triumphed and its influence on the world has been considerable. Its success in holding together a successful country has been part of that influence. Britain’s unwritten constitution has gradually emulated ours in expanding the vote; it exceeded ours and pushed us forward in its renunciation of slavery. The shared Common Law tradition has been fertile ground for the emergence of governments limited by the people’s liberty throughout the English-speaking world.
War has always been a supreme test of a nation. It is not only the external threat but the internal that war brings forward — the excuse of emergency draws would-be despots like garbage draws flies. Pitt the Younger expressed the danger in memorable words: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
Never before had more power been centralized and coordinated than during World War II. The Nazis believed that freedom was an impediment to power. They took all rights away from everyone and put all power in the hands of their leader, then set to prove their beliefs right in armed struggle. They believed that the democracies would be forced in the emergency to concentrate power, too, exposing their own hypocrisy even as they would lose.
But the line was held against them, for a crucial time by Britain alone, eventually joined by Russia and then the United States.
True, the democracies did severely curtail individual freedom during the war (it had long been eliminated in Stalin’s Russia). Massive conscription, throughgoing rationing, immense governmental redirection of private industry, extensive censorship, even detention without trial or charges of large numbers of people characterized these years in the democracies.
Yet there was one episode that puts it all in perspective, that showed that the core of democracy, the right of the people to choose their government, was still alive and well.
This was on display both in the United States and in Britain.
The Constitution gives no choice — every four years, there must be another presidential election. Even in the chaos of the Civil War, the presidential contest was held. So it was in 1944 as well. Dewey fought a hard campaign, justly making an issue out of the president’s health, which was much worse than anyone was saying and perhaps more than was ever told FDR himself. Of all his four opponents, Dewey came closest to beating Roosevelt—but even that wasn’t so very close.
Britain, on the other hand, had no such hard and fast rule about elections. Churchill had taken on the leadership in 1940 as the result of parliamentary negotiations, not an election. It wasn’t until Germany had been defeated that Labour left Churchill’s national coalition government and a new election was held.
Churchill took some pride in his scrupulous stewardship of the nation’s will in seeing that the sacredness of fair elections was upheld.
Britain still had massive amounts of soldiers abroad. Some candidates for Parliament were in the service. Churchill wrote how his caretaker government ensured a scrupulously fair election:
Every arrangement had been made on strictly equal terms about bringing candidates home from the front, about uniforms and petrol rations, and not the slightest reproach was ever levelled at those who held executive power.
Further, British law required the ballots to be counted in the UK, so they had to be gathered up and sent from wherever voters were stationed around the world and brought home before the election results would be known. The election was held on July 5, 1945, and the results were not to be announced until July 26.
Churchill took some pride in his scrupulous stewardship of the nation’s will in seeing that the sacredness of fair elections was upheld. He wrote:
When it was known that the ballot-boxes would be in charge of the British Government for three weeks, astonishment was expressed that there could be any doubt about the results. However, in our country these matters are treated exactly as if they were a cricket match … Long may it so continue.
We can only read that ruefully. Calling sports to mind in this context today brings the vision instead of an out-of-control parent screaming at the referee who called a foul on their child.
This was not theoretical for Churchill. Had he used the state media to his exclusive advantage as his Conservative predecessors had done, he might have helped his own candidacy. For against most expectations, the man who had warned against the Nazi threat when all in power played it down, who saw Britain through the darkest days of the war to victory was soundly defeated at the polls. He took pride in the honesty of the elections for it showed that he had not succumbed to that love of power itself against which he had fought so arduously. Even though the voter’s rejection pained him deeply, he took pride in the deeper triumph of all that he had fought for — the liberties of a free people and their sacred right to choose their own government.
David McCullough wrote of the reaction of the world leaders at the Potsdam conference to the news of Churchill’s defeat:
Hardly anyone could believe it, but the Russians seemed most upset of all. How could this possibly be, Molotov kept demanding. How could they not have known the outcome in advance? Stalin postponed the conference for another few days and was seen by no one.
The big business of government has put today’s America a lot closer to the viewpoint of Molotov. Political consultants, legacy media, social media all make money by promising to control the outcome so that it should be knowable in advance. Some politicians know in advance that they should win, and any other result would have to be the result of cheating. Others cheat, to make sure the result they desired is attained. And some enlist the apparatus of police, intelligence, and the justice system to enforce the political result they desire, so the verdict of the people can be ignored entirely.
Like Molotov and Stalin, none of them give the people their due.
Let’s insist that they do. We can still carry on Hamilton’s project of “deciding good government by reflection and choice” — if we so choose. Sift every word carefully as the campaigns get under way. Decide from the deepest place of your soul. And place your loyalties to your candidate second to your loyalties to the nation and its Constitution, and the divine spark within each one of us that is the very seat of the people’s sovereignty. Only when our greatest cause succeeds can our lesser aims have their victory as well.
