Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet

Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin
© 2008 Bill Kauffman
227 pages

There isn't enough whitewash in the world to create a Luther Martin hagiography, Bill Kauffman admits, but in the spirit of lost causes he does his best. Billed as a biography, Drunken Prophet is truly more about Martin's role in the Constitutional debates, in which he warned the assembly that the Constitution they were debating would destroy the States altogether  Few realize today that the Constitution - -regarded as a guardian of our liberties, however much a token now -- was rightfully feared in its day as a tool of big-government enterprise.  In this biography of Martin, Bill Kauffman gives voice to one of the Constitution's chief opponents, a man who refused service in the government it created.

When the delegates invited to reform the Articles of Confederation chose instead to create an entirely new government, Luther Martin took a stand against it. He could do no other.  He wasn't alone in being suspicious of the Constitution; Patrick Henry wouldn't even attend the convention, claiming to smell a rat. The convention contained radicals who wanted to do away with the States themselves, men like Hamilton, and Martin was their steady opponent.  He promoted the New Jersey plan against the Virginia plan, arguing that Virginia's bicameral legislature was beyond the scope of what was necessary. A government that need so many checks and balances was oversized to begin with.

Following the conclusion of the convention,  Kauffman's usual energy and the book's point drift. Technically, this is a biography of Martin, but little of import happened in his life  beyond the convention, other than a couple of court cases. Oddly, the staunch anti-Federalist became a defender of Federalist politicians, defending Sam Chase in the first-ever Supreme Court impeachment, and later defending Aaron Burr. (Kauffman notes that Burr's only crime was invading the Southwest too early, and shooting Hamilton too late.)  Kauffman suspects that Martin's defense of Federalists owed principally to his hatred for Thomas Jefferson.  Another case Martin participated in was the famous McCullough v. Maryland, arguing against the expansion of Federal powers.   Martin was evidently regarded well-enough in Maryland that the state imposed a tax on all lawyers just to give the aging attorney fiscal support after stroke and alcohol forced him to retire.

Drunken Prophet is the first Bill Kauffman book I've read that didn't absolutely bowl me over, but those interested in the anti-federalist or republican case against the Constitution will definitely find it of interest.

The Anti-Federalists stood for decentralism, local democracy, antimilitarism, and a deep suspicion of central governments.  And they stood on what they stood for. Local attachments. Local knowledge. While the Pennsylvania Federalist Gouverneur Morris 'flattered himself he came here in some degree as a Representative of the whole human race', Anti-Federalists understood that one cannot love an abstraction such as'the whole human race'. One loves particular flesh-and-blood members of that race. 'My love must be discriminate / or fail to bear its weight,' in the words of a modern anti-Federalist, the Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry. He who loves the whole human race seldom has much time for individual members thereof.

From the introduction, "The People Who Lost".


Previous books in the Forgotten Founders series:
American Cicero: Charles Carroll (Brad Birzer)
The Cost of Liberty: John Dickinson (William Murchinson)

Out of the Ashes

Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture
© 2017 Anthony Esolen
256 pages

Some things, like a Roman bridge, can last for millennia through the virtue of their design, the simplicity of their use, and the inherent strength of their materials. Other things, like the Golden Gate Bridge,  or a house, require more steady attention. It isn't that they're built in an inferior fashion, but they are far more complicated and ambitious.  A culture is a thing that requires attention; it must be renewed generation to generation. In Out of the Ashes,  Anthony Esolen calls attention of Americans to the fact that western culture  is past need for attention: it has sat too long exposed to the elements without refreshing layers of paint, the termites and mice of base creation have withered away its walls and support posts, and the foundation has sunk and cracked. What is needed is rebuilding and restoration. No one can do everything, but everyone must do something, and here Esolen offers hearty arguments for resurrecting education, play, a society based on marriage, family, and the home, politics reoriented towards the local, and the veneration of beauty and virtue. In short, he bids us deny the unholy trinity of Self, Sex, and the State, and  to become participants in our own lives once more.

In interviews and lectures Esolen maintains that what  we must realize about American culture is that there isn't a culture there at all, merely memories and leftover habits. It is as we are walking through a dry creekbed; the impression of the creek is still there upon the land, even as the water itself is a far-distant trickle.  The role of culture in Esolen's sense isn't the mere transmission of music and games from generation to generation, with improvisation and growth along the way. Instead, culture is more broadly applied to civil institutions supporting a common appreciation of man and the cosmos, supporting human life -- the cultivation of man as it were, the garden in which we are watered, thrive, and  create anew the next generation.  Society formerly relied on the  subtle, consistent, and constant pressure of civil society -- of places like the home, the church, and the school. These were all institutions which people not only participated in, they were in complete control of them.   These institutions not only shared a common architectural language, in that schoolhouses, homes, and village churches might look like, but they shared a common mission in promoting human welfare.  That mission was also shared by social organization (the organization of dances to allow young people to meet one another, for instance) and ordinary habit, like allowing children to run outside and play unattended.   In 2001, Robert Putnam decried the decline of civil institutions -- churches, civic groups, bowling clubs, local political moments -- and attempted to figure out what caused their decline. Now the fall is complete:  state schools are such failures that colleges must teach remedial English (prior to their English Literature courses on Twilight and Fifty Shades, Dickens and Stoker having been dumped);   young adults raised in the hookup miasma have no socialization in creating a bonafide  soul-speaks-to-soul relationship,  and every romantic encounter must be  carefully navigated lest someone be sued because the old culture what ensured everyone knew what was appropriate and what was not is lost.

There is no use complaining; we can only rebuild, and the place to start is the family.  Esolen emphatically rejects the modern primacy of the individual, maintaining the family is the foundation of every human society. The home and family are where children are created, nurtured, and taught to become authentic members of their society, their polis.   Speaking of the polis, it too needs awakening:   the State has taken away every prerogative of local communities, leaving them a few pittances like garbage pickup. This is wrong in that it takes away from people the ability to be effective citizens of their community.  Citizenship in the national government means nothing; the individual is grist in the mill.  Yet there is little point in running for something like the school board nowadays, because the decisions have already been decided by far-distant strangers who know better than people what and how to teach their children.   Esolen thus encourages people to create alternative institutions, to  homeschool their children and work together to create private colleges in response to the past-pathetic state of university education today, a place that provides safe spaces and coloring books to its wards instead of teaching them to grapple, body and soul, with adversity and ignorance.   Yet helping to participate in the restoration of society isn't as formidable as creating new and virile sources of education like St. John's and Christendom College;   it can be as simple as learning to appreciate the poetic beauty of traditional hymns,  so much more potent than the happy-clappy praisesongs favored by megachurches -- or leaving the television behind to use one's leisure time to build something with their hands.   Fight ugliness with beauty, lies with truth, decay with work. Participation is the thing -- walking one's neighborhood and picking up litter is more effective than parading about D.C. dressed up as a vagina.

Esolen's concerns are not necessarily exclusive to Christians;  the Swedish eudaimonic philosopher Alain de Botton, for instance,  has written extensively on the role of art, literature, and architecture in human flourishing,  seeing them as important as philosophy in allowing human beings to grow to fulness.  Wendell Berry and Bill Kauffman are both emphatic voices for subsidiarity,  but rarely refer to religion.  Robert Putnam also delivered the essential book on civil culture's decline in his Bowling Alone, which was not religious in the least.  Nevertheless, Esolen is indisputably writing primarily to Christians,  because the west’s civil culture has been Christian, and he is  inspired and rooted by the Catholic social doctrine, referring to papal encyclical at times. At the end Esolen doubles down that he is writing a defense of Christian civilization.   As he urges readers to devote themselves once more to truth and beauty amid the constant babble-babble of lies coming from politicians, the news, and , the amazon of banality that is social media, he bids them to realize that truth remains treason in the empire of lies, and that  ultimately, we pursue the good and true because it is Good, not to create a heaven on Earth. That can never be, for all Christians are ultimately pilgrims on a journey to another world.

Esolen -- whom I've heard described as a "fun Jeremiah" --  is a joy to listen to and to read, a man of passion with a deep bench of literary references. In a lecture on the decline of culture, for instance,  he once used an obscure play by Ben Johnson to make his point. In an interview, someone off-handedly mentions a hymn -- "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" -- and Esolen recognizes it, seizes on it with joy, and at once begins lovingly reciting it.  He is capable of slinging barbs as his foes, but animosity is largely absent here. Instead he writes here in a mood of intense concern, driven on by hope in redemption.   For those who  look at the American landscape -- all the lonely people, the dehumanizing stretches of asphalt and smoke, the constant presence of the foul beast of Jabba the State, who forever demands attention and obedience -- this is a handbook to what went wrong, and a bracing cup to cheer to begin the work of restoring a more humane culture.

Related:
Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam

Local democracy and the State of Jefferson

mp3 

One of the local-democracy initiatives Bill Kauffman covered in his Bye, Bye, Miss American Empire was the 'state of Jefferson', an area of northern California (and bits of southern Oregon) that want to be free of their respective governments. Today, Tom Woods interviewed a man preparing to sue the state of California on behalf of twenty-one counties for 'lack of representation and dilution of the Vote'.   The movement is cultural, not merely political, as 'Jefferson' appears  in the names of businesses and such in the region.

It's an interesting and brief interview (19 mins), but below follow two quotes-in-paraphrase.

Guest, Mark Baird: "Northern California has no representation; one state senator in California has to represent a million people, and an assembly person represents half a million. There are eleven  counties in Jefferson that have one state senator between them. Los Angeles county has eleven state senators, and fifteen if you count the senators whose districts overlap with greater Los Angeles. 51% of the  state representation lies from the Los Angeles county line south to the Mexican border.

After explaining the problem of representation, Baird follows with concerns of how the economy of northern California has been smothered entirely by the dictums of a government nine hundred miles away. "There are four businesses through which every industry moves: timber and forest products, farming and livestock, energy production,  The last [escapes me at the moment]. We have all four of those businesses but have been denied their use by the political processes of the State of California. In other words, our counties are not poor; we have been impoverished by mob rule coming out of southern California."

I say good luck and godspeed.

Bye Bye Miss American Empire

Bye Bye Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and Underdog Crusades to Redraw America's Political Map
© 2010 Bill Kauffman

You say you want a devolution?

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Far beyond the city across the river, this country is pregnant with happy auguries, with the delicious foretaste of sweet rebellion.

(Bill Kauffman, "Love is the Answer to Empire")

Americans everywhere are angry, disappointed, and frustrated by their government. Politicians demand much,  voters demand much, and much is attempted -- but nothing virtually positive actually happens.   Little wonder, when the scale of things is taken into account. The average member of the US House of Representatives now stands in for seven hundred thousand people, making him a representative in name only.  Having written many a book hailing the local and particular -- little America -- against the big and abstract, Kauffman now turns his pen to celebrate those who have attempted and are currently laboring to restore truly representative democracy at various levels. They lobby for more autonomy for, or from, their state government -- perhaps even the fission of cumbersome states into smaller, more responsive entities. Beneath the oil-glazed asphalt expanse of the Empire, hope is growing; dandelions are breaking through the crust -- and in chapters dwelling on New York, Vermont, the South, Califorina, and a few other places, Kauffman explores opportunities for resurrection. 

Bill Kauffman consistently refers to his home as Upstate New York, and heretofore I'd heard that as a direction -- rather like central Alabama, or southern Idaho.   But Upstate New York is more distinct than that, closer to "The South" -- a place, not a direction.  The rural folk of this region, particular the western rim of the state,  feel dominated by the beast below: New York City,  which has practically usurped the very name of New York. Who says those two words with the Adirondacks in mind?   The city itself, a fusion of five once-distinct places, has its own internal dissent,  boroughs that want their freedom back.  Upstate New York's resentment is shared by West Kansas, which cries exploitation at eastern Wichitia --and by northern California and 'upper Michigan', both of which feel ignored by their governments. The fault lines are reliably rural-urban splits, but there are special circumstances:  in its Spanish beginnings, California was organized as Alta and Baja California, and might have settled into the Union as two states were it not for the unpleasantness of the 1860s.   Even today ,there are persistent cries to subdivide the continent-sweeping state into more manageable polities.  In every case, the parties that want to create their own city or state feel abused or ignored by those with perpetual power over them: Staten Island is used as a city dump for the other boroughs, while western Kansas bankrolls the rest of the state at the expense of its own needed services. 

Kauffman addresses Hawaii,  Alaska, and Puerto Rico from an altogether different perspective.  He describes himself as an American sentimentalist with a strong attachment to the 48, who would be saddened to part ways with a seceding state like Vermont or Texas.  But Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico have no geographic link to the rest of the United States;  they were seized as objects of empire, and disrupt the contiguous integrity of the rest. If Hawaii -- three thousand miles away from the rest of the country -- can be claimed as a state, why not any place? Why not Corsica,  the Canary Islands -- "all of Creation, U.S.A!" ?   Here Kauffman champions these places' independence movements, something touched on lightly before with Vermont and California but never too much encouraged.  

The South, of course, receives repeated mention -- in part because it was the South's failed war of independence that gave secession the odor of treason, its ruination used as an example anyone else who would dare break the Union asunder.  The group Kauffman spends time with doesn't champion secession, however, merely claims to defend Southern culture against the homogenizing force from without. That's right up Kauffman's alley, for as usual he's not just writing politics. Kauffman's books brim over with references to forgotten poetry and novels. Kauffman is forever the champion of local cultures, lionizing those who preserve, contribute, and spread their place's literature, its songs, its stories, its beer.   Bad enough that looking to the distant Capitol frustrates and alienates people;  still worse is that local identities are falling away, the citizens of the States becoming nothing but little bricks in the wall, living frustrating lives in a geography of nowhere. (James Howard Kunstler, another upstate New Yorker, makes a cameo here.) 

Kauffman's message here is one of hope, hope that comes through in the tone of his voice during speeches, and his playful wordsmithing here. He is not an ideologue; indeed, he scorns ideology. He does not give any voice to race-separatists, declaring that life is too short to waste words on assholes.   Although a ready fellow traveler of libertarians, Kauffman fires a shot across the bow at the Free State Project, which encourages libertarians to move to New Hampshire en masse so that it might be demographically converted into a haven.  What's important to Kauffman is local control, that people be allowed to live their own lives in peace, flourishing in their distinctiveness: let San Francisco be San Francisco, and Peoria, Peoria.  Kauffman's hope is connected not only to these political movements, moreover, but to other locally-oriented movements like community-supported agriculture and new urbanism.   

In Kauffman is found a passionate defender of humane living -- a man who breaks bread with leftists and reactionaries alike, who would be just at home at a punk rock club as in a bluegrass festival. His affection for little America,  the joy he takes in savoring it and conveying it, are always worth experiencing. 

"The camp guards of contemporary politics will tell you that secession is based in fear or isolation. I say it flows from love and from hopefulness, from the belief that ordinary people, living in cohesive communities, can govern themselves, without the heavy hand of distant experts and tank-and-bomb-wielding statesmen to guide their way. The secession of which I write with (sometimes qualified) admiration is Norman Mailer in love with Brooklyn, native Hawaiians hearing ancestral echoes, Vermonters who think Robert Frost and George Aiken are wiser men than Barack Obama and Joe Biden."

Related:

• "Empire Corrupts",  Kauffman interview about this book
• Saving Congress from Itself, James Buckley. Argues that part of the problem of Congress is centralization, of it assuming too many of the States' burdens and responsibilities. 
• Ain't my America: The Long and Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle Class Antiimperialism, Bill Kauffman
• Look Homeward, America! In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front Porch Anarchists, Bill Kauffman
• Bill Kauffman and James Howard Kunstler yakking about localism and NY literature
• Kauffman articles at TAC and the Front Porch Republic

Saving Congress from Itself

Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States and Empowering their People
© 2014 James F. Buckley
120 pages

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 11% of Americans approve of Congress’ job performance, but virtually every senator or representative who runs for reelection will receive it.  Americans want Congress to do more, even as the institution proves itself incapable of doing much of anything.  The problem lies not merely in entrenched partisanship, but in misplaced priorities.  James Buckley argues that Congress is overworked --   not with its own responsibilities but of those of governors, state legislatures, mayors, and city councils.

The core problem is the existence of “grants in aid” programs, which transfer money to the states as assistance, and which carry with them stipulations for their use.  This allows Congress to  directly influence the policies of the states by offering money, and then explaining it can only be given out if the States follow Congress’ wishes.  The creation  and administration of these grants has become a major devourer of Congressional time.   Because the number of programs granting aid has multiplied several times over since the 1960s, there are more committee reports to listen to than there are hours in the day. Buckley, who prior to serving as a federal judge was a member of the Senate, offers a sample  daily agenda as illustration. Of the fifteen items spanning 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m, only three had a national-interest scope, being items like reports from the US Army Corps of Engineers and a briefing on Iran. The rest were grant aid reports and requests, and so numerous were they that nine of the fifteen scheduled events had schedule conflicts with one another.  Congressional members either skip meetings altogether, or dash from one to the other to put in an appearance, relying on aides to fill them in on the substance.  Where is the time to read legislation, let alone pore over and discuss thousand-page bills?   (A bill forcing Congress to read the bills it passes has yet to make it out of committee consideration.)

Congressmen use their time in this fashion because it pays, at least for them.   While a national body should not be spending its time arguing and administrating local affairs,  this is the sort of thing local citizens actually expect their Congressmen to do.  When Mr. Smith goes to Washington and returns to townhalls with his constituents, they complain about bus routes and schoolrooms – and he, if he is able to finagle some funds for the locals, has an easy in come election day.   That’s not chump change, because when they’re not missing meetings or voting for bills without reading them, congressmen are constantly working to get themselves reelected, spending hours on the phone to beg for money.

This is a situation that must be altered.  Not only has Congress become patently dysfunctional, ceding every Constitutional prerogative to the executive branch,  but the weight of ever-multiplying grants is fiscally unsustainable. The United States government doesn’t generate money; it either takes it from citizens, issues bonds that future generations will have to pay for, or prints more and weakens the value of the currency.   Not only has the national government ceased to be effective, but the stipulations attached to these grants often compromises the aid as the funds are leached away on both ends in administration and in hiring lawyers who can interpret the Talmudic policy requirements.  The number of agencies is such that many have redundant -- and sometimes even conflicting -- goals, with fuzzily-defined metrics for success.  Aid can be done better, and so can government.  A constant theme in Saving Congress from Itself is that of subsidiarity, that in matters of politics, responsibility should remain at the level most capable of dealing with it. A city should take care of its own infrastructure; outside grants only prop up poor planning, like low-density sprawl,  and the ease of spending other people’s money means the funds won’t be put to their most productive use. (There’s no ‘skin in the game’, to borrow Nassim Taleb’s way of putting it.) The national Congress, with an entire world of challenges in front of it, certainly should not be deliberating on local issues.

 Buckley ends the argument with several propositions that would serve to end this legislative torpor.    To curb the amount of time officials spend working on their reelection campaigns, he suggests we (1) restrict Congressionals to two terms, and (2) limit the president to one six-year term.  More drastically,  he proposes that federally-issued grants end altogether, being phased out. Initially, money would simply be issued with no stipulations, and after a pre-fixed number of years to allow state governments to adjust their budgets,  the grants would be no more.  Buckley cites the example of Rhode Island, which was given an opportunity: if it agreed to receiving less money, there would be no rules whatsoever attached to the use.  With no outside pressure, Rhode Island was allowed to tailor its own plan to its own particular need, with effective service increasing and costs declining.  If Congress does not admit or pass the necessary legislation, a convention called by the States could also propose and pass amendments.

Saving Congress is a short little book, and Buckley doesn’t waste a word.  I was aware of political corruption in regards to military contracts, but had  little idea for how Congress conducted its business.  Truth be told, I generally imagine Congress-folk to spend their time golfing, eating, and conspiring against the public.  Buckley's argument is valuable in form as in substance. He approaches this from a nonpartisan observation that Congress is simply not performing. He doesn't deny that people still need help, but the current approach isn't doing it -- and it''s costing local cities who keep looking to Congress, and distracting Congress from its actual constitutional responsibilities.  If nothing else,  Saving Congress illustrates why the American public continues to elect their senators despite loathing Congress altogether: it's only pork on the other guy's plate.: One senator's wasteful spending is another's putting 'tax dollars back to work for you'. How about we dispense with the middle man and put our dollars to work for ourselves?


Related:
Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Chuck Marohn.

Nullification

Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century
© 2011 Thomas E. Woods, Jr
309 pages

In a game of word association, chances are that 'nullification' would not meet with flattering replies. Nullification is a word associated with the Civil War, or the Civil Rights movement, of the southern states blocking attempts at racial equality by insisting on their own right to declare a federal law unconstitutional, and thus null and void. But nullification has a richer and nobler history than its modern critics realize; in Nullification,  Tom Woods explains the legal basis of the principle, demonstrates its use throughout early American history, and points out areas in which the states have adopted it as a tool today.

Nullification's sanction, Woods argues, rests in the little-c constitution of the United States. Though today the fifty states may seem like mere departments of the national polity, in the beginning this was not so. The united States began life not as a nation, but an agreement between thirteen, and with specific purposes. Treaties from the period enumerate the individual states, demonstrating their primacy. If not the States, who may declare a given law unconstitutional? The Supreme Court has assumed that role ('judicial review'), but as part of the government, how can it be expected to police itself?  The individual States, however, have existence without the national government, and it exists, or was supposed to have existed, as their handmaiden -- not the other way around. Theirs is the right to declare the actions of Congress, the President, and the Court unconstitutional -- but theirs is likewise the responsibility to create measures for frustrating the government's knavish tricks.

This they have done, from as early as the Adams presidency til today. Nullification first came onto the scene after the Federalist congress put into effect the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made defaming the government and its officials a crime. (Defaming the government was, until the rise of baseball, the national sport, and especially loved by Jefferson, Hamilton, and their respective parties.) Straightaway governors began throwing up barriers to federal agents attempting to arrest mouthy citizens. They did the same when, during the Napoleonic Wars, President Jefferson imposed an embargo on Europe -- an embargo that might have driven American trade to its knees. The reality and the threat of nullification continued to force the hands of overambitious executives. Today, legislative sabotage continues as states decriminalize marijuana use even as the federal  government continues to insist it's a no-no.   Given that the US attorney general is now retreating from parts of the War on Drugs (starting with that odd habit of theirs of seizing  property that has been declared guilty of participating in a crime), the principle seems just as potent.

Nullification is a small book (~165 pages, not counting the documents appended to it), but is a very worthy introduction to compact theory, in which the States are legally superior and not subordinate to the national state. It's also a respectable attempt to rescue nullification from its historical taint, but loses some points given that Woods never squarely addresses the threatened use of it during the 1960s, maintaining only that nullification is a weapon that can be used unjustly as easily as it can be for justice.  I was also hoping for other kinds of nullification to be covered (like jury nullification), but Woods focused only on formal measures by the States themselves.  Altogether it's a solid intro to the subject, and I am all for throwing wrenches into the machinery.


Related:
The Liberty Amendments, Mark Levin,  all of which aim to restore to the fifty states their original power over the central government.

Human Scale

Human Scale
© 1980 Kirkpatrick Sale
500 pages      

      Human Scale is an ambitious assault on big business, big government -- the very concept of Bigness. Opening with biology, Kirkpatrick Sale first establishes his basic operating principle:  for everything, there is a limit to its size beyond which it cannot grow without being compromised. In its opening third, Human Scale addresses the problems inherent in large, complex systems, then follows that with sections on how society, economy, and politics might function more effectively if scaled down.  On the hefty side itself, Human Scale impresses with its thoroughness; a kindred spirit to E.F. Schumacher's small is beautiful,  the book has largely stood the test of time in putting forth a case for decentralized politics, appropriate technology,  organic locally grown agriculture, and cities and buildings built to the human scale.  Sale creates a synthesis from topics as varying as demographics and aesthetics.. It is at times dated, at least in its optimistic projections for solar energy efficiency.  On the whole, however, it offers insight into government dysfunction and widespread social problems, along with ways people can work to effect change themselves. It is almost an anarchist how-to, a review of ways people can reclaim their lives against the power of centralization, and its enduring relevance is proven in the multitude of authors still advancing its ideas, a number that includes Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry.

The Long Loneliness

The Long Loneliness
© 1952 Dorothy Day
288 pages (Harper Collins, 2009(

            Dorothy Day came of age amid the Great War, a child of struggling parents whose labors to make ends meet stayed with her even after they had achieved some success. Caught up by the social upheaval of the early 20^th century, Dorothy moved among the ranks of Communists, anarchists, and draft-resisters. Her determination to fight for the poor changed directions after she joined the Roman Catholic Church, however, and in The Long Loneliness she recounts the efforts of her comrades, both radical and Catholic, as they worked to create a better world for the impoverished. Day’s autobiography is a beautifully written response to the early 20^th century’s social turmoil, the story of a hell-raiser on the verge of sainthood. 

            Although overtly pious as a child, Day recounts here falling away from religion as she aged;  what did faith have to offer the poor, she thought, except meaningless promises of a happier afterlife?  Why should the impoverished and oppressed remain meek and serene when they could throw off their chains? Dismissing religion as the opiate of the people, Day recounts how she threw herself into the struggle for social justice. Her faith in inexorable progress was tested, however, during repeated periods of imprisonment, periods which she worsened by engaging in hunger strikes. In the despair of those hours she turned again to the God of her childhood, and when she was finally set free,  her Christian faith would be reborn and strengthened. Ultimately,  her yearning for comfort and  order led her to the Catholic church, and so strong was her desire for inner peace that she converted despite knowing it would mean leaving her common-law husband, who refused to submit to a church marriage. 

            The Long Loneliness is by no means a comprehensive biography; even if Day were blessed with total recall, constructing a narrative means leaving some facts behind to focus on others.  From this account she seems to have accepted the Church on its own terms, rather than being able to embrace it after learning about its social doctrine, which is by no means passive concerning poverty. I suspected the social doctrine might be the  draw for her, but she gives it scant mention and indeed passes over a discussion of Distributism. Instead, she mentions its similarity to the Southern Agrarians and similar movements as her own. The distributist ideal is hers, “a world where it is easy for people to be good”, where people are not destroyed by their work but ennobled by it. There is no escaping poverty in The Long Loneliness, either material or spiritual; it is to escape spiritual poverty that Day finds herself almost revering the material. She and her great ally, Peter Maurin, both emphasize voluntary simplicity as a means of not only focusing on what really matters, but in saving money to create self-reliance. “Self” is misleading, however:   The Long Loneliness is often a book about creating community.  Her rich collections of her neighbors, regardless of where she moved,  and the emphasis she and Maurin both place on experience life communally – through group discussions on philosophy, or establishing cooperatives and charity houses – demonstrate how  vital being with and working with others was to her life, to her worldview.  Day’s journey here ends on a farm, where she, Maurin, and other staffers of The Catholic Worker would be self-sustainable, she writes, if they did not give so much food away.  

            What a fascinating work this is, quoting from church fathers and personalities like Emma Goldman in the same breathe; what a life she lived,  as a journalist and nurse and agitator during a most interesting period of the 20^th century, when workers were brawling in the streets with the forces of  establishment and winning victories even as they were imprisoned and beaten en masse. Many of the  laws they fought for, Day writes, are now on the books.  At the time of this writing she was no doubt by what had been achieved, not by her but by the people she served, the people who took the ideas of The Catholic Worker – pacifism and libertarianism among them --  and spread them across the world.  Hers is a dream still unrealized, but a life such as hers is a testament as to what is possible. 

Related:

• A Life of Her Own, Emile Carles. Also the biography of a driven young woman whose response to seeing her village and its boys swallowed up by the national government during the Great War is to become increasingly sympathetic toward anarchism and the libertarian left. 
• The Story of my Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi, which also ends in a newsletter staff being run from a communal farm. Pacifism and self-reliance are also common motifs, though Day is more sensual.
• Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, Shane Claiborne, whose 'new monasticism' brings Day to mind..
• I’ll Take my Stand, various authors. She frequently mentions the southern agrarians who penned their defense of a culture rooted in the land.
• Red Emma Speaks, Emma Goldman

Look Homeward, America!

Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists
© 2006 Bill Kauffman
250 pages

"The Little Way. That is what we seek. That -- contrary to the ethic of personal parking spaces, of the dollar-sign god -- is the American way. Dorothy Day kept to that little way, and that is why we honor her. She understood that if small is not beautiful, at least it is always human."  p. 39

           Look Homeward, America collects the stories of eccentric individuals who, in a century marked by the advance of corporate and state power, rebelled against the machine. Planting their flag above small towns and in the countryside, they held on what they regarded as valuable and defied or attempted to resist the march of a more inhumane world. Bill Kauffman is a sympathetic soul, a die-hard "placeist". He calls himself the anarchist love-child of Henry David Thoreau and Dorothy Day, and Look Homeward is his tribute to peaceable troublemakers like his 'parents'. They are farmers and social workers, politicians and miners, men and women whose faith is the family and the local community. They champion self-reliance, local interest, and peace; they scorn war, industrial agriculture, big business, and government bureaucracy.  The expression thereof varies; some are hands-on activists, like Day and Mother Jones,  others very frustrated political candidates, still others authors who sing the song of their places and peoples in novel and verse.No political labels apply here; although most are out to protect traditional expressions of civil society, or are vigorously insisting that the powerful leave them be, these conservatives and libertarians are joined by men like Eugene Debs. A book that can honor the six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist party in the same breath as Wendell Berry (a Kentucky farmer, novelist, and proponent of agrarianism)  is wonderfully eclectic. A strong sense of the meaningful life pervades and is carried forth by both religious personalities (Catholic Dorothy Day, featured prominently) and the irreligious, like Robert Ingersoll.   (The great agnostic only receives a mention, which is too bad; his view of the American republic was quite Jeffersonian.) The expression of this common spirit differs from In essence, Look Homeward is a lively championing of localism, a tribute paid to people whose lives were a great raspberry in the face of war and modern alienation. It's a ball to read, not only because Kaufman is so personable,  but because of his colorful-but-not-obscene vocabulary.

Related:

• The Plain Reader,  assorted authors (including Berry)
• Crunchy Cons; The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Rob Dreher.  Like Kauffman, a writer at Front Porch Republic
• Any of Wendell Berry’s works
• Review: "All American Anarchists"

"....this institution of the home is the one anarchist institution. That is to say, it is older than law, and stands outside the State. By its nature it is refreshed or corrupted by indefinable forces of custom or kinship."  - G. K. Chesteron, What's Wrong with the World?

The Liberty Amendments

The Liberty Amendments:  Restoring the American Republic
© 2013 Mark Levin
257 pages

The United States Constitution was written by men who appreciated their lack of omniscience, and who therefore included in Article V means for amending their handiwork, for fixing through Congress and the state legislatures any problems that might arise. How do you solve a problem through Congress, however, when Congress is the problem?   The solution, says Mark Levin, is right there in the Constitution: Article V, which establishes the means of amendment, provides two. While Congress can vote on amendments, the State Legislatures can independently  call a convention to propose amendments, amendments Congress is obliged to respect.

With that as a starting point, he introduces ten amendments intended to bring the metastasizing national government into hand. The amendments taken as a whole are strongly sympathetic to a states' rights perspective, as all three heads of the Scylla-like national government are subordinated further to the state legislatures. The legislatures are given the power to override Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress, and  term limits are imposed on all branches, including on the formerly lifetime Court seats.  Levin's amendments make it clear that he believes sovereignty lies in the states alone. as he proposes measures intended to stifle the effort of the government to take a life of its own. The Supreme Court is denied a right it has assumed, that of judicial review (judging whether a law is constitutional), and federal programs are given an automatic expiration date that they escape only by submitting to a scrutionous review.  Most of the amendments are general and limited, with Levin arguing from what he believes the founders would have intended or believed; he draws on the Federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers, and the founding fathers' letters to inform his views. The exception to this is the tenth proposal, which requires photo ID for elections. This is so specific to current political arguments and current technology that it doesn't deserve the dignity of being attached to the Constitution: let it join the legions of acts of Congress.

As personally sympathetic as I am to any measure limiting the power of the state, and hostile to any measure intended to magnify its power,  something about this book doesn't sit right with me. Levin speaks often about the founders' firm belief in checks and balances, but his proposals put so many cards in the hands of the state legislatures something is bound to go wrong. The state legislatures are not havens of sensibility and justice; my own state has a constitution written by planters to disenfranchise the poor, place the burden of public finance on them, and force local ballot measures to be resolved by means of constitutional amendment.  On the other hand, perhaps we'd end up with something like Swiss cantons; that kind of dynamic localism is attractive.  My principle problem with Levin is that he doesn't bother with a dialogue but writes to people who already agree with him as he presents his case against the dreaded Statists, the Evil Ones.  I don't know if Levin's approach is the answer, but it's not mere talk: in late December, state legislatures sent representatives to George Washington's Virginia home in Mount Vernon to discuss the possibility of an "Article V Convention".   Thus, while Levin's amendments aren't necessarily ones I'd get behind in total (with the exception of term limits),  his basic premise of states using their article V right to discipline Congress, the Court, and the President has promise.