Ideals vs Self-Interest: A False Dichotomy

Near the end of His Excellency, Ellis writes

The second long-term pattern in his thinking about slavery was a relentlessly realistic insistence that ideals per se must never define his agenda; indeed, he associated an idealistic agenda with sentimental illusions, like the belief that American virtue was sufficient to defeat Great Britain in the war....

Try to reconcile that with this—Washington setting an historic precedent in surrendering his sword.

The fact is the American Revolution was not just political. It included an implicit moral revolution. The new moral code implied was that of rational selfishness. As such, Washington was wise to reject the idealism that kept the world in slavery and darkness for centuries. America's practice of slavery was part of that ancient legacy that had to be addressed and Washington struggled with it, as Ellis reports.

In the end, American virtue did defeat the British. A new ideal—the virtue of rational selfishness—drove the American force. It is secondary that not all Americans shared that ideal. What was crucial was that the leading thinkers —the Founding Fathers—embraced the ideal, with Washington chief among them, literally and figuratively.

So, although I disagree with Ellis' ethical orientation, I admire and appreciate his work in his biography of Washington. I got to see Washington as the great, real man he was, not just some impassive face perched on a mountain. I got to see how fitting it is that he is the father of our country—a deeply principled, intelligent, moral man of action.

At the same time, I am grateful to Ayn Rand for arming me with the ideas necessary to navigate around the kind of conventional errors Ellis makes in his review and analysis of Washington's life. My respect and admiration for Washington is all the richer and more personal.

Hamiltonian Power and "Behaving Responsibly"

A light went on when I made a connection between Ellis' comments on force being used to get "both individuals and sovereign states...to behave responsibly" and his report of Alexander Hamilton's dangerous quest for power.

Ellis reports on page 250...

In collusion with disaffected and disloyal members of Adams's cabinet, Hamilton had hatched a scheme to transform the Provisional army into a permanent military establishment and an instrument for his expanded power within the Federalist Party. To be fair, Hamilton had convinced himself that Napoleon's imperial ambitions did include North America....[H]e envisioned marching his army through Virginia, thereby intimidating the Republican leadership in its major sanctuary, then launching a preemptive invasion of Florida and the Louisiana Territory....

He goes on to report that "Washington was unwittingly providing the imprimatur of his name to this wild scheme...playing directly into Hamilton's hands....At any rate, the moment exposed the dangerous tendencies of Hamilton's genius once released from Washington's control."

Whoa. Hold up. The dangerous tendencies of Hamilton's genius? More like the dangerous logic of the idea of forcing people to "behave responsibly". Hamilton's scheme strikes me as terribly consistent with that premise.

I ain't lion!

Check out this amazing video.

Touching as it is...still...as a form of urging caution, I'll just say two words: Siegfried and Roy!

A Unified American Nation...for freedom

On page 202 of His Excellency, Ellis describes a 1790 attempt to end slavery. "Whatever [Washington's] personal views on slavery may have been, his highest priority was the creation of a unified American nation."

This formulation does not do justice to the magnitude of the deeper issue. A "unified American nation"? For what purpose?

America wasn't just a new nation. It was the first nation in history dedicated expressly to the idea of individual rights. It was radical. It still is, given how many are willing to give it up at the first sign of pressure.

But the point here is that it was fragile at its birth, as cited in Ellis' book. To be precise, protecting his own and his country's fragile freedom was Washington's highest priority and a unified American nation was the means to that end.

Did everyone understand that freedom? No. Was it universally applied immediately after millenniums of slavery across the world? No. The revolution had just started. Slavery was a horrible, "in your face" contradiction and the Founding Fathers knew it. Tragically, resolving that contradiction took time and rivers of blood.

Balance of Power

In my 2/7/08 post, I cited Ellis as follows:

Both individual citizens and sovereign states often required coercion to behave responsibly, which meant that the federal government required expanded powers of taxation and ultimate control over fiscal policy.

Among the problems with this claim, notice this core assumption: the federal government will "behave responsibly" in its use of coercion.

How right the Founding Fathers were to do everything in their power to assure a balance of power in our government. Too much power in one group's or one man's grasp is dangerous.

Check your premises.

Dilbert

Today, while doing some technical housekeeping, I decided to add a link to the Dilbert homepage.

Being fuzzy on how to use HTML to display on my blog both a free Dilbert graphic and a link to the Dilbert home page, this site gave me the necessary guidance. That assistance combined with the Blogger wizard engine (which makes so much of blogging a joy) gave me the result I wanted, which you can see on the right side of my blog now.

Incidentally, I love that I can do that—just plug a search into Google to get an instant answer to a technical point that is not second nature to me. Man, the Internet rocks!

I added the Dilbert link because Scott Adams is so well in touch with the nutty patterns of behavior that afflict life in most large organizations.

Sacrifice: A romantic delusion

"Making voluntary sacrifice the operative principle of republican government had proved to be a romantic delusion." So writes Joseph Ellis on page 168 of His Excellency at the beginning of the section named Infant Empire in chapter 5.

Here, there is certainly a romantic delusion. Ironically, the delusion is the notion that sacrifice—voluntary or not—is romantic.

Ellis adds: "Both individual citizens and sovereign states often required coercion to behave responsibly, which meant that the federal government required expanded powers of taxation and ultimate control over fiscal policy."

The only proper role of government is to manage the use of force to protect us from force (and fraud)—be it from abroad, from our neighbors, and especially from the biggest force wielder of all: our own government. As Washington himself apparently wrote or said: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Damn straight.

So, when Ellis associates, in effect, "behaving responsibly" with "sacrifice", he's in dangerous territory.

Sacrifice means to surrender a higher value for a lower value. Given this, Washington was certainly not sacrificing when he risked his life for years to defend everything he loved about America as it was and as it could become. He was gloriously selfish.

The greatest man in the world

Though I knew Washington had earned King George's awe (calling him "the greatest man in the world") when he surrendered his sword after winning America's independence from Great Britain, I did not know that he did so fully aware of the fates of the Roman and English republics at key points, that they fell to military dictatorships.

Ellis also reports that Washington's opinion of America's government, which, at the time, was only the weak Congress operating under the Article of Confederation.

So, while how America was going to work was not yet evident and not looking good under the Articles, one thing for Washington was crystal clear—how America was not going to work—i.e., under a dictatorship, not while he lived.

Not only did Washington lay down his sword, he stopped his officers from raising theirs. On this critical moment in history, Ellis writes: "Whereas Cromwell and later Napoleon made themselves synonymous with the revolution in order to justify the assumption of dictatorial power, Washington made himself synonymous with the American Revolution in order to declare that it was incompatible with dictatorial power.

This and all it implies is one of the most moving moments in history for me. It has earned from me an emotion that does not and cannot come lightly—reverence.

God bless George Washington.

Gasp!

Yup, the Patriots perfect football season came to a crashing halt in the final game. Ouch.

But the opposing team, the New York Giants, was too much for them. They earned the win, playing especially well on defense. They kept Brady, one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, off balance for most of the game.

So, I tip my cyber hat to them. Well done, dammit! ;^)