Centrepiece
Founding fathers
Colin Welch
Tsar Nicholas II often bewailed the fact that he had been born on St Job's day — a misfortune which could not have befallen him in western Christendom. I wonder sometimes whether the European Community was born on such an ill-starred day, under such a dark sign.
Not that the birth itself was inauspicious, apart from our own sad absence. The Euro- pean founding fathers, all men of prudent and liberal temperament, charged them- selves with the task of making out of six na- tions, often in the past with ruinous results at each others' throats, a European people: e pluribus unum. The route they chose to that end was modest, tested, sensible and practical: a customs union or Zoilverein. Never did they regard this as an end in itself: it was only a means to greater ends. Never did they value the economic above the political, or perversely place prosperity, as did Dostoievsky's modern Antichrist, above the civic virtues and attitudes it was hoped to engender. The customs union was intended to invite the Europeans to get to know and respect each other in the market, there to discover common interests. The purpose was to ensure that when steps towards an ever closer European union were proposed (as the preamble of the EEC treaty, which we too now have signed, makes obligatory), they would seem natural or even inevitable. Nothing of the sort, alas, has yet occurred.
The most obvious reason is that the basic Common Market itself does not yet exist. Obstacles to the free movement of goods, as well as of money (French exchange con- trols), services, travellers and workers, still abound. A very excusable failure of will is here evident, excusable to all aware of the complex vested interests everywhere involv- ed and the way in which vicious practices, repressed, flourish again in new forms. Yet evident too is a failure or perversion of statecraft very characteristic of our age, a lack of prudence as well as energy, a modern lack of that sure sense, possessed by most of our liberal forefathers, of what the state (or in this case the European con- federation) must do, may do, need not do and must not do, if it is to succeed. Europe has left undone those things which she ought to have done and done those things which she ought not to have done; and there is no health in her.
Most forcibly was I reminded of this lack or failure of modern statecraft when reading Irving Kristol's weighty and penetrating essay on 'The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution', published in his Reflections of a Neoconser- vative (Basic Books, New York, $19.95: not yet issued here, to our shame, when so much utter rubbish infests our shelves). Well do I know that the American founding fathers of whose achievements Irving writes lived in circumstances very different from our own, with different problems, dangers and advantages. What then can they have to say to us? AL first glance too Irving's lucid but deep analysis of the differences between the French, Russian and American revolutions appears more historically in- teresting than relevant to our problems to- day. But this turns out not to be so at all. Unlike the French and Russian revolutions, the American revolution was relatively orderly, bloodless, respectful of the law, modest, promising not happiness but freedom to pursue it (a silly promise in itself, I agree, but not the silliest). It was and still is a huge success.
The differences between the two sorts of revolution lay of course in the minds and hearts of those who made them. It is in the writings, speeches and constitutional legacy of the American founding fathers that we find so much wisdom of nigh universal value, and particularly to those engaged, as we are now so ineptly engaged in Europe, in building a new polity. The founding fathers are neglected now even in America: Irving reports that at major American universities it is almost impossible to find a course devoted to The Federalist. If true, what bad news for Americans, like monkeys who have inherited a palace, ungrateful heirs of a political order which they no longer value or understand, and which cannot thus be wholly safe in their hands. Our own ignor- ance of the founding fathers is even more profound, perhaps less perilous, but nonetheless a fearful loss to our statecraft.
What sort of men were they? As Irving pictures them, the least likely, the most reluctant, therefore the best revolutionaries you can think of. They were prudent, cautious, mistrustful of popular passions, fully awake to the need to restrain them, widely read in political philosophy, their own enthusiasm tempered by doubt, intro- spection, anxiety and scepticism, more republican than democratic (two words not synonymous), governed not by dogma but by the mind, much more aware of how dif- ficult self-government is than we are (who think it the easiest, most natural thing in the world, and are daily mocked by resultant disasters), respectful of states' rights and local government, which they regarded as the source of their own legitimacy.
They thought that federal and state governments alike should be relatively weak and limited, unable to threaten personal liberty even did they wish to. They would have thought it quite wrong for any govern- ment to have the desire or capacity, by redistribution of wealth, to secure greater material equality between persons or regions. It was their attitude to power which distinguished them most sharply from their French contemporaries, who regarded revolution as an expression of the people's will to power, which should accordingly be unlimited. The founding fathers thought that power should be divid- ed, separated and severely curbed.
Now what would wise men of this sort have made of what goes on in Europe today? They certainly would not have seen here any monstrous all-pervading tyranny: no one in his right mind sees that. But, far- sighted and mistrustful as they were, they might have seen tendencies in that direc- tion. They might have noted in Brussels a restless greed for power, as yet in its infancy, an urge to interfere, uncurbed not by any regular checks or balances but only by the excessive independence and votes of the member nations. They might have sus- pected it thus less likely to issue in the tyranny towards which it tends than in futility, disunity or dissolution, which would have grieved them. By striving to do too much, the new Europe may render repulsive and thus endanger, damage or smash the very institutions on which she relies to do anything at all.
The American founding fathers would, I think, have been shocked by the frivolous, naïve and uncritical enthusiasm of the Euro-fanatics. Enthusiasm in plenty they had themselves, couldn't have done what they did without it. But, as Irving said, it was tempered by doubt and self-criticism. They questioned ceaselessly the wisdom of what they were doing. Serious criticism of it by others was not resented but valued.
Very different is the Euro-fanatics' atti- tude. All absurdities, provided they are Euro-absurdities, are sacrosanct, defended to the death. No one may criticise holy cows like regional policies, the CAP or Brussels' financial incontinence without being brand- ed as anti-European. He (or she, for Mrs Thatcher has been so branded) often is anti- European, though not invariably so. If his real objection is to the European idea rather than to the perverse ways in which it expresses itself, then it is useless to try to please him. No matter: his criticism should be respected, valued, carefully heard and, where possible, profited from. Is Mr Nick Budgen MP, a constant, sharp and percep- tive Tory critic of Euro-follies, really an anti-European? How can we tell, till what he justly deplores has been ended or amend- ed? If Europe became a land fit for Budgens to live in, she might find in him a friend hitherto disguised. Some might say, with friends like these, Europe needs no enemies. I would rather say that Europe badly needs friends like these, period.
Much more in our young Europe would the founding fathers have contemplated with disquiet or distrust: much more than there is room for this week.
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