[0:00:10 Speaker 1] well, I'm uh professor thomas Pangle, I'm the co director of the thomas Jefferson Center for the study of cortex and ideas, which is sponsoring this event, which is the University of texas, a celebration of Constitution Day. Uh, and that is mandated by a law of the United States, that every university such as this must have such a celebration on this day or close to it september 17th, which is the day the constitutional convention ended in 17 80 87. And uh, this is partly funded by the Jack Miller Center, which is a, a foundation in uh, in philadelphia. That is very concerned with uh, spreading the teaching and study and discussion of the constitution and our whole constitutional tradition, especially in the university campuses. And so they have about 50 such supported lectures going on today, maybe even at this, almost at this hour, all across the United States. And we're participating with gratitude to the Jack Miller Center in that, that celebration and celebration and we're particularly pleased and pleasure uh, and happy to have with us today. One of America's distinguished historians of social and political american history, Wilford McLay. He uh, as you no doubt saw if you saw the poster, which we're very proud of, our lovely poster is the holds the blankenship chair in the history of liberty and in the history department at the University of Oklahoma. Before that, he held the Suntrust Bank Chair of Excellence in humanities and was professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He's written innumerable articles and essays and a number of important books. Um most just uh two or three that are most notable. Uh he won the 1995 Merle Curti Award in intellectual history from the organization of american historians for his book, the mast earless, self and society in modern America. Uh He uh he wrote, religion returns to the public square faith and policy in modern America in 2002 figures in the carpet finding the human person in the american past in 2000 and seven. And he has forthcoming, uh, this uh, or or actually I guess it's out now uh, at this very time why Place matters geography, identity, and civic life in modern America. Uh, and today he is going to honor us with his lecture on the soul of man under Federalism. Mr McLay. Yeah, 

[0:03:13 Speaker 0] thank you. Tom it's wonderful to be here. I have to tell you my provost ou is a ferocious football fan and he does not approve of my being here in the camp of the, of what he regards as the enemy. So, you know, I'm gonna try to behave myself, especially since I'm being filmed and you know, I'm sure copy this is gonna go straight back to him. So he will make sure I have not said anything heretical or disloyal to the institution. Um it's I think a a coincidence, a felicitous one that where I'm giving this talk on federalism the day before this big vote in Scotland over whether or not Scotland is going to become independent and sever its ties to the United Kingdom. Uh this is uh I think for those of us who are interested in these kinds of things, this is a very big moment when full of apprehension and nobody quite knows what the outcome is gonna be. Uh uh and it's a time when uh there is uh a it's a moment, historical moment in which the map of the world um seems to be changing or is under pressure in the direction of change. Not only in the anglo sphere, the english speaking world, not only in this uh this episode with Scotland, but some of the, the principal nations of old europe spain France. Italy Belgium, you have the Catalans and the basques in Spain who are watching this Scottish uh business with great interest, the britons and corsicans in France, the tarot, leon's Indonesians in Italy, the Flemish in Belgium. Um all of these are potential points of fracture or fissure in uh what we think of rightly or wrongly as he's very finished old european states. And that's not even to get into the Middle East, where the lines uh the nation's and boundaries that were created after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire are are certainly not likely to last very much longer in their current form. So, uh if you could, it's hard to generalize, but you could say uh that we're seeing the rise of of a kind of tribalism in the world over trans nationalism or nationalism in some cases the decomposition of nations. It's an interesting time in some ways alarming, some ways full of promise. Well, I'd like to put it, is that where the Scots are trying to decide whether to choose Braveheart or jean Bonnie, the architect of the european union. And yet there ought to be some alternatives two between tribalism and post nationality or trans nationality. Uh we need a conceptual vocabulary to comprehend what kinds of alternative arrangements might be between those two extremes and and to avert what could be very damaging and anarchic fracturing of the world order. I'm not meaning to way of the Scottish decision with all of this weight. But some of you may have seen Roger Cohen had a column in the new york times a few days ago called The Unraveling, in which he describes pretty much the kind of thing I'm describing uh, as characteristic of the world scene today. It's also a comment on the Obama administration's foreign policy. But uh, I'm more interested in this devolution or uh, political aspect, organizational aspect. There was an article last month, very smart article I thought by a man named Adam Garfinkle, who is the editor of a magazine called the american Interest, with the title, What's going on, which those of you who are scholars of american popular music? Well, no, it's a reference to Marvin Gaye's what's going on, but uh, at any rate, uh, what's going on and to summarise a long and elaborate, rather interesting article is a failure of state systems of nation states and state systems around the world. Uh, and he goes on, I'm just gonna quote a couple of passages. Uh, he says the trick in addressing this problem. The trick is to carefully and by consent selectively devolve the social and political authorities of states, Nation states. He means here to lo sai where it can be more effective and possibly even more legitimate. Uh and then he goes on planned subsidiarity, maybe the best protection against state and state system failure. Well, I read that, I said, you know, we have a word for planned subsidiarity. That word is federalism, why why don't you use it? Uh He goes on even more interestingly to talk about all the ways we've learned the about the pathologies of centralization of excessive centralisation. Again, I read you a wonderful passage dealing with the economic crisis of 2007, 2000 and eight. When financiers and bankers aggregate a host of regional business cycles into one massive global cycle. Everything collapses if that mega cycle collapses, it amounts to doubling down on a bet when one cannot even read clearly the cards on one, in one's own hand. This is not a formula for resilience. This is a thumbnail description of what happened to humpty dumpty. So, uh, the the thrust of my remarks is to be, is to encourage us to revisit federalism uh rather than calling it planned subsidiarity, uh revisit the arguments for federalism and see if they have fresh appeal uh in contemporary circumstances. Um, and especially as my title implies, with a view towards the way in which a federal system of governance as a kind of regime has feedback effects uh, on the inner life of those who dwell under it. And uh, indeed reciprocally that that that regime requires these qualities to to be uh, to sustain itself and to be healthy. Now, it wasn't as I think I've already implied it wasn't very long ago that most american scholars, uh political observers assumed that Federalism was a dead letter and utterly dead issue intellectual relic every bit as antique as the divine right of kings. Um and generally it fell down before the argument, the perennial argument that a full fledged federal system, such as the framework of american constitution had envisioned uh simply is no longer practical for a modern, economically, politically and socially consolidated nation, uh with large concentrations of wealth in the hands of private individuals, a nation in which the inhabitants changed their residents every five years, a nation with immense global responsibilities, which finds itself competing in a global economy of unprecedented scope and complexity. Um, well, this is a hard, this is a powerful argument. It's a hard argument to answer. Um in fact, in these days it's hard enough merely to defend the legitimacy and viability of the nation state itself against its many detractors left and right who cheerfully proclaimed its obsolescence. So to defend Federalism would seem to be even more of a stretch. The humpty dumpty argument would seem to carry some weight in the opposite direction. But in addition to uh the longstanding, uh as I say, perennial argument against a full fledged federal system is the fact that it would appear americans collective sense of federalism has atrophied uh seriously compared to what it was in the 19th century Alexis de Toqueville, who wrote about America in the in the in the first half of the 19th century marvel that even the humblest americans he met in the 18 thirties were, so to speak, instinctive. Federalists ready to distinguish among the respective obligations of the national state and local governments. It's hard to imagine that even relatively well educated americans of today would be similarly confident of their knowledge, for example, what courts have jurisdiction over particular legal issues which level or agency of government should provide them with the services that they desire and expect. Um, in many americans minds, the upholding of Federalism seems an abstract and formalistic concern. Who cares after all. Uh, so they're likely to say what agency or what level of government outlaws, for example, the possession of firearms in schools or prosecuting violence against women. What does it matter who does it? As long as the right thing is done? Um, and at worst in some minds, the champion of championing of federalism is instantly associated with memories of the antebellum and Jim Crow South. The invocation of state sovereignty, states rights to defend slavery and racial segregation a heavy burden to bear. Either way. A genuine revival of Federalism has its work cut out for it. If it comes though, it will not have to start from scratch because we have the necessary institutions in place, a piece of good fortune that other nations such as the emerging democracies of Eastern europe or for that matter of the United Kingdom, uh can only envy. But at the same time, such a revival may not be able to presume the same american citizenry with the same dispositions of intellect and character that prevailed 180 years ago, like any other system of government and genuine and sustainable federal system has to be able to draw on and reproduce a certain social character in its citizens. Hence the focus of my title, The Soul of Manager Federalism, which takes off from the title of a little book by the eminent political scientists, Oscar Wilde. I'm kidding uh, about him being an eminent political scientist, but it was an eminent writer, influential writer. Published in 18 91 a book called The Soul of Man under socialism. Uh the structure of his title might suggest that Wild grasp the connection between the character of a political regime and the character of the ones that regime governs, but not the case. On the contrary, Wild esteemed socialism, simply because he believed it would free all individuals from the tiresome prospect of having to think at all about material and social things, indeed about anything or anyone except themselves under conditions of private property. That is before socialism, he argued, there had only been a handful of true individuals. I'm using his terminology or true individuals, men and women able to realize their personality completely. And these were all artists, people like Shelley Byron Baudelaire and so on. All of the others were constrained by the sordid necessity of living for others, and the necessities of getting and spending and the things that go with a non socialist economy. But socialism would change all that, freeing men and women to uh not have to engage in the labor that sap their energy and misdirected their strength, enabling their true personality too emerge without hindrance, like a flower opening to the sun. Nowhere in the book, this wild suggests that the social order or the institutions of government or any other like force has a role to play in the proper formation of the this precious flower like itself. Not for him was James Madison's famous dictum in Federalist 51. That government is the greatest of all reflections on human nature. Instead, the political regime would seem to have nothing to do with the process of self realization except insofar as it interferes with it. Government has only one job. It is to be the central organizer of labor and the manufacture and distribution of goods. But once that dreary job is taking care of government should get out of the way of blossoming personalities. And as Wild famously said in another context, not take up too many evenings. The form of government that's most suitable to artists was no government at all. And indeed, in wilds understanding which melds socialism with high aestheticism and romanticism, art occupies a singularly high position because it's the most intense mode of individualism in Wilde's eyes. The supreme exemplar was jesus christ, who he conceived of as a kind of wandering cafe artiste, a free spirited sage of nonconformity, who encouraged his followers to be themselves, pay no heed how the world regarded them in the wilds. Admiring uh revisionist eyes, christ was the ultimate individualist whose ultimate message was, I quote, you have a wonderful personality develop it. Uh Perhaps if jesus had lived longer, he could have opened a branch of the esalen institute on the banks of the Jordan and taught therapeutic massage. Uhh it would, I suppose, be captures of me to ask Wild how he reconciles all this liberty, this individual liberty with turning over the whole economy to the state. But I won't dwell on that. It's more to our purpose to make a different point that Wilds understanding of individualism made no concession to the idea that human beings are formed an association and interaction with one another in families, communities and nations. And even artists like Oscar Wilde are constrained to work within the quintessentially social instrument of language uh and right for audiences made up of other people. He placed his faith in a religion of art and a religion of art is at bottom of religion of the self, a religion whose values are self created and self validated. Wilds Vision actually has proved far more enduring than the sterner and more formidable ISMs of the 19th and 20th centuries. His world eerily resembles certain aspects of our own world today. Over 100 years later, with its worship of the autonomous self. The autonomous would be artists that trans values, values scorns convention constructs its own identity and bowls alone, if ever. So. Despite his books promising title, Wild spelled out no direct relationship between the character of the polity and the kind of souls that produce, except so far as the farmer stays out of the way of the ladder. His view, Good government was like good indoor plumbing. It keeps life's uglier things out of the field of vision. But what escapes wilds attention is explored in an explicit way by Toqueville, who predicted several years before Wilde was born that there would be a close correlation between the rise of centralization and of animistic individualism in modern democracies, precisely because Toqueville didn't take individual autonomy to be a natural or normative standard, he was able to see what wild did not. That the wildean gold of expression, expressive individualism rests on a particular set of social and institutional arrangements in which the individual gains consumer sovereignty and expressive liberty at the cost of his citizenship and of his stake in the common pursuit of the common good. This punitive antagonism between centralized bureaucracy and expressive individualism between the organ organization, man and the hipster turns out not to be an opposition at all, but a mutually sustaining partnership. It's precisely in a world governed by large impersonal, centralized bureaucracies that an emotive itself, which reduces all moral reasoning to questions of personal preference, is most likely to arise precisely because such a self is cut off from the kind of responsible context and deliberative institutions that make up the school of public life. And that was the term Toqueville like to use the school of public life in short, Wild was more right than he knew in positing that a certain kind of centralized regime produced a certain kind of what I call how one housebroken individual, but the natural illness and desirability oven housebroken individuals, and of the big centralizing government that begets them, has now become more questionable proposition. And so that in term leads to me raising questions about the Federalist alternative, more decentralised alternative. What sorts of people? It's actually a series of questions what sorts of people are required of federalism and fostered by federalism? What sorts of dispositions and aspirations does a federal system encourage or discourage? What qualities of character does it esteem or dis esteem? What in short might the soul of man under federalism look like before going any further? I need to devote some attention and maybe I should have done this at the beginning, but to the defining the term Federalism, which is a confusing term used in a multiplicity of senses. Uh, and it's heart. Federalism is an attempt to reconcile opposites to find a balance between the advantages of national combination, unity and the equally considerable virtues of autonomy and small scale organization diversity without having to choose finally between one and the other. But the specific terms in which that balance can be struck very widely in space and time for Federalism has not always meant what americans take it to mean today. The older sense of Federalism designates a confederation of sovereign, fully sovereign constituent states. Uh That's not the american sense that the modern and american sense, which James Madison accurately presented in Federalist 39 is a composition his word, a composition of federal and national elements. Such an arrangement differs dramatically from the minimalist federalism of the premodern world, in which the central entity was not even regarded it as a true unit of government. Since it didn't deal directly with the internal character of the policy or the governing of its citizenry, it may be more accurate to call the american system a form of d centralist federalism as martin Diamond. The late martin diamond suggested as a way of indicating the independent dignity and ultimate primacy of the National Union, with the state's maintaining some measure of autonomy. Nevertheless, the ambiguities that complicate the word Federalism have their uses. They prepare they preserved for us an awareness that the new federal Union uh, at the time of the constitution did not entirely reject an older conviction associated with monty skew, but also deeply rooted in classical antiquity, that the small autonomous community was the proper seed bed of republican virtue. The United States constitution was born in the crossfire of fundamental political debate and its final form showed the impress of these contending sides uh factions that it was attempting to reconcile um is Herbert storing rightly emphasized his scholarship. The views of the Constitution's opponents whom I won't call anti federalists to avoid confusing everyone will just call them opponents of the constitution became an active part of the dialogue that defines american political principles trailing the constitution faithfully like the tail of a comet. The opposition was worried about the constitutions in attention to the sources of republican virtue, among other things, fearing that moral de clenching would befall any community that based itself solely on the pursuit of self interest. However cleverly channeled and controlled they believed as storing put it that the american policy had to be a moral community if it was to be anything. And they feared that the constitution took the perpetuation of a virtuous citizenry for granted the classical republicans that these opponents republicanism, that these opponents of the constitution so tenaciously represented gives the lie to the longstanding assumption that the american political institutions were born exclusively liberal and modern for a generation now, historians and political scientists have pointed out that american political thought of the 18th and 19th centuries was significantly influenced though the degree is a matter of considerable debate uh by classical ideas about the meaning of political life for classical republicans, independence meant not wilds, contemplative pleasures of art, for art's sake, but the rigors and satisfactions of self governance. Self governance. They understood that republican institutions could not endure unless the citizens had the capacity for individual and collective self governance, meaning civic virtue, public virtue and their mouths. The word virtue, far from being a euphemism for victorian, feminine chastity still retained many of its vigorous classical meanings, stressing the value of excellence. Economic independence, a certain kind of manliness, virility. It's right there in the word and above all, participation in civic life. The last of these, the vita activa and the exalted conception of citizenship was central to the classical understanding of republicanism, and entailed a view of human nature completely at odds with the wildean premises of modern american life. It presumed that human life has a proper and natural end they tell us, and that for an individual to be virtuous, that is for him to realize his human nature in its fullness. He had to involve himself intensely in the affairs of civic life very much including by the way the conduct of war. Indeed, it seems anachronistic to speak of the individual or the self in this context, because the deepest sources of one's identity were what we would call social. The republican ideal was, as JJ Pocock has expressed it, a civic and patriotic ideal, in which the personality was founded in property, perfected in citizenship and perpetually threatened by corruption by the loss of virtue. Notice especially those words perfected in citizenship. That civic life was an arena in which the soul was instructed in its higher nature. Such are the worthy attributes of classical republicanism, but before we get too carried away with enthusiasm, uh, it's well to remember some less pleasant things, at least from our perspective about it. Aside from the chronic problem of the instability of Republics, Pocock himself observed, quote, the ideal of virtue is highly compulsive for demands of the individual under threat to his moral being, that he participate in the race public. Once we tune in and turn on, we can't drop out the soul of man under classical republicanism, Foursquare's Wildean vices, but it force wears a lot of liberty as well. For example, the pleasures and satisfactions of commerce, of the arts and sciences, of luxury of entrepreneurship, of religious devotion, of private life, of cultivating one's garden literally or figuratively, all these must give way to a vision that taken to its extreme, makes political activity virtuous political activity. The alpha and omega of existence. For most of us, there would be something dismal, even totalitarian about such a vision, for it seems to deny us sanctuary for reflection or space for enterprise. Uh, such a regime would consume to condemn us to a hellish round of school board meetings and Cohen's breakfast. Uh, constant attention to the indoor plumbing. Go back to that image. Um, if it's an error to assume that human beings are by nature pure and unencumbered individuals, the wild and view it is equally unsatisfactory to assert their life in the polity can exhaust who and what they are. So the proper federal settlement needs to find a way to give scope to both of these things, To individual ambition, to economic energy, and dynamism, to the bourgeois virtues of a liberal democracy, while respecting and upholding the role of the acts of citizenship in public life in general, play in the deepening and elevation of the soul. This was a constant preoccupation of Toqueville who explored whether the power of self interest, rightly understood could be made to take the place of virtue. He thought it could, Yeah, he, at any rate, he thought we had no choice but to try to make it work, but he never sees worrying about what might happen if it didn't. In any event, there had to be an institutional framework within which exhortations to virtue would be rewarded, reinforced and perpetuated. There had to be arenas, places for meaningful acts of citizenship. There had to be places to be citizens in. Um and Toqueville saw one of his shrewdest observations that the federal idea, the federal system as it was evolving in the United States, provided a way that americans could retain the spirit of Republican citizenship, even when embracing the self interested dynamics of liberal individualism, particularly in commerce. In so doing, America's would be in effect, reconciling the essential principles of both classical and modern political thought. This did not mean that Toqueville took a doctrinaire view of it, precisely how this should be worked out the details of how political authority should be allocated and subdivided. And it did not mean he opposed an energetic national government with broad responsibilities, such as the constitution, created out of the inadequacies of the articles of confederation. But he did understand the political communities, if they're to have any real moral vitality and legitimacy in the hearts and minds of those who constitute them, must find ways to spur those inhabitants onto the free exercise of their highest natures and provide them with public spaces in which they can do so. And one of Tokyo's very shrewd insights is that by the american system, by permitting citizens maximum freedom and scope and the administration of minor and local affairs, it had the effect of drawing them in to public life, habituated them to public life by giving them a genuine palpable stake in it and there there by educating their souls and also leading them into a greater loyalty to the nation through their loyalty to their locality. Hence the importance of this general subject of devolution. Writers on republicanism, from Aristotle to Montesquieu, you have insisted that republic needed to be small, relatively small, because only a small polity could possess sufficient social and moral community and commonality to be self governing. Of course, James Madison uh attempted to rebut these theorists when he argued that an extended republic could actually be more effective in controlling the tendency towards faction in popular governments. That's much of the source of their instability. But even Madison insisted that the central government, its jurisdiction should be limited to certain enumerated objects in the states and localities would retain their authority and activity. Indeed, he speculated that if the constitution abolished the states, the general government would soon be compelled to reinstate them. He didn't assume that a large and diverse nation could have the same sense of moral community as a small and relatively homogeneous entity. Although he did assume the national view would be that the more elevated and more dispassionate. Rather, he assumed a judicious modification and mixture of the federal principle could combine the advantages of both. All of which suggested for today's politicians to fulfill the spirit of Madison's words, they would have to move in the opposite direction of this centralising trend of the past century, which I I think in my discipline of history, is really taught as the the official narrative of american history. And it has been a process of moving towards from dispersion towards uh john Higham called it from uh from boundless nous to consolidation, uh that's the narrative And but to think in terms of institutional arrangements that multiply the opportunities for public association, one has to think in the opposite direction. And I were talking here about real flesh and by people living in real places and not places on the internet and their acts of public association have to take place within a sphere that's limited and contained to make citizenship a sustained activity. So the challenge is to find ways of restoring smaller or human scale institutions that can serve as schools of citizenship while retaining the considerable benefits of national government. That is, in a word, the promise of federalism. It doesn't require us to renounce the national government only to specify its limits and it does not do so merely to limit the power of the national government. That was clearly one of the framers intentions. But to preserve at least the thrust of what I want to say today is that to preserve certain kinds of association, certain qualities of soul that are beyond the power of nationalism to create foster and sustain. And these prospective benefits offer us a clue to one of the salient features of the soul of man under Federalism. By attempting to accommodate in one structure what are in fact different, very different principles of government ultimately traceable to different views of human nature. The federal system, demands of its adherence, extraordinary powers of discrimination and distinction making. They will need a highly developed ability to distinguish what laws and actions are appropriate to each given sphere, an ability to distinguish between and among different spheres of possible activity. And it grasped the different actual principles, animating each one. Mhm. Uh This description suggests Federalism should be seen as part of the great tendency towards functional differentiation that's characteristic of modernity, and in a sense it is um Liberalism rests on the separation of spheres of activity, religious, social, political, economic, cultural familial. We owe our conception of the market, for example, as an independent economic institution standing outside the network of social kinship and religious and cultural institutions to precisely such a conception. But to the extent that american federalism keeps its Republican component alive. It has a holistic counter current and counter argument to that very liberalism and institutionalized recognition of the fact that when we act as citizens, we were fine and fulfill something in our nature that can be touched in no other way. And I should note in passing that we all grasp the fact that the separation of spheres is at best an ambivalent ideal, think, for example, of the many contexts in which we use the phrase business is business. Sometimes it's to concentrate our minds on in a constructive way on the principle of utility. Other times it's to justify an inhumane and callous act that overrides all sense of decency. Uh, you think of various lines from the Godfather movies can be plugged in here. Uh, it's nothing personal, just business. If this is right, then Federalism. If my description of Federalism and the Solar Manager, Federalism is right, it entails a very complex vision of the human soul, one that requires us to be forever balancing not only contending external interests, but competing understandings of what it means to be most fully human. And there's every reason to believe these dualities will be unstable, shifting rather than resting once and for all in a grand equal ploys or as a machine that will run of itself, individuals in a federal system must have the ability to operate mentally on more than one track, recognizing sometimes the principal virtue, sometimes the principle of interest or maximizing utility, sometimes the principle of liberty, and sometimes the principle of pious obedience disdaining none, but granting non trump trump over all the others. There's something in this that does not come naturally that goes against the grain. It's not for nothing that the word integrity in our language has such a high standing, by and large, we trust singleness of mind and purpose, and we distrust multiplicity, which for us often translates to duplicity. Uh Kirkegaard, the great philosopher said, purity of heart is the will. One thing two will one thing, but it's precisely the wish to be devoted to only one thing. The focused passion of that. The yearning for a consecrated existence precisely that that the federal idea requires us to resist. Although paradoxically, it also leaves a respectful place for the recognition of it. The remembrance of there is in Federalism to conclude here a recognition of a kind of restlessness in our existence, a kind of abiding mystery and indecisiveness, even, I would say, at the heart of american political life, as if many of the most important questions in life remain open, vibrant. But on the settled to express this, I can hardly improve on the words of the political scientist, Martin Diamond, who I think is one of the most thoughtful students of american federalism. In an essay of his called The Ends of Federalism. Let me just read you several sentences. The distinguishing characteristic of Federalism is the peculiar ambivalence of the ends. Men seek to make it serve ambivalence going in two opposite directions at once. The ambivalence is quite literal. Federalism is always an arrangement pointed into contrary directions aimed at securing two contrary ends. Hence any given federal structure is always the institutional expression of the contradiction or tension between the two. Uh particular reasons, the two contrary ends. It's a tension between the particular reasons that the member units have for remaining small and autonomous but not wholly so and large and consolidated, but not quite. The differences among federal systems result from the differences of these pairs of reasons for wanting federalists. I think there's wisdom in this ambivalence that Diamond expresses um even if there is also this quality of unsettled nous and uh and restlessness and mystery and the fact that return to the Constitution as I must on Constitution day. The fact that such wisdom as the constitution embodies, emerged out of an intensely political process, a very messy political process. Rather than emerging from the brow of Zeus does not take anything away from it. It is easy when looking at the U. S. Constitution to see only the seams and the fault lines of compromise. Large states against small states, north against south, landed wealth against personal tea and so on. It's also easy to see these compromises as mere way stations on the inevitable path to a powerful national union of a sort that the articles of confederation, which were in many respects an example of the old style federalism could never have produced. But there is more to the story of the constitution than an understanding of it as an attempt to produce a powerful national union which was held back for a while in certain respects by various bands of nervous nellies and self interested parties. The american style of Federalism, for all of its ambiguous, even ad hoc qualities, tried, in my view, to do something very grand by attempting to balance virtue and interest, accommodate and incorporate different kinds of community, different understandings of community and a human nature, and to arrive at a form of liberty that incorporates both ancient and modern understandings of political life in an age that claims to worship diversity, that should be reason enough to look at the federal idea with new respect as an idea that attempts to accommodate and to some extent reconcile the respective strengths of a variety of ideas about human nature and human society. It does not necessarily require us to turn back the clock as critics of Federalism so often charge and undo the past century and a half. A fairer criticism, however, might be that it attempts something akin to squaring the circle that is doing the impossible, reconciling the incompatible. That may well be so. But it's equally true that the soul of man under trans nationalism are wildly and socialism leave a great deal to be desired quite as much as does the soul of men under pure localism or pre political tribalism, Scotland ought to be able to choose something between tribalism. The one hand between Braveheart, on the one other one hand, and a kind of uh escalated nationality under the leadership of David Cameron on the other. There should be something between the two and Federalism. We americans understand. It proposes an avenue of escape from the constrictions of this either or dilemma, but it does so at the cost of imposing a very high order of complexity in thought and feeling and action on its citizenry. That I would argue is both its strength and its weakness. Thank you. 

[0:48:37 Speaker 1] So, now the floor is open for questions, 

[0:48:39 Speaker 0] I'll just let you. Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. 

[0:48:42 Speaker 1] Oh paul. Navigating, I forgot. Mhm. 

[0:48:54 Speaker 0] About marriage possible, or I do. Uh I doubt it, but um um just simply because you know, full faith and credit and you know, they they it's hard for me to see how states some states will be able to ban it and others will be able to endorse it uh just because of the sort of full faith and credit clause of the constitution, but I wouldn't say that it's impossible. Um It seems unlikely to me. Uh But one of the one of the things about um federalism and it's actually a part I didn't want to talk to go even longer than it did, but one part that I cut was that federalism places a high um premium on procedure. That in some ways procedure is substance in a federal system. So we, I don't think we know exactly what would come out of that particular debate. Uh, we will see if I live long enough. I'll see. But I, um, I think it's, you know, just as slavery was not an issue in which there could be local option. You know, Lincoln was right, uh, that, you know, the nation was either going to be entirely slave or entirely free, entirely allowing slavery or entirely banning it. That that's not a principle, it's easily confined of. And now if the dread scott decision had gone a different way, I mean, who knows how long that experiment could have been worked out. But it does, it does seem to me that slavery goes to a very fundamental issue about which there can't really be national diversity. And it may well be that that marriage turns out to be similar. Uh, it's hard for me to see going any other way. But yes, you, I'm sorry, go ahead. 

[0:50:59 Speaker 1] Definitional one. So you began by saying we have a word for plants of security namely federalism. But when I've heard the words subsidiarity within teacher, the jurisprudence of the european union being slightly because 

[0:51:14 Speaker 0] it yes, mm it's a mort Yeah. What? So it's been? Yeah, american. 

[0:51:28 Speaker 1] Yeah, yep. So what's the way forward? So it seems like the anti federalist nightmares? Mhm. More or less. And if we boston this aristotelian idea of the zone. Okay, Game called then let's wait. Okay, three into the new federal rules. 

[0:51:54 Speaker 0] Mhm dollars. Is that the way forward or some other? Yeah, I think it's it to do it it has to be done in increments. It has it can't be done as a grand mega project because in fact, the whole problem with centralization is the problem of the mega project, but your earlier I don't think that this is maybe a little dodgy way to answer your point, but I don't think Garfinkel was all thinking of the fully articulated, you know, sense of subsidiary as you see it in catholic social thought, or as you see it in Germany and the european union. So I think he's really um using it as a kind of term to indicate that you devolve authority to the lowest level, where if there's a competency to exercise and that you don't you don't you don't do place responsibilities any further up the hierarchy of political authority than you need to. I think that's all all he really meant uh in that sense, I think you could uh what I mean, the whole notion of plans subsidiarity, what that means to what that modifier meant to me, it means it has to be unconstitutional in some sense of the word constitutional. Uh but no I don't see I don't see a radical magic bullet solution to the problem except to do what we can when we can to give local institutions the ability to decide things for themselves so that they actually have um the sense of power and accountability for their actions that go with that. You know that this is one reason I think, and I think there is a yearning for that in the Scottish example. That's why I began with that is that it does seem to me that this is uh in this sort of splintering of the world map has something to do with the inadequacies of overly comprehensive political governance. Uh whether you're talking about the european union or the U. K. Or or maybe even the United States of America. So I hope that, yes. Yeah. Good, good to be here. Will 

[0:54:33 Speaker 1] Augustine's City of God a couple weeks ago. Class. We're talking that model works in been simultaneously a citizen of the city of Man. In the city of God. And it seems that a more robust federalism working each individual can have these multiple citizenships, local polity in the state America well, and that some of the problems we're having is when those those last. But is it possible to have we must fully warmongers citizenship been a meaningful federalism without it just getting 

[0:55:09 Speaker 0] well, you know, I think that's a real question and I meant to leave that question open. I'm in fact I'm I'm I'm I'm in favor of are moving more in this direction, but it is something I see as having all kinds of perils uh and uh not not being a sort of magic wand sort of solution, but Yeah, I think, look, I think the problem is that both ways of doing things, speak to certain needs of human nature, certain needs that we come to our polity in search of, and uh I don't know exactly what the alternative would be to sort of foursquare any kind of local associations to have just sort of decentralized. Uh I mean sort of have centralized administration that administered in a decentralized manner. Um Oh, I'm not sure what, I think, I think there's some way in which the world is moving towards trying to find something. We discover something like the federal principle, how do we how do we sustain the advantages of unity, whether economic unity or political uh limited political unity um without sacrificing the ability of, let's say, british farmers to decide what cheeses they want to produce, without having it decided for them in brussels. And uh it doesn't seem to me that these things have to happen, but uh there have to be enumerated powers. There has to be something like a constitutional settlement that that recognizes that the the in some ways the central government exists for the sake of the of the of the smaller institutions and more local forms of association rather than the reverse. 

[0:57:07 Speaker 1] Yes. Your response. Mhm. Marriage is in question, tears in my eyes. Work with right. Yeah. Mark, practicality or what away with pull off was real 

[0:57:29 Speaker 0] principle problem with gay marriages. Full faith and credit. Yeah. Well, rights that are deciding criteria. Yeah. Well, I mean, I really within the context of the question though, I think it was proper to answer it in terms of a procedural way, and not in a principled way. Um and I mean, the answer on slavery was also, I think a procedural rather than the principled answer. 

[0:58:00 Speaker 1] Uh, there are rights that ought to be the ultimate criteria, 

[0:58:05 Speaker 0] the term. Sure. I mean, yes. Um, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I 

[0:58:15 Speaker 1] it would have been possible license with those, those instances in quite a different way work human rights that rather Okay, oh, be able to engineer a curious is 

[0:58:34 Speaker 0] And what how you would what you would say about no role of rights, determining what kind of better Well, can I uh, I mean, I'm afraid this is going to sound like an undergraduate lecture here, but uh, you let me answer your question at some length. I mean, I think that if you look at Lincoln's uh, statesmanship in handling the issue of slavery, Lincoln always believed that the constitution, the perpetuation of the constitution, the integrity of the union, superseded any considerations of the abolition of slavery, even though he was firmly anti slavery, always had been that he saw the constitution, that the preservation of the union and of the constitution and its legitimacy as primary and importance. Uh so even though and he uh acknowledged that slaveholders had rights uh dr from the Constitution to their property, that he did not have the power. Even the Emancipation Declaration doesn't doesn't assert the power for him to assert principle over existing political institutions. It had to be done in the right way. It had to be done in the procedurally right way to preserve the integrity and the legitimacy of the constitution. Ah, yeah, that helped. 

[1:00:09 Speaker 1] Well, you're does not articulating any. 

[1:00:14 Speaker 0] Yeah, okay. Sense of right that 

[1:00:18 Speaker 1] override procedural, for 

[1:00:23 Speaker 0] example. Well, there's a process for that which amendments 

[1:00:32 Speaker 1] you to employ that process? 

[1:00:36 Speaker 0] The process itself provides the means for that. I mean, I'm maybe I'm not getting your question, but I mean, you you want something external to the process to decide what constitutional amendments are worthy of consideration this? Well, they're in the individual conscience, certainly, but not as a matter of public policy. I mean, I can't impose my conscience on the rest of the country, even if I feel something very strongly something wrong, something is wrong. I have a feeling we're talking past one other questions. Yes. So the question 

[1:01:22 Speaker 1] our federalism between the state and national that's there was already at the time of the founding an argument against the anti was that the smaller looks that they were hoping to embody were already we're already much too. There were states of the much bigger 

[1:01:41 Speaker 0] than Yes, 

[1:01:46 Speaker 1] many times bigger first. So texas. 

[1:01:50 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Is there something really 

[1:01:56 Speaker 1] important that our state, it's are doing lost? Didn't have state US or most important things that you see counterbalancing will say. Very, very, 

[1:02:12 Speaker 0] yes. I think I would agree with that last part. I think the states don't really provide, uh, that kind of venue, that kind of arena, uh, it really is in local, local government since in school boards and, and local city councils and, and county government and that kind of thing where you, where you see this sort of thing and no states are sort of mini nation states in a lot of ways, but I think that they serve an important purpose. I wouldn't favor a consolidation of the, of the nation, elimination of the states or just reduction of them to mere administrative entities. I think, uh, you know, that the whole notion of competitive federalism that the states uh, serve a purpose by competing with one another, um, is a very powerful one, I think. And I think that's some people argue that this is implicit in the founders and the framers design. I don't really think so, but it seems to be something that's come out of it. I this is a great question for another reasons. I think it's important to distinguish between the particular set of arrangements that the constitution uh, puts forward in 17 87 and the federal idea, which, and maybe the word subsidiarity is useful here, because it does, it does, uh, it does suggest that we're not talking about a sort of freezing in time of a particular set of arrangements, but a more general consideration that uh, Federalism involves weighing the demands of the local against the advantages of, of unification of the general. And how can you sustain both of those things? How can you balance them against one another, even though they're in profoundly intention uh, and speak, two different kinds of needs. Is there a way of uh, facilitating that? And this is why I think that the example of what's going on in the world is so powerful is that that this is uh, you know, the is the european union a sustainable entity, is the United Kingdom of sustainable entity. Things are going to change even if uh, even there's a no vote on Scotland, because uh already Gordon Brown and others have said, you know, they're going for the devo max the maximum devolution, which means the Scots will raise their own revenues and spend it all themselves through the Scottish parliament, except for a sort of payment to Westminster for defense and a few other uh, things like that, that that that are uh sort of enumerated powers of the of the central government. So, if things are going to change in the United Kingdom, whatever comes out of this vote. And I think it shows us that there's a kind of vitality uh, in the direction, whatever you think of the Scottish nationalist movement, I'm not passing judgment on them one way or another, but there's a kind of vitality, some bubbling up that is occurring in many places in the world of that reflects the inadequacies of a sprawling nation state as a locus for political and cultural identity. Uh huh. 

[1:05:34 Speaker 1] Well, 

[1:05:35 Speaker 0] thank you