The Way and Virtue of Anti-Federalism

Ralph Ketcham, in his edition of The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, says of the ultimate victors in the debate, "The federalist on the whole saw and sought the benefits more effective, energetic government could bring," namely "English-style commercial growth, domestic prosperity, and world power." The contrasting view:

Perceiving these aspirations and purposes, the anti-federalists were at once skeptical and disheartened. They saw in federalist hopes for commercial growth and international prestige only the lust of ambitious men for a "splendid empire" where, in the time-honored way, the people would be burdened with taxes, conscriptions, and campaigns.... The anti-federalists looked to the Classical idealization of the small, pastoral republic, where virtuous, self-reliant citizens managed their own affairs and shunned the glory of empire....

To the anti-federalists this meant retaining as much as possible the vitality of local government where rulers and ruled could see, know, and understand each other... Each "district," furthermore, would be a town or ward or region conscious of its own, particular identity rather than being some amorphous, arbitrary geographic entity....

If the basic decency in human nature, most evident among ordinary people at the local level, amid family, church, school, and other nourishing institutions, could impinge directly and continuously on government, then perhaps it too might be kept virtuous and worthy of confidence... Anti-federalists saw mild, grassroots, small-scale governments in sharp contrast to the splendid edifice and overweening ambition implicit in the new Constitution. The first left citizens free to live their own lives and to cultivate the virtue (private and public) vital to republicanism while the second soon entailed taxes and drafts and offices and wars damaging to human dignity and thus fatal to self-government...

The anti-federalists... sought a society where virtuous, hard-working, honest men and women lived simply in their own communities, enjoyed their families and their neighbors, were devoted to the common welfare, and had such churches, schools, trade associations, and local governments as they needed to sustain their values and purposes.

(From the above, it seems almost as if the Anti-Federalists could have been using the LVVV^th Chapter of the Tao Te Ching as their guidebook, evidence of the universality of good ideas.)

The reader does not need me to remind him that the two parties that form the American political duopoly and the narrow streams called "liberal" and "conservative" both seek "effective, energetic government," if at times for slightly varying purposes, and are both adamantly opposed to the vision described above, even if they sometimes pay it lip service. (It remains, after all, the genuine American political tradition, however unexpressed it may be.) However, there are still those of us who remain "skeptical and disheartened" at the very idea of "effective, energetic government," and we can be found on the left and right of the so-called political spectrum.

One see can readers of not only The American Conservative, Antiwar.com, Chronicles, Front Porch Republic, LewRockwell.com, and Taki's Magazine nodding their heads in agreement, but also readers of CounterPunch and Energy Bulletin doing the same to many of the points above. Wouldn't it be grand if the particular constituencies of the above publications, while remaining "conscious of [their] own, particular identity," could all agree to put differences aside for the moment and unite under the banner of Anti-Federalism?