tantly Solon and Lycurgus. In the definition of
Publius, Lycurgus would certainly be
a
tyrant
but in the ancients understanding he was the
ultimate anti-tyrant. The remark that
a
modern
commentator has made about Solon captures
the entire spirit of the Federalist Papers
as
well
as Smithian political economy: “Solon, though
he has been called the greatest economist of
antiquity, did not really know much about
Political Economy, for to his simple mind it
seemed that
the
source of the trouble was not
the System, but Greed and Inj~stice.”~ The
motor for the new science
of
politics is greed
and avarice, precisely those characteristics
which for the ancients described the soul of the
tyrant. In Federalist
12
we find: “The pros-
perity of commerce is now perceived and
ac-
knowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be
the most useful as well
as
the most productive
source of national wealth, and has accordingly
become
a
primary object of their political
cares.
By
multiplying the means of gratifica-
tion, by promoting the introduction and circu-
lation of the precious metals, those darling
objects of human avarice and enterprise, it
serves to vivify and invigorate the channels
of
industry, and to make them flow with greater
activity and copiousness.”
In brief, man is
a
monster more complicated
and swollen with passion than Typho. Even
though he cannot be reformed he can
be
har-
nessed. The expected fruits of such harnessing
are, we should never forget, liberty and char-
ity. In Plutarch’s treatment
of
Publius Valerius
Poplicola and the comparison to Solon’s life, he
reminds
us
that “Poplicola’s riches were not
only justly
his,
but he spent them nobly in
doing good to the distressed.” The incredible
productivity of
a
free economy and the allevia-
tion of man’s distress were certainly promised
fruits of the new science of politics which have
been delivered. To use
a
different analogy one
can compare the Constitution to a gigantic
windmill which is able to capture the winds of
hurricane force and use that energy to grind the
mills and produce bread for the people. One
can make a very persuasive case that the mod-
em liberals who would subvert the Constitution
in the name of equality will end up killing the
goose which lays the golden eggs. Liberty is
justified not only
by
itself but also because it
delivers the goods through economic growth,
and effectively tends to eliminate poverty de-
fined in terms of any meaningful objective def-
inition. It is presumably these indirect conse-
quences of the Constitution
to
which Publius is
referring in Federalist
1
when he refers to
philanthropy and the public good. Let us also
remember that the windmill, although thought
of
nostalgically today as belonging to the old
order, was a symbol of energy and efficiency,
in short, of modernity in that earlier commer-
cial republic, Holland.
But can we live
by
bread alone? Will not-too
much bread and material goods corrupt the
necessary minimum of virtues that a commer-
cial society presupposes? We have had the
bread. All the Founding Fathers-Madison,
Jefferson, Adams, Washington included-
believed that there was
a
necessary minimum
of republican virtue required for a free and
responsible society. Irving Kristol has properly
identified that virtue
as
public spiritedness,
pre-Claudian Roman, not very elevated, and
essentially similar
to
what we would call
the
-bourgeois ethic.
This
minimum includes the vir-
tues that the classical economists praised and
thought would be the fruits of
a
middle class
society-thrift, hard work, spirit of indepen-
dence, and self-respect. This is why they
wished to destroy the vestiges of feudalism
and
hoped that material progress would
be
steady
and never in huge jumps, because unexpected
riches and wealth may corrupt, and produce
sloth, and decay.
Now that we live in post-republican times,
hopefully not Caligulan yet, what can we do?
To what standards can we repair? If Diamond is
correct, then there is not much hope from the
Founding Fathers. There is a price or trade-off
which we have paid and which must be paid if
we are to maintain
a
regime of liberty.
We
can
go
back
and
soberly think with the same seri-
ousness
as
the Founding Fathers did and no
one since that time has done, but what the
outcome of that process would be
is
left obscure
by Diamond. There is the heartland thesis that
the people out there
are
still virtuous, as they
may have been presupposed by the Federalist
writers; on this hypothesis
all
we have to
do
is
Modem
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