History rife with pattern, but not repetition
History doesn’t repeat itself. That would be something. Welcome to Groundhog Day the movie.
Still, there are patterns.
An example, which might explain the still-unfolding scandals of the Trump administration:
The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., argued: “When private interest dominates (the national government), public morals” become expendable. “Many businessmen who serve conservative governments are men of integrity. But some do not scruple to use public authority to feather their own nests. They do what comes naturally.”
Beginning at least 100 years ago, every conservative, business-oriented administration has had a case or two of sticky fingers. The Harding, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush years were replete with scandals of one kind or another.
Contrast these with the governments of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton (despite the hoopla) and Obama, where, in Schlesinger’s words, “there was a notable absence of scandal …. When public purpose dominates, government tends to be idealistic.”
Because in the distant past commercial interests overthrew feudalism, business gathered an early reputation as a champion of liberty. Today, in the U.S., many view business entrepreneurship as the very essence of liberty, which it may very well be for some people.
But historian and political activist George Bancroft, writing in the first half of the 19th century, had a contrary view. “I know perfectly well what I am saying … in all history … there is not to be found an instance of a commercial community establishing rules for self-government upon democratic principles.”
The goal of business in government, Schlesinger believed, is to “establish itself in power, not to free mankind; to found government on property, not on the equal rights of the people.”
“It is a mistake to suppose commerce is favorable to liberty,” noted the great American novelist James Fenimore Cooper. “Its tendency is to a monied aristocracy.”
The “priority of (private) wealth over commonwealth naturally nourishes a propensity to corruption in government,” Schlesinger concluded. “… Idealists have many faults, but they rarely steal.”
Theodore Roosevelt said that most business types in government are nothing more than “glorified pawnbrokers.”
Hello, Scott Pruitt. Goodbye, Scott Pruitt.
Historic patterns persist across the board.
Ours is hardly the first generation to recoil over the prospects of immigrant hordes ruining the country. Conversely, ours is hardly the first to shake an immigrant hand or two (even if the purpose is to corral votes) or to put out the proverbial welcome mat.
In the 1840s, thousands of uneducated, low-income Europeans began the trek to this country, where they mingled and competed for jobs with native Americans thrown under the bus by the first waves of the industrial revolution.
Suddenly, the nation’s democratic faith and “unlimited reliance on popular government” were called into question.
Even weathering the Civil War provided small comfort. Walt Whitman, usually the trumpeteer of American democracy, could not “gloss over the appalling dangers of universal suffrage” incidental to people and politicians “with hearts of rags and souls of chalk …. Is not democracy … humbug, after all?”
In the end, Whitman’s legendary faith in “the people” won out. American democracy, as both he and Lincoln knew, was a lantern to people the world over. The lantern could not, dare not, be quenched.
The United States, extrapolated Schlesinger, was destined to be the “proving ground for democracy,” and thus politicians who kept the faith in the teeth of “nativist agitation” were “on the spearhead of history.”
That spearhead has been dulled of late, but it’s been dulled before.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.