American Principles of Self-Government

Michigan Law Review, 1984

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.. .. An amendment of our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth. .

Studies in American Political Development, 2013

Thomas Jefferson is often invoked as an advocate of limited government and a defender of individual rights. This article argues that rights were Jefferson's starting place. Jefferson also believed that American citizens should have opportunities to develop the capabilities necessary to enjoy the full use of their rights. Rather than thinking about Jefferson as progovernment or antigovernment, this article concludes that we must understand the particular kind of government Jefferson desired, the ends he had in mind, and why and how those ends differed from his Federalist predecessors. A better understanding of Jefferson's statecraft not only offers a new perspective on the relationship between government and rights in Jefferson's thought but also how and why Jeffersonians in power used the state to promote individual freedom.

Democracy Education, 2015

Jefferson believed that citizenship must exhibit republican virtue. While education was necessary in a republican polity, it alone was insufficient in sustaining a revolutionary civic spirit. This paper examines Jefferson's expectations for citizen virtue, specifically related to militia and jury service in his 'little republics. ' Citizens required not only knowledge of history and republican principles, but also public spaces where they could personify what they learned. Jefferson often analogized the nation as a ship at sea, and while navigational instruments are necessary in charting an accurate course, i.e., republican theories, they become inconsequential without the decisive action required for their successful use. W riting to Samuel Kercheval (12 Jul. 1816) regarding his concern over calling a convention to reform Virginia's constitution, Jefferson affirmed his dissatisfaction with the constitution's structural provisions. After expounding on its inadequate design, he disparagingly asked, "Where then is our republicanism to be found" (Jefferson, 1984, p. 1397)? Reminding Kercheval of his earlier and similar disappointment with the nation's organic law, Jefferson (1984) commented, "The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that draught from genuine republican canons" (p. 1396). His reflection revealed a sense of sustained ineffectuality giving rise to the sterile mechanics of constitutionalism and the administration of state altogether lacking in genuine republican substance. "In truth, " he demurred, "the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy" (1984, p. 1396). Fear, pessimism, and misunderstanding, rather than a true appreciation of republican doctrine, Jefferson believed, explained the architectural deficiencies in and the diminution of republican principles from the constitutional scaffolding upon which the nation and the State of Virginia were to be governed. Events had proven what Jefferson earlier feared-namely, the potential aggrandizement of national power at the expense of local and state sovereignty. Jefferson's response to this pervasive setback lay in his reliance on abstract republican principles and the ancient democratic Saxon constitution, which he often drew upon as a means of evaluating existing political practices. He perpetuated this Saxon myth by emphasizing the importance of and necessity in developing citizen

SSRN Electronic Journal

The liberty of citizens in a democracy has two components-the negative liberty to be let alone and the positive liberty of self-government. 2 Both are crucially important, yet promotion of one can eclipse the other. If individual freedom can never be limited, the community is powerless to address significant social ills like the Great Depression. At the same time, if the power of self-government knows no bounds, individual freedoms can be lost. The fact that any democratic government committed to individual rights must attend to liberty in both of its forms is a familiar idea. Every society must decide how to organize its economy and how pervasively to extend market-based principles of distribution and allocation. Given the role that governments can and do play in establishing the framework within which economic activity takes place, meaningful self-government requires that elected officials be able both to set the rules for the economy and establish its boundaries. Yet, democratic decisions about the reach of the market can affect a person's ability to exercise her individual rights. The positive liberty of self-government must be balanced against the negative liberty of individuals to do as they choose. This important and familiar tension has been overlooked in the Supreme Court's current campaign finance jurisprudence. While the Court has aggressively protected

Asian Journal of Basic Science and Research, 2023

An outstanding group of leaders left evidence that a richer and more sustainable democracy could be achieved with American independence and democratic principles integrated into a new republican form of government. They were moved by principles that are the very spirit of democracy. These principles are needed to enhance democracy and improve well-being. Using the constructivist tradition of grounded theory and Aristotle’s conception of abstraction, the article proposes a theory of the first principles of democracy based on substantive data: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. Knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security are the first principles of democracy and are regarded as the bedrock of democracy and a government framework for the people. This theory contributed to a formal model of democratic social change. It also contributes a conceptual framework that supports Solum’s semantic originalism, a theory of constitutional interpretation. The principles of democracy can revitalize democracy and provide new possibilities by protecting education as an innate human right, abolishing capital punishment, criminalizing private prisons on the stock market, and reevaluating the proportionality of prison sentences.

Democracy & Education Journal, 2015

Jefferson believed that citizenship must exhibit republican virtue. While education was necessary in a republican polity, it alone was insufficient in sustaining a revolutionary civic spirit. This paper examines Jefferson's expectations for citizen virtue, specifically related to militia and jury service in his 'little republics.' Citizens required not only knowledge of history and republican principles, but also public spaces where they could personify what they learned. Jefferson often analogized the nation as a ship at sea, and while navigational instruments are necessary in charting an accurate course, i.e., republican theories, they become inconsequential without the decisive action required for their successful use.

2012

Drawing on Aristotle this paper contrasts two conceptions of liberty – one, as ‘ruling and being ruled in turn’, the other as ‘doing what one likes’. It claims thatAmericacan be said to have had two foundings. The first was that of the Puritan settlers who adopted the notion of self-government and self-restraint; the second, ‘official’ founding heavily influenced by the social contract philosophy of Locke who understood government as existing only to secure our rights and advance our individual freedom. Unlike the first understanding it does not seek to foster conditions in which our souls are educated in self-government. The author concludes that the future of American democracy will depend on which of these two conflicting conceptions becomes the dominant understanding ofAmerica’s liberty.

Annual Review of Political Science, 2009

The eighteenth-century ideal of self-government of the people was based on an assumption that renders it incoherent and unrealistic, namely, that interests and values are sufficiently harmonious that each individual needs to obey only himself while living under laws chosen by all. This conception collapses in the presence of heterogeneous preferences. Yet a weaker notion of self-government is logically coherent:

2013

This response argues that it is reasonable to consider Thomas Jefferson a proponent of democratic education. It suggests that Jefferson’s education proposals sought to ensure the wide distribution of knowledge and that Jefferson’s legacy remains important to us today. This article is a response to: James Carpenter. (2013). Jefferson and the Ideology of Democratic Schooling. Democracy & Education, 21(2). Article 5. Available online at http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol21/Iss2/5. Carpenter (2013) has written a provocative, important essay on the person whom many Americans invoke as the founding father of democratic education. By placing Jefferson in his time, Carpenter argues, we see him as a republican rather than a democrat. By this, Carpenter means, Jefferson’s focus was on public things— the importance of education for citizens and leaders— rather than on educating for individual liberation in an egalitarian context. Thus, Carpenter concludes, Jefferson’s goals for educ...

Nw. UL Rev., 1991