Philadelphia, PA

Dear Hörcher, 

Regarding American political thinkers, the best I have come up with is William Penn, who, of course, originally owned Pennsylvania outright under a grant from the English king. He is regarded as the founder of the city of Philadelphia. His ideas are more plausibly seen as based in the reformation rather than his experience as Governor of Pennsylvania (at a time when the population consisted largely of the population of the city of Philadelphia and the local native Americans).  

Still his ideas on the rule of the city and the colony have had their influence. What stands out to me at first thought is Penn's "Holy Experiment," of religious liberty and religious pluralism. There was to be no official religion in Penn's colony. One might understand this as a matter of magnanimity, since the colony was originally founded by Penn's Quakers (the Society of Friends, officially), in the face of the religious diversity of the colony and its settlers. But the pacifism of the Quakers also suggests itself as an explanation. It would be hard to imagine a uniformly Quaker colony enforcing an official religion against the resistance of others. That would be a violation of their own principles on several counts. 

But looked at in more theoretical terms, one finds that Penn placed great emphasis upon freedom of conscience. The basic idea in this is that any official religion tends to encourage adherents who go along merely on the basis of the official status of the doctrine or religious denomination--or social and political advantages of those who belong to an officially established religion. He regarded this as destructive of the potentiality of freely chosen commitment on the basis of conviction, and he regarded such free choice as essential to genuine religion. Of course, one may argue that this kind of position is much more plausible in a city (or polity) combining a great or significant diversity of confessions; and that is, in fact, what Penn had to deal with in Philadelphia. There were other, similar views expressed in colonial times, and the man who comes to mind in particular is Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. Rhode Island, at that time, was also perhaps substantially the town of Providence.   

The objective of disestablishment was later taken up by founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who together fought for the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Virginia,  and the same idea, of the prohibition of establishment, along with protection of religious practice, was later written into the U.S. constitution as the first amendment. Official religion persisted at the state level until the 1830's, but was eventually given up by the states. The puritan churchs of New England were the last to give up such privilege. 

I can not immediately think of any other examples of American political thinkers whose experience arose from actual rule of a city. Our municipal-level politicians tend to be lawyers, of course, as with most U.S. politicians. However, they also tend to be "nuts and bolts" politicians and not theoreticians in the style of Jefferson, Madison and John Adams. Our theoreticians, at present, tend to be academics. I cannot think of any present-day American politicians who I would regard as an expert in political theory. The closest we come is, perhaps, the justices of the Supreme Court and the lessor federal judiciary. 

In any case, Penn's "Holy Experiment" of religious pluralism and liberty stands out as an important origin and prior example of the principle of the first amendment and of America's distinctive religious settlement. No religion can be official.   

H.G. Callaway

Dear Mr. Callaway,

If I recall it correctly, we had an agreement how you would address me - in Hungarian, to call someone simply by his/her family name, is regarded as rude.

As for the substance of your comment (for which I thank you) I think your example is quite instructive, for the following reason:

1. to remind us of the practicalities of the difficulties the early founders confronted, and their ability to address the issue with a theoretical bent as well,

2. because you call our attention to the fact that present day leaders of countries like the US are usually not theoreticians. On the other hand, it is also remarkable, that theoy is primarily practiced by academics, who most of the time do not have actual experience as magistrats. Let me, however, refer to a counter-example, the historian John Lukacs, who remarkably took the resposibility of becoming a local magistrat, as far as I remember, somewhere in the Pennsylvania area.

Best,

Ferenc

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mr. Horcher, 

When I am in Hungary or have occasion to speak the language, I will keep your advice in mind. As it is, I use the forms I know and which work generally among very many people; and there is no intention in this to be rude to anyone. I recall no agreement such as you suggest--merely a bit of conflict on the point. I take it we are not doing diplomacy here. 

John Lukacs, the historian, lives in the Philadelphia suburbs. Now retired, he taught for many years in an area university. I am aware of his work, and have discussed it with associates and even quoted from his book on Philadelphia --where I found some striking points of agreement. The points of agreement have to do with analysis of some of the local social and political configurations. I refer interested readers to the opening chapter of my philosophical memoir, Memories and Portraits. I appreciate Lukacs' religious stance, though I do not share it. Regarding American's working religious settlement, I am close to William Penn, Roger Williams, Jefferson and Madison. More generally, I regard a single unitary religion, of any cast, as undesirable in a large country--the larger the country the more onerous. I also regard the politicization of religion as undesirable; as institutions and configurations of civil society religions play their best roles in transmission of values.   

As for theory and practice, in the American context, I believe that political theory is not something popular among our state and local politicians and elected officials. So, it tends to be poorly assimilated to politics as practice. On the other hand, and especially at the national level, the resources and personnel of the great universities are regularly called upon, and people go back and forth between government and the universities. You will perhaps recall that our sitting President taught constitutional law at Chicago. Both federal and local authorities have been very busy of late in efforts to clean out the corruption among local politicians, which, in the past, has too often been winked at and tolerated. So, things are changing here, and I expect that there will be further changes. On the other hand, local government has been a one-party affair in the city for the last 60 years, and that means that old and sometimes corrupt relations among political figures are rarely cleaned out thoroughly by the local electorate.

I expect that the perception among local political figures that political theory is somehow the opponent of their political practice is correct in degree; it must certainly be the enemy of corrupt political practices. Of course, it is also the enemy of the idea that political forces should shut down theory which may not support their immediate and short-term objectives. That is essentially a kind of self-blinding and arrogance. 

In spite of that, I can say that I genuinely admire some of our local and state politicians, and I believe that as a group they are improving. I have been pleased to meet several of them, and they have got my vote. The city is improving. Yet it has a long way to go, since according to recent reports in the media, Philadelphia is the poorest county in the state. The local metropolitan area, on the other hand, is fairly rich by general American standards. So, we have very great disparities of income and prospects. The tendency has been, too often, to merely administer the persistent problems of the city and not to understand and solve them. Center city has become a gem, but great poverty, crime and decay persist in the outer neighborhoods. The lack of financial support for basic education has been shameful. The ready substitution of electoral strategy and power politics for deeper understanding will have to go. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Mr. Callaway,

as long as you are up to address me as you did in your last comment, I do not need to do much more diplomacy. :)

I read with much interest what you said about Professor Lukacs. I would be glad to read your memories of your impressions of him.

I am ready to accept the AMerican view of a separation of church and state in the modern context. However, I do think that religion plays an important part in individuals' and communities' life, and according to sociologists, the US is one of those countries in which this remains the strongest even today - not on the federal or even state level, but on local (and public) civil society level. 

I also find very interesting your views of corruption on thel ocal level in Pennsylvania. I think that local politics must be experiencing real challenges in the US. I also recall here the recent case of Atlanta (was it?), and also what I have read in Tilo Schabert's Boston Politics. THis is the more interesting if we recall TOcqueville's description of the strength of democratic politics on the local level in the US.

Finally, I was not informed of the fact that Obama might have taught constitution law in Chicago. In this respect I would call attention to a book I read recently: Sotirios A. Barber: Constitutional Failure, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2014., which states that there is an obvious constitutional failure in present day US politics. My analysis of Barber's views is made available at my researchgate homepage, under the following link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274064503_How_to_cope_with_constitutional_failure

Best,

Ferenc

Conference Paper How to cope with constitutional failure?

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mr. Hörcher, 

I wouldn't speak of "constitutional failure" here in the U.S. This seems to me a description which goes too far. I believe instead that we are afflicted with political excesses which arose, directly or indirectly, from the long ordeal of the Cold War. We did not sufficiently build-down the institutional and political system developed and deployed over many decades, from WWII onward --to shift to civilian purposes. (In traditional American terms, a "reconstruction" was needed.) The Cold War system has both domestic and foreign-policy elements, and, in effect, much of the contemporary political conflict concerns the control and disposition of the power and spending of the federal government. Both political parties have huge investment in the constituencies which benefited from the very centralized system which arose. (Consider, in this connection the effects of the Cold War upon the former Soviet system.) 

Corruption in local politics is nothing new here, and it is in fact one of the virtues of the federal system that local corruption can be addressed, more disinterestedly, from the federal level. It can also be quite effectively addressed at the local and state level, as out local prosecutors have been proving, of late, quite effectively.

I think of the religious settlement of the first amendment as one key to needed changes, since it shows how diversity can be combined into agreement and unity. Its an established pattern of mutual tolerance and even respect. In a multiracial and multi-ethnic society of continental scale, no one is going to get everything just the way they might want it, and a good deal of tolerance is required of all concerned. This means stepping back from strident political ideology and ideological posturing--looking to sources of unity which do not require the largess of the federal government.

H.G. Callaway