Last week we came across the following quote from Abraham
Lincoln. At least, that’s who it was
attributed to, so we’ll take the internet’s word for it. (The internet knows everything.) Anyway, the
(alleged) quote was, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will
be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, that was pretty much William
Crosskey's analysis in Politics and the
Constitution in the History of the United States (1953). It is also, not coincidentally, that of Alexis
de Tocqueville in Democracy in America
(1835, 1840) and — what baffles many people today — seems to have been that of Pope
Leo XIII. As de Tocqueville commented in the conclusion of Vol. II,
“The object is not to retain the
peculiar advantages which the inequality of conditions bestows upon mankind,
but to secure the new benefits which equality may supply. We have not to seek
to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out that species
of greatness and happiness which is our own. For myself, who now look back from
this extreme limit of my task, and discover from afar, but at once, the various
objects which have attracted my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am
full of apprehensions and of hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is
possible to ward off--mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I
cling with a firmer hold to the belief, that for democratic nations to be
virtuous and prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my
contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below,
and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power,
arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of
their country. Such principles are false and cowardly; such principles can
never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has
not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that
around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but
within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with
man, so with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions
of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the
principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or
barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.”
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| Alexis de Tocqueville |
That’s interesting, of course. What is more interesting, however (especially
to the monarchists amongst us), is that Pope Pius XI seems to have been
familiar with de Tocqueville’s analysis of democracy in America — and approved
of it. Given the work of Father William
J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., and looking at the act of social justice from that
perspective, Pius XI may have seen in Democracy
in America an example of social justice in action.
We can’t prove this, of course (at least, not until we get access
to the Vatican archives and learn to read Italian . . . not necessarily in that
order), but the hallmark of the act of social justice according to Father
Ferree is organizing for the common good.
This was (again according to Ferree) why Pius XI stressed freedom of
association so much: you can’t organize effectively unless you are allowed to
organize freely . . . and the translation we’re using has the word
“association” nearly forty times, all in contexts that either state outright or
imply freedom to organize. As he said in
Quadragesimo Anno,
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| Pius XI |
“87. Moreover, just
as inhabitants of a town are wont to found associations with the widest
diversity of purposes, which each is quite free to join or not, so those
engaged in the same industry or profession will combine with one another into
associations equally free for purposes connected in some manner with the
pursuit of the calling itself. Since these free associations are clearly and
lucidly explained by Our Predecessor of illustrious memory, We consider it
enough to emphasize this one point: People are quite free not only to found
such associations, which are a matter of private order and private right, but
also in respect to them ‘freely to adopt the organization and the rules which
they judge most appropriate to achieve their purpose.’ The same freedom must be
asserted for founding associations that go beyond the boundaries of individual
callings. And may these free organizations, now flourishing and rejoicing in
their salutary fruits, set before themselves the task of preparing the way, in
conformity with the mind of Christian social teaching, for those larger and
more important guilds, Industries and Professions, which We mentioned before,
and make every possible effort to bring them to realization.”
Read that passage again carefully, and not just to count the
number of times Pius XI stressed freedom of association. Now compare it with the following passage
from Democracy in America, I.xii:
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| Freedom of Association |
“In no country in the world has
the principle of association been more successfully used, or more unsparingly
applied to a multitude of different objects, than in America. Besides the
permanent associations which are established by law under the names of
townships, cities, and counties, a vast number of others are formed and
maintained by the agency of private individuals.
“The citizen of the United
States is taught from his earliest infancy to rely upon his own exertions in
order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon social
authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims its
assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it. This habit may even be
traced in the schools of the rising generation, where the children in their
games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and
to punish misdemeanors which they have themselves defined. The same spirit
pervades every act of social life. If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare, and
the circulation of the public is hindered, the neighbors immediately constitute
a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an
executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of
recurring to an authority superior to that of the persons immediately
concerned. If the public pleasures are concerned, an association is formed to
provide for the splendor and the regularity of the entertainment. Societies are
formed to resist enemies which are exclusively of a moral nature, and to
diminish the vice of intemperance: in the United States associations are
established to promote public order, commerce, industry, morality, and
religion; for there is no end which the human will, seconded by the collective
exertions of individuals, despairs of attaining.”
We don’t know about you, but we see what appears to be a
clear parallel between the two passages.
It’s something to think about, anyway.
#30#
