The previous chapter explained that the idea of Natural Right is the base ethical principle for all various political ideology groups in America. There is no one mainstream opinion leader of politics, and various political ideology groups compete each other to gain the popularity. However, there is one shared fundamental principle which all these different political ideology groups share, and this principle exists as a nonhuman sovereign of America. This is called Natural Right, which means the naturally given right, which regards that there is a naturally given impregnable right provided equally to all human-beings, and all individual citizens and their nation must use their best effort to protect and furthermore promote.
American theists believe that the provider of this Natural Right is God. Natural Right theory is heavily influenced by Christianity because John Locke, the father of Natural Right, was a devout Christian. The original founding principle of America was Protestantism because majority of European immigrants moved to America during the establishment period were Protestants. The founding fathers of America were devout Christians, and aspired to enable be Christianity more influential in their new home country America than their previous home country in Europe.
When several years after American independence had passed, the change in American people's mind started taking place. During the 20th century, the new modern political ideology emerged in Europe, and this spread the strong scepticism about religion, history, culture, and the pre-existing perception of this world in Europe, and then the rest of the world afterward. The mastermind of this movement was Immanuel Kant, and his followers encouraged this movement. America was not an exception from its influence, and in a different form from the others, the influence was way stronger than the rest of the world.
The speed of spreading its influence was slower in America than the rest of the world due to Americans' strong resistance against this European born politics which seemed to decay the traditional American Liberal Democracy based on the Natural Right ethics originated from Christianity. Nevertheless, because Kantian ethics was evolved from Lockean Natural Right theory, Kantian Deontology was familiar to American political culture. As same as American traditional Natural Right theory, Kantian theory puts emphasis on the universally right morality, an absolute truth, and the challenge against the reality, and these characteristics of Kantian philosophy corresponded to American personality. More than Europe, because the natural right ethics is more influential in America, Americans are more likely to constantly put emphasis on the universally right morality, aspire after an absolute truth which they believe in, and express their world view by means of their idealism. Then, Americans adapted Kantian philosophy to America as a different form from the European counterparts.
After some time passed, agnostics and atheists started appearing in America. But, even though the characteristics of someone changes, the fundamental quality of the innate personality of all the people tends to remain unchanged. As America, the nation, was born as a Christian and Liberal Democratic nation who has a strong invincible universal ethical principle, American agnostics and atheists tend to look for the agnosticism and the atheism whose fundamental characteristics is similar to both Christianity and the traditional Natural Right. Kantian characteristics of God-less monotheism has attracted many American individuals who were disappointed by Christianity for some reason, and then Kantian Deontology has become an alternative belief for these Americans which is different from Christianity but whose characteristics is similar to Christianity.
Kant was a German, but his ethics as well as the legal philosophy influenced by Kantian ethics seemed to be more influential in America. In European and any modern secular nations, the objective of creating legal codes of law and imposing the law enforcement is the economic and political stability. Then, in these nations, morality is considered to be relative to various different cultures and situations in these nations so that morality tends to be considered not as a primary matter in law. Therefore, their social justice tends to refer to the objectively (Kantian theorists call "hypothetically" instead) determined measures and values such as property values, utility (pleasure minus pain), and any form of physical or psychological sanctions predicted to induce a desired consequence i.e. the stability. By contrast, American social justice regards highly of the abstract but absolute universal moral code equally important as or sometimes more than any legal legal codes of law which Kantian theorists may call hypothetical (Not categorical). All in all, Kantian ethics and legal philosophy deeply corresponds to American mentality and was adapted to one of the big political ideology groups of America (The other groups tend to be deeply sceptical about Kantian philosophy due to its compatibility with their characteristics and political aim).
2.2. Rise of Wilsonian
Woodrow Wilson shaped a new form of American politics, and his political philosophy, called Wilsonian, has become the most dominant American political ideology in 20th century onward. Moreover, Wilsonian is a compatible American ideology with the modern idealism created by Kant and Hegel even though Wilson himself was not categorised as either Kantian or Hegelian. The combination of Wilson's political philosophy and the ethics of Kant and Hegel became to be known as the international Human Right activism.
Wilson himself had not declared to enthusiastically support Kantian philosophy, and his admiring political philosopher was Edmond Burke whose philosophical principle is totally different from the counterpart of Kant and those influenced by Kant like Hegel. However, Wilson's original political philosophy somehow shares a very distinctive similarity with Kantian deontology, and Wilson's political principle had turned up to be similar to Kant's ethical principle. Kant's ethics attempts to create an ethical principle because it is totally unique from any existing philosophical principles. Wilson’s Burkean philosophy encourages thinking beyond any existing philosophical principles. All in all, both Kant and Wilson aspire to invent the new methodology of imagining and accomplishing in their transcendental ideal world which completely deviates from the philosophical axiom and the wisdom of life which had ever been invented. The characteristic of their idea was very different from each other, but the quality of both was identical to each other.
Since Wilsonian became popular in American politics, America has started aggressively intervening into various foreign affairs of the international politics as the opinion leader of the International Human Right activism. American international interventionism used to be merely motivated by the materialistic interests. Nonetheless, when Wilsonian politics was introduced, America started intervening to the international politics by means of her moral interests on the top of the materialistic interests. Wilsonian attempts to combine the power of the federal government, which Hamiltonian puts emphasis on, and the consistent attitude toward the pursuit in the political ideal which Jeffersonian insists on.
Wilson himself condemned Jeffersonian politics and admired Hamiltonian, but his enthusiasm of pursuing in American Liberal Democratic ideal was very similar to how Jefferson did. Wilsonian also insisted on the strong federal government for not only the economic and domestic political stability but also maintaining the strong unified moral standard and protecting and promoting American Liberal Democracy and its base principle Natural Right. It is similar to Jeffersonian in terms of its moral obligation. Both Jeffersonian and Wilsonian expect America and her citizens to be well-enlightened with American Liberal Democracy and her ideal.
Nevertheless, Wilsonian accuses Jeffersonian scepticism of a strong paternalistic federal government. Wilsonian regards that the federal government is responsible to be operated as a guardian of American Liberal Democracy, and the union of states under this ideal. Meanwhile Jeffersonian believes that securing and prospering Liberal Democracy in one country is already a big challenge, Wilsonian states that the international corporation of spreading Liberal Democratic ideal is essential to establish stability and prosperity in the liberal democratic world as well as maturing the own liberal democratic nation.
As Wilson was a big admire of Alexander Hamilton, the way of Wilson and his follower Wilsonian to structure American political system is very similar to Hamiltonian way. Wilsonian insists on the stable unified monetary system under the common currency usage and the central bank's supervision. The traditional Wilsonian claims for regulations imposed on the private sector intensive market economy unless it interrupts the healthy economic growth. Wilsonian assists American international trade expansion and big businesses unless these things threaten American national interest.
The big difference between Hamiltonian and Wilsonian is budgeting the public finance. Hamiltonian is far more sensitive about balancing the budget than Wilsonian. Hamiltonian purpose of the government expenditure is to secure the necessary infrastructure basing both economic growth and domestic political stability, and the peaceful international trade roots. By contrast, Wilsonian government expenditure plan is aimed to achieve its political and moral objective in both the domestic politics and the international relations on the top of what Hamiltonian insists on. Hamiltonian objective of government expenditure plans are materialistic and regard the moral issue can never be the primary purpose. So, meanwhile Hamiltonian objective is more visible and a shorter perspective, Wilsonian government expenditure plan is motivated by the moral achievement. The Wilsonian plan is quite difficult to estimate when the objective will be fulfilled and how much cost will be incurred upon this plan. In addition, Wilsonian moral objective may sacrifice the material objectives such as an economic stability and cause a strong antagonism from the other political ideological groups from both America and abroad when this plan takes significantly long enough.
On the other hand, despite the critiques of Wilsonian imprudent fiscal management based on its zealous moral commitment, there were several occasions which demanded a stubborn persistence encouraged by Wilsonian kind of an intensively strong moral commitment in order to keep America united for American future prosperity and her strong initiative in the foreign diplomacy. Wilson was the remarkable figure who established a distinct political ideological group retaining his political ideology. But, before Woodrow Wilson was born, there were already some political leaders and political thinkers who had a similar political ideology to Wilsonian. There have been various political events in American history which required the stubborn persistence even to cause the fiscal imprudence and the antagonism from enemies as well as allies. The most notable one of them is the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln could be seen as the most remarkable Wilsonian who had already existed before Wilson was born. In fact, the best role model of Wilson was Lincoln, and so Wilson looked upon Lincoln and imitated many Lincoln's policies and customs. Therefore, it can be quite legitimate to categorise Lincoln as one of Wilsonian politicians.
* The description about these American political ideologies refers to “Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (Vintage)” by John Milton Cooper, Jr., 1 Jun 2011
2.3. Discussion on American Civil War: Prequel of the Fate: Lincoln’s Fundamentalism over Consequence
The American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 was the most remarkable political event in the entire American history. The way American behaved in this war describes the fundamental characteristics of America. Also, this time was recognised as the first time when America reinforced her federal government power to impose their law enforcement by means of the moral reasoning and the political idealism on the citizen of this nation.
It is still a very controversial topic to define what the exact causes of this civil war. Despite that many historians and political scientists concluded that this was caused by the slavery issue and the South's secession from the union, there seemed to be so many various causes, and the Confederacy (The South) had many legitimate reasons to fight against the Union (The North). The Southerners nowadays call this war the "The Aggression from the North" instead of the American Civil War. To be fair, both the Union side and the Confederacy side certainly had their own politically and morally legitimate causes and reasons to fight against the other. Regardless of the cause of this war and the reason of both sides, this chapter of this essay focuses on the consequence of this war and the contemporary attitude of the Union government lead by Abraham Lincoln.
The war was prolonged longer and the war damage was more severe than estimated. The resistance of the Confederacy was overwhelming and persistent enough to prolong the war more than the Union government expected due to the Confederate able commanders, soldiers' morale, and geographic advantage.
The scale of this war was incomparable with any war having existed in the past. The newly invented technology of weapons was destructive enough to dramatically increase the death toll per its usage. The logistic for the supply in this war incurred the huge cost because it required to build locomotives and railroads as fast as possible. The Confederacy requested for the assistance of Europe, their important trade partner, to secure the sea trade routes after the Union imposed the naval blockage on the Southern sea to sabotage the Confederacy's trade with Europe. Then, the Confederacy and Europe started increasing the speed of building transport and war ships. However, the Union productivity was significantly higher than the Confederate counterpart so that the Union overwhelmed the Confederacy in this competition. All in all, the industrial productivity level was a critical key aspect to defeat the opponent so that both the Confederacy, assisted by Europe, and the Union competed for increasing their industrial power as faster than the opponent as possible.
The high price inflation hit the entire America due to this tremendously resource consuming war. The demand of production was always consistently higher than the supply capacity. So, the transaction speed of goods and services were high, and the government's demand of goods and services produced was very high so that the currency was always in short during the war. Therefore, when the war broke out, Lincoln administration started printing the new currency notes called Greenbacks in order to finance this expensive war. This caused the quantity of currency issued to be significantly higher than the increase in the aggregate supply of productions. This was the trigger of the high price inflation which harmed American people's life and the post war economic recovery. The income gain of people was always lower than the price rise of goods and services. Furthermore, the perpetuated inflation after the war harmed businesses due to the rising operation costs.
Due to these critical material disadvantages, any Hamiltonian would claim to stop the war when it was predicted to burden a sizable cost on economy which would haunt badly in the future. But, at the beginning of the war, Hamiltonian in the Union side would agree with the war in order to keep the national economic well-beings secured under the stable union of states. Hamiltonian in the Confederacy side would support the secession to put priority on the trade with Europe over remaining in the Union. The Union started enforcing the South to suddenly alternate their industrial features and follow what provided more advantages to the North then the South. In addition, the Union started interrupting the international trade between the Southern states and Europe, and then Hamiltonian in the Southern side supported the Confederacy to maintain the socio-economic stability and the international relationship with Europe. Nevertheless, when they started recognising that the Union naval force was invincible enough to keep blocking the trade route and the Union productivity level was far superior to the Confederacy combined with their European Confederacy supporters, Hamiltonian realised that it was far more costly to support the Confederacy, and more profitable to support the Union.
Not only these previously mentioned physical living standard but also this war severely depreciated the mental and spiritual living standard as well. Majority of historians and political scientists recognise this war as the first modern total war in the human history because the aggregate material productivity of one nation significantly affected the national military strength in this war. Therefore, a military force started using the mass destruction such as a scorched earth policy to reduce the aggregate production level of the opponent. Then, this war is seen as the typical example how more ordinary citizens have started to be involved in a war than ever, and the strength of national economy and the foreign diplomatic relation have become the key to win a war since then. Therefore, this war killed not only many soldiers but also many civilians, and also severely affected their life style so that a strong ressentiment attached to this war remained in both sides.
George McClellan, one of the Union generals and the nominee opposing Lincoln in the 1964 US presidential election, supported the ceasefire of this war due to the tremendously high cost and the unexpected tragedy of American people. McClellan himself was a devout supporter of the Union cause as well as abolition of slavery and defending Natural Right for all Americans. His philosophical commitment in these cause was stronger than majority of Americans. Nonetheless, he realised that the war damage was underestimated and the cost of it would keep haunting after the war ended as long as the war was prolonged further longer. Therefore, after dealing to the Confederacy enough to exhaust the Southern majority citizens and weaken the Southern economy, he recommended America to wait until the Confederate economic and political power naturally collapsed due to its lack of ability to compete with the Northern economy. As a matter of fact, his plan was materially efficient and peaceful, and sounded far more plausible than Lincoln's perspective by means of economic and social aspects.
By contrast, Lincoln persisted to continue this war until the Confederacy's defeat became clearly certain and the Confederate government officially surrendered to the Union even by using some ruthless brutal forces. For example, on the top of the previously mentioned huge economic loss and people's unbearable sufferings, the Union decided one notirous scorch earth policy called "Sherman's march to the sea". This march destroyed the entire towns and villages on their passage in order to cut the Confederate supply base and transportation network. In America, Lincoln's aggressive manifest, which is often seen as even brutal, was favoured by majority, and the majority Union politicians were not hesitate to completely agree with him. Moreover, even though McCellan's passion for the Union cause was never weak nor diluted, McCellan started to be condemned as being too soft on the traitors, and then he was miserably expelled to Europe from America due to his unpopularity among Americans then.
Lincoln affirmed that this war was not based on the material interests so that the meaning of this war was to maintain the impregnable spiritual characteristics of America. This was the ideal of America created of people by people for people. This ideal is the natural right initially explained by John Loch and the American founding fathers, and evolved further by the modern idealists inspired by Immanuel Kant. Lincoln thought that defending the Natural Right ideal was an unremovable factor of American identity, and then authorised the Union federal government to become the guardian of protecting and promoting the Natural Right ethical principle. In order to keep the Natural Right principle surviving, Lincoln believed that there should not be any exempted state from strictly following the universal morality based on this principle. Hamiltonian regards that, as long as America is a wealthy nation, the Union will be maintained because Americans will assume the Union brings their wealth. Lincoln also thought of the material well-being and keeping the Union was the key to achieve it. Nevertheless, he was afraid that any small collapse of this American spiritual identity would induce the domino-effect of this continuous collapse of this identity, which would eventually collapse the material well-being when America would no longer be united.
These stories convinced Lincoln to put priority on defending and promoting the unified fundamental ethical principle for all individuals and their states under the federal paternalism even by sacrificing the fiscal stability and causing some big antagonism. This war conducted by Lincoln certainly characterised the modern America and her future. Wilson reincarnated Lincoln's policy, and theorised Wilson's own thoughts inspired by Lincoln. Afterward, the mainstream democratic party members became converted to the policy of Lincoln and Wilson after observing the remarkable Wilson's Democratic party administration. Since America became powerful in both economy and foreign diplomacy and her action became influential to the entire world, the paternalism manifested by both Lincoln and Wilson was put into practice for not only the united states of America but also the other foreign countries.
Jeffersonian at this time strongly disagreed with Lincoln because Natural Right also puts emphasis on each state's right and sovereignty not violated by the federal authority. By contrast, Lincoln, and Wilson later, criticised Jeffersonian disadvantage of not able to guarantee to secure the system providing all American people with Natural Right when many states decided to compromise the Natural Right ideal. Thus, Lincoln and Wilson claimed that there has to be a strong cohesive force preventing states deviating from American ethical principle. The modern Jeffersonian accepted this claim, but Jeffersonian is still highly against Lincoln's and Wilsonian style big federal authority. Jeffersonian is worried about "The power to do good is also the power to do harm." as Milton Friedman said.
2.4. What Edmund Burke could not predict about America
Edmund Burke, one of the famous Classical Liberalist philosophers as well as the supporter of American independence, could not predict such future outcomes like the rise of Wilsonian ideology and this transformation of America. Burke noticed that American independence was emerged in order to provide people in the new land with liberty even though Burke tends to be seen as a devout British monarchist. One of the reasons why Burke supported American independence was that the over-expansion of British empire resulted in the expansion of bureaucracy in both her domestic policy and colonial management. He was worried that this was a big threat for the healthy stable development of Great Britain, and the cause of the collapse of the traditional laid-back British culture. In addition, the contemporary British bureaucratic administration was brutal enough to deteriorate the culture of British new land America. Burke detested brutality especially imposed by authority, and despised the loss of beauty and sublime caused by this brutality. Therefore, Burke stepped up to encourage American independence as the negative sanction against the contemporary British policy.
Nonetheless, despite his enthusiastic support for American independence, America has actually become the nation which Burke would disagree if he were still alive in several decades after the independence. Even though Burke supported American independence, and he despised and protested against French revolution. He distinguished American Revolution from French revolution because each of them was based on the different political reasoning process from each other. American independence did neither attempt to replace the American culture nor imposed a notorious brutality like massacre and an execution of the state figure head. French revolution incurred the tremendous pains such as committing a huge scale massacre of the old status quo.
What the point that Burke criticised at most was that French revolution was motivated by sticking to the fundamental principle. He warned that human-beings' experience, knowledge, and rationality to construct logical inferences are still way too limited to enough to draw and construct their dreaming ideal politics. Therefore, there principle basing their political ideal can never be rigorous as much as mathematical axiom. Moreover, sticking to one principle tends to misguide individuals to ignore obtaining the furthermore sets of knowledge and impression from new experiences when they deviate from their believing principle. He also insist that the traditions having existed in the past which the believers of the fundamental principle reject may have some beneficial characteristics useful in the future. Many traditions have to be evaluated and contradicted in order to expect a productive progress from the past to the present, and to the future. He insisted that human-beings should neither stubbornly stick to the entire traditions nor completely ignore them.
Burke described that the danger brought by French revolution was caused from this fundamentalism of believing in the ethical principle and the complete abandonment of the past traditions. He recognised that American revolution was not detached from carefully reevaluating the traditions which retains beauty and sublime from the past, and then American revolution was motivated by the basic needs rather than the fundamental principle. He argued that American independence was the natural transition of British governance to transform British administration more able to handle with the smaller bureaucratic scale. By contrast, French revolution was motivated by the fundamentalist bureaucrats of their new national legislature based on their believing fundamental principle.
Burke could not predict that American ethical principle called Natural Right became to govern the entire America as a nonhuman sovereign after throwing a human sovereign, a British monarchy away through her life. Burke was sceptical about John Locke's ethics as he had written a lot of criticisms about Locke's ideas. Nonetheless, Burke's understand of the contemporary America was a piece of British colonial territory, cohabiting the other European colonial territories inside American continent, who was struggling with the contemporary overgrown British bureaucratic occupation. He did not imagine American have finally occupied a large land mass of the Northern American continent, chosen to unify themselves under a strong unified principle in order to maintain their big nation, and become a stronger and influential nation than her former suzerain Great Britain.
After America abandoned the colonial master, they started worshiping their political idealism as their alternative sovereign of their new nation. American politics is still never comparable with the French fundamental principle base politics causing a brutality and political and economic inefficiency. However, it has shown that American worship of Natural Right as her ethical principle contains some element motivating an aggressive pursuit in their strongly believing ethical principle such as the political action taken by Lincoln, Wilson, and onward. Burke might have shrugged and revised his own political agenda if he had been alive and observed how Lincoln and Wilson changed America to be.