REVIEW ESSAY

The Legacy of Wilson Carey McWilliam

Natalie Taylor

Published online: 20 February 2013# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Redeeming Democracy in America, Wilson CareyMcWilliams. Edited with an introduction by Patrick J.Deneen and Susan J. McWilliams (Lawrence: University Pressof Kansas, 2011), 335 pp. $34.95. ISBN 978-0700617852

The Democratic Soul: A Wilson Carey McWilliams Reader,Wilson Carey McWilliams. Edited by Patrick J. Deneen andSusan J. McWilliams (Lexington: The University Press ofKentucky, 2011), 430 pp. $40.00. ISBN 978–0813130132

In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, requir-ing the citizens of all states to return escaped slaves tobondage. Believing that the law was a violation of theescaped slave’s just freedom, Transcendentalist and Unitar-ian minister, Theodore Parker helped to organize resistanceto the law in Boston. Parker went so far as to arm a fugitiveslave so that he could defend his natural rights. The right topreserve one’s life and freedom against a tyrannical govern-ment is a fundamental principle of John Locke’s politicalphilosophy, which was articulated most concisely in theDeclaration of Independence. Despite their disagreementon particular issues, Americans share a belief in the funda-mental principles of government: Locke’s theory of lim-ited government or liberalism, including the defense ofproperty rights and individualism. A century after theFugitive Slave Act was passed Louis Hartz explainedAmericans’ singular commitment to liberalism by notingthat America had never experienced a feudal stage ofdevelopment. Americans, as Tocqueville reminded us,were “born equal” and so Hartz argued, “Locke domi-nates American political thought as no thinker anywhere

dominates the political thought of a nation. He is a massivenational cliché.” 1

Wilson Carey McWilliams understood that Locke did notcompletely dominate the American political tradition. WhenParker “armed a fugitive slave, he gave him a sword for hisbody and a Bible for his soul. There was an important truthin Parker’s gesture. The doctrine of natural right implied thatit was not enough to restore a slave to his or her naturalfreedom… Scripture, by contrast, argued that it is futile tofree the body and neglect the soul. Emancipation calls formore than striking of shackles; it demands nurturance andeducation in social and political life” (Redeeming Democracy,49). Wilson Carey McWilliams’s devoted a lifetime to con-templating the paradox of American democracy: liberalism’stenets do not ensure democratic politics―indeed, a strictadherence to the tenets of liberalism would endanger Ameri-can democracy. Rather, the vitality of American democracydepends on ancient notions of politics, including those foundin the Bible and on the pages of Aristotle’s treatises.

Carey McWilliams published his most well-known work,The Idea of Fraternity in America, in 1973. He began withthe argument that fraternity is required to temper individu-alism in American politics. The inability of men to bearchildren makes their connection to other human beings,particularly the next generation, tenuous. Men have a dis-torted sense of their autonomy, which undermines the polit-ical community. Fraternity is one means by which men arebound together. Susan McWilliams warned contemporaryreaders that “the idea of fraternity does not encompass anyold gathering of XY chromosomes, a bunch of men with akeg and a dream.”2 Fraternity allows for shared purpose and

1 James P. Young, Reconsidering American Liberalism: the TroubledOdyssey of the Liberal Idea. (New York: Westview Press, 1996), 3.2 Susan, J. McWilliams, “The Brotherhood of Man(liness). Perspec-tives on Political Science, Fall 2006, Volume 35, Number 4, 211.

N. Taylor (*)Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway,Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USAe-mail: ntaylor@skidmore.edu

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builds a mutual dependence among men. McWilliams un-derstood it to be creative, not destructive. In a sweepingstudy of American letters, McWilliams illuminated the per-sistence of fraternity in America, belying the rugged indi-vidualism of our national myths. Instead, The Idea ofFraternity in America demonstrated that citizens are boundtogether by affection and by a commitment to a largerwhole. Our most profound political insights come, not fromstudies carried out by social scientists, but from America’sstatesmen, ministers, philosophers, and poets.

Although McWilliams was a devoted teacher and anactive member of his community, he found time to write astaggering number of essays on a range of topics within theAmerican political tradition and civic education. The essayswere originally published in diverse scholarly and popularjournals and have been collected in two volumes, Redeem-ing Democracy in America and The Democratic Soul: AWilson Carey McWilliams Reader. Both volumes were edi-ted by Patrick J. Deneen and Susan J. Mc Williams. Whilethe introductions to both volumes give a brief biography ofMcWilliams and a summary of his thought, the introductionto Redeeming Democracy in America offers a particularlyvivid impression of McWilliams’ decency and his winsomepersonality. Born in California in 1933, McWilliams isdescribed as “a child of the west” (Redeeming Democracyin America, 1). The heroic individualism featured in Holly-wood’s westerns and the technological progress so oftenassociated with California were tempered by McWilliams’large family, who instilled in him the importance of self-governance and religion. Although McWilliams’ father, awell-known historian and journalist is mentioned, it is hisgreat-aunt Willie who is called upon to best illustrateMcWilliams’ understanding of politics and religion, com-mitted as it was to both biblical truth and the Democraticparty. The introduction of Redeeming Democracy in Amer-ica is followed by three parts. Part I, “American Founda-tions” includes essays that are about the fundamentalelements of the American political regime: citizenship, theBible, natural rights, and the anti-federalist view of politics.Part II, “America’s Two Voices” is comprised of essaysdevoted to liberalism and to competing expressions of pol-itics, found in the Bible and in ancient philosophy. Part III ofRedeeming Democracy, “American Politics, Public and Pri-vate,” includes essays on how Americans are educated to becitizens of our democracy.

The introduction to The Democratic Soul does not treatreaders to a story about “great-aunt Willie.” But, it doesintroduce McWilliams’ subtle mind with brilliant clarity.Although Part I of this volume is on “Political Thought inAmerica,” the essays The Democratic Soul are on broaderrange of topics. Part II is devoted to “Political Thinkers” andincludes essays on George Orwell, Reinhold Niebuhr, LeoStrauss, and Sheldon Wolin among others. Part III, “Theory

and Practice,” includes essays that weigh topics such as civildisobedience and the equality of men and women. And,finally, Part IV is devoted to “Democracy as a Moral Enter-prise” and includes essays on contemporary matters such asmulticulturalism and the moral resources provided by theCatholic tradition. The essays in both volumes are wellchosen and well organized, but missing from the collectionsis a selection from The Idea of Fraternity in America. Anexcerpt from it would have introduced new readers toMcWilliams’ seminal achievement.

McWilliams brought his unparalleled knowledge ofAmerican letters to his essays. The essays treat a particulartheme or topic, which McWilliams illuminated with thewritings of the Puritans, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain,and James Baldwin, in addition to Thomas Jefferson, Alexisde Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.The essays also offer evidence of McWilliams’ command ofthose Constitutional law cases that speak to his topic.

At the heart of all of McWilliams’ thinking and writingabout politics was a concern for human dignity and a cer-tainty that human dignity is best achieved through politics—politics that has a broader meaning than we normally un-derstand it today as the use and abuse of power—politicsthat allows citizens to tend to the public good through thepractice of self-government. In order to achieve humandignity through American democracy, we must allay theworst tendencies of liberalism by harmonizing its viceswith, what McWilliams called, America’s “second voice.”“The Bible is the great gate to Western culture, an indis-pensable key to our language, meanings, and thought… TheBible, I will be arguing, has been the second voice in thegrand dialogue of American political culture, and alternativeto the ‘liberal tradition’ set in the deepest foundation ofAmerican life” (Redeeming Democracy, 29). In his essay,“The Bible in the American Political Tradition,” McWil-liams was not concerned with the practice of any particularreligion, but the Bible as a text that teaches us about politics.In contrast to liberalism, the Bible reminds its readers thathuman beings are not free and independent, but depend onGod and their fellow creatures. They are part of an orderedwhole. Redemption, so central to Christianity, suggests hu-man beings’ reconciliation with the order of creation andtheir fellow human beings. Political life is founded on acovenant that fosters justice and human attachments, ratherthan individualism and material gain. To the greatest extentpossible, political society should educate citizens to over-come their self-regard. Again, the Christian tenet of graceinstructs citizens in this effort. “God’s love is graciousbecause it is given freely and without consideration, notbecause of merit but in spite of sin” (Democratic Soul,47). This example of authority is based on the benevolentand forgiving qualities of the ruler, not on “the consent ofthe governed.” Political society, because it is part of a

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whole, is subject to a higher law. As the only common textto white Americans at the time of the Founding and duringits early history, the Bible informed how the Founders andmost American thought about politics.

The Founders would have also been familiar with ancientpolitical philosophy. Although McWilliams did not identifyclassical philosophy as the second voice as explicitly as heidentified the Bible, its teaching resonates with ancientphilosophy. Aristotle also understood human beings to bepart of an ordered nature and they knew it is best for humanbeings to respect the limits of nature in order flourish.McWilliams cautioned modern readers, “This, however,did not necessarily restrict our liberty, since just as humanbeing are free when they can do what they want to do, theyare free when they want to do what they can do.” In otherwords, ancient philosophy, along with Judaism and Chris-tianity, sought to temper human beings’ desires and recon-cile them with human beings’ place in the natural order.Jeffrey K. Tulis has aptly said “that McWilliams offers a‘Presbyterian slant’ on ‘a forgotten Aristotlian world’” (Re-deeming Democracy, 127).

Yet, the Founders, in the spirit of Locke and other mod-ern philosophers, began with the presumption that humanbeings are born free and independent. The natural freedomand independence of human beings cannot be sustained dueto their imperfections and the indifference, even hostility, ofnature to human beings. McWilliams told us bluntly, “Na-ture… frustrates us and ultimately kills us.” As a conse-quence of nature’s hostility to human beings, human beingsseek mastery over nature. For those who may wish to elideLocke’s political philosophy with the Bible’s teaching onpolitics, McWilliams delivered a line that is typical of hisknowing good humor, even in the face of seemingly irre-solvable tensions. “If follows, of course, that the humanstruggles to triumph over nature precludes any reconcilia-tion with it” (The Democratic Soul, 48). In an effort tomaster our own nature, human beings agree to enter intopolitical society in order to retain as much of their naturalfreedom as they can. They are bound to the community as aresult of their consent, not the consequence of the politicalleader’s authority and benevolence or the fellow-feelingamong the other participants to the agreement. As McWil-liams described modern notions of liberty, liberty is not tobe found in the natural order but by transforming it, “break-ing free of its forms.” “We are free, then, only to the extentthat our power becomes as infinite as our desires… Perfectliberty severs the spirit from ‘all its relationships’” (TheDemocratic Soul, 23).

McWilliams pushed the Lockean political philosophy toits logical conclusions and attributes those conclusions toAmerican political development, rendering America, a vastdemocracy filled with people motivated by self-interest onlykept in check by political institutions that separate citizens.

McWilliams’ account can be downright dispiriting for thosereaders who do not have McWilliams temperament. In hisessay, “Science and Freedom: America as the TechnologicalRepublic,” McWilliams argued that technology is signifiedby more than gadgets. It is “associated with a frame of mind,a preoccupation with ways of getting results, a dangerousspirit that strains against limits for rule” (Redeeming De-mocracy, 89). It is this frame of mind or spirit that iscompatible with liberalism’s notion of liberty that seeks totranscend limits. Technology is seemingly the answer to ahuman beings’ struggle against a hostile nature. It allowshuman beings to “become supreme mechanics with theirhand on the levers of natural power” in order to masternature. Americans take the same posture toward politics.“Nature drives human beings into political society, but pol-itics is not natural; it is a technological project, an instru-ment for protecting rights and effectuating essentiallyprivate desires, properly rooted in the consent of theintended users” (Redeeming Democracy, 92). And, so theFounders designed political institutions that encourage cer-tain behaviors by channeling individuals’ passions, evenwhile they are left free to pursue their private interests.Our republic produces what McWilliams called “a limitedliability politics.” Moderation is achieved by disaffiliationand, worse, disenchantment.

“Power and scale, the artifacts of technological politics,have magnified its original theory and practice into theideology of the administrative state and the search for sci-entific or quantitative measures by which data can displacecivic deliberation” (Redeeming Democracy, 105). Politics ofthis kind was meant to create and sustain stability and tominimize risks. And it may do so. But, the consequence is acitizenry that lacks support and affection for its political andcivic institutions. “It convinces a growing number of citi-zens that public life is a sham, manipulated by secret powersand hidden strategists, at best no answer to and possiblycomplicit in their indignity” (Redeeming Democracy, 105).

Although the technological spirit prevails in Americanpolitics, the Founders recognized that religion is an impor-tant antidote to the most dangerous propensities of liberaldemocracy. Religion promotes law-abidingness at thosemoments when a citizen might be tempted to break one’spromise because he or she may so easily get away withdoing so. Religion also serves as a restraint on the majority.“Religion, as Tocqueville observed, taught a law and a rightsuperior to the will of the majority. It provided a basis fordefying the majority―and it urged the public to limit itself”(The Democratic Soul, 46). Despite the individualism thatour Constitution encourages, the Bible continued to providemoral bearings during our political history. In his essay,“Standing at Armageddon: Morality and Religion in Pro-gressive Thought” McWilliams considered the Progres-sives’ efforts to establish democracy on a grand scale.

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They were “informed by the belief that the human spirit orconscience, guided by social science, could eventually cre-ate a vast and brotherly republic of public-spirited citizens”(Democratic Soul, 99).

In addition to religion, a renewed dedication to equalitycan mute the worst effects of liberalism. Americans haveundermined democracy by subordinating equality to liberty.McWilliams anticipated that other students of Tocquevillewould find “this assertion heterodoxy” (Democratic Soul,24), given Tocqueville’s well-known concern that Ameri-cans’ love of equality―equality of conditions―would en-feeble citizens, leaving Americans vulnerable to soft-despotism. In order to prevent the degradation of democracythat McWilliams found a possible consequence of the logicof liberalism, we must have recourse to ancient notions ofequality. McWilliams drew on Aristotle’s teaching onfriendship to demonstrate the importance of equality topolitical life. Friendship may exist among unequal friends,but that friendship must seek to make the two friends equal.Because citizenship is a form of friendship, the politicalcommunity should seek to make friends or citizens equal.“Equality unites where liberty separates…In fact, equality isthe foundation of political virtue. Political society greatlyexpands the division of labor, combiningmany skills and crafts.The city gives us liberty because it frees us to what we dobest… For the health of political society, its citizens need to seetheir diversities as subordinate to some more fundamentallikeness and commonality. Political society in other words,needs equality precisely because equality tells us that citizenscan be both ‘different’ and the ‘same’” (Democratic Soul, 26).Liberty is merely the means to the end of equality.

McWilliams argued that this understanding of equality isnot foreign to our political tradition. It is known to Ameri-cans through Mark 3:21–27, the most familiar version of thestory of a “house divided.” “A house is not divided againstitself because its members differ or have private interests;that is always to be assumed. A house becomes divided‘against itself’ when what is unlike is regarded as moreimportant than what is akin. Private allegiances and interestsmust yield to public and higher goods” (Redeeming Democ-racy, 50). The challenge of subordinating liberty to equalitywas never so acutely felt as it was during the Republic’sefforts to eliminate slavery and to restore the Union follow-ing the Civil War. In the Gettysburg Address Lincoln an-nounced “Four score and seven years ago our fathersbrought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived inLiberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men arecreated equal.” McWilliams observed that Lincoln’s wordsreversed the preference of liberty to equality in the Decla-ration of Independence, which “asserts that men are createdequal but aim to secure their rights. “At Gettysburg, Lincoln

reversed that order: ‘conceived’ in liberty, America must be‘dedicated’ to equality” (Redeeming Democracy, 51). Thechange is not insignificant. As McWilliams observed, “Itamounted to the proclamation of a new covenant” (Redeem-ing Democracy, 51).

Subordinating liberty to equality in this way and recog-nizing our equality as members of the same political com-munity, we are able to act as citizens in a manner that givesus greater dignity. It is citizenship, not voting rights, thatMcWilliams believed distinguished and ennobled democra-cy. Again, McWilliams found Aristotle’s definition of polit-ical rule, “ruling and being ruled” distinctive of a democraticcitizenry. It recognizes the differences among individualsand their just claims to decide political matters. This is quitedifferent than the claims made by the majority to rule; thoseclaims rest on the majority’s greater force. Ancient concep-tions of citizenship found a place in the American politicalregime through the influence of the Anti-Federalist. Amongtheir objections to the new Constitution was the role ofcitizens in the new republic. They were in favor of a morerobust citizenship that allowed citizens to deliberate andpersuade their fellow citizens while arriving at politicaldecisions. McWilliams argued that the Anti-Federalists“profoundly affected the use and interpretation of theConstitution and its powers.” Tyranny of the majority,which strips citizens of their dignity, has become anincreasing threat in American democracy. Nowhere isit more effectively combated than at local political andcivil institutions. Democracy is to be redeemed by citi-zens practicing the arts of persuasion and deliberationsin order to cooperate in order to achieve their sharedpurpose.

McWilliams’ essays reveal that American democracy isnobler than the self-interested individualism on which it wasfounded because it cannot be reduced to its “massive na-tional cliché.” In an age when political discourse seemscombative and our leaders struggle to restore political andcivic participation, we would be well served to heed Amer-ica’s “second voice.” Even as it promises dignity in a com-munity of equal citizens, it reveals to us why it is so elusivein America. Carey McWilliams’ readers will be moved byRedeeming Democracy in America and The DemocraticSoul to confront the intellectual and moral challenges ofAmerican democracy.

Natalie Fuehrer Taylor is an associate professor of Government atSkidmore College, where she teaches American politics and politicalphilosophy. She is the author of The Rights of Woman as Chimera: thePolitical Philosophy of MaryWollstonecraft and the editor of A PoliticalCompanion to Henry Adams.

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