Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 38

MODERN AGE

political terms, rather than in philosophical
or spiritual ones. In other words, what, if
anything, is gained or lost in associating in a
"more perfect" global political union?
After declaring their independence from
Great Britain, Americans were faced with a
similar choice: what degree of political unity
would best secure the way of life they pre-
ferred? The more loosely defined confederacy
of states gave way to the establishment of a
federal republic. Proponents of the Federal
Constitution argued convincingly that the
American Revolution would be short-lived
if a greater degree of political unity was
not established as prescribed by the Federal
Constitution.
While some, like John Jay in Federalist
No. 2, argued that American geographic,
cultural, and political homogeneity would
make the establishment of a more perfect
union possible, much more of the Federal-
ist case for unity amounted to a discourse
on the ever-present dangers within popular
government that derive from human dif-
ferentiation and political heterogeneity, and
the political necessity of accounting for self-
interest-even rightly understood-within
the political affairs of mankind. Whereas
they might have attempted to remedy the
problem of faction (in Madison's words) by
"destroying the liberty which is essential to
its existence" or "in giving to every citizen
the same opinions, the same passions, and
the same interests," they sought rather to
establish a republic of republics that required
constant tending by the American people.
Of course, they did not think there were
any guarantees that the political model they
constructed would work perfectly. Moreover,
the anti-Federalist "Brutus" feared that com-
pelled political consolidation would be nec-
essary to unite a diverse American people.
They had read enough of the rise and decline
of regimes to know that the more perfect
38

FALL 2014

union they had attempted to establish might
in turn become, in Lincoln's words some
sixty years later, "a house divided against
itself" if it lost its republican character.
As Americans watch a venomous political
debate play out in our day in the American
public square, they may be enticed by the
siren call of human unity to exchange our
older political architecture for a modern
replacement. But what would American
political life look like if we decided to join
formally a political association that promises
global peace? The idea of globalism would
crowd out cosmopolitan philosophic activity
or redirect our attention away from all but the
material nature of our existence-and politi-
cal engagement in the global city would suffer
a similar purposelessness. For ideational and
moral difference disregarded would amount
to waxing political in an indeterminate pub-
lic square, in which a citizen was merely a
citizen in name only; the questions of who
rules, and to what end, would have already
been predetermined for us.
The greatest danger, however, is that rulers
of the global city would suggest to Ameri-
cans that moral, intellectual, and political
engagement that highlighted human dif-
ferentiation was politically intolerable in
the name of political tolerance. Here an
advanced democratic American society
might follow the example of a supposedly
enlightened Athenian regime that found
Socrates guilty of crimes against the city, or
a supposedly cosmopolitan Roman regime
that found Christian worship worthy of
the death penalty. Americans ought not to
assume that those cities that hold political
universalism in high regard are willing to
accept particular intellectual, moral, and
political allegiances that threaten its suppos-
edly universalist global premises. And how
could we expect Americans not to desire
to engage on those matters that Lincoln
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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