The American framers, both those who would ultimately endorse the 1787 constitution and those who would oppose it, shared a profound appreciation for the dangers and fragility of republican government. From the perspective of the 1780s, history offered scant evidence of admirable and enduring republics. The Greek and Latin classics, that intellectual canon for the English-speaking world in the 18th century, offered at best a bitter lesson about the viability of republics. Historically, later republican experiments, from the Renaissance republics of Italian city-states to the confederal republics of Switzerland and the Low Countries, appeared only to confirm that bitter lesson from antiquity. Republics, history seemed to advise, hovered always on an edge between two chasms. On one side lay a slide into anarchy; on the other lay a slide into tyranny.

Recent events in the United States also were not reassuring. The period after the revolution was one of governmental tumult and confusion. A bare skeleton of republican government was estab-lished under the Articles of Confederation. But it was a hasty arrangement that served in large part only to heighten worries about the stability and endurance of republics.

Not surprisingly, considering their circumstances, the 1780s were years when American politicians took political theory seriously. They read John Locke and David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith and Bernard Mandeville, Machiavelli and Monte-squieu, Liberals like John Trenchard and tories like Bolingbroke, and French physiocrats like Quesnay. Moreover, they returned to their Greek and Latin classics, reading Aristotle and Tacitus, Herodotus and Cicero. The upshot of their study and of their political experiences was a consensus that republican government required a well-ordered civil society.

Their thinking in this vein was not profound. Where popular thinking today equates good government with democracy, such that the presumption is that more democracy means better government, the American framers thought differently. Good government was what was wanted. The Preamble to the 1787 constitution speaks to this, citing the need to "establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." Good government, in other words, was some admixture of order that secured and maximized liberty. Democratic institutions in the framers’ thinking might serve as part of the formula for such "good government," but they might very well also be an obstacle to that end.

Some framers pointed to the historical development of limits to the power of the crown in a monarchy as illustrative of the problem. By the 1780s, of course, the French and English monarchs were con-strained by longstanding traditions and by established law in their use of power. The power of the crown could not be exercised arbitrarily; it was regulated and limited. Ostensibly the state was thus protected from tyranny. The history of republics and the reading of political theorists convinced the American framers that similar constraints were necessary upon the citizenry in a republic, if the republic itself was to avoid a slide into tyranny or anarchy. As with the monarchs before them, it was reasoned that republican citizens would need to be guided or constrained in the exercise of their sovereignty, so that this could be preserved and maximized.

Inherent in this, of course, was a problem for republics which was not so evident for more mixed forms of government, such as those of France and England. If citizens were sovereign, as republicanism demands, then on what ground of legitimacy was the sovereignty of citizens to be constrained? What was of interest was not so much what the American framers turned to for that legitimacy (a melange of higher law, natural law, natural rights, tradition and common-good arguments), but rather where this legitimacy was to be worked. To have it worked by the government, they realized, was contrary to republican principles themselves, according to which government must in large measure derive its legitimacy from the governed and serve as an agent for the citizenry.

Hence, they came to maintain that the sphere for working out necessary constraints on the sovereignty of citizens must be found in a public space that was somehow separate from government—i.e., "civil society." The American framers came to contend that the very nature of republican government demanded a foundation in a quasi-independent civil society. And, from ancient as well as from then contemporary writers like Montesquieu and Bolingbroke, the preponderance of argument for the framers was that this civil society operated for a republic by instructing citizens in "civic virtues" in order to constrain and guide them toward responsible exercise of their sovereignty.

The discussion of democracy in Aristotle’s Politics was a common source for many framers’ reflections concerning civil society, civic virtues and republican government. Aristotle’s analysis began with a fundamental division between true govern-ments and false governments along a line determined by the common good. In true governments, sovereigns governed in pursuit of this good. In false governments, sovereigns governed in pursuit of their own desires. The exterior forms of true and false governments may be the same. Monarchy, for example, was "true" because the single sovereign pursues the common good. In contrast if the single sovereign did not rule for the common good, then rule by a single sovereign was the false government Aristotle called "tyranny." A true republic (politeia) was government by the many sovereigns wherein each seeks to enact the common good. A false republic (demokratia), according to Aristotle, describes a participatory government where individual citizens pursue self-interest rather than the common good.

For Aristotle, a true republic stands forever on the verge of devolution into a false republic, and of all forms of government, he argued, republics are most prone to such decay. For when sovereignty resides in many individual citizens, opportunities are multiplied for the virus of self-interest to infect and spread, so that the common good is easily lost. Furthermore, because so many sovereigns are involved, a false republic is the most difficult form of government to bring back to the pursuit of the common good. A viable, true republic, Aristotle concluded, requires powerful means to keep citizens focused on the common good and to weaken the centrifugal pull of individual interests. Aristotle’s reasoning about the weakness and tendencies of republics seemed nearly self-evident to many of the framers. In the years immediately following the revolution, national and state politics witnessed the rise of increasingly narrow, privately directed interests and factions. The centrifugal pull and separation posed by such forces convinced many that devolution to anarchy was at hand. State legislatures, especially for the larger states, were embroiled in conflicting and competing efforts at private legislation. Cliques and cabals formed and reformed around everything from the disposition of former loyalist properties to land speculation in the western territories, and from the establishment of monopolies for trade to speculation in bank bonds. In the eyes of many framers, well-founded traditional limits to politics and even basic property rights were being imperiled by these so-called "anarchical" trends.

Moreover, some perceived not only anarchy, but also tyranny poised outside the statehouses. Potent political machines emerged in the mid-1780s around figures whom opponents called "demagogues." In New York, George Clinton was at the center of a well organized faction of upstate interests who had seized control of the legislature. John Hancock’s organization in the Massachusetts legislature was already rooted in Boston’s immigrant population, anticipating a pattern for American urban politics that would be perfected later in the 19th century. Patrick Henry in Virginia and Samuel Chase in Maryland became kingmakers for their states’ politics by organizing small scale planters against each states’ traditional elite—the old "first families" from the colonial era. The two supposed horrors of the devolution of republican government, anarchy and tyranny, thus, were perceived by many of the framers as already embryonic within American politics. If republicanism was to be saved, if it was to work and endure, it was thought, then civil society itself must be reconstituted with limits and guidance for the citizen sovereigns.

The most recognized recipe for the reconstitution of civil society emphasized the need for the citizenry to acquire various civic virtues. Taking their cue from sundry ancient authors and also especially from Montesquieu, framers understood these virtues from the Latin root of the word "virtue" itself. That is, civic virtues had a masculine and even somewhat martial ambience. Conjured were notions of steadfastness, courage, self-sacrifice, discipline, hard work, patriotism and Stoic endurance. At the heart of such civic virtues, however, was a curious and ancient understanding that joined a citizen’s individual glory with gloria in patria. Contrary to many contemporary interpretations of 18th century American politics, the "liberalism" of the period is a far cry from the "Manchester liberalism" of the 19th century. Citizens should be self-reliant, for example, because dependency (effeminacy) was recog-nized as being at odds with civic virtues. Nevertheless, individual "manly" citizens were ultimately understandable only for the glory they derived in practicing civic virtues for the common good.

Where, however, was the source of such virtues to be found, and how were such virtues to be taught and enforced upon the citizenry? Or, to put the question more squarely in the context of present concerns, what sort of civil society was appropriate for acquiring these virtues that were thought so necessary for republican government? Sorting through the complexity of ideas and understandings abroad among 18th century Americans, a case can be made for two models of civil society—a puritan model and an agrarian model. As models, of course, these represent analytical ideals; they are simplifications of many complex and overlapping notions entertained by different framers.

The puritan model takes its name from the Puritan religion of colonial New England. In part, this reflects the model’s geography; New Englanders like John Adams and Elbridge Gerry can be identified with the model. In a larger sense, however, there is also a fit between Puritanism itself and this model of civic society. Puritanism, an English Calvinist religion, rejected the Lutheran separation of the secular and the sacerdotal. As a result, in Puritan society there was no certain and unequivocal distinction between the role of the church and the role of the state. Likewise, in the terminology of this study, Puritanism did not recognize a separation between civic virtue and personal morality. The ostensible independence of civil society from government is also undercut in Puritan society by the ubiquitous presence of religious authority.

Speaking to this model of civil society for republican go-vernment, Forrest McDonald refers to a letter from John Adams to Mercy Warren. For John Adams, whose Defense of the Consti-tution of the United States (1786) was enormously influential for the thought of the framing period, republican government required a civil society of:

pure Religion or Austere Morals. Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private (virture), and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics. There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honor, Power and Glory, established in the hearts of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real liberty.

 

This same public passion, Adams maintained:

Although the cited examples stress religious behavior, it should be noted that what has been called here the puritan model of civil society need not be associated narrowly with religious or even moral virtues. In a contemporary reformulation of this model of civil society, the content of civic virtue might even be limited to formal or pluralistic virtues, such as tolerance, due process, privacy, or rule of law.

The model’s distinguishing character is its integration of civil society with public authority, and its emphasis on enforced law, rather than education. The civil society perceived as necessary for republican government here would be a creature of organized public authority. In a vertical and largely external fashion, pervasive public authority would scrutinize, regulate, and discipline citizen behavior in keeping with recognized civic virtues. Such virtues would be "legislated" and enforced, rather than promoted, by public authority in consideration of the common good. The prescriptions of these virtues, obviously, would be a totalizing public enterprise from which no citizen was exempt.

Like the puritan model, the agrarian model, too, would provide for an enduring and effective republican government by creating virtuous citizens. However, where the puritan model emphasizes law, a central and singular public authority, vertical hierarchy and en-forcement of virtuous behavior, the agrarian model—in contrast—emphasizes education, local and plural authorities, horizontal pluralism and the development of virtuous character in the citizenry. Likewise, where the puritan model proffers external mechanisms to punish transgression, the agrarian model relies upon private, internal mechanisms to mold a citizen’s heart. Much emphasis, too, as the name "agrarian" suggests, was placed by many of the American framers on a specific context or "lifestyle" for the working of these mechanisms. An agrarian life of self-sufficient small communities and self-sufficient small landholdings was held to be an ideal context for the civil society necessary for republican government.

What is meant by education here goes far beyond formal schooling, although schooling may well be one facet of the enterprise. Education refers to the myriad local means by which civic virtues are to be inculcated in this model of civil society. Families and homes in this landscape of self-sufficiency each would operate privately and independently to nurture appropriate civic virtues. Similarly, small communities and associations would be principal settings for the exercise of such virtues and would themselves reinforce the education of homes and families. Contrary to the puritan model, religion here is perceived more as a private affair and its role would be one of support and association for families, rather than instruction.

The most potent education in civic virtue, however, derives from the agrarian lifestyle itself. Acquiring and maintaining a self-sufficient life in small landholdings, many framers thought, demands the development of the key virtues for republican government: temperance, fortitude, frugality, courage, and industry. Moreover, the agrarian model, owing perhaps to its focus on self-sufficiency, values more highly virtues like tolerance and appreciates more the concerns of privacy than the puritan model. Yet, clearly the foremost virtue for the agrarian model was love of independence.

Drawing support from Locke and James Harrington, from Bolingbroke’s radicalized Tory thought, and from Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters, framers associated here with the agrarian model understood such independence in almost material terms. James Harrington’s Oceana, for example, had argued that independence could be secured only by the ownership of land. The possession, utilization and defense of property was, then, the measure of independence. Locke’s Second Treatise, in some parallel with Harrington, sees property as the foundational right that secures and maintains all other rights (life and independence), and serves as the primary explanation for the origin of society. In the thinking of many framers property, especially land, secured self-sufficiency, which in turn was the condition for the education of those civic virtues necessary for republican government.

Notice the relative independence of civil society from public authority in the agrarian model. Indeed, there is something of a reversal in comparison with what was seen in the puritan model. For the puritan model, civil society was largely a creature of public authority, for the agrarian, it is the opposite. Authority flows from the many private contexts of civil society to authorize a subsequent public authority. In political terms, the state is much more a creature of civil society. Accordingly, public authority is perceived from the first in this model as inherently limited to a narrowly defined public arena. Unlike the singular and potentially totalizing authority of the puritan model, here authority is divided and limited.

Its reliance on internalities of education, however, rather than on the externalities of law for crafting virtuous citizens must be recognized as potentially troublesome. Public law is exterior to sensibility and can be considered objectively, assented to or resisted reflectively. For good and (likely) for ill, the molding of hearts and minds by education and lifestyle is much more difficult to bring to reflective appreciation, and thus is much more difficult to resist.

Both the puritan model and the agrarian model of civil society overlap among those in opposition to the 1787 constitution. That is, adherents of these models can be associated with the so-called Anti-Federalists from the ratification debates of the years 1787-1789. In contrast, among those proponents of the new constitution, the so-called Federalists, a third model of civil society for republican government is evident: a political economy model. Chief among the Federalists associated with this model were Alexander Hamilton and especially James Madison.

Anti-Federalists like Luther Martin and Richard Henry Lee recognized the endemic potential for republics to slide into anarchy and or tyranny. To enable any vaguely republican government to work, appealing to classical authors and Montesquieu, the Anti-Federalists emphasized that government must have its basis in intense communities. Such communities alone were capable of tempering the self-interestedness of citizens in order that the vision of the common good might be sustained. Perhaps more strongly committed to republican ideas than the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists saw a civil society of civic virtue as a necessary glue for republican government. Civic virtue educated and tamed the passions of individual citizens, rendering them fit to govern. As might be expected, unlike the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists tended to emphasize the importance of religion, of communal ties and of common values.

Madison and the Federalists feared the smothering effect of intense communities on liberty. For this reason, where the Anti-Federalists largely sought to constrain democracy internally by educating the hearts and souls of citizens through civic virtue, the Federalists sought to constrain democracy externally by placing limits on anarchical or tyrannical extremes of citizen behavior through laws supported by the coercive power of the central government. As one well-known scholar of the period puts it:

Overt, lawlike constraints on the democratic spirit—enforced by the coercive power of government—were preferable to the tacit and subtle operation of civil societies of civic virtue. Laws and similar formal procedures are promulgated widely, are subject to deliberation and public review, and are thus objects exterior to the sensibilities and are able to be accepted or resisted in the minds and hearts of citizens. Exterior constraints, furthermore, create walls of an arena within which pluralism and citizen difference are granted "free" expression. Madison wanted exactly this.

There is a kinship here, too, with the utilitarian notion of the free market of ideas. Good policy will out, thought Madison, from the interplay of free individuals each engaged in what Madison’s con-fidant, Thomas Jefferson, called "the pursuit of happiness." The polity succeeds by promoting and protecting the diversity of interests and the liberty of individual citizens. Civic virtue is limited to rather insipid values like civility. Those undemocratic elements that preserve the democratic spirit itself, in Madison’s case, have the character of public laws buttressed by the strong arm of a vigorous, but limited, government. Avoiding reliance on civic virtue, Madison believed, maximized the space necessary for the needed liberty.

Formed into a model of civil society (the political economy model), Madison’s thinking stands in some contrast with the puritan and agrarian models. The basic premise is that republican govern-ment does not need virtuous citizens. Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1714) comes to mind here. The fable is a long allegory of a beehive in which everyone is motivated by powerful, self-interested passions and vices. Because of some unexplainable working of individuals’ interactions, the general condition is one of prosperity. When a miracle occurs and the bees are liberated from their passions and self-interested vices—when they become virtuous—then prosperity ceases and disorder reigns. Put simply, Madison like Mandeville imagines that self-interested pursuits, even vices, in a countervailing system can lead to the virtuous civil society necessary for republican government.

The advantages of the political economy model of civil society are obvious. No proactive role for public authority is necessary or desirable, as had been the case for the puritan model. Unlike the agrarian model, ostensibly, citizens are not inculcated with sub-stantive civic virtues by mechanisms of education.

Or, are they?

Contrary to Mandeville’s thesis, the high prince of political economy, Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations (1776), argues that markets do inculcate certain "virtues." Indeed, the so-called "vices" of Mandeville’s bees are in fact the "virtues" of political economy. On this basis, there is in Madison’s position an irony in the contrast between the political economy model and the puritan and agrarian models.

Madison’s own fears of intense civic virtue return and bear upon the results of his own thinking at this point. His argument in the Federalist Papers was that a totalizing civic virtue would undercut the possibility of the rationality in politics required for legitimate republican government. It would also eliminate the range of difference and pluralism among the citizenry that he believed to be the motor of civilization and of responsible politics. The famous tenth Federalist paper is illustrative. Madison did not wish to destroy factions; he wanted a permanent system of diverse countervailing factions designed to secure space for the differences among citizens that enabled and promoted liberty.

Sadly, the political economy model that he proposed to maintain such a system may work in a wholly opposite direction to create a monolithic and near totalizing civic virtue that imperils the very legitimacy Madison sought to preserve.

Puritan: The constraint or guidance placed on citizens is basically one of civic virtue. The virtues prized are what Max Weber would later call "protestant": temperance, frugality, industry, modesty and churchliness.

Agrarian: Also uses civic virtue. Virtues are somewhat different, emphasizing: self-sufficiency, fortitude, honor, patriotism. Industry is somewhat downplayed, while leisure is more valued. Modesty is somewhat downplayed, while noblesse oblige is much valued.

Political Economy: Ostensibly suspicious of civic virtue, the constraint here would be marketlike forces. Still, what are we to call the self-interest, passion, competitiveness and so forth needed by the model if not "virtues"?

Puritan: The legitimacy of the order of civil society here emphasizes a source external to the political community itself: God, tradition, higher law, or a medieval conception of natural law. The flow of authority is downward, from some recognized representative of external authority like the church through the hierarchy of civil society.

Agrarian: Authority derives from popular sovereignty and is limited only by its associated rights. The flow is upward, from self-sufficient landholdings to local communities, and from communities to the larger state.

Political Economy: Authority derives from the "natural" laws of the marketplace. Civil society’s structure, theoretically, is horizontal rather than vertical; there is no direction to the flow of authority.

 

Puritan: The state is difficult to separate from civil society. This model envisions the state playing a continuing role in the working of civil society.

Agrarian: The state is lagely a limited creature of civil society. Still, the clear separation of state and civil society is valued here. Hence, the state ought not be an instrument for intervention in civil society.

Political Economy: The state performs the limited function of protecting, and possibly maintaining, the arena of competition that is civil society. Intervention in civil society by the state would be precluded.

1. The terminology "Puritan" and "Agrarian" are borrowed from Forrest McDonald’s study Novus Ordo Seclorum (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1987). It should be noted, however, that McDonald’s use of the terms differs somewhat from the use employed here.

2. For a discussion of what is here called the puritan model elsewhere, see J. G. A. Pocock’s book The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 231-33. See especially, too, Forrest McDonald’s Novus Ordo Seclorum, pp. 66-96.

3. McDonald, p. 71-2.

4. The comments are from James Madison’s notes from the convention, dated May 31, 1787. See The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (Yale: New Haven, 1937), Vol. 1.

5. McDonald, p. 72

6. Consider Robert Yates’ many essays and letters written in opposition to the 1787 constitution under the pen name "Brutus."

7. Wilson Carey McWilliams, "Democracy and the Citizen: Community Dignity, and the Crisis of Contemporary Politics in America," in How Democratic is the Constitution?, ed. Robert A Goldwin and William A. Schambra (Washington: AEI, 1980), p. 89.

8. Madison, Federalist 10.

9. Madison, Federalist 51.

10. Consider what the "free market of ideas" means for a religiously founded university. The university’s religious concerns are increasingly pressured by the forces of the marketplace of ideas that is the academic environment for American universities. The truth and value of ideas are measured by their marketability. Religious truths are treated by the marketplace as on equal footing with any other notion, for markets hold nothing sacred save sales. If religious truths do not "sell", then they have no place. Obviously, there are tremendous pressures on the university to conform to the demands of the market.

Historically, political progress had come with the development of restraints on the arbitrary power of the monarch through tradition, law and the balance of powers. When authority shifted to the people a key question was whence such restraint could come and how it could it be exercised? Three approaches were proposed which might be termed the (a) puritan, (b) agrarian, and (c) political economy models. The three were analyzed in terms of (1) the type of constraint placed on power, (2) the mechanism of constraint, (3) the source of authority, and (4) the role of the state vis-a-vis civil society.

The puritan model reviewed the restraint as imposed by institutions from above, such as the state or the church. In the debates following the American Revolution the Anti-Federalists favored the "agrarian" model in which authority moved upward from civic virtue fostered in the citizens by their culture in small local communities which therefore were preferred to a strong federal government. The Federalists, in contrast, promoted a political economy model focused upon maximizing self-interest and competitiveness as the driving forces of economic innovation and achievement; the constraining power was situated more remotely in a strong federal government. Over time, however, the market has proven to be a harsh disciplinarian, shaping human life by the hidden hand of the market and reducing human life according to predominantly economic concerns.

In the discussion the chapter was considered from a number of perspectives:

1. At one level the paper appeared as an analysis of three modes of introducing restraint upon power and thus provided a set of alternative approaches to governance. As analytic models there is no suggestion that in the future one needs to choose one against the others; indeed, from different points of view all seemed to have limitations and advantages.

2. Further, it was suggested that each of these elements evolves through time. For instance, the terms ‘political’ and ‘civic’ have long histories during which the meaning of political moved from that of a polis in which all participated to that of the state at some distance from the people. Conversely, civitas which originally had meant government came to stand rather for the citizens.

At present all three models have their adherents in different sectors of the populace; sometimes more than one model is joined in the same group. Thus the agrarian model of firmly grounded personal morality is notable among present conservatives, but they are not loath to call upon government action to protect and even enforce moral standards. Their real concern may be the economy, which they consider to be the real teacher of the important values.

3. It was noted that the political economy model, though propelled by greed, can, in the Providence of God (as noted Vico), generate good. Examples are the moral qualities of punctuality and precision, hard work and perseverance, parsimony and saving that must developed in a system built upon competition. Further the funds accumulated by greed were not simply hoarded, but in a few generations gave birth to great foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller which are able to take up pressing needs and explore new avenues of potential human progress.

On the other hand, it was noted that greed implies inordinate possessions and that these are acquired at the expense of others. Before accepting the political economy one needs to consider the inhumanly exploitive working conditions which were grievous enough to inspire not only the brutally suppressed strikes, but Marx’s world revolution. The parallels between slavery in the South and the life of factory workers in the North in the past are too many for comfort, not to mention the reductionist effects of this model on life in our times.

Three serious questions were raised regarding the applicability of the model. First, regarding the political economy approach it was noted that, as the resources of the world are limited, hardly bridled self-interest, competitiveness and consumption lead to the pro-gressive impoverishment and marginalization of peoples and nations. Hence, there is need for a horizontal or global perspective in order to be aware of the effects of self-interest, but there is need as well for a vertical perspective which takes account of the values and virtues by which people have come to find meaning in their lives.

Second, the agrarian model was questioned because it saw the restraints as external, coming from the community. But a more adequate sense of law, its generation and application would suggest that, especially in a modern society, to a great extent law reflects, embodies and codifies the values of a people and the cultural norms of interpersonal interaction. To eliminate this ability of a people to shape their social life would be to eviscerate their identity: the U.N. Charter on Human Rights terms this cultural genocide.

Third, it was questioned whether the puritan model calling upon religion should be considered to be an alienating appeal to an external power. God is not only transcendent, but is equally immanent; Tillich would say that God is the ground of my being, in whom I live and move and have my being. Hence, the turn to religion as a basis for social life would be better considered not as alienating, but as empowering.

All of the above raise questions at another level, namely, regarding the basic suppositions behind the set of models, and re-flective of much of the thinking which has pervaded the public philosophy since the founding of the country. This would appear to be that of a citizenry constituted of single individuals (the philoso-phical heritage of English Nominalism) who are fallen and corrupt in their very nature (the theological heritage from Protestantism). The need for constraint was then not only an analogous application of the earlier experience of the reigning in of kings by the Magna Carta or the more recent experience of tyrants and demagogues in the emerging republics, but a view of human nature as isolated and conflictual.

For the puritan vision this grounding comes directly and forcibly from Calvin; for the political economy model it comes from Hobbes through Adam Smith and reflects the conviction that we are dealing not with human goodness, but with evil humans whom, like bullfighters, we must manipulate. For the agrarian model it reflects the pervasive sense of the fallen character of human freedom which, therefore, must be controlled from without. As an ideology this theology is culturally installed as the basic and unquestionable presupposition of public life in this tradition.

The paper’s analysis of the unacceptability of any one of the models suggests some integration of the positive elements of each. But for this another and more adequate basis is required.

The paper is hopeful in a number of ways. It brings to attention the central issue for a free people, namely, how can it exercise its freedom to provide the responsible self-direction needed in order to create and exercise a social life which is one of human dignity, achievement and fulfillment. The three models each emphasize one source for the effective directive power needed for the self-government of a democratic republic, and it is especially enlightening to see these being articulated in the context of this first modern attempt to create such a republic.

For a small agricultural community at what then was certainly the remote rim of the ancient civilizations the founding fathers did their homework amazingly well. Their positions divided appro-priately along the natural lines of life so that their proposals reflected either the central government (the Federalists) making general laws or depending on the concrete tasks of daily life to create the virtues required in the local context (the Anti-Federalist) or the competition of interests in the "market" of ideas (the political economy model). This, in turn, was seen as working to install the needed virtues either from without in the puritan model through the institutions of church or local government or from within in the agrarian model through the culture and heritage of a people.

All reflect real dimensions of our life; hence all are important and full of promise. It is important then to promote and draw upon them all, which implies overcoming the all too human temptation to focus more narrowly upon one to the exclusion of the others and thereby to create a lack of balance whereby what should have promoted human freedom becomes oppressive, freedom itself atrophies, and one is crushed.

Such would be the case, for instance, if in the so-called puritan model public opinion enforced by the state were to override the varied open sensibilities to what is just and charitable in the many particular instances of our life with family and neighbors. This could be true also if the inner sense of tradition were to stifle one’s creativity in adapting this to present circumstances. Finally, this could be especially true if one’s pursuit of self-interest were to be guided only by some minimal general regulations and to lack any the interior humane virtues which have been discovered through history and installed by family and community.

As in most things we need to overcome the insistent and narrowing focus which characterizes the modern rationalist mind, in which technical analysis and exclusion has supplanted synthesis and inclusion as an attitude toward life, and constructed systems are valued over integrated expressions of the cognitive, affective and active dimensions of human life with others.

Thus in the end, it is perhaps not so surprising when Professor Schneck’s search for freedom of choice in society takes him through the three models only to find that the first two are not adequate and that the third, constructed explicitly in order to constitute a place of freedom, proves in the end to be yet more constrictive. For the third model seems to dissociate the exercise of freedom from its ontological roots so that it becomes only individual self-affirmation rather than seeing this, in turn, to be an exercise and manifestation of being. This makes absolute what is relative and thereby misses the essential relatedness which constitutes social life. Analytically, on the human level it dissociates what needs to be held together; it focuses upon freedom as individual rather than as personal which, while unique to each person, is also social as are persons themselves.

This may help to understand one of the queries, namely, how is it that from a situation in which the civil society was the primary context from which emerged the political order and the state, this latter took such a predominant role that either intentionally or unintentionally it so suppressed civil society that in many places it now needs to be reconstituted as human freedom is restored or revivified.

In this light a number of considerations were suggested regarding the relation of the economic and the political orders to civil society. First, as regards the capitalist economic order two dynamics were noted. One was the way in which the capital accumulated at harsh costs to generations of workers generally has not been squandered on personal luxury, but has been funneled into foundations for public works. Among these have been the foundation and/or support to prominent universities, which provide a critical source of insight needed for managing public affairs. This holds potential for generating a civil society much stronger and more creative than had been foreseen in Aristotle’s topology of the political order. It also raises the question of the extent to which the university can join the task of the church as described in the puritan model.

On the other hand, it would appear that the action of the profit motive in the economic order has been less successful in distributing wealth. Statistics show the wealthy increasing their holdings while the poor hold a diminishing percentage of the wealth of a nation. This is dangerously more true when one considers the limits of the world’s resources and the disparity between rich and poor nations.

In this context as well as that of the previous paragraphs, it becomes essential that civil society keep alive the values of a people including justice and altruism and that these be able to shape the general pattern of economic life. This suggests the importance then of a global civil society and of the international NGOs, religious and civic organizations through which such values can be developed and expressed.

If it be true that a basic motivation in the economic order is not really profit and material possessions, but the self respect which these entail, then it need not be expected that only the profit motive can be operative and effective. Indeed, self-respect is too limited if it be restricted to the individual and to pride. Human persons are much more open and concerned: equality and justice are basic motivations as are care for those who are disadvantaged and benevolence for others, their accomplishment and welfare. All of these must be kept alive and fostered. Both the puritan and agrarian models are important for this, and even moreso the civil society which undergirds both.

It was suggested that in the federalist model the legal order expressed and promoted values exteriorly, while education did so from within. But it was added that laws, though they work from without, are themselves derived from within the hearts and minds, the sensibilities and commitments of a people. In this sense civil society, as the dimension in which the culture and traditions of a people are formed, transmitted, fostered and applied, becomes vital for the legal and political order for it is there that a people forms its sense of what is socially acceptable and that social authority is grounded in merit. Hence, we need to develop awareness and respect synchronically for the entire nation and world with all its peoples, and diachronically through the history peoples build themselves and for ever-larger communities.