Conservatives, Liberals, and the
Constitution: Martin Diamond's
Political Science
artin Diamond once said that what drives most Americans is
M not ideology but the spirit expressed in a country and western
song by Tom T. Hall titled "Faster Horses, Older Whiskey, Younger
Women, and More Money." The reference to race horses and
whiskey may seem anachronistic, but if we can judge a nation by its
leaders, younger women and money are still more important than
ideology. As Americans we understand when people cut a few
corners regarding love or money and we are willing to tolerate a few
vices even in a President as long as the economy is strong. We may
even find comfort in the fact that our leaders' standards of private
morality present little challenge to our own actions. We can do
without the harsh judgmental moralism that animated more virtuous
republics. In the proper institutional setting private vice might be
the best support for public virtue.
Diamond liked to use examples such as Hall's song to puncture
the pretensions of both academic idealists and partisan ideologues.
Academics often see politics in terms of abstract models based on
either mathematics or philosophy. But Diamond believed that
neither mathematical behaviorism nor philosophic detachment
offered the proper perspective from which to understand human
nature or political life. Politics could not be reduced to simple
formulas or utopian ideas, because people were neither simple nor
dispassionate.
At the same time Diamond could never be a mere partisan. In
1976 Diamond was asked to debate another professor on the relative
merits of Ford and Carter in the race for President. Diamond
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presented a spirited and persuasive case for Ford, but half way
through the proceedings he said to his colleague: "I can make a
better case for Carter than you have done," and he proceeded to do
so. His colleague responded: "Marty, you take words and turn them
to magic." He did, but it was not the magic of a sophist or base
rhetorician. The sophist believes there is no truth, whereas Diamond believed that common opinion always contained a grain of
truth. He had no illusions about the moral equivalence of all political
beliefs, but he thought the student of politics should begin by
looking for the truth inherent in opinion.
In his essay "Conservatives, Liberals and the Constitution" 1
Diamond does just that. Like Aristotle Diamond thought that
individual actions could be understood only in light of the conception of the good to which they were directed. He also knew that each
conception of the good was incomplete, and argued that the partiality of contemporary ideology could best be understood by recourse
to the principles of the Constitution. For Diamond the Constitution
was the fundamental law which bound the nation together. It was,
if not comprehensive, the common ground on which liberals and
conservatives met and addressed their differences. It provided the
framework within which political debate took place, and by which it
was transformed into policy and government.
I will begin with Diamond's constitutional criticism of liberalism
and conservatism, and I will go on to show that Diamond's thesis has
held up quite well over the last thirty years. It has proved better at
predicting emerging trends in contemporary liberalism and conservatism than many behavioral studies. Diamond, however, thought
that political science should be more concerned with understanding
than prediction, and that understanding began with an appreciation
of the principles animating the political system. It is Diamond's
contribution to the study of the Constitution that lies at the heart of
his work. There has been much scholarship on the creation and
meaning of the Constitution since Diamond first wrote on the
subject. Others have deepened, refined and even corrected
Diamond's view, but it is largely due to his work that we see a
renewed interest in the thought of the Founders among political
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77
scientists.
Diamond has been faulted for reducing the Founders' view of
government to a system of safe but petty and selfish commercialism.
But Diamond did not create this vision. In many ways he only
reacted to it. He saw the truth in it as a description of contemporary
politics, but unlike other critics of contemporary political life he
sought to show the good at which it was directed and the use to which
the Founders thought it could be put in building a decent liberal
republic. Life and politics are about choices, and Diamond did not
recoil in the face of the costs that all choices entail. Diamond
believed that if the choice was between a politics grounded in selfinterest and a politics based upon abstract principles, he would
always choose the former. He was too aware of the monstrous
possibilities to which the latter choice might lead.
At the highest level Diamond knew that no choice was perfect,
but this insight led him to neither nihilism nor despair. To the
contrary, it was because of this fact that he found the greatest hope
for politics and human happiness. For if we can never achieve
perfect knowledge or justice, we are at least open to and in some
sense driven by these questions. Especially in his later work,
Diamond points beyond the limits of politics and human nature to
their possibilities. He shows that the recognition of the limits
imposed by necessity can itself lead to a kind of freedom, and also
that tolerance is a necessary precondition for the flourishing of the
highest human possibilities in a world where men are not gods. Just
as we can move from conservatism and liberalism to the Constitution, we can also move from the institutional arrangements of the
Constitution to the highest human possibilities.
Conservatives, Liberals, and the ConstitutionA Restatement
The central point of Diamond's essay is that both conservatives and
liberals have an incomplete view of the Constitution. Diamond turns
to a famous quotation from Federalist No. 51 to illustrate his point.
In framing a government that is to be administered by men over
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men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the
government to control the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no
doubt, the primary control of government; but experience has
taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions (Conservatives, 69). 2
According to Diamond liberals tend to emphasize the importance of democratic dependence, whereas conservatives are partial
to auxiliary precautions. They do agree on two particulars, however.
First, they each see democracy and institutional restraint as mutually
exclusive alternatives. Although Madison knew that these concerns
were often in tension, he believed they were ultimately interdependent. Democracy needed restraint to protect liberty, just as institutions must be accountable to the people if the people are to be free.
Liberals and conservatives saw only the tension and potential
conflict in these principles, and concluded that we must choose
between them. Liberals in the 1960s chose democratic dependence
as their guiding principle, whereas conservatives aligned themselves
with the principle of institutional restraint. Neither believed there
was a middle ground.
Their second point of agreement is derived from the first,
namely that the Constitution supported the principle of institutional
restraint in opposition to the principle of democracy. To be for
democracy was to be against the Constitution and to be suspicious
of democracy allied one with the Constitution. Under the influence
of late nineteenth century scholarship and politics, the Constitution
had come to be seen as the major barrier to political reform.
Understood almost exclusively in terms of the "liberty of contract,"
the Constitution could be used to trump popular support for reform.
In response to this view the Progressives were willing, even eager,
to part company with the Constitution. As Diamond explained:
"Debunking the Founding Fathers would emancipate the present
from the moral claim of the past and open the way for drastic
reform."(Conservatives, 70). Or, as Herbert Croly argued, the
purpose of the progressive movement was to free "democracy from
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79
the bondage of law." 3 The Constitution was a voice from the past,
the voice of tradition, creating a roadblock to liberal reform. If the
Constitution's moral authority could be brought into question, then
the path to reform would be clear. Thus the Constitution as the
unquestioned symbol of the status quo served to rally conservatives
to its defense and liberals to fight the common enemy. By accepting
the most radical, conservative interpretation of the Constitution, the
Progressives joined with the conservatives in reducing the Constitution to a simple instrument of restraint.
According to Diamond the liberals were right that the Constitution provided a restraint on democracy, but they were wrong in
rejecting such restraint as incompatible with democracy. Much of
Diamond's essay, and his work in general, is a response to the liberal
view of the Constitution. Diamond's response was determined in
part by what he took to be the dominant view of his time, especially
among academics. To judge the quality and character of Diamond's
, work it is necessary to understand the political and theoretical
context within which that work took place. One of the most important things Diamond taught us is to distinguish what is contingent
and what is essential to politics and our understanding of it.
Diamond said less about the errors of the conservatives because
they were then less influential, but his criticisms of simple conservatism are as powerful if not as plentiful. Diamond explained:
The conservative wrongly thinks that the auxiliary precautions
were designed to prevent the majority from doing whatever it
is the conservatives now dislike-that the system is indeed
tilted toward anti-democracy and deadlock (Conservatives,
88).
Conservatives liked the Constitution for its anti-democratic tendencies, but that was a mistake. They depreciated Madison's claim that
a dependence on the people is the primary check on government.
From a more comprehensive perspective, "the liberal is the intelligent foe of the Constitution and the conservative its foolish partisan.
Given the dominance of either, the Constitution would perish"
(Conservatives, 88). What was missing from the debate between
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liberals and conservatives was an intelligent defense of the Constitution, and that is what Diamond hoped to supply. Thus Diamond
rejected mere partisanship of either the left or the right.
According to Diamond, liberals and conservatives were particularly deficient in their understanding of the basic institutional
structures created by the Constitution, the separation of powers and
federalism. Diamond knew that conservatives and liberals would
inevitably switch sides on these issues depending on the politics of
the moment. The same ideological blinders that led liberals and
conservatives to ignore the Constitution's complexity also allowed
for convenient memory lapses regarding their earlier positions. Both
believed that the constitutional separation of powers was created
primarily for the purpose of thwarting majority will and preventing
the tyranny of the executive. From Franklin D. Roosevelt through
Lyndon Johnson, conservatives applauded the separation of powers
for protecting liberty whereas liberals saw it as frustrating the ability
of the executive to unite and execute popular will.
Partisans of each stripe accepted this view of the Constitution
without question. In doing so, however, they ignored one important
fact: the separation of powers was created, according to Diamond,
"to avoid the kind of weak executive then prevalent in the states"
(Conservatives, 74). The desire on the part of the authors of the
Constitution was to strengthen, not weaken, executive power. They
believed that a free government must also be a competent government. Otherwise it would not be able to protect the liberty of the
citizens. The experience under the Articles of Confederation had a
sobering effect on many of those revolutionaries who had believed
that government in any form was the enemy of freedom. In particular they learned that a national government needed an independent
executive and judicial branch to perform even the limited purposes
assigned under the Articles.
Neither liberals nor conservatives admit that the framers created "the strongest executive possible under the circumstances, and
that the development of the modern presidency... depended upon
the separation and broad powers thus independently granted the
office" (Conservatives, 74). As Diamond points out, even such a
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81
powerful liberal critic of the separation of powers as James McGregor
Burns thought that if the Framers had opted for a parliamentary
model, it would have been "much more like the 3rd or 4th
Republics of France... than Great Britain's system of strong executive leadership" (Conservatives, 74).
Diamond also understood that the separation of powers provided an "auxiliary precaution" against tyranny of the majority, but
that precaution was to protect liberty rather than subvert democracy. In addition, it should be noted that this precaution was
directed primarily against the legislature and not the executive.
Whatever the merits of their policies, neither liberals nor conservatives have provided a complete or consistent understanding of the
constitutional office of the Presidency or the separation of powers.
Although both liberals and conservatives were wrong about the
Framers' intentions regarding the separation of powers, they were
right about the effects of federalism on national power. Both saw
federalism as merely another means of separating power and
weakening the national government. The federal elements of the
constitutional system fragment political authority and thereby
reduce the power of the national government. Conservatives applaud this feature, whereas liberals condemn it, and both attribute
this to Madison. Each ignores the fact that the federal elements
were not Madison's idea. They were added by those who opposed
the centralizing tendencies of Madison's original proposal.
Like contemporary liberals, the anti-Federalists complained
that the Constitution was undemocratic. Although liberals often
embrace the democratic criticisms made by the anti-Federalists,
they ignore the conflict the anti-Federalists saw between democracy and the centralization of political power. A strong national
government was a threat to democracy as well as to liberty. On the
other hand conservatives forget that the Federalists believed that a
national government was the only practical means by which to
restrain the threat to liberty posed by unchecked democratic
majorities in the states. If cured of their ideologically induced
amnesia, liberals would have to admit that centralization might be
a major threat to democracy just as conservatives would have to
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entertain the possibility that a powerful national government was
necessary to protect liberty.
Diamond's Prescience:
Liberal Elitism and Conservative Populism
In his introduction to "Conservatives, Liberals, and the Constitution," William Schambra points out that:
in the mid-1960s, when the essay was written, liberals tended
to deplore and conservatives to celebrate the Constitution's
constraints on majority rule. In the post-Reagan era, that
division is not so clear-indeed to some extent liberals and
conservatives have switched positions, with conservatives seem4
ingly more "populistic" than liberals.
Although this reversal of positions has become more apparent
in the post-Reagan era, Diamond anticipated this possibility in his
account of liberal and conservative attitudes toward judicial review.
By the mid- 1960s conservatives who had embraced judicial review
from the late nineteenth century through the New Deal became
bitter opponents of the Court. Conversely, the liberals who had
attacked the Court and its power of judicial review had become its
most strident defenders. As Diamond concluded: "Both seem to
change regarding the Court according to their respective estimates
of whether their policies will prevail" (Conservatives, 78).
Diamond contends that the liberal distrust of the Court was
more radical than that of the conservatives, because liberals distrusted any institutional impediments to direct democracy. At the
same time, conservatives were caught between their dislike of the
policies of liberal judges and their belief in the need for auxiliary
precautions. What has happened over the last thirty years is that as
conservatives have been more successful at the polls, their belief in
auxiliary precautions has faded. Increasingly the conservatives are
attracted to the rhetoric of populism rather than the rhetoric of
institutional restraint. The goal of the conservatives remains limiting
the power of the national government, but their new slogan might
be, "populism in defense of restraint," a slogan that might have been
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83
foreshadowed in Barry Goldwater's famous 1964 phrase, "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."
Diamond also noted a growing inconsistency in the liberal
position. Although liberals attacked judicial restrictions on the
powers of the national government, they defended such restrictions
on local majorities. As liberals have been less successful at the polls,
first in presidential races and more recently in congressional elections, they have become less enamored of democratic accountability
at the national level. They have been eager to use the courts,
independent regulatory commissions, and procedural restraints on
the power of majorities in Congress to promote their agenda. The
liberal slogan might now be, "elitism in defense of democracy." But
without a constitutional defense of institutional restraint the legitimacy of liberal leadership is open to question. Only if we understand
the more comprehensive perspective of the Constitution can we see
the limitations of ideology and discover the possibility of political
principles that are more than short term rationalizations for immediate policy preferences.
Diamond's ConstitutionA Response to Progressive Scholarship
In order to recover a constitutional perspective, Diamond thought
it was first necessary to rescue the Constitution from the grips of its
most powerful intellectual opponents. By the 1960s, there was no
doubt in Diamond's mind that its most influential critics were on the
left. Furthermore he understood that contemporary liberal distrust
of the Constitution had its roots in the Progressive thought of the
early twentieth century. According to Diamond, historians such as
J. Allen Smith, Vernon L. Parrington, and Charles Beard were
largely responsible for the idea that the Constitution was antidemocratic (Conservatives, 70). Such historians castigated the
Founders as reactionary opponents of democracy dedicated to
protecting their class interests. All of American history, according to
the Progressives, could be understood as a battle between true
democrats and an oppressive, oligarchic class. In response, Diamond argued that Madison had anticipated Marx, foreseeing the
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possibility that a broad middle class and a diverse economy would
moderate the violence of class conflict. Different kinds of wealth and
the resulting multiplicity of interests would be the decisive political
fact in the modern era s
Diamond was not the first to call into question the Progressives'
view of the Founding. In the 1950s historians such as Louis Hartz
offered an alternative view of American political development,
arguing that consensus rather than class warfare was the primary
dynamic of American history. According to Hartz, America never
produced stratified social classes. Hartz points out that the categories or classes on which Beard's analysis depends were never present
in America. The social conditions in the United States supported
consensus rather than class conflict. In Europe, where vestigial
feudal structures stood in opposition to the egalitarian thrust of
modernity, democratization resulted in class conflict. But in America
the relatively equal social conditions prevented feudal institutions
from taking root. Liberal principles naturally flourished in the
American social setting where social mobility was the rule.
Although Hartz denigrates the Beardian analysis, he nonetheless argues that economic conditions were the primary determinants
of American history. Hartz contends that there was no legislator in
American history. We did not need one, he says, because history had
already laid the foundation of the regime.' Historical circumstances, not the authors of the Constitution, determined the shape
of American institutions. Hartz in fact argues that the Constitution
represented a falling away from the liberal tradition in America. In
his view, the Framers of the American Constitution made the same
mistake that many historians such as Beard have made. The Framers
assumed that the political problems they were facing were the same
as those in Europe, where there was intense conflict between the
rich and the poor. Consequently, they thought that the political
problem was to assure stability by restraining that conflict. But
because of America's "social freedom and social equality," Hartz
contends, America did not need the restraints that were suitable to
a more stratified society. Madison's discussion in Federalist No. 10,
Hartz says, is largely irrelevant for America. In fact, Hartz argues,
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"The Founding Fathers derived a scheme to deal with conflict that
could only survive in a land of solidarity" (Hartz, 86).
Hartz admits that the Lockeanism from which American principles are derived has two sides, "a defense of the state that is
implicit, and a limitation of the state that is explicit" (Hartz, 86). But
he claims that only the explicit teaching was appropriate to America.
America, at the time of the Founding, was like Locke's state of
nature, where neither the scarcity of land nor conventional class
distinctions were present. The social conditions in America were
perfect for liberalism. No strong government was necessary.
Hartz finds support for his thesis in the fate of the Federalist
party. He says:
The very solidarity that supported the Constitution meant
Whig elitism would be isolated as the democratic tide of the
nation asserted itself once more. The mechanism of 1776 did
not end in 1787; it merely went underground as the victories
of Jefferson and Jackson were to show (Hartz, 86).
The Constitution was the result of an aberration in American
politics, but it survived because of our overwhelmingly fortuitous
social circumstances. Those social circumstances insured the development of a populist, and egalitarian political system.
Diamond disagreed. He believed that only a political system
that understood the limits of populism and economic determinism
could protect the equal political rights of its citizens. On this point
Diamond is closer to historian Bernard Bailyn, the seminal author
of the "civic republican" school, than to Hartz. In The Ideological
Origins of the American Revolution,' Bailyn contends that although political institutions and ideas were designed to fit America's
social setting, social conditions alone do not explain the development of American politics. No social setting, however favorable, can
ensure the liberty of the people. The preservation of liberty
requires the establishment of political institutions. Bailyn shows
that the Founders recognized this fact and set up institutions that
protected liberty. The Founders' idea of liberty, according to
Bailyn, was most emphatically one of political liberty-a liberty
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achieved through a political system rather than one that inheres in
societal developments. The Founders saw that the same political
power that was necessary to preserve liberty might also threaten
liberty. As Bailyn says, they knew that the natural prey of political
power was "liberty, or law, or right" (Bailyn, 57). Yet they also
recognized that concentrations of power would exist, if not in the
political system, then in society. For this reason, "The very idea of
liberty [for the Founders] was bound up with a preservation of [a]
balance of power" (Bailyn, 76-77). Even the colonists' view of
representation was heavily influenced by the belief in the need for
a balance of power. Without a voice in Parliament, the colonists
feared, a balance of power would be impossible: "[T]he contention
on the part of the Revolutionary leaders was that they were faced
with a deliberate conspiracy to destroy the balance and eliminate
their liberty" (Bailyn, 144).
The colonists, for the most part, were not simple democrats, but
republicans who saw the need for government. Bailyn, however,
refers to a strain of Revolutionary thought that supports Hartz's
socioeconomic determinism. Like Hartz, Thomas Paine associated
liberty with social factors rather than political systems. For example,
he claimed that liberty in England was "wholly owing to the
constitution of the people and not the constitution of the government" (Bailyn, 286). But Bailyn contends that:
Common Sense had scarcely been published when it came
under strong attack, not only by loyalists, but by some of the
most ardent patriots who feared the tendencies of Paine's
constitutional ideas as much as they approved his plea for
independence (Bailyn, 286-87).
The colonists who attacked Paine thus recognized the importance of the constitution of the government for the constitution of
the people, or the importance of political choices for a people's
freedom. Bailyn emphasizes the political dimension to historical
development that Hartz's analysis neglects. He shows how the
Founders were dealing with particular political problems within the
context of an established political tradition.
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According to Bailyn:
The intellectual history of the years of crisis from 1763 to 1776
is the story of the clarification and consolidation under the
pressure of events of a view of the world and America's place
in it only partially seen before (Bailyn, 22).
It is of course true that there was a development in American
political thought taking place during the pre-Revolutionary period,
but it is incorrect to argue that this is the period when American
political thought reached its peak of clarity or consolidation. New
ideas and perspectives were generated during this period, but what
was lacking was precisely the clarity and consolidation that Bailyn
leads us to believe we would find. There was no authoritative view
on issues such as representation or the best means of achieving a
"proper" balance of power.
In The Natural Rights Republic, Michael Zuckert points out
thatBailyn, in his The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution "barely mentioned the Declaration. Indeed, his only discussion
of it centered on the rather peripheral issue of the notion of
conspiracy it contained." 8 Far from being a synthesis of earlier Whig
thought, the Declaration rests its claims squarely on the foundation
of Lockean natural rights theory. The importance of this theory to
the founding generation could only be denied if one ignores the
i mpact of the Declaration on the American political tradition.
Martin Diamond has himself been accused of slighting the
importance of the Declaration. His work focused on the Constitution rather than the Declaration, and he claimed that the Declaration was an essentially conservative document. This conclusion
might be consistent with the argument that the Founders were part
of a gradual evolution of republican thought. But just as some of the
so-called Straussian students of the American Founding have faulted
Diamond for his failure to emphasize the natural rights claims of the
Declaration, the followers of Bailyn see Diamond as merely another
member of the Straussian natural rights school. Diamond accepts
the distinction between ancient and modern republicanism, a
distinction that contemporary historians have been reluctant to
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make.
I would argue, however, that Diamond understood both the
importance of the Declaration and its limitations. As a statement of
the natural rights foundation of American politics the Declaration
cannot be ignored, but as an explanation of how to institutionalize
that principle it offered little or no guidance. The Declaration was
written in reaction against Great Britain. It clarified and in some
sense radicalized the argument for popular government, shifting
the emphasis from a gradual evolution of the British tradition to an
appeal to nature and nature's God. The Revolution could not be
justified by the appeal to tradition. No matter how sober and
conservative, the Founders were taking a radical step. That is
precisely why it was so controversial a step, and why they could no
longer rely on their claims to the rights of Englishmen. Once this
step was taken, the job was to win the independence they had
claimed. It was not the time for a careful consideration of the
institutional arrangements best suited to the protection of their
freedom. Thus Bailyn, in one sense, may not give sufficient weight
to the pressure of events. He may not see that the pressure of events
at the time of the Revolution did not allow for a consideration of the
issue of the structure of liberal government, the issue that would
ultimately shape the debate at the Constitutional Convention.
Bailyn saw American republicanism as a direct outgrowth of the
opposition thought of the English Whigs. The Whig's distrust of
political power and wealth resonated with the ideas of certain
members of the founding generation. For Diamond, however, the
tradition of opposition thought found its primary expression in the
writings of the anti-Federalists. The anti-Federalists saw a powerful
government as inconsistent with democracy. It was Madison who
argued that political liberty would be safe only if there was a national
government powerful enough to protect it. It was the anti-Federalists who were suspicious of wealth and economic development.
Critics may be correct that Diamond attributes to Madison a more
fully developed view of industrial society than the evidence supports. But if this is true, it is also possible that Diamond saw the
implications of Madison's thought more clearly than Madison. One
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of Diamond's chief critics on this score, Alan Gibson, has argued
that Madison was essentially an agrarian, but even Gibson admits
that Madison's agrarianism was a commercial agrarianism that
supported economic diversity.' The question for Gibson and
perhaps ultimately for Madison is whether, in such a system,
commerce and diversity will inevitably take precedence over agrarianism. In any event it was the anti-Federalists, not Madison and the
Federalists, who were most fearful of commerce and wealth.
Finally, it was the anti-Federalists who saw executive power as
essentially monarchic and therefore illegitimate, but as we have
seen, it was Madison who made the case for the need for and
legitimacy of a strong executive within a republican government.
Zuckert notes that Bailyn is far from the most radical critic of the
natural rights doctrine:
Bailyn admitted the role of Locke, and Enlightenment theory,
and of the natural rights philosophy in the mix of ideas
animating the Americans at the time of the Revolution (Zuckert,
202).
Zuckert argues that it was civic republicans such as J.G.A. Pocock
who claimed that:
the opposition tradition Bailyn identified was an Anglican
version of a much older republican tradition, originating with
the Greeks, especially Aristotle, and revived by the Italian
Renaissance humanists, especially Machiavelli.... Pocock decrees "The American Revolution, [was] less the first act of
revolutionary enlightenment than...the last great act of the
Renaissance." America was founded in a "dread of modernity"
(Zuckert, 204).
Diamond was well aware of this older republican tradition, and
he knew that there were parallels between the institutional arrangements created by the Founders and those of earlier republics.
Nonetheless he concluded that there was something distinctive
about the foundations and the institutional arrangements of American republicanism. In his essay "The Separation of Powers and the
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Mixed Regime," Diamond explained that:
the separation of powers was clearly aimed at guarding against
the loss of liberty by its system of separate and checking
branches. But it must also be added that the American
founders believed democracy prone to a second and equally
grievous failing, namely, a tendency to ineptitude, inconstancy, incompetence-in a word, inadequacy to the requirements of competent government (which itself was, of course,
also regarded as indispensable to liberty).'°
To achieve these goals the founders relied on a "policy of supplying
by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives"
(Federalist, 349). But these rival interests were not the product of
wealth or even wisdom or virtue, but simply of "the separated jobs"
and the "self-regarding attachment to them" of their occupants.
(Separation, 67). Diamond saw that this was different from the
arrangements of earlier republics or mixed regimes. The constitutional separation of powers was a crucial and novel element of the
Founders' solution to the problem of republican government.
The Declaration represented the beginning: not the end of
American political thought. It provided a new principled framework within which American republicanism would develop. It was,
however, the Constitution that would address the questions of how
to organize a government, without the unifying authority of a king,
an aristocratic class, or a politically powerful church. The older
republican tradition did not tell the Founders the best way to
resolve the conflicting claims of majority rule and minority rights.
The older tradition was animated largely by the desire to wrest
power from individuals or groups who ruled in their own interest
against the interest of society as awhole and the rights of individuals.
That older tradition had no conception of the salutary possibilities
of self-interest. Only after the Revolution could the problems of
liberal republican government come into focus, and only then could
a discussion of it be free to examine the potential and the problems
of free government.
It was after the Revolution, when the Founders faced the task
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of institution building, that we find the best statement of their
political principles. The Constitution was not the mere product of
the pressure of events, or at least it was less so than virtually any
previous constitution. Men who thought they had a choice regarding
their form of government, who thought that choice was significant,
and who believed that reasoned debate was the best guide for choice
created the American constitutional system. These men were not
oblivious of political pressure. They did not transcend their social
setting or their particular self-interest. These factors qualified, but
they did not overwhelm the deliberate choices made at the Constitutional Convention, choices that considered not merely immediate
pressures and self-interest, but also the long-range good of the
people.
There is an important parallel between Diamond's reflections
on liberalism and conservatism and his scholarship on the founding.
As we have noted Diamond was explicitly responding to the Progressive criticism of the founding generation. He wanted to explain the
Founders' belief that republican restraint and popular government
could and should go together and thereby expose the problems
inherent in the charges of elitism made against the Constitution. But
on another level Diamond also anticipated and responded to the
civic republicans' attack on natural rights. Just as the Progressive
critics looked to an older, feudal class structure to explain a dynamic
modern economy, the civic republicans ignored the important
difference between ancient and modern republics. Diamond understood that the setting for republican government had changed.
The principles that had guided the English Whigs were appropriate
for a country where monarchy and aristocracy were deeply rooted,
but they did not address the problems of democracy in a country that
by tradition and by choice was detached from those institutions. If
the English Whigs presented a poor model for American republicanism, the small homogenous republics of the ancient world were
even further removed from the world of eighteenth century America.
In many respects the civic republicans adopted a more ahistorical
approach than Diamond. The most far-sighted of the Founders
understood that they were in a novel historical situation, and that a
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reliance on old formulas was no longer adequate. Diamond's
scholarship reveals the novelty of their response to those circumstances.
To explain Diamond's position on contemporary scholarship,
we might paraphrase his comments on liberalism and conservatism.
The Progressive historians were the thoughtful critics of the
Founders. They were correct that the institutional arrangements
created by the Founders were at odds with the Progressive's vision
of democracy and equality. The civic republicans are, like the
conservatives, the foolish partisans of the Founders and of the
republican tradition. They see no conflicts within that tradition and
they see little room for reasoned debate and choice in political life.
There is some truth to each position. The Progressives were right
that institutional restraints could and were used to threaten democracy and political equality. The civic republicans were right to point
out the importance of historical evolution and the limits of reason.
But they were only partly right. Both were trapped by the past. The
Progressives mistook the vestigial elements of class conflict as an
essential part of the constitutional system, and the civic republicans
could not accept the insights of modern natural rights theory,
because they were blinded by a traditional notion of republicanism.
Diamond believed that American republicanism could avoid the
class conflict and elitism feared by the Progressives at the same time
that it could create a more stable foundation for popular government than one could find in an appeal to a tradition of another era.
Diamond's Political Science
Does Diamond overemphasize the importance of self-interest and
individual rights? Does he overstate the Founders' reliance on
modern liberal theory and neglect their more practical, more
traditional, and more noble elements? One can certainly find
evidence for these charges in his writing, but the charges will stick
only if one commits the same crime of which Diamond is accusedtaking an argument out of its context. Diamond sought to add a
dimension that was missing in contemporary political debate and in
contemporary scholarship. He wanted to show that it is possible to
Martin Diamond's Political Science
93
see the legitimacy of different political perspectives, and moreover,
it was possible to reach beyond mere partisanship to a ground of
common principle. He wanted to speak for the Founders against the
Progressives' charges of elitism and the civic republicans' depreciation of the distinctive role the authors of the Constitution played in
the transformation of the idea of republicanism.
The evidence of Diamond's belief in a broader and more
elevated view of politics and human nature is too often ignored or
depreciated. If Diamond learned from the Federalists about the
importance of self interest and institutional arrangements, he also
learned from Tocqueville about the bonds of association that are
essential to a decent political system. His last major essay was a
discussion of the bourgeois virtues that he thought were a necessary
element of the American regime. He saw in these virtues not only
their low and selfish origins but also their ability to move people
beyond those origins to appreciate the qualities necessary for
independence, success and perhaps even honor.
Diamond was himself a political scientist and it is in his writings
about political science that he gives the most complete picture of his
teaching. If Diamond appeared Lockean in his understanding of the
American founding, he was unquestionably an Aristotelian in his
approach to political science. In the 1960s Diamond argued that
political science oscillated between two undesirable extremes.
Behavioral political scientist made a radical distinction between
facts and values. It claimed to possess a scientific knowledge, and
argued that this was the only kind of knowledge possible. The cost
of that claim was neutrality on the most important questions faced
by the political world. The political scientist as political scientist had
nothing to say about political choice.
If the behaviorists became the partisans of "facts," the New Left
became the partisans of "values," and Diamond expressed some
sympathy with the New Left attack on behaviorism.
They have rightly insisted that the study of political questions
is inseparable from questions regarding justice, the good life,
and the best political order. Had they stopped there, or more
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precisely, had they really dug in there and truly reopened these
questions they would have vastly improved contemporary
teaching about political matter.'
Of course they did not stop there. The New Left rejected the
fact-value distinction as understood by the behaviorists not because
they believed that reason was a guide to political life but because they
thought questions of fact were irrelevant to political life. The result
of this doctrine, according to Diamond, would be the utter
politicization of the classroom. Education would become indistinguishable from politics. The New Left may have disappeared but if
anything the politicization of the classroom has found even more
powerful support in the doctrines of post-modernism. Diamond's
question remains as provocative today as it was thirty years ago: If
education is merely politics, then what do we as teachers and
scholars have to offer to our students or our political system?
It was to Aristotle that Diamond turned for an alternative to the
contemporary perspectives. Because politics is about choice, political science is different from other sciences. It must begin with an
appreciation of "its peculiar political circumstances (the `variable,' as
it were) to preserve its scientific integrity (the `constant') (Teaching,
291). The world of politics, unlike the laws of gravity, involves choice
and change. Thus one cannot explain it in terms of the principles of
physical science. Aristotelian political science stands as a criticism of
contemporary behaviorism on empirical, not metaphysical, grounds.
We know from experience that human action and political action are
animated by goals or purposes. People act because they believe that
things can be different from what they are. They act in the name of
some potential good. If the goal was inevitable or determined there
would be no need for action. If there were no possibility of change,
action would be futile. Humans act because they can conceive of
different alternatives and they believe they can make them real. Our
choices are real, and those choices are inextricably connected with
our values. As Diamond often said "you can't tell one factual datum
" 12
from another without a normative score card.
In this sense Diamond's analysis of the distinction between
Martin Diamond's Political Science
95
ancient and modern republicanism places him squarely in the camp
of Aristotelian political science. If the American Founders rejected
the practice of ancient republics, they embraced Aristotle's belief
that through the exercise of human reason they could create a better
political order. They saw possibilities that had not heretofore existed, at least not in the practical political world. They accepted the
self-interested nature of human beings and their propensity to be
moved by passion, but they also saw that only a political system or a
political thought that recognized this aspect of human nature would
be capable of understanding and supporting the highest possibilities
of that nature.
Diamond had no taste for utopianism in either political thought
or political life. He knew that for better and for worse, both
philosophy and politics were the product of complex and often
selfish individual human beings. Perhaps he even believed that only
a thought so conceived, could be dedicated to the end of human
happiness or human goodness. In this respect we might say of
Diamond what he said of Lincoln: "he was the Common Man's
13
Uncommon Man." Although some of Diamond's critics complain
that in taking opinion seriously he debased the Founders' understanding of politics and human nature, his purpose was the opposite.
It was to demonstrate the virtues of the American political system
and the Founding principles that animated it. Diamond distinguished those principles from self-righteous moralism on the one
hand and vulgar selfishness and materialism on the other. He
thought himself neither a beast nor a God. He was a passionate man
who knew that human reason could not perfect, but might improve,
political life.
David K. Nichols
Montclair State University
NOTES
1. Martin Diamond, "Conservatives, Liberals, and the Constitution." First published in Robert A. Goldwin, ed., Left, Right, and
Center, Chicago, 1963, Rand McNally. Reprinted in As Far as
Republican Principles Will Admit: Essays by Martin Diamond, ed.
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William A. Schambra, Washington, 1992, AEI Press. Cited as
Conservatives; page numbers are to the Schambra edition.
2. Diamond's emphasis. The quotation is from Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. Jacob
E. Cooke, Hanover, NH, 1961, University Press of New England
(Wesleyan University Press), p. 349. Cited as Federalist.
3. Herbert Croly, Progressive Democracy, New York, 1915,
Macmillan, p. 256.
4. Schambra, op. cit., note 1, supra, p. 68.
5. Martin Diamond, " Democracy and The Federalist." First
published in American Political Science Review, vol. 53, no. 1,
March, 1959, p, 52. Reprinted in Schambra, note 1, supra, at pp. 1736. The passage here is at p. 32.
6. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, New York,
1955, Harcourt, Brace, pp. 46-47. Cited as "Hartz."
7. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American
Revolution, Cambridge, 1967, Harvard University Press. Cited as
"Bailyn."
8. Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic, Notre Dame,
1996, University of Notre Dame Press, p. 203.
9. Alan Gibson, "The Commercial Republic and the Pluralist
Critique of Marxism: An Analysis of Martin Diamond's Interpretation of Federalist 10," in Polity, vol. 25, no. 4, Summer, 1993, p. 514.
10. Martin Diamond, "The Separation of Powers and the Mixed
Regime," first published in Publius: The Journal of Federalism,
1978. Reprinted in Schambra, note 1, supra, at pp. 58-67. The
citation here is to pp. 66-67. Cited as "Separation."
11. Martin Diamond, "Teaching About Politics as a Vocation,"
an expanded version of which is reprinted from Sidney Hook, et al.,
The Ethics of Teaching and Scientific Research, in Schambra, note
1, supra, at pp. 285-308. The citation here is to p. 296 in Schambra.
Cited as "Teaching."
12. Martin Diamond, "The Dependence of Fact Upon `Value'."
First published in Interpretation, vol. 2, no. 3, Spring, 1972, at
pp.226-35. Reprinted in Schambra, note 1, supra, at pp. 309-18.
The citation here is to p. 318.
Martin Diamond's Political Science
97
13. Martin Diamond, "Lincoln's Greatness," a speech given at
Claremont Men's College in 1960, reprinted in Interpretation in
1980, and then reprinted in Schambra, note 1, supra, at pp. 258-62.
The citation here is to page 262 therein.