The emphasis on the civil character of our political leaders,
and indeed on the civil character of citizens in general,
strikes right to the core of 18th and 19th century thought
about the vitality of republican government.  This emphasis
has been part of the political tradition of our country since
its inception, and continues to be vibrant among at least one
important group of politically active Americans today.  The
phenomena is much broader in our country than simply a focus
on the founders--or to put that slightly differently, the
focus on the character of the founders is part of a much
larger public concern about character in general.  The
questions that historians find interesting to ask, and that
other historians find interesting to read, are always
connected to the questions that stimulate the larger society
of which they are part.

In classic republican thinking, of which Jefferson was most
definitely aware, a public order premised on popular
sovereignty can only remain stable, orderly, and decent so
long as the citizens possess the right character.  Democracies
inevitably threaten to devolve into factions.  Factions
produce demogogues, who seize power for their own
self-interested ends, subvert the polity, and ultimately
produce tyrannies.  This is one form of what John Pocock
refers to as the "Machievellian Moment."  Republics die.  The
question in front of statesmen is how to prolong the vitality
and health of a republican polity for as long as possible.

Jefferson's answers to that question are complexly grounded in
earlier political thought.  He condemned economic dependence,
urban life in general, and life time wage work.  Like many
Virginians, he saw land ownership as vital to sustaining good
character.  His thought was also shaped in part by his
rejection of Augustinian Protestant pessimism about human
potential.  For Jefferson, average, typical people were not
irrevocably tainted by original sin.  Landed independence and
the responsibilities that naturally accompanied it would
condition people to good character and prepare men to be good,
vigilant citizens.  Proper education would prepare the best of
them to be good statesmen.

Many of the contemporary concerns of the religious right and
their allies share this broad Jeffersonian concern.  Jefferson
was somewhere along the unitarian/socinian/deist spectrum, a
rationalist in his religious life.  The wing of the Republican
party that today worries about American character is
influenced by evangelical Protestantism.  So in that sense
Senator Allen parts company with Jefferson.  But the broader
concern that the character of individual citizens is deeply
related to the vitality of republican self-government is
something that many contemporary conservatives and Jefferson
share.  Read, for example, Robert Bork's SLOUCHING TOWARDS
GOMORRAH, and compare the rhetoric there to the classic
republicanism that Pocock describes.  The parallels are striking.

I find it quite astounding that the most vibrant heirs to the
Jeffersonian tradition I describe above are evangelical
Protestants.  I don't hear the same concerns for civic
character from libertarian conservatives, which is to be
expected.  But I don't hear it either from the various
constituencies of the Democratic party.  Anyone who has read
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" Inaugural Address
of 1941 can see the concern for civic character of an earlier
generation of progressives.  But today's progressives do not
bother to ask the question that Jefferson asked, that worried
Roosevelt, and that Bork, in his own polemical fashion,
expresses.  So if Allen and others like him appropriate
Jefferson successfully, its because progressives have ceased
to care about questions that certainly animated Jefferson himself.

Warm regards,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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