Call me cynical. Or, simply call me another investor. Although I would like to believe that my investment portfolio is as “progressive” as progressive can be, I also recognize that money is, by necessity, “dirty.” I part with my dollar, so someone else can use it. I part with it because I anticipate a return. But that “someone” may also part with it because she determines that it will earn more in some other venture. And so on, and so forth.
I often reflect on this Econ or PoliSci 101 example when I think of the behavior of the 45th President and his Cabal. They are investors. They are cynics. And, as often as I think of this example, I think of how terribly naive the 44th President was to feel that principal might triumph over self-interest.
I am not suggesting that the 44th President was innocent of political or economic maneuvering. No one is. Rather am I reflecting, personally, about how little “principle” comes into play when we theorize the contemporary world. Even principled action is driven — or so we cynically argue — by the utilitarian pleasure-pain principle. Our neoclassical models would not function (they do function quite well) were this not the case.
A member of the 45th’s team meets with a Russian who says he has dirt on the 42nd’s wife. That’s golden! Go for it!
Wouldn’t we do the same?
There is really no answer to this question. I have spent more time than most pouring over the records of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. They are not pretty. They are not pretty even though, to a person, the anti-federalists were excluded from the assembly. Had they been admitted, there would have been no constitution. But, it was not their exclusion that brought the anti-federalists to mount a centuries-old campaign against the U.S. Constitution. On principle they are opposed to its underlying logic. Which is why they feed upon those few scraps offered to them — the 3/5ths clause, the militia clause — that promise to unravel the fabric from inside out.
They are not unprincipled. They are anti-republican and anti-federalist; on principle.
The question is: what is that principle? It is not republican. It has no respect for “the wealth we hold in common,” for the “commonwealth.” Nor is it aristocratic. They are not champions of blue blood — not champions of power by blood. So, what is their principle?
Their principle is money; not inherited wealth, but money. They will just as quickly turn upon old wealth as they will turn upon new learning. Money is freedom; freedom is money. This is the old yarn that Milton Friedman used to tell about why the common man and the self-made millionaire are one and the same: money. Or, should we not say “private wealth”?
There is a reason why this doctrine — principled to the core — is antithetical to the republic. There is a reason why the framers excluded every anti-federalist and every anti-republican from Philadelphia. The Federalist Papers are propaganda. No doubt. They are politics. Because the folks who stand on the other side hate — they really hate federalism and republicanism, on principle.
Their whole raison d’etre is wrapped up in “private wealth.” The very essence of the U.S. Constitution, by contrast, is “the wealth we hold in common,” res publica, the republican ideal.
But if “private wealth” forms the beginning and the end of political being in the U.S., then what danger is their in a meeting with Russians who have dirt on a politician who threatens, however modestly, private wealth? If “private wealth” is the bottom line, then cynicism is simply another word for common sense.