As I’m now engaged in teaching a summer course on the Hebrew Scriptures, I can’t help but reflect – this being Memorial Day – that the distinguished Founders weren’t only indebted to the likes of Montesquieu, Locke, Burke and others for their political theory, but (believe it or not) to the Bible. The “Good Book,” they were convinced, would help them escape the endless pitfalls of governing. Remember the prophet Samuel, who warned the Israelites of the dangers of asking for a king? Didn’t the Scriptures envision an early form of “checks and balances” to prevent one form of tyranny or another from gaining the upper hand? The king wasn’t allowed to rule in an unfettered manner; he was to be “checked” by priests and prophets, whose job it was to hold him accountable to a higher authority, who could and frequently did put him in his royal place. The Bible, it seems, isn’t just a book of high-minded religiosity. It puts forth the very political ideas that came to be part of our own republic!
In the American experience, as, we know, all the tensions that were bubbling underneath, between the North and the South, between the big states and the little states, were never resolved. They were discreetly shoved under the carpet, but they were still there, destined to erupt later. The framers tried various compromise solutions, especially regarding slavery. They decided, notoriously, to count a slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of allotting representation to the states. This of course was a temporary fix at best. The slavery problem came to be fused to the looming issue of states’ rights, and historians to this day debate what it was that precipitated the great rift that culminated in the Civil War. Was it slavery, or was it in fact the question of how much autonomy can and should be granted to each individual state?
Perhaps slavery was only a pretext, the spark that ignited the conflict that was there from the beginning, between top-heavy central authority and the idea of a diffuse “confederacy” or “conglomerate” of sovereign state governments. In any case, the new reality after the Civil War was that the United States really was one nation rather than a “league” of states. The power of the federal government would grow steadily from then on, as would the expectation among the populace that it do more to benefit the lives of ordinary Americans. A few post-Civil War presidents would try to hold back the tide of bigger government, taking the position that the main role of the Chief Executive was to keep bad laws from being enacted. President Grover Cleveland famously quipped, “Though the people should support the government, the government should not support the people.” But such sentiments only got him into trouble, politically. The nation and the vision of the Founders had fundamentally changed. Government was destined to become stronger and more centralized – huge, bloated and bureaucratic, scarcely resembling the “balanced center” of the Founders. Some call it a “soft tyranny.”
What readers of the Bible scarcely if ever notice is that the same paradigm existed in ancient Israel, between those who favored a top-heavy central government, namely a monarchy, and those who wanted a diffuse “confederacy” of tribes – “tribes’ rights.” Just as in the United States, the issue could not be swept under the carpet or in any way resolved. The one biblical monarch who tried to preserve a balance was Israel’s first king, Saul, who gets condemned, justly or unjustly, for “disobeying God.”
The man who comes to power in his stead is the venerated David, about whom no one is to utter a negative word. Yet, it was David who clearly favored his own tribe of Judah over the other eleven Israelite tribes. Scholars point out that this was what precipitated the real troubles to come. It was a centralization of power in Jerusalem, the city that David chose. In centralizing authority there, the other tribes felt trampled, “tread on.” The issue of tribes’ rights actually came to the fore in the form of bloody civil war during David’s reign, fostered by his wayward son, Absalom. Later, during the rule of King Solomon, things get even worse, as various regions under Israelite control chafe at the rule of Jerusalem. The only way Solomon can preserve his hegemony is through a tyrannical approach to governing. He puts a lid on rumbles of revolt, building an ever larger army.
It will all come to a head during the reign of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, when open civil war breaks out. It’s the “War Between the Tribes,” and it is never resolved. Unlike the American experience, where the South capitulates to the Union, in ancient Israel it’s the North that breaks away; furthermore, the rebels win! The “Union” is never restored. A long time has passed since those days of yore; yet it seems that the issue of states’ rights is back on the “front burner” again in American politics.
Politicians love to appeal to the sacred text, but can we allow them to make the Bible say whatever they want it to say? The Bible – believe it or not – is surprisingly "libertarian," and in tune with the political landscape today.
No comments:
Post a Comment