Vertical War in America

News and videos of the bloody assassination of right-wing evangelist Charlie Kirk spread like wildfire across the Internet and social media. Even before the initial shock wore off, both Republicans and Democrats, each in their own way, asked the question, “what has become of our democracy?” Calls to tone down divisive rhetoric have reverberated throughout the country. Even President Trump denounced such rhetoric saying, “It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.” Unfortunately, he blamed only one side for such vicious speech saying, “Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.” Trump reinforced his assertion that the violence and rhetoric is one sided blaming the violence on “Radical left lunatics” ignoring the violent attacks, assassinations and fire bombings on Democrats.

Democrats, to their credit, have also condemned the horrific attack with California Governor Gavin Newsom calling the murder, “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible,” and socialist candidate for NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani saying, “Political violence has no place in our country.”  But all of this shock and dismay will soon fade when our politicians get back to campaigning for the next election (as if they ever stopped campaigning).

But the question remains, “what the hell is going on in our democracy?” I gained some insight on this question as I read Gordon S. Wood’s book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize back in 1993. I have read many books about the Revolution and know all about King George III, the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord all the way through to Yorktown but Dr. Wood takes a different approach to the causes of the Revolution. He compares the different social structures of the mother country, England, and the American colonies.

He describes English social relations in the eighteenth century as vertical descending from the king, to the aristocracy, to the artisans to the peasantry. (I first encountered the concept of vertical societies in a book by Manuel Hinds, In Defense of Liberal Democracy on which I based two commentaries, Vertical War published March 15, 2022 and Slanted Society published April 18, 2022). For example, the household staff of an English estate would interact with the estate’s peasants and tenant farmers and with estate’s aristocrats but would have little interaction with the staff, peasants or gentry of other nearby estates. American society was more horizontal. There were no great lords or great estates in America. Even the southern plantations paled in comparison. Most American farmers owned their own land and since about 90% of workers were farmers back then that meant most American farmers were independent land owners. And without self-sufficient estates, the colonists had to interact with each other to provide the basic necessities of life. And while the king would appoint a royal governor, with little administrative staff and no British troops (prior to the French and Indian war) the colonists had to provide most of the governance for their colonies as well.

So cut off from the seat of power, reliant on a tenuous transatlantic connection by sea and responsible for their own protection the colonists developed a very independent society with a heavy dose of self-government. Much more so than England even though England was developing the most liberal and eventually democratic country in Europe.

The social structure of the American colonies was fertile soil for the Enlightenment ideas of John Locke and others. What Jefferson wrote as “all men are created equal” others interpreted as all men should be free and independent, individuals working in their own self-interest in cooperation with others but not dependent upon kings and lords. As one contemporary noted, the Revolution converted subjects into citizens. But it is more than just a change in our relationship with government, it is also a change in our relationship with each other.

But the American society envisioned by the Founders never came to pass. The Founders had envisioned a republic led by educated gentleman divorced from the petty interests of making a living such that they would be able to govern for all citizens without regard to their own self-interest. But only wealthy elites could possibly meet this standard and even such elites governed with an interest to create a society that would preserve their elite status. The free and independent citizens of the newly formed nation would have none of that and so the democratic franchise spread across all white men, and thence to black men and, eventually, all women.

Although Dr. Wood theorized that this eventuality was a surprise to the Founders who were almost universally dismayed by the course the country was taking, the Framers of the Constitution included some limitations on the power of democracy in the separation of powers and the checks and balances on governance. It was this diffusion of power that enabled the United States to remain democratic for nearly 250 years while Europe and most of the rest of the world remained mired in autocracy until relatively recently escaping the clutches of authoritarianism only with the help of America.

But if it was the structure of our society and the nature of our culture that was able to maintain our country as a democracy (and not the other way round) what has changed in our society and culture that so endangers our democracy now?

The structure of our society has changed over the centuries, generally for the better. Slavery was abolished, the franchise extended, health improved and life prolonged. Demographics have changed and technology has changed the nature of work. We created the most prosperous and powerful society the world has ever seen. We saved the world from Naziism, fascism and communism. So where did we go wrong? Why are we at each other’s throats? Why are we killing people for debating ideas?

A clue to the answer, I believe, lies in Dr. Wood’s original analysis of the American Revolution. American democracy was successful because we had developed into a horizontal society that empowered many millions of people compared to the vertical societies of continental  Europe. But as America has become larger, more powerful and more technologically advanced we have also become more vertical. Political power that was diffuse has become more concentrated.

In recent decades, activities formerly done by citizens are now done by government or controlled by government through overbearing regulations. In those same decades, productive work became dominated by powerful corporations but even those powerful entities are now being more and more controlled by government through industrial policy and arbitrary edicts. Once free and independent citizens are now becoming the dependent subjects of the welfare state and the scope of liberty is becoming constrained.

The divisiveness plaguing our country are the riptides and eddies of the struggle to control all that centralized government power as extremes on both the left and the right battle for supremacy. Checks and balances created by the Framers are being attacked. Power is being concentrated in the executive branch abetted by a compliant bureaucracy as an inept Congress cedes its enumerated constitutional powers. The judiciary is the next target in emulation of the tactics that brought Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales to power. Party discipline based on absolute loyalty is textbook Leninism.

The sound and fury continues unabated and Donald Trump and JD Vance will milk this tragedy for all its worth. Charlie Kirk is now a martyr of MAGA Movement and the MAGA thought police are about to teach us what cancel culture is all about. The progressives are on the defensive now but they will surely mount a counter-attack soon. But don’t delude yourself. This isn’t about Charlie Kirk. This battle is about power. And as long as America is vertically oriented that battle for power will continue until we become a tyrannical authoritarian state and then it won’t matter if it is a tyranny of the left or the right.