June 18, 2023

by Stephen Stofka

This week’s letter is about the political movement to remove books from schools and libraries that reveal the uglier parts of American history. Any society makes mistakes, historical debts that never be paid and the succeeding generations are reluctant to shoulder the burden of those mistakes. A truly great people acknowledge those flaws and adopt policies that ameliorate some of the suffering caused by those mistakes. Some who shout the loudest that America is great are more concerned that America appears great than contributing to America’s greatness.

For some groups in America, the nation was never great. Some laws kept people out of restaurants, bathrooms, schools and other public places. American customs and federal policy kept some Americans from living in certain neighborhoods – the process of redlining in real estate. Some customs kept some Americans from jobs and credit because of their religion or skin color. These restrictive laws have been repealed or found unconstitutional but the customs and sentiments live on.

In 1705, Bernard Mandeville (1795) published The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Public Benefits, an eleven page poem and commentary about a thriving beehive. When some bees complain about the many vices of their neighbors in the colony, the god Jove grants their wish and makes everyone virtuous. Bars are closed for lack of business, prices fall to an honest level, debtors pay their debts, and most lawyers are put out of business. Criminals are either hanged or set free and the jails closed. The jailers and attendants are put out of work. Many locksmiths and blacksmiths are idled because no one needs security locks or bars. Without vanity, the now contented bees no longer want clothes and other accoutrements that signify their civic stature, and this causes much industry to be idled. As the bees leave the hive, it collapses.

A prosperous society emerges from both the virtues and the vices, Mandeville claimed. Preachers assailed Mandeville’s criticism of good Christian virtues. That a good could come from vice was a heresy at the time of the book’s publication in the early 18th century. Mandeville described an emergent vitality and wisdom in the interplay between vice and virtue, contradicting the Christian teaching that wisdom was received from God’s or from reading the ancients.

Mandeville’s thoughts inspired David Hume, a giant of 18th century philosophy, and Adam Smith, the founder of the study of economics. Both were keen observers of human behavior, empiricists who believed that a variety of perspectives promoted vitality in a society. In time Adam Smith would develop the concept of the division of labor, that greater specialization improved productivity and promoted economic growth. Specialized trades can only develop and flourish in areas with large populations. Competition and diversity were the key to this outlook.

In another camp of political philosophy were Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx, idealists who believed that a uniformity of rules and circumstances was the key to social improvement. A rigid adherence to norms that curbed people’s greed and self-centeredness was the key to a flourishing society. Policy proposals that ban books and public behaviors fall into this camp.

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution embody this conflict between the idealists and empiricists. The Declaration of Independence espoused an idealistic uniformity like “All men are created equal.” Governments were allies to the individual’s pursuit of happiness. In contrast, the U.S. Constitution was an act of pragmatic bargaining to form a more powerful alliance between diverse colonies. In the text (Article 1, Section 2) of that bargain, slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person and the Congress could not regulate the importation of slaves for twenty years (Article 1, Section 9). Article 4, Section 2 preserved a universal right of ownership of a human being regardless of which state that human being was located. Governments promoted the happiness of some at the expense of others.

If we are a great nation and a great people, we teach our children about the good, bad and ugly truths that formed the backbone of this nation. There is a lot of each. Teach it all. A great people stand up in the daylight of truth. They pick up their legal tools and their steel tools and they get to work fixing the ugly, not burying it. They don’t drape themselves in flags and blather slogans. They put on their work clothes because building strong institutions and repairing ugly is hard work.

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Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Keywords: Constitution, Declaration of Independence, history, book bans

Mandeville, B. (1795). The fable of the bees: Or, private vices, public benefits. Printed for C. Bathurst and others. Available free from https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fable_of_the_Bees.html?id=I7JlAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false