Summary: Framed around an oft-repeated but inaccurate quote, McKinzie points out that the theological and political anthropology of the founders changed within a generation and how that change impacts our politics today.
As McKenzie opens the book, he traces how many politicians over the past decades have wrongly quoted Tocqueville to say a variation of, “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” The quote has publicly and regularly been pointed out as wrong, but it continues to be used.
After establishing the quote as wrong, McKenzie lays out how he believes the founders understood human nature and how they established the constitution concerning their understanding of human nature. McKenzie believes that the founders believed in Original Sin (Wikipedia link), which in his conception, means that they designed the constitution to prevent populism from overtaking the country. In McKenzie’s account, human depravity and sin would mean that populism would lead to demagogues and other corruptions of power.
I want to start by saying that. I am not a historian, a theologian, or a political scientist. I read and respond to books here, and quite often, I think I am likely wrong because of my educational limitations and ideological biases. I have read many of these posts that I would disagree with later as I acquired new information or saw through some of my blind spots. We the Fallen People is a book that I both really do recommend because I think it is overall helpful in thinking through the issues of the partisan divide and how the country should be politically oriented. But I also think that there are two related concepts that I think McKenzie has either gotten wrong or wrongly described.
Much of the evidence that McKenzie is citing is about how President Andrew Jackson’s version of populism (and his authoritarian tendencies) was contrary to the founder’s intentions and then how the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, who was skeptical of democracy and populism, rightly understood the strengths and weaknesses of the United States more similarly to the founders than his contemporary Jackson. Underneath this historical analysis is a concern about the ways that the recent President Trump, who regularly drew inspiration from Jackson, is accelerating the problems within the United States because the founder’s vision was for a country that rejects strong central leadership and populist leaders because they distrusted centralized power because of sinful humanity.
Jackson has lots of evidence for authoritarian styles of leadership, from his rejection of the Supreme Court’s attempts to curb his power to the vilification of minorities (the enslaved and Native Americans) to create a point of fear to draw people to him, to rejection of institutions not under his direct control because of their ability to resist his impulse toward power (The Bank of America).
And Tocqueville’s skepticism of populism and individualism meant that in his exploration of democracy, he was particularly interested in how democracy could lead to tyranny.
McKinzie, about a third of the way in, uses Cherokee removal to illustrate that it was not a failure of democracy (as is often framed today) but an example of democracy’s problems that Tocqueville identifies:
Modern scholars who condemn the removal of Native Americans typically describe it as a “contradiction of democracy” or a “betrayal of democracy.”73 This would have mystified Tocqueville. Remember, as Tocqueville understood it, the “output” of democracy is whatever the majority in a democratic society advocates, condones, or tolerates—good or bad, wise or unwise, just or unjust. By Tocqueville’s reasoning, any act of government that commands the support of the majority is by definition “democratic.” To suggest otherwise would be illogical.
This may be accurate, but it seems to miss part of the point, which is also coming up today politically. Democracy isn’t populist majoritarianism but a legal system of order. The Trail of Tears was a violation of the rules of democracy, so not a perfect example of democracy but an example of the ways in which majoritarian power can violate the constitution and rule of law but still be allowed to continue without being stopped. The Supreme Court ruled that Jackson was required to uphold the previous treaty obligations. The Georgia law that led to the Trail of Tears violated the previous law and policy.
I agree with the conclusion that a significant part of the problem for Jackson and our modern political reality is the centralization of power and the inability to resist majoritarian movements. But I think the constitution’s orientation is toward not just limitation of power but the rule of law that establishes processes that limit the power of the majority for the purpose of protecting minorities. The US has not done well in part because it started with severely limited conceptions of enfranchisement (who can vote) but also because of issues of class, gender, and race which placed the voting rights within a narrow type of people who wanted to remain in power.
Similarly, McKenzie identifies Christian anthropology as centered on his understanding of Original Sin. He may be right that the founders had a similar idea of Original Sin as he is referring to. Still, that becomes a problem communicating to readers today because McKinzie’s understanding of Original Sin is narrow within the theological tradition. McKinzie cites Augustine and reformers but frames his argument as if all Christians universally have had the same understanding of Original Sin as the post-reformation Lutherans and Calvinists did. The problem is that this isn’t true. Orthodox Christians understand the fall as having a cosmic reality that has broken the world and allowed sin to enter but does not have the same understanding of human depravity as the post-reformation Christians did. And prior to Augustine, many early Christians did not think that children were born already corrupted by sin in the same nearly biological way that Augustine talks about.
This matters because while I want to affirm the corrupting power of power that is central to McKenzie’s point, I think his labeling of this as Original Sin, in the sense of how early reformers may have understood it, will not be understood by all readers in the way he wants it to be understood. Similarly, I think his orientation toward the language of populism in describing the majoritarian tramping of minority rights without a greater emphasis on how the rules of law, tradition, and norms are designed to protect minority rights will be misunderstood.
I also think that McKenzie’s pointing to the founders as rightly understanding human anthropology does not consider how the founders restricted minority rights, allowed slavery, kept women subjugated, and did not uphold the bill of rights. McKinzie does mention this and talks about the constitution as a set of ideals that came into practice over time. But what we think of now as the constitutional limits of government were largely the result of 20th-century jurisprudence, not constitutional intent. Those 20th-century jurists did not all have the same anthropology as the founders. But they expanded freedom of speech and religion and limited the government’s powers with restrictions like Miranda and the death penalty restrictions. Obviously, the 20th-century courts, congress, and the president also have helped create problems like the expansion of the executive role, so I don’t want to make too strong of a point.
I think We The Fallen People is largely right, even if the way I get to that conclusion is different. I think is a helpful book that should be widely read. But I also think it is an example of how we can understand our Christianity too narrowly. Much of his advice in the final section, where he turns from history to the present and attempts to use his historical insights to help modern Christians think more “Christianly” about our political reality, I agree with.
Don’t misunderstand my point. To concede that we probably would have supported the removal of Native Americans had we been alive two centuries ago doesn’t exonerate those who did so at the time. It implicates us. When we wrestle with this rightly, when we not only concede but confess this reality, our prayer shifts to that of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” And when this becomes our heart’s cry, Native American removal becomes more than just a regrettable episode in the distant past. It becomes an urgent warning—to us, today. Although the circumstances would surely be different, we are just as capable of condoning injustice and rationalizing it as righteous, of depriving others of their liberty and calling ourselves good. In a democracy, the minority is never truly safe from the majority.
We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy by Robert Tracy McKenzie Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook