A recent
Harvard discovery suggests why this Sunday's French Presidential Elections
French should interest Americans, and especially American Catholics.
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| "France for the French" vs. France, member of Europe |
The French
Election
Some observers have said the 2017 election for
president of France is all about sovereignty, since Marine Le Pen wants to pull
France out of the European Union and Emmanuel Macron wants to stay in the EU
but reform it.
Le Pen’s supporters believe the EU Impinges on
France's sovereignty as a nation; they want their country back, their money
back, their borders closed, their industries protected, their immigrants
expelled. They want “France for the French.”
Macron's supporters often do not actually support his
politics or agenda, but they support France's continued membership in the EU.
They know this means sacrificing some of the nation’s sovereignty: the Euro
replaced the Franc, trade is subject to EU "free trade" regulations,
the borders are open to anyone from the EU, even the traditional French license
plates have been replaced by euro-style plates. But those prepared to vote for
Macron believe that giving up some national sovereignty serves the common good
of both the French people and Europe as a whole, especially in bringing peace
to a chronically war-torn continent (see CrossCurrents # 463).
Catholic Social Teaching (CST) acknowledges the
dilemma here. On the one hand, CST makes promoting the common good a top priority,
which leaves little room for a self-serving agenda that ignores the effects on others.
Pope Francis in particular has decried the “Exclusion” of others that occurs
when policy is set to benefit some narrow part of any population.
On the other hand, CST also values “subsidiarity”—the
principle of keeping decisions at the most local level possible, and solving
problems by the participation of those closest to the problem.
The EU clearly aims to serve the common good of
Europeans, but that means decisions get made, not at the local or regional or
even national level, but at the international level which sometimes is far
removed from the people affected. So common good and subsidiarity sometimes
clash. How can this clash be addressed?
Some, like Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs,
take a hard line view of sovereignty. He argues that internationalism of any
kind cannot really achieve the common good: for him, the real common good comes
only with national sovereignty:
“The only
democratic institutions that we have are national institutions. So if you get rid of the nation-state, what
you’re really doing is getting rid of democracy.”
In other words, Krein considers that, to serve common
good, all sovereignty must be national. This
is exactly what Le Pen is proposing in her campaign, and it is exactly what Macron
is opposing.
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| Wednesday Night's Debate |
But it strikes me that such a hard line is completely arbitrary
and also completely contrary to our experience as Americans. That’s why last week’s Harvard discovery is
so interesting.
The Harvard
Find
Two Harvard researchers, Danielle Allen and Emily Sneff,
have recently reported the discovery of an early handwritten parchment copy of
the Declaration of Independence--only the second such copy in existence. They call it the “Sussex declaration” after
the location of its discovery in England.
The significance of the discovery is that this version
is slightly different from the one in the national archives. That original in 1775 reflected the practice
of the Continental Congress of having state delegations sign official documents
as
a group, with state labels for each group.
But the Sussex declaration dates from the 1780s. By then the War is over, and war debts have
led to conflicts among the states, especially farming states vs. the coastal mercantile
states. Eventually these conflicts would
lead to a constitutional convention, but already the clash was between
federalists (who saw the new nation as a single united people) and anti-federalists
(who saw it as a collection of states).
The issue here was whether sovereignty would belong to the nation as a
whole, or whether each state would retain its own sovereignty.
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| The Sussex Declaration |
This newer version shows the balance shifting to the
federalists. Allen points out the key difference:
“The Sussex
Declaration scrambles the names so they are no longer grouped by state. It is
the only version of the Declaration that does that…This is really a symbolic
way of saying we are all one people.”
Of course, during the time between these two versions,
the US was governed by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777 and
ratified in 1781. The guiding principle
here was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of each state. It legalized the Continental Congress, but
gave that Congress very little power. There was no president, no judiciary, no
executive agencies, no tax base--which meant no way to pay off the war debts. Even the Congress had only one body,
comprised of state delegations.
Shifting
Sovereignty
The Articles of Confederation failed, because the
national government lacked enough power to perform its essential duties. This provoked a Constitutional Convention and
eventually led to the U.S. Constitution which governs us today. The essential difference is that the U.S. Constitution
shifted much of our sovereignty from individual states to the nation as a
whole. But the shift involve major
compromises, including a Congress split into two houses; Senate representing
the states, and the House of Representatives representing the people by
proportional vote.
In other words, US history is rooted in a compromise which
recognized that sovereignty needed to be shared between the nation and its
member states. When Krein says that our
only democratic institutions are national institutions, he is simply ignoring
our own history.
What is happening in Europe follows a direct analogy
to U.S. history. If we think of France
as a member state of the European Union, we can see that the issue of
sovereignty, and the conflict over how much sovereignty France should sacrifice
to the common good of Europe, is precisely the same issue as the argument over
States’ rights vs. Federal power in the US.
From the point of Catholic Social Teaching, this means
that American history can help show us how the tension between the common good
and the principle of subsidiarity can be resolved.
We don’t need to look into the distant past to observe
this history. Recent events provided
ample examples. These show that debates
over shifts in sovereignty reflect a tension that still exists in American
Life.
Current Examples
1. Death Penalty. When Dhzokar Tsarnaev was tried for his role in the
Boston marathon bombings, his trial took place in Massachusetts, which rejects
the death penalty—and yet he received a death sentence, because his crime was
determined to be a violation of Federal law.
Thus Massachusetts could not control the judicial process because the
authority of the Federal government prevailed. The state does not enjoy
absolute sovereignty
2. Sanctuary
Cities. When Donald Trump attacks the
notion of sanctuary cities, he is pitting the rule of local law enforcement in
preserving public safety against the interests of the immigration authorities
to locate and detain illegal immigrants.
Most states that have sanctuary cities are claiming that their law
enforcement officials cannot be forced by the Federal government.
3. Healthcare. The current struggle to repeal Obamacare involves the
question of whether the U.S. government will continue to mandate coverage, or the
states will have the option to seek alternative plans. Obamacare relied on the sovereignty of the
Federal government; the repeals are pushing for state sovereignty.
4. Border Wall.
Donald Trump’s border wall involves the
Federal government imposing construction in many border states that oppose a
wall. Here again, the common good
becomes the rationale for overruling local decision-making.
5. Tribal Sovereignty.
When the Wampanoag Tribe tries to
establish a casino on Martha’s Vineyard, this pits the tribe as a sovereign
nation vs. the power of the local community, and invokes both state and Federal
power to resolve the issue. In this
case, the dispute is about sovereignty on four different levels.
6. Gay Marriage.
In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court legalized gay marriage, exercising its own authority to regulate marriage
on the state level. But when the US Supreme
Court imposed its Federal authority over state laws and regulations, gay marriage
became legal across the US.
7. “Romneycare.” Obamacare’s rules for health care were remarkably
similar to the rules that already existed in Massachusetts under the program
supported by a Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Romneycare reflected the
state’s sovereignty, Obamacare reflected the federal government’s sovereignty
The Moral of
the Story
In all of these cases, the question of sovereignty has
been resolved on a case-by-case basis.
It is true that some people would prefer the Federal government to always impose its will over states, while
others would prefer that states always get to decide all matters for
themselves without any Federal interference.
But the vast majority of Americans accept a constant balancing act
between two (or more) levels of legitimate authority.
Thus life in “these United States” involves a chronic
but healthy tension between the sovereignty of the nation and the sovereignty
of the states. Neither sovereignty is absolute,
so a Federal System like ours requires repeated negotiation to redefine the shifting
limits of each sovereignty.
And that is exactly what Europe is going through today,
especially if we think of each country as something like our states. 70 years
after the Treaty of Rome established the idea of a united Europe, its federal
system is still being formed.
The European Union has reached a moment much like the
crisis caused by the Articles of Confederation.
In other words, its governing treaties are failing to provide the right
mix of sovereignty between the European Union itself and the member
states.
It seems that, if Europe is to serve both the common
good and honor the principle of subsidiarity, it will need to find ways to
democratize its operations and reflect comment local and national interests and
preferences rather than make all decisions by some remote process that does not
reflect public will.
But the failure of the Articles of Confederation did
not lead to the failure of the United States; it required instead a reformed
federal system. Europe faces the same challenge, and France’s commitment to
meeting that challenge (rather than quitting to protect its own sovereignty)
will say much about Europe’s future prospects.
© Bernard
F. Swain PhD 2017
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