Peter Augustine Lawler, Dana professor of government and international studies at Berry College, has analyzed the protectionist rhetoric favored by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Both campaigns, Lawler argues, emphasize the benefits of citizenship at the expense of its responsibilities. “The rule of law,” he concludes, “is a theme conspicuous by its absence in the populism of Trump and Sanders.”
Abraham Lincoln consecrated his life to the rule of law. He was deeply committed to social mobility within an expanding market economy. However, unlike many latter-day libertarians (including, on occasion, myself), he never forgot that order and stability are necessary precursors to economic liberty.
Lincoln’s 1838 “Address before The Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” which dwelt on “the perpetuation of our political institutions,” decried the baneful effects of mob law. A pro-slavery rabble had assassinated abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy in November of the previous year. Though in March of 1837 Lincoln had sponsored a protest in the Illinois state legislature that opined “the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate [slavery’s] evils,” he denounced Lovejoy’s assassins. Their actions threatened the civil and religious liberty he cherished.
“Good men,” Lincoln said in reference to the extra-legal hanging of gamblers in Vicksburg and of a freedman in St. Louis, “men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits…seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered…become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection.”
Lincoln’s aggressive response to secession stemmed not from a passion for abolition. “My paramount object in this struggle,” the president wrote to Republican editor Horace Greeley in August of 1862, “is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” In his first inaugural Lincoln had labeled the doctrine of secession “the essence of anarchy.” Law and order governed the president’s words and actions throughout the sectional crisis.
I’m currently reviewing John Gary Maxwell’s book on the Civil War in Utah Territory. The friction that existed between federal officials and Mormon clergy during Lincoln’s tenure derived from the Mormons’ unwillingness to submit to any civil authority that did not stem from the theocracy established by Brigham Young.
Jonah Goldberg has reminded readers of the National Review that order, bolstered by legalized theft, is the “first fruits of the invisible hand.” Without order and an established system of law, there can be neither property rights nor free markets. The Vikings, Goldberg notes, discovered that pillaging Englishmen discouraged the accumulation of wealth. By instituting the Danegeld, a tax on English property, in lieu of amphibious raids, they provided subject peoples the stability and predictability that allowed for the accumulation of assets.
A center-right party looking to continue the legacy of the Whig and Republican parties will have to incorporate law and order conservatism alongside a commitment to free market capitalism.
The Southern Unionist 