Civic Patriotism and Town Meeting

 Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently about contemporary American liberals' discomfort with civic forms of patriotism, the patriotism of Lincoln and FDR, of citizen armies -- and, let us not forget, that Lincoln and FDR were about as left as you can get and still be elected President; I guess in national emergencies, we often make the right call in our leaders (yes, McClellan and Hoover, I'm looking at you, you perpetual jackasses -- and let us hope that soon we may add Mittensthwaite von Romney to your ranks!).

   But it occurs to me just now that this lack of civic nationalism doesn't occur only on the contemporary center-left; its also a persistent feature of their cultural confreres on the far Right, the Libertarian movement, which eschews not only civic patriotism, but the very idea of the polis whatsoever -- as though we were only so many disaggregated individuals, contracting with one another in a beautiful, rationalistic, and utterly fantastical ballet.

   Just what do I mean by a sense of civic patriotism? Let me explain.

   In New England we were blessed by the radicalism of our forbears, and the wisdom of their descendants, with the most directly democratic form of local government in the United States, if not the world, the Town Meeting (do I proclaim us a City on Hill? Perhaps -- but with the admonition not to seek our monsters!). The Town Meeting is the government of each of the Towns constituting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or the State of Vermont, or any other Town in the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island); unlike other parts of the country, county government is almost non-existent in much of New England, and nearly all functions of local government are left to the several Towns, themselves possessing an ancient sovereignty, from their 17th and 18th century origins, that precedes the constitutions of the six states. In fact, unlike states further west, there is no "county land" in New England (with the exception of Maine, where its northern wilderness is organized as the vast "Unincorporated Territory", where there is nominal county government, though this has little meaning in the North Woods). Instead, the entire territory of Massachusetts, for instance, which is typical, is divided up between 351 Towns (and 14 cities, which are defined as possessing a mayor-council type of government). If you leave the jurisdiction of one Town, you have by definition entered another Town; you will notice the difference in street signs, for instance.

   Most Towns are governed by the directly democratic Town Meeting (though some larger Towns that don't want to become cities have instituted the novelty of the representative Town Meeting). The Town Meeting, in which any adult voter can take part, is the legislature of each Town. It is run by a popularly elected Moderator, who is in many senses the Head of State for the Town; it is the most "elder statesman" of the various Town offices, above the more earth-bound and political world of the Selectmen. The agenda of the meeting is determined prior to the meeting: articles are added to the the agenda, or Warrant, by both the Board of Selectmen, who are the multi-person, popularly elected executive of the Town (usually three or five positions), and other Town boards and commissions, which are a mixture of elected (e.g., the School Committee) and appointed (e.g., the Alternative Energy Commission) positions. In addition, articles may be added by citizen petition. There are usually around fifty articles, and they deal with all aspects of a municipality's government in any given year: finances, the institution of new bylaws on everything under the sun, resolutions condemning nuclear power or praising the Red Sox, whether to replace the fire station -- just anything, really. The judiciary is represented by the Town Attorney, who advises the Town Meeting on legal matters. It is run according to standard parliamentary procedure, and motions can be brought from the floor. Debates are lively and to the point, as in the Athenian assembly. Votes are by voice; if the Moderator cannot determine whether the "Yeas" or "Nays" have it, he will send out the counters, who will count by section (many votes are unanimous, like "Will the Town consent to allow the beach to be opened this summer?", etc.) and give him the totals. To prevent skullduggery on the moderator's part, any citizen can call for a reconsideration of a vote, or can move that a previous vote was illegal. Because they were the product of an agrarian society, the meetings occur in the early Spring, when the snow was melting and travel became easier (many New England farm families were isolated from November through March, and the children did not attend school during these months), usually at the end of March. Usually the annual Town Meeting in March is the only one; special Town Meetings may be called for certain emergencies or pressing questions.

    This, as you can no doubt see, is a complicated system, and yes, sitting at Town Meeting for the two or three days it usually takes (meeting 9-5 with a lunch break in the high school auditorium or gymnasium, usually) can be boring. But, like church, which can also be boring, you leave -- after all the parliamentary maneuvering, after the impassioned debate, after either hard-won victory or a close defeat -- after all this, you leave with an uplifting feeling, also like church. Why, you think, we have just governed ourselves; we did not massacre anyone, we sought imperfect agreement over the just government of the public things (res publica), and no delegate or senator or president did it for us: we did it. And if we don't like it -- there's always next March.

     This is the feeling I mean by civic patriotism. And it is absent entirely from those liberalisms, of the left and of the right, that foolishly assert that we are the masters of our own stories, that we are individuals unmoored from communities, and that the highest end is, respectively, one's own pleasure and self-realization, or, the untrammeled tyranny of market economics. These are not what people bleed and die for -- they bleed and die for one another, for home and family and for actual and experienced liberties, not the abstract liberty of the Brooklyn set or the Chicago School Friedman types. For peace and bread, not for the gold standard or organic food. It is this abstraction in politics, and its takeover by sniping petty lawyers, mere solicitors of political sophistry, that makes it detestable to the common people, for they feel no part in it.

   But this need not be the case. Jefferson famously suggested the division of the country into units the size of New England towns, to be directly and democratically self-governing; he called it "ward democracy". And here, at the edge of a tragic and burning century, is it too late to move towards the realization of this seemingly distant vision?

    No! It is not! Indeed, it might be our only hope: for there is no power like the power of what Melville called "the kingly commons", and Jefferson was correct when he remarked that, in matters of morals, 'tis better to ask a common farmer than the most learned of metaphysicians. So, embracing democracy and our love of democracy, of our selves as a communitas, let us take back our land and fortunes from what Jackson so rightly called "the Money Power". It is not too late to dream a newer world.