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In a few months, the Marquette University Law School community will pack up and move to its new building, located on Tory Hill.\u00a0 Perhaps this is a good time to consider whether any actual \u201cTories\u201d will reside there.\u00a0 This is doubtful, because American political thought does not have a history of embracing the Tory philosophy.\u00a0 Nonetheless, in today\u2019s political climate, we all might benefit from hearing an occasional Tory point of view. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Republican Party in America currently stands at a crossroads.\u00a0 There has been a great deal of debate within the political punditry concerning whether the Tea Party movement is a positive or a negative development for the Republican Party.\u00a0 Some observers have noted the friction <\/a>between the rage being expressed by Tea Party activists at the government bailout of the financial markets and at the expansion of government regulation of the health care sector, on the one hand, and the more business and government friendly track record of establishment Republican officials on the other.\u00a0 This friction was most evident last month, when conservative activists rejected the establishment candidate put forth by party leaders for the 23rd Congressional District in New York, split the Republican vote, and delivered the seat to a Democrat. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Similarly, Sarah Palin\u2019s book tour has engendered speculation about her future political plans.\u00a0 Some have applauded <\/a>her anti-Washington and anti-big government philosophy as reflective of the public\u2018s current attitudes.\u00a0 In the wake of the Administration of President George W. Bush, who spoke like a \u201cStates’ Rights\u201d Texas governor while simultaneously expanding the federal government in the name of education and national security, many conservatives look to the former Alaska governor as someone who might actually govern in accord with a political philosophy that promotes decentralized government.\u00a0 However, other observers have questioned whether Sarah Palin\u2019s appeal extends beyond regional and rural areas of the country.<\/p>\n Democrats have their own problems.\u00a0 The liberal wing of the Democratic Party finds fault with much of what President Obama does (a troop surge in Afghanistan) and doesn\u2019t do (end \u201cDon\u2019t Ask\/Don\u2019t Tell,” close Guantanamo Bay sooner).\u00a0 Meanwhile, centrist Democrats struggle to find a recipe for health care reform that is neither too big nor too ineffective.\u00a0 It is as if the Democrats, now in possession of the federal government, cannot decide what to do with it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n My previous blog posts have often reflected a preoccupation\u00a0with the role of federal power <\/a>in our constitutional system.\u00a0 Previous posts have sought to track the manner in which the debate between centralized federal power versus states rights has persisted and evolved <\/a>throughout our nation\u2019s history, and to offer a defense of a strong federal government as both faithful to the original intent <\/a>of the Constitution and as vital to maintain our country\u2019s economic and military security.\u00a0 In this regard, I have tried to do my part to participate in a debate of ideas that is as timely today as it was in 1789.<\/p>\n What is noticeably missing from this ongoing debate is the expression of a Tory point of view.\u00a0 Only a Tory can claim both to be culturally conservative and to love big government.\u00a0 This combination of viewpoints, so alien to our modern ears, is unsurprising given that the Tory philosophy was born in England as a defense of the monarchy against republican reformers.\u00a0 In the United States, we associate Tories with the Loyalists who supported King George, many of whom moved with their families to Canada after the Revolution.\u00a0 If we remember American Tories at all, it is as aristocrats and persons of privilege who sought to maintain their elite positions within the status quo.<\/p>\n \u00a0However, Tories have a distinctive political philosophy.\u00a0 As the historian Gordon S. Wood <\/a>noted in his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution<\/em> (1991), prior to the American Revolution \u201call government was regarded essentially as the enlisting and mobilizing of the power of private persons to carry out public ends\u201d (p. 82).\u00a0 True Tories embrace this view to this day, and in Great Britain they esteem the monarchy as a symbol of government power conjoined with a public purpose.\u00a0 Tories recognize that the great accomplishment of representative democracy in America is to reverse the direction of this flow of power, in order to make government serve the ends of private persons.\u00a0 However, Tories fear that the benefits of this change in the flow of power are derived\u00a0at the expense of the common good.<\/p>\n While American conservatism has some of its roots in the Tory movement, it has evolved over the years in a way that glorifies private initiative and that diminishes the value of government.\u00a0 George Will<\/a>, who occasionally claims Tory sympathies, once noted disapprovingly that American conservatism \u201ctends complacently to define the public good as whatever results from the unfettered pursuit of private ends.\u00a0 Hence it tends to treat lasisez-faire economic theory as a substitute for political philosophy and to discount the importance of government.\u201d (George Will, The Morning After<\/em> (1986)).<\/p>\n