A while back, I made a remark in response to someone's post something to the effect that President Obama's Economic Council suffers from a plethora of economists, and that other branches of the Academy could make valuable contributions, geographers, philosophers, sociologists and historians, perhaps one who also played the flute.  I hasten to say I'm not angling for membership...I don't play the flute.  But I do think a historian on board would be a good idea-not so much for the purpose of chronicling the glories of the Obama years, but to plumb the mines of the past in order to correct appalling and deliberate errors (F.D.R. caused the depression), and to look for clues to what might work in the present by investigating what did work in the past.

I come back to this theme to joust with those on the right who call the stimulus package and indeed any government intervention in the economy "unAmerican".  Balderdash and Tommyrot!  Individualism and "Communalism" have been present in the culture from the beginning.  (I would say socialism, but the word hadn't been invented yet in the sense it carries today).  And if we were to look at the founding years, most would find it hard to defend individualism as a key to the thriving of a community in its infancy.  Here's what happens when "gentlemen" think work is beneath their dignity:

    BEfore the Lord la Ware arrived in England, the Councell and Companie had dispatched away Sir Thomas Dale with three ships, men and cattell, and all other provisions necessarie for a yeere; all which arrived well the tenth of May 1611. where he found them growing againe to their former estate of penurie, being so improvident as not to put Corne in the ground for their bread, but trusted to the store, then furnished but with three moneths provision; his first care therefore was to imploy all hands about setting of Corne, at the two Forts at Kecoughtan, Henry and Charles, whereby, the season then not fully past, though about the end of May, wee had an indifferent crop of good Corne.

This businesse taken order for, and the care and trust of it committed to his under-Officers, to James towne he hastened, where most of the companie were at their daily and usuall works, bowling in the streets; these hee imployed about necessarie workes, as felling of Timber, repayring their houses ready to fall on their heads, and providing pales, posts and railes, to impale his purposed new towne,. .

The result of this pride of station?  A ninety per-cent mortality rate in the first two years.  I guess there must have been some worry about a brain-drain should one force the Gentlemen Adventurers to dirty their hands and work for survival rather than a princely bonus and well-decorated offices.  There were some interesting by-products of this venture...cannibalism for one, and the story John Smith tells about the man who killed his wife, quartered her, and salted her in a barrel under the house.  I no more than John can speculate on how salt wife tastes.  I would gather not very good.

On the other hand, we have the Puritan experience, and the exposition of a theory of society by John Winthrop, Magistrate, which I think can still advise us today.  The address is A Model of Christian Charity, delivered on the deck of the Arbella in 1630.  It is an address and not a sermon.  Winthrop was a governor, not a preacher.  Which means it is political theory, though admittedly the distinction between political theory and theology was blurred.  Yet if one follows the argument sans the biblical proofs, it still holds, I think.  I'm hoping some will slog through it, both to catch my exegesis where it falters, and to enjoy what a finely tuned argument looks like.  Let me just highlight a few points.

Winthrop was no egalitarian in financial or social terms.  But he had some interesting ideas about functional inequality.  Three points mark the outset of the essay.  First, Winthrop argues that diversity, rather than equality and uniformity is the mark of the natural order.  If one doesn't find equality in nature one should hardly expect to find it in humanity.  Second, he argues that inequality provides a moral good-teaching virtues impossible to learn any other way.  The "great" learn restraint by not grinding up the poor though it is in their power to do so.  The poor or "inferior sort" (his language is of his time, no getting around that), learn not to spend their time envying the rich.  No sitting watching Apprentice.  Take that, Donald Trump.  But the third reason is my favorite.  Inequality makes us need each other, and binds us into a social organism.  It would not be stretching it to suggest that Winthrop sees society as bonded by interdependency.  David K Shipler observed the same thing when he wrote The Working Poor.

    Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to America's prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole.  Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff.  It is time to be ashamed.  (W.P. 300).

I submit that Winthrop was wiser than we are...he didn't forget the poor.  If anyone reads The Model today, it is usually the peroration-a stirring call to community empathy.  But few look at his questions, which form the central part of the essay.  Winthrop poses a series of hypothetical situations.  I'm going to paraphrase them, hopefully not abbreviating to the point where I do the arguments damage.

First.  Winthrop posits two "laws"-justice (I think of Coolidge refusing to forgive war debts which were driving Europe into insolvency.  "They hired the money, didn't they?), and mercy.  He goes on to argue that with very few exceptions the law of mercy takes precedence, even towards those we consider our enemies-we're supposed to "love them," after all.  From this principle he draws the following instances.  

• Question:  What rule shall a man observe in giving in respect of the measure? (Of assistance)
• Answer:  If the time and occasion be extraordinary, he must be ruled by them; taking this withal, that then a man cannot likely do too much, especially if he may leave himself andhis family under probable means of comfortable subsistence.
• Objection: A man must lay up for posterity, the fathers lay up for posterity and children, and heis worse than an infidel that provideth not for his own.
• Answer: For the first, it is plain that it being spoken by way of comparison, it must be meant of the ordinary and usual course of fathers, and cannot extend to times and occasions extraordinary. (In other words, if the times be extraordinary caring for the community's needs trumps laying up goods for posterity)
• Objection: "The wise man's eyes are in his head," saith Solomon, "and foreseeth the plague;"therefore he must forecast and lay up against evil times when he or his may stand in need of all he can gather.  (In other words-the moral hazard argument-if you didn't see this recession coming, your bad, not mine).
• Answer: This very Argument Solomon useth to persuade to liberality (Eccle. 11), "Cast thy bread upon the waters...for thou knowest not what evil may come upon the land." The righteous is ever merciful and lendeth, and his seed enjoyeth the blessing; and besides we know what advantage it will be to us in the day of account when many such witnesses shall stand forth for us to witness the improvement of our talent. And I would know of those who plead so much forlaying up for time to come, whether they hold that to be Gospel Matthew 6:19, "Lay not up foryourselves treasures upon earth," etc (In other words, moral hazard or no, our responsibility is to those in dire straits).

• Question: What rule must we observe in lending?
• Answer: Thou must observe whether thy brother hath present or probable or possible means of repaying thee, if there be none of those, thou must give him according to his necessity, rather  then lend him as he requires (requests). If he hath present means of repaying thee, thou art to look at him not as an act of mercy, but by way of commerce, wherein thou art to walk by the rule of justice; but if his means of repaying thee be only probable or possible, then he is an object of thy mercy, thou must lend him, though there be danger of losing it.
• Question: What rule must we observe in forgiving (a debt)?
• Answer: Whether thou didst lend by way of commerce or in mercy, if he hath nothing to pay thee, thou must forgive, (except in cause where thou hast a surety or a lawful pledge).

• Question: What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community of peril?
• Answer: The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own.

I'm sure by now all but the hardiest have gone on to read more passionate blogs-his vorpal blade when snicker-snee and all of that.  But it strikes me that there is ample precedent for arguing that John Withrop's economic vision is as fully American as that of any rugged individualist.  And, if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, this vision provided a college, a printing press, a book of poetry and a psalter in its first ten years, public education at public expense in the next ten.  And NO PICKLED WIVES!

The Democrats view of government activism and community responsibility is full and anciently American.