The American Republic was the greatest one ever. It was so because it developed a Tao. There was a complicated and necessary balance between the Libertarian and the Authoritarian. There was another equally important equipoise between the Classical Liberal and The Progressive. Each school of thought had its plusses and minuses. Through rigorous balance, the best was extracted from each and the crack-pot ideas of all were kicked remorselessly to the curb through an almost Darwinian perfection of the civic population. These four forces were famously described by Walter Russell Mead as Wilsonian, Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, and Jeffersonian.
While the mapping isn’t perfect (Walter Russell Mead was writing foreign policy commentary when he developed the taxonomy), it’s not too abusive a stretch to map Wilsonians to Progressives, Jacksonians to Classical Liberals, Hamiltonians to Authoritarians and Jeffersonians to Civil Libertarians. Banish one of these four vectors to the outer darkness and you get a disturbance in the force…
While the mapping isn’t perfect (Walter Russell Mead was writing foreign policy commentary when he developed the taxonomy), it’s not too abusive a stretch to map Wilsonians to Progressives, Jacksonians to Classical Liberals, Hamiltonians to Authoritarians and Jeffersonians to Civil Libertarians. Banish one of these four vectors to the outer darkness and you get a disturbance in the force…
