Story From The War Adminicle
It was during the Great Depression , when I was fourteen and I first explored the New Atlantis, a book that was to become crucial for me a half century later. It was at a small used book store in Indianapolis on Meridian Street just north of The Circle, about mid way between the Kissel and the Cord luxury auto showrooms. In 1938 in that used bookstore in Indianapolis I didn't yet know that a new world was emerging. I did know first hand about the Great Depression. My father wore his two-tone brown and white summer shoes in the dead of winter, putting wads of paper inside to pad their worn out soles. He was from Texas and a Democrat by birth. I was puzzled when he cautioned me not to mention F.D.R.'s New Deal out loud among other kids in Indianapolis.
I loved that bookstore and the owner always gave me large discounts - the more he approved of my choices the less they cost me. This particular choice cost me sixteen cents. It was Ideal Empires and Republics and included three other utopias in addition to New Atlantis. I loved that book; kept it with me through college and lugged it in my duffle bag throughout World War II. It started my interest in both the author and in political theory and now stands to my right in my Francis Bacon bookcase. At first I knew only that I had in hand a book by a forbiddingly great man whose Essays were included in all collections of the Great Books. I was not then aware that many different brands of scholars and philosophers had come to think ill of its author's philosophic and scientific contributions. In fact, I didn't even look into any of those controversial works until after a long study of Francis Bacon's legal and constitutional writings, which didn't begin until I was twenty-seven.
In 1945 I was discharged from World War II into a Cold War America whose pundits debated constitutionalism versus dictatorship the way pre-9/11 America debated welfare versus privatization. In the Spring of 1947 I finished college on the G.I. Bill and was doing my M.A. at Indiana University under Francis D. Wormuth who together with Charles H. McIlwain was a leading theorist of constitutionalism. Wormuth concentrated on the foundations of American constitutionalism and the seminal writings of the republican theorists of the 17th century English Civil Wars. McIlwain concentrated on the medieval origins of English constitutionalism. Both men were established authorities on the English seventeenth century, the staging ground for most academic battles over constitutionalism. It is a bit nostalgic to recall that one argument was over the presidential and parliamentary forms. This in turn related to a long standing dispute over the role of political parties; should they be like the American or the British party systems? American parties feature collections of candidates from decentralized State-based party confederations and present slightly different models, like Fords and Chevrolets, competing for the same market. American candidates choose their parties rather than the other way around and finance their own campaigns. There is little party discipline In Congress, except during "Presidential Wars".
British parties are membership associations like unions and clubs. They establish platforms, choose candidates, finance campaigns and exercise party discipline in Parliament. The foundations for both were laid in the 17th century and my fellow utopian, Francis Bacon, was one of their founders.
The English seventeenth century, the century that invented "The Modern", opened with Shakespeare and Jonson, produced the King James Version, and included Bacon, Hooke, Milton, Newton, Harrington, Hobbes, and Locke. The Gutenberg Galaxy emerged in English print, carrying in its orbit modern science and constitutionalism. The British constitution always was and always remained "unwritten." It rested on "conventions" like the unwritten code of the gentleman. Its rules were developed and maintained informally by members of Parliament acting like members of an exclusive club. The Rule of Law, as a set of limits on government, emerged the way the rules of evidence emerged as a set of limits on adjudication. Foundations derive from The Petition of Right (1628), which staked Parliament's claim to unwritten common law rights. The Bill of Rights of 1688-89 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 had and have no more than statutory authority.
Stuart England was like today's America in a vivid sense: a cauldron of trouble and turmoil. The poet's lament was "all coherence gone." Inherited ways and wisdoms were fusing, fissioning and recombining into a mitosis of strange new inventions and institutions.
I loved that bookstore and the owner always gave me large discounts - the more he approved of my choices the less they cost me. This particular choice cost me sixteen cents. It was Ideal Empires and Republics and included three other utopias in addition to New Atlantis. I loved that book; kept it with me through college and lugged it in my duffle bag throughout World War II. It started my interest in both the author and in political theory and now stands to my right in my Francis Bacon bookcase. At first I knew only that I had in hand a book by a forbiddingly great man whose Essays were included in all collections of the Great Books. I was not then aware that many different brands of scholars and philosophers had come to think ill of its author's philosophic and scientific contributions. In fact, I didn't even look into any of those controversial works until after a long study of Francis Bacon's legal and constitutional writings, which didn't begin until I was twenty-seven.
In 1945 I was discharged from World War II into a Cold War America whose pundits debated constitutionalism versus dictatorship the way pre-9/11 America debated welfare versus privatization. In the Spring of 1947 I finished college on the G.I. Bill and was doing my M.A. at Indiana University under Francis D. Wormuth who together with Charles H. McIlwain was a leading theorist of constitutionalism. Wormuth concentrated on the foundations of American constitutionalism and the seminal writings of the republican theorists of the 17th century English Civil Wars. McIlwain concentrated on the medieval origins of English constitutionalism. Both men were established authorities on the English seventeenth century, the staging ground for most academic battles over constitutionalism. It is a bit nostalgic to recall that one argument was over the presidential and parliamentary forms. This in turn related to a long standing dispute over the role of political parties; should they be like the American or the British party systems? American parties feature collections of candidates from decentralized State-based party confederations and present slightly different models, like Fords and Chevrolets, competing for the same market. American candidates choose their parties rather than the other way around and finance their own campaigns. There is little party discipline In Congress, except during "Presidential Wars".
British parties are membership associations like unions and clubs. They establish platforms, choose candidates, finance campaigns and exercise party discipline in Parliament. The foundations for both were laid in the 17th century and my fellow utopian, Francis Bacon, was one of their founders.
The English seventeenth century, the century that invented "The Modern", opened with Shakespeare and Jonson, produced the King James Version, and included Bacon, Hooke, Milton, Newton, Harrington, Hobbes, and Locke. The Gutenberg Galaxy emerged in English print, carrying in its orbit modern science and constitutionalism. The British constitution always was and always remained "unwritten." It rested on "conventions" like the unwritten code of the gentleman. Its rules were developed and maintained informally by members of Parliament acting like members of an exclusive club. The Rule of Law, as a set of limits on government, emerged the way the rules of evidence emerged as a set of limits on adjudication. Foundations derive from The Petition of Right (1628), which staked Parliament's claim to unwritten common law rights. The Bill of Rights of 1688-89 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 had and have no more than statutory authority.
Stuart England was like today's America in a vivid sense: a cauldron of trouble and turmoil. The poet's lament was "all coherence gone." Inherited ways and wisdoms were fusing, fissioning and recombining into a mitosis of strange new inventions and institutions.
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