A Change of Systems
Two turning points in the life of Orestes Brownson
Some years ago, I gave a speech to a Toastmasters group, stating there are 2 types of people in the world, those who believe the universe always existed (pantheists) and those who believe it was created by God from nothing.
At the end of 1841 or beginning of 1842 Orestes Brownson realized that he had been a pantheist when he discovered that God is FREE as he relates in Chapter 16 of The Convert. Brownson rejoices that God is not a prisoner of his mind, that Creation is a free gift of God, and that he is loved by the Father..
This was an important element in his religious conversion but prior to that he had experienced a political conversion that was just as impactful for him.
Brownson spent his whole life striving to elevate humanity. As a young man he was committed to creating a society that truly recognized that “all men are created equal” through education and economic reform. In the 1830s, in America, the land of liberty, he regarded it as unfair that the factory owners grew rich and were admired, while the factory workers were impoverished and distained. For the first 37 years of his life his concept of Liberty was individualistic and anarchical and, much like Kamala Harris, “unburdened by things that have been.”
Since the churches had failed to instill society with Gospel values such as justice, equality and brotherly love, this divine task must be taken up by the government as the agent of “We the People” because vox populi, vox Deo.
To achieve his aim of economic equality, Brownson went so far as to plot a takeover of the Democratic Party by its radical wing, very much like the recent equality tour of Bernie Sanders and AOC, except that Brownson had very little money behind him.
Like all fortunate Progressives, he was bludgeoned by reality. In the presidential election of 1840, the Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren, was defeated “by doggerels, log cabins, and hard cider, by means utterly corrupt and corrupting,“ which “disgusted me with democracy as distinguished from constitutional republicanism, destroyed what little confidence I had in popular elections, and made me distrust both the intelligence and the instincts of ‘the masses’.”
Rather than sulk over this misfortune, and ever seeking the truth, he undertook a thorough study of government: its origin, its forms, and its administration.
“I read, for the first time Aristotle on Politics; I read the best treatises, ancient and modern, on government within my reach; I studied the constitutions of Greece and Rome, and their history, the political administration of ancient Persia, the feudal system, and the constitutions of modern states…”
He discovered that society fills a need in man; it is a part of the natural order. Further, every society needs some form of government, “some authority to direct, control, restrain, or prescribe.” Government’s office is more lofty than merely restricting personal freedom by keeping competing interests in check. It has a positive aspect: “It is needed to render effective the solidarity of the individuals of a nation, and to render the nation an organism, not a mere organization.” It is necessary to build community, “to be a social providence, imitating in its order and degree the action of the divine providence itself, and, while it provides for the common good of all, to protect each, the lowest and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society. It’s nature is beneficent, and its action defines and protects the right of property, creates and maintains a medium in which religion can exert her supernatural energy, promotes learning, fosters science and art, advances civilization, and contributes as a powerful means to the fulfillment by man of the Divine purpose of his existence. Next after religion, it is man’s greatest good; and even religion without it can do only a small portion of her work.”
Therefore, a firm, strong, and efficient government is necessary to “maintain order in the state and justice between men…Liberty is not in the absence of authority, but in being held to obey only just and legitimate authority.”
These reflections led him far from his starting point.
“Evidently, I had changed systems, and had entered another order of ideas. Government was no longer the mere agent of society, as my democratic masters had taught me, but an authority having the right and the power to govern society, and direct and aid it, as a wise providence, in fulfilling its destiny.” [The Convert, end of Chapter 13]
He regarded this “change of systems” so important and so misunderstood by his contemporaries [and ours] that he dedicated the first half of The American Republic to the origin and purpose of government.
“I became henceforth a conservative in politics, instead of an impracticable radical, and through political conservatism I advanced rapidly towards religious conservatism.” [The Convert, end of Chapter 13]
These two conversions, the political and the religious, were the foundation of his analysis of the American Spirit as reflected in the U.S. Constitution which he so admired, admitting in 1870 that, “I cannot conceive a more profoundly philosophic, or more admirably devised constitution, than that of our own government.”