Better Government and Better People: John C. Calhoun and the Most Powerful Cause of Moral Character

Bad government and the pain and suffering and death it causes spur men on toward better government. 

The main purpose of government, as ordained by God, is to preserve and to protect society. Bad government is government that fails to carry out this purpose, either by negligent inaction or by hostile anti-social action. But if and when human government fails, God, by His Providence, and working indirectly through the human natures that He created, provides a remedy.  

Man, by his created nature, and specifically, by the inclination and force of his individual and social feelings, bestirs himself when, in this earthly life, he deems his own condition and that of his loved ones insufferable.  And this is so both in the public and the private affairs of man, and it includes, by the way, both the suicider, whose goal is to spare himself future suffering, and the self-sacrificing patriot, whose goal is to secure safety and liberty for his family and countrymen.

So within human nature we find what is at least the beginning of a remedy for bad government.

Seeing this, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) correctly taught that all political authority is rooted in opinion. And so bad government, as it worsens, tends to lose its authority among the people it misgoverns and thereby, over time and by degrees, it tends by its actions and inaction to delegitimize itself, as the very recently deceased German philosopher Jurgen Habermas  (1929-2026) taught in his work titled Legitimation Crisis (1973). 

And when the point is reached where conditions in the misgoverned community are deemed insufferable by people of sufficient numbers and standing in society, the government is, by the very fact, cued either for partial reform or for fundamental revolutionary replacement. 

The spark that ignited the revolution in France in 1789 was that many Parisians could no longer afford bread, the very staff of life.  To use a metallurgical analogy, every human society has a specific yield strength, the point at which stress permanently deforms it, and a particular tensile strength, the point at which the society, or at least its government, breaks down and then, breaks up.  

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As voters in what was originally (and now long ago) a federal democratic frepublic, we Americans become cynical, because regardless of what person or party we vote for, the same person always wins, and, right now in the United States, the winner is always "John McCain" — a paradigmatic corrupt, bought-and-paid-for, uni-party moral and intellectual zero.  And this situation will continue, and conditions in the country will worsen, until things become intolerable to enough of the right people. 

As hapless voters and as ordinary, powerless citizens, we look on and we see how the goodness of individual good men avails little against what we call "the uni-party system" or "the powers that be."  Like caged and doomed animals, we pace back and forth, at successive elections, between two hopelessly corrupt political parties, between stupidity and evil, as Limbaugh put it. And then, at last, we get frustrated and angry and turn away, when instead we need to look on with penetration, or at least listen to those who have looked on with penetration. 

But, as Machiavelli (1464-1527) rightly noted, most people see only surface appearances and never penetrate to underlying causes and operational realities, and many of the superficial are easily and even willingly led astray by the sophistical lies and delusions of ambitious political gamers or opportunists.   

But, if we are serious about desiring better government, we will look more deeply and see that the heart or core of the governmental "system", and the very force that creates the more visible the powers that be, is the underlying structure of government as this structure relates to the evolving interests of society. 

But underlying governmental structure, compared to man, is so big, and thinking about it is so abstract and therefore so prone to defocus and to error, that it takes the supreme effort of the greatest human vocation, philosophy, to spy it out, to track it, and to describe it, in all its great complexities, and then, in all its great implications for earthly human life and for the living of it. 

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In a modern age that prides itself on being scientific and advanced and progressive and, above all, serious, moderns and post-moderns are distinctly unscientific and profoundly unserious when it comes to politics.

The proof is that everyone and their dead aunt is allowed to vote and to run for office, regardless of real moral and intellectual and political-scientific qualification. 

While our society insists on having qualified doctors and engineers and even lawyers, government and holding political office and voting are treated casually, as if any and every breathing biped is eo ipso, or by that very fact, qualified to rule. 

As Plato had Socrates say in the Apology, people with knowledge and skill in specialized areas that are non-political are prone to cavalierly assume that their knowledge in their narrow specialty somehow qualifies them as political ruler, as if there is no separate art and science of the statesman to be mastered. 

So, for example, a mere career politician like Joe Biden, who never mastered the science of politics and qualified himself thereby, either morally or intellectually, as ruler or statesman, is in the same class of intellectually deficient and morally depraved men as that profoundly uneducated real estate mogul, Donald Trump.

And Trump, as a man controlled by rich oligarchic megadonors and by an ultimately hostile foreign power, from sheer selfishness and pride and vanity, having discarded his winsome campaign promises and betrayed his supporters, yet continues to insist that he is making the country great again. 

Radically deluded and controlled, and profoundly unqualified as ruler, Trump bulls forward even as our ship of state is going down by mindless warfare and vast expenditure that impoverishes and endangers ordinary Americans and countless others around the world.  

Alas, statesmanship left America's shores years ago, and the result is that now, before our eyes, we have incompetent leaders in a state of Alice-in-Wonderland mental unreality, believing merely what they want to believe, contrary to all fact and reason. 

Leaders of both parties are now quick to promise and to proclaim, under their watch only, restored national greatness; and this comes, ironically, just as the evil Yankee Empire, wickedly triumphant in1865, now teeters on the verge of collapse.  

Specifically, the ridiculous and counterfactual claims of national greatness come while missiles are still flying with great precision and effect from our supposed enemy.  They come as our stupid leaders claim military victory over and over just as the United States is defeated and humiliated and permanently ejected from the Persian Gulf by a powerful and determined Iran, backed by Russia and China.

Finally, our delusional and prideful claims of greatness come as the American Empire precipitates worldwide financial crises that will, before long, cause famine abroad and social upheaval and political revolution at home.

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At this point, every real American patriot will ask:  what has happened to my country?; how did our government get so bad, our leaders so corrupt, our people so debased?; and how did our best people, our best minds with their best characters, become so powerless?;  and finally, how can we turn things around, to make America truly great again, with better government and better people? 

To do this, we must be profoundly and prayerfully serious about the science of politics.  And this leads us back, specifically, to consideration of the moral effects of the structure of government.

And the great irony here, when we consider why the science of politics and the art of rulership have been treated by men so carelessly and casually and haphazardly over the centuries, is that, of all the sciences and arts, physical and social and humane, politics is the science and the art that rules over all other arts and sciences.  In this way, the science of politics, and the attendant art of statesmanship, are respectively, the most important science and the most important art of all.

As Plato made clear in the Republic, all other sciences and arts are conducted under and in somewise by the permission of government.  Also, politics is the most complex of all the sciences (except metaphysics), since it deals with man as a purposive being in a struggle for physical survival and moral-spiritual actualization.  Most of all, politics, as a branch of philosophy, is the ruling or architectonic science because of its specific and characteristic concern with the good of man in this earthly life.  And this is why the alternate title for Plato's Republic, the greatest philosophical work of all, is On the Good.

Politics, as the science and art of man's earthly good, has been treated casually and carelessly over the millennia for a host of interconnected reasons, and all of these reasons derive ultimately from man's fallen condition, and specifically, from his resultant sinful and ignorant and morally and intellectually and physically degraded nature. 

Moreover, there are at work, around us and in us and under God's sovereign will, invisible cosmic forces of great evil — including powers and principalities and Satan himself — which actively oppose human goodness and which work to impede by deception and obfuscation all scientific inquiry into the human good. 

But, though finite man is radically ignorant and oblivious and is beset by sin, in self and in others, Perfect and Infinite God knows all, sees all, and has made provision.  And this provision or Providence takes many forms, including forms that are deep and institutional and which are hidden especially out of the sight of those lacking Machiavellian penetration. 

One such form was uncovered and described by the great political economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who noted the existence and operation of an Invisible Hand in market economies, by which the subjective value judgments of consumers spontaneously, or without conscious and central direction, establish a pricing system that drives the production of goods and services at optimal levels to satisfy consumer demand. 

The Invisible Hand that Adam Smith described organizes and coordinates a vast amount of information, the subjective value judgments of millions of consumers, spontaneously in an ever-changing and ever-adjusting pricing system.  And this astounding epistemic and computational ability of freer markets, being infinitely more powerful and wise than any board of human central planners ever could be, is why market economies succeed and generate prosperity while controlled or heavily-regulated economies fail and generate poverty and human misery. 

Nobel laureate economist F.A. Hayek (1899-1992), whom this author once met, later secularized Smith's Invisible Hand (of God) into a "spontaneous order", but Smith's suggestive and far more pious and accurate appellation, pointing to deeper Causes, First and Final, was more accurate than Hayek's.

And significantly, Smith, unlike Hayek, correctly self-identified as a political economist rather than merely as an economist, thereby correctly acknowledging the Aristotelian truth that economics, as the art of material provision for the household, is a part of and subordinate to politics, the art of the human good, material and spiritual, in the broader polity. 

The German philosopher Hegel (1770-1831), in The Philosophy of History, called these deeper institutional mechanisms or invisible Providential forces, like market pricing systems and, as we shall see below, the structure of government and its moral effects, instances of the "cunning" of God's Providential Reason, capital "R."  Through history, these invisible but eminently real and powerful institutional forces have typically proved paramount and decisive in driving and directing human affairs. 

But fallen man, ever distracted by the concrete and immediate present, and by his belly and carnal desires most of all,  lives out his short span oblivious to these manifestations of God's Providence -- even at his own imperil.  And God, foreseeing this distraction and carnal preoccupation and oblivion, provided yet another remedy, in the form of man's pain and misery at the hands of bad government.

And so, the STING of misery and tyranny from bad government is Providential, and inevitably redounds in efforts toward political melioration. But the success of such efforts depends on the governed people's proficiency in self-government.  And so man, in order to have better government, must understand better what makes government better. And happily, and again Providentially, as we shall see below, the same great cause that makes government better makes people better too.  

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The great causal connection between politics and morals, between good government and good or virtuous people, on the one hand, and between bad government and bad or vicious people, on the other hand, was identified and best explained by John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) of South Carolina. 

Calhoun was a statesman of extensive and varied experience who, in the final years of his life, wrote a short but brilliant theoretical and philosophical work titled Disquisition on Government.  And by that work, Calhoun established himself as perhaps the greatest political philosopher of the modern age, which includes Machiavelli, Althusius, Hobbes, Locke, Vico, Hume, Rousseau, Burke, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and Marx. 

In a single short work, his Disquisition, by deep and powerful metaphysical reasoning and by enormous analytical accuracy and systematicity and concision of expression, Calhoun laid a solid, Newtonian foundation for the science of politics.  Along the way, he gave definitive and true philosophical answer to many of the central, longstanding, and most vexing questions of politics, as I have explained in my dissertation titled The Constitution of Man:  John C. Calhoun and the Solid Foundation for Political Science (1999). 

And, as we shall see below, Calhoun, by virtue of a brilliant and multi-faceted insight about the fundamental causal relationship between governmental structure, on the one hand, and individual moral character, on the other hand, also merits recognition as a foundational moral philosopher in the Western philosophical-theological tradition, alongside Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Calvin, Suarez, Shaftesbury, Butler, Vico, Hume and Kant. 

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In his Disquisition, Calhoun says:

"... of all the causes that contribute to form the character of a people, those by which power, influence, and standing in the government are most certainly and readily obtained, are, by far,  the most powerful.  These are the objects most eagerly sought of all others by the talented and aspiring; and the possession of which commands the greatest respect and admiration.  But, just in proportion to this respect and admiration will be their appreciation by those, whose energy, intellect, and position in society, are calculated to exert the greatest influence in forming the character of a people."

And so the publicly observable ways by which power, influence, and standing in government are "most certainly and readily obtained" emerge within the community at large as an overarching and compelling moral example that is widely registered, ingested, and emulated.  They are the ways of success, the ways to the most highly prized earthly rewards.  But, as we shall soon see, the particular ways to success can be good or bad, or virtuous or vicious, depending on certain structural governmental conditions in the community. 

Government is typically that institution in society with an essential and publicly-sanctioned monopoly on the use of coercive force within the community's territory.  The public moral example and influence of concrete governmental power — including the manner of acquiring power, of wielding power, and of retaining power --  is difficult to overstate. 

Without impiety, one can even say that government, in its institutions and its human agents, is a kind of god on earth.  Indeed, God's Word tells us that earthly governments are agencies of God on earth whose proper role is to maintain order among fallen and sinful humanity (Romans 13:1; Psalm 22:28). 

So the particular manner or way of acquiring power, of wielding power, and of retaining power in a given polity at a given time becomes a moral model, as it were, or carries great moral suasion in the minds of people and leaders in that polity at that time. 

Consequently, says Calhoun: 

"If knowledge, wisdom, patriotism, and virtue, be the most certain means of acquiring them  [i.e., power, influence, and standing in the government], they {i.e., knowledge, wisdom, patriotism, and virtue] will be most highly appreciated and assiduously cultivated; and this would cause them to become prominent traits in the character of the people."

"But if, on the contrary, cunning, fraud, treachery, and party devotion be the most certain, [then] they will be the most highly prized, and become marked features in [the]character [of the people]. " (emphasis added)

So different governmental structures produce different moral effects, on leaders and on their people.

To understand this moral influence or power better, we must understand that every human government, regardless of type, is a structure of incentives and disincentives that encourages or discourages virtue or vice.  Every government, at root, is a structure of moral incentives and disincentives, a system of punishments and rewards, with the power to form or to craft in somewise human characters.  

In this sense, statecraft is soul-craft.  And this moral suasion of structure operates regardless of  whether the government is a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy, including absolute and constitutional forms of each, and including all the various admixtures of these types.  

Moreover, as moral influence goes, government considered as structure causally precedes and outweighs the typically epiphenomenal and ephemeral influence of concrete historical political leaders. 

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And so, what kind of governmental structure, as a structure of incentives and disincentives, and as a system of punishments and rewards, encourages virtue and discourages vice?

Governments that are truly constitutional are such because they embody the principle of concurrent majority, where the various interests of the community each possess the power of self-protection by means of an effectual veto on any laws that may harm the human members of that interest. 

That power of self-protection, having assured the members of that interest of their security against molestation by other interests, makes the members of the interests of the community strongly inclined to work together for the common good.

For as the etymology of the word "concurrent" suggests, under a concurrent majority or truly constitutional government, the various and disparate persons and interests and portions of society are united and harmonizes and "cum" plus "curro", concur or run together. 

And then next, we must ask:  what kind of governmental structure, as a structure of incentives and disincentives, and as a system of punishments and rewards, encourages vice and discourages virtue?

Governments that are organized exclusive on the principle of numerical majority are such because, under such government, members of interests that are in the minority lack the power of self-protection from laws prejudicial and damaging to that interest. 

And in a polity where only interests in the majority possess to power of self-protection by virtue merely electoral victory, and where the interests of the minority are defenseless against the molestations of legislative warfare,  the overwhelming concern of all will be to gain and to hold power by whatever means are necessary, including both fair and foul. 

And this immoral climate of power attainment and retention, with the vice it necessarily engenders and rewards, sets the moral tone and example for the entire community. 

But now, before proceeding to examine Calhoun's bold claims about the effects of governmental structures on the morals of leaders and people, let's turn aside to view in greater detail the nature of numerical and concurrent systems of government respectively

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Everyone knows what a simple or numerical majority is. It is a subset of a set consisting of more than half of the set's elements. Hence, 16 is a numerical majority of 30. But very few people have ever heard of and understand that other kind of majority, the concurrent majority, that is the foundational principle of all constitutional governments in history. Indeed, ignorance of this vital principle extends to nearly all modern politicians and degreed "political scientists."

The English world "concurrent" comes from the Latin "cum + currere", which means "to run together." This other kind of majority —the concurrent majority — is an institutional organization or framework or "organism", as Calhoun called it, by which the sense or opinion of all the various interests of a community or society about their own good is registered and required to initiate and maintain governmental action.

Because a simple numerical majority can register the opinion or sense of only slightly over half of a society, it is inherently tyrannical because neglectful of the large (almost half) minority subset of that society. Rule by numerical majority leaves the minor institutionally defenseless and ever at the mercy of the major that possesses and wields the powers of government. Legislation by the major invariably tends to disregard and plunder and exploit the minor in its interests. By contrast, in a concurrent or truly constitutional system of government, the minor possesses a veto over the enactments of the major.

Every society, no matter how homogeneous the interests and occupations and pursuits of its constituent individuals or people, consists of at least two distinct interests as regards the fiscal action of its government: the tax-payers and the tax-consumers. Taxation and disbursement, by their combined action, and even in a system most just, necessarily result in net gain for tax-consumers and net loss for taxpayers. In less just systems, taxation and disbursement have been corrupted into systems by which consumers tend to systematically plunder the payers.

Government by concurrent majority -- whether democratic, aristocratical, or monarchical, or some combination of these -- is government that does not plunder any portion of the community it is charged to protect. Government that promotes interests rather than plundering them is government that enhances the moral and physical power of the community it was established to protect and perfect. Concurrent government unifies society as regards all its disparate individuals and subgroups and interests.

Government by concurrent majority means every interest in society possesses the power of self-protection in the form of a veto; and this veto is backed ultimately by a willingness and ability on the part of that interest to wield physical force in self-defense. The English word "veto", from Latin, means "I forbid." Through its veto power, an interest can nullify or strike down proposed legislation it deems prejudicial or harmful to its well-being.

For Calhoun, an interest is any portion of society that can be beneficially or harmfully effected by the action or inaction of government. The English word "interest" comes from the Latin "inter + esse", meaning, "to be among." It is the responsibility of the members of each societal interest to "be among" and to understand their own good or interest. They should endeavor to understand what laws, which are general rules enforced by government, promote or hinder their well-being. 

One better knows an interest, including one's own interest, by being among it; and that is why government that is distant and remote and out of touch tends to be abusive and tyrannical.  So the concurrent system is epistemically superior to and therefore inherently more just than other governmental forms.

Providentially, a nascent or incipient interest is awakened into self-consciousness, leading to self-organization and effectual political self-assertion, by the sting of governmental abuse or neglect that originates in and is driven by other, previously awakened and governmentally empowered interests.

The veto possessed by an interest, to command acknowledgement and respect from other interests and from the government, is ultimately backed by the physical force that interest is willing and able to project self-protectively on behalf of itself.

So, the right of veto is not an abstract "natural" right that comes automatically or without effort. It is not apportioned out arbitrarily and gratuitously as a boon by government, which, rightly understood, is merely an agent of the people. The concurrent right of veto secures rights and protections for individuals, but these rights are not in social isolation and without established institutional teeth — so their guarantor is not, and cannot be, impotent words on paper.

In the concurrent system, an interest -- and the individuals that constitute it -- obtain a formal or constitutional veto by skillful self-assertion, or by winning the right by intelligent and courageous and self-sacrificial exertion. And then  -- to make liberty last -- vigilance, in turn, must maintain what skillful assertion has won.

This is why liberty — true liberty — is a Providential reward for moral and intellectual virtue; and why governmental tyranny and slavery in society, so common among men historically, is the just providential punishment for the ignorance, sloth, and depravity of whole peoples or portions. Providentially, it is the sting of tyranny — the painful experience of being abused and oppressed — that stirs the individual and social feelings of the abused and oppressed to skillful self-assertion and then vigilance.

But tyranny and slavery should not be conflated, since the former, and not the latter, is inherently abusive, and since the protection and direction entailed by humane (and especially Christian forms of) domestic slavery is right and just and good for all who cannot handle more extensive liberty responsibly, as well as for general society.

Finally, as Calhoun shows, real constitutional government, via its concurrent majority system or elements, is an exercise in self-knowledge. Individuals within interests are challenged to consider what laws redound to their good or ill. This system compels individuals to reflect on their own nature and good with respect to the physical and moral effects of laws. Also, truly constitutional or concurrent majority governments promote unity and virtue and augment society thereby with moral and physical power.

Concurrent systems encourage the elevation of leaders of virtuous character gifted in identifying and articulating the interests of those they represent. In a concurrent system, individuals of all interests, being confident and secure in their own rights and powers of self-protection, are willing to work closely and cordially with other interests to promote the common good of all. In such happy systems, a friendly competition emerges, even, to promote the good of the other and of all.

So, the concurrent system may be viewed as an institutional form (and great encouragement) of loving one's neighbor and one's self rightly.  By squarely reckoning with man's fallen sinful nature, and by deftly turning it and transforming it to the general good, the concurrent system may be said, without impiety or exaggeration, to be man's most Godly form of government.  

Having now viewed the operations of the numerical and concurrent systems more closely, we are now prepared to consider their respective effects on the morals of governmental leader and of the people at large.'

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Now consider the great boldness of the central claim Calhoun makes about the causes of moral character and then consider whether or not it is true.  Again, Calhoun claims that "... of all the causes that contribute to form the character of a people, those by which power, influence, and standing in the government are most certainly and readily obtained, are, by far,  the most powerful." (emphasis mine)

Calhoun the philosophical political scientist is so firmly convinced of the truth of his causal findings, of his root-cause analysis of all the possible causes of human character, that he goes on, in scientific fashion, to explain how his bold claims may be tested and proved out by two countervailing socio-political experiments. 

He says: 

"So powerful, indeed, is the operation of the concurrent majority, in this [moral] respect, that, if it were possible for a corrupt and degenerate community to establish and maintain a well-organized government of the kind, [the governmental system of concurrent majority] would of itself purify and regenerate them; while, on the other hand, a government based wholly on the numerical majority, would just as certainly corrupt and debase the most patriotic and virtuous people."

And then, says Calhoun, the basic truths about the moral effects of the concurrent and numerical systems will explain all mixed cases as well.  Hence:

"So great is the [difference between the concurrent and numerical systems] in this [moral-influence] respect, that, just as the {concurrent] or the [numerical] elements predominate in the construction of the government, in the same proportion will be the character of the government and the people rise or sink in the scale of patriotism and virtue."  

But the numerical majority is far simpler and therefore far better understood by the mass of men than the concurrent majority.  So when people talk about a majority, they nearly always assume a numerical majority.  And even though people may reasonably expect, after elections,  to see those in the losing minority suffer unjustly, along with the general population, at the hands of the empowered majority, they shrug their shoulders, from ignorant resignation and complacency, and dogmatically insist that a "democratic" government operating on the principle of numerical majority, however imperfect and even unjust, is somehow still the best form of human government. 

With this kind of mindless and pigheaded and palpably erroneous dogmatism of his fellow "democratic" man in mind, Calhoun silenced the dogmatists by observing how "Neither religion or education can counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to corrupt and debase the people." 

And so  bad government, in its immoral power and influence,  tends ever to overpower the moral influence of true religion and sound education.

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Having now underscored the vital causal role of governmental structure in general and of the concurrent majority in particular, let us consider how, armed with Calhoun's brilliant discoveries and insights, we may move toward a world with better government and better people.  And here we must begin with the role of the statesman, as compared to the mere politician.

The statesman's role includes: identifying the existing and emerging or incipient interests of the community; assessing the moral and intellectual condition of the people, in their various portions, orders, or classes; determining and monitoring the physical and material conditions of the community, including natural defenses;  assess the conditions, strength, and inclinations of neighboring states, gaming possible friendly and enemy alliance scenarios; assessing the physical conditions and circumstances of the community, internal and external; and finally, buttress or reinforce good governmental structure (with its good effects) with special attention to the cultivation of family and the sound moral instruction of children. 

The overarching task of the true statesman, the philosophical statesman (which is a redundancy), is to see how an existing and evolved system or structure of government aligns with and relates to the society or community it is charged to protect.  This is important because societies change and evolve, populations increase or decrease, neighboring polities change, wealth and territory increase or decrease, technologies change, and so on. 

And after having determined the existing relationship between his society's interests and its governmental structure, the statesman's task is to work to methodize and correct and improve the fit of that structure to the society as the society evolves.  Above all, the statesman's primary concern is with enduring structures or organs of government as they relate to and serve or disserve the community, and not with the ephemeral and fleeting phenomena of individual leaders and political personalities.  Wisely viewing persons as essentially ephemeral moral products of government structure, the statesman keeps his eye on underlying structure. 

Government structure, specifically, is the organs of government that express and reflect the evolved interests of the community. And organs make up an organism, which is the whole polity considered in its entire physical, moral, and spiritual existence and reality. 

Most significantly, the individual organs of government, as outgrowths of social interest, together register the understanding or sense of the entire community about what its own good is. 

And every society or political community consists of portions or interests that are positively or negatively affect by laws, or by the action or inaction of government. And, it bears repeating, every human society consists of at least two distinct and (often) opposing interests in relation to the government — the taxpayers and the tax-consumers. 

And finally, since every human society, with its attending and superintending government, is a complex of multi-generational evolving conventions, the whole cannot be put into drydock for repairs, any more than a whole polity can be wrought from whole cloth at its start, but rather comes into being by degrees, by original family associations. 

As Hume taught in his Treatise on Human Nature (1740), every historical political order is like a "leaky, weather-beaten vessel" for which reformative repair must be made while at sea, plank by plank.  Reform, and even revolution, must be performed in situ (in operational place) and cannot be performed ex situ (out of operational place). And add to this the infinitely complicating factor that the race of men consists, at any given time, of many separate polities, and that, as Hobbes noted in his Leviathan (1651), the standard relation between nations is, by primal disposition and inclination, a state of war by each against every other. 

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All of creation, including the societies and governments of earth through all ages, may be traced back to God's grace.

As Rousseau, a follower of Plato, correctly noted in his Social Contract (1762), a governmental structure, to be truly good, must fit its society and specifically, the political maturity of the people that it aims to protect and to improve. A bit like a shoe on a foot it was made to protect, a government should fit its society or its people.  

And so, for example, a certain government or governmental structure may be too complicated in its institutions and organizations and operations for a people less advanced both morally and intellectually, or another structure may be too simple and rudimentary for a more advanced people, so that it governs redundantly and superfluously and inconveniently or even tyrannically in areas of life where these more advanced people are capable of governing themselves. 

We see these stages of maturity writ small in the family, of course, but we err, even to our destruction, when, in our egalitarian age, we assume that all biological adults have equal moral and intellectual virtue and that all societies and social classes and races and sexes possess equal Rousseauian political maturity. 

Government therefore can be good either by virtue of fitting a people, and thereby maintaining, at least, order and stability in a society, or by generating, by its structure and operation, goodness in a people and its leaders. But these are two different ways that government can be good, and they should not be confused.   

One people may be barbarous and savage and  vicious and incapable of self-government and require, for its own survival, an absolutist and heavy-handed government that maintains basic order, and such is one form of good government among fallen humanity.  Another people may be comparatively orderly and  civilized and  virtuous and therefore capable of establishing and maintaining constitutional or self-government.   

So government that is fitting, along with the sound moral instruction of persons, are instances or manifestations, we may say, of God's special grace.  And beyond that, a constitutional or concurrent-majority structure, when befitting a people, is a crowning grace that imparts even greater virtue on a people and its leaders.

At the other extreme, there are occasions and transition periods, in this earthly life, when some governments do not fit their respective societies well.  And then, almost universally, or far more commonly, the societies of man are found to be morally and intellectually incapable of forming and then maintaining, beyond the span of a single generation, genuine self-government, or a constitutional government worthy of that name. 

During such long absolutist (as compared with constitutional) periods, which are the rule rather than the exception in the earthly political history of fallen man, governmental structures tend to encourage and to generate vice rather than virtue. And this rule of vice and of the rare exceptionality of virtue, we note in passing, parallels and reflects the reprobate spiritual majority among humanity in every age, as a feature of His mysterious Providence. 

And so God draws men near to virtue or to vice in this best of all possible worlds, by earthly government, according to His Providence.  So good governmental structure is one means among others that God uses to draw His elect sheep to Him and to suppress evil. 

The task of forming and maintaining a constitutional government that is worthy of the name is, as Calhoun argues, perhaps the greatest challenge facing men in this earthly life.  This is so because there is no human institution or structure that vicious men, ever plotting and probing, cannot defeat.  So the universality of fallen, sinful human nature means that absolutist government structures, wherein limitations of power and checks and balances are essentially absent, are the rule around the globe in every age, while truly constitutional governments are, in our day but perhaps not indefinitely, the all-too-rare exception. 

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As moral character goes, bad governmental structure tears down or destroys, while good structure builds up or edifies.  Indeed, as Calhoun teaches, government or governmental structures are properly designated as good or bad as they tend to form and to influence human character. But how do governments, as moral influencers, play causal spiritual roles across a broader history or Providence? 

Bad structure, in its effects, tends to further darken and to embolden the already benighted reprobate and to discourage and dishearten and to literally demoralize or corrupt both the regenerate and the elect-but-not-yet-regenerate.

If left unchecked, a vicious governmental structure tends to destroy all healthy social institutions, including that most fundamental political unit of all, the family,  as Aristotle and the great Calvinist philosopher Johannas Althusius (1563-1638) wisely taught.

Across such a dark Mordor hellscape, there will be lone virtuous men, men of sorrows, either scattered about or in endangered leagues, in vicious polities -- their livelihoods and lives ever threatened.  They are voices crying out in a moral and spiritual wilderness.  They are lone men, as Plato remarked (Republic, Bk VI), whose destinies are to weather, perhaps all their lives, a long torrent of evil for the sake of the Good. 

Bad or vicious leaders are ultimately all about self, and must be endured and not enjoyed when they cannot be judiciously replaced.  Good or virtuous leaders are about selfless service to others or to the generality without partiality and are a joy and inspiration to good people everywhere. The good leader is good because he is about God and country and others, or, in pagan states, about country and others at least.  And the best conceivable earthly leaders are Christian. 

So after becoming truly qualified for leadership in political-scientific terms, Christian political leaders will be selfless and self-sacrificing and patriotic and Christlike.  And yet, as Niccolo Machiavelli "infamously" but rightly taught, in The Prince (1513), all leaders, Christian or not, will find it necessary to use, on occasion, and for the sake of their polity, techniques of concealment and deception against enemies of the community, both external and internal.  But that is a subject, both fascinating and complex, for another day. 

For now, we must end by asking of Calhoun the moral and political philosopher the hard and deep question which his brilliant account in the Disquisition prompts:  Just how decisive for individual souls is the causal effect of earthly governmental structure?  

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The answer to this burning and fundamental and critically important question seems to be the following.

We all know the expression, "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."

Analogously, it appears, that while the best governmental structure, the system of concurrent majority, can lead a man to virtue, it cannot, of itself, finally make him virtuous, or so it seems.  Conversely, a bad governmental structure, the system of numerical majority, can lead a man to vice, but cannot make him, of itself, finally reprobate and therefore irredeemable.  And while, as either bystander or participant, one may bemoan the former, one may yet find consolation and relief in the latter.

So again, while good structure can lead a man to virtue, and we can see that leading, it is not certain to us that it can make him imbibe or truly drink in goodness.

To use more technical terms, governmental structure, as a cause of morals, is perhaps more paedeutic and heuristic than definitive and final in its effects.  So earthly governmental structure is a great invisible moral teacher that operates imperceptibly to most and subtly and powerfully, in ways that  determine the course of nations, affecting the moral trajectory of masses of men and their leaders, but it is not clear, at least to our finite human eye, that these structures finally or completely determine the spiritual destinies of individuals.   

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By the light and insight Calhoun was given, we have now caught an invaluable glimpse of how governmental structure can edify or degrade people and their leaders.  We have seen, in a great flash, how grace and its dearth, respectively, surround us and pervade us by our social and political associations.  

And even if it turns out that concurrent structures were not designed and intended by Him to secure the final spiritual destinations of individuals, it is clear that they promote much good, and specifically, that they have been Providentially ordained by Him to play a key role in protecting and shielding His Church, or the elect among the reprobate.  In this way, and during such happier times, the goodness of the elect is encouraged and shielded and the evil endemic to the reprobate is discouraged and suppressed. 

And yet, still, the Almighty is known to work by both indirect and direct means or causes.

He works indirectly through the natural cosmos He created, by the laws of nature He established.  And He works more directly and dramatically for His Church and for HIs glory through what we call miracles.  And so, in the end, it is not the place of finite and puny and sinful man to presume to restrict or to set limits on the devices employed by the All-Good and All-Wise. 

God took on flesh in part in order to be more relatable and compelling to man.

And political leaders, as moral role models, can lead others either to edification or to perdition.  In human politics, we find the sighted leading the sighted, or the blind leading the blind, or at least two other logical combinations. 

Finite man, made of spirit and matter, relates more readily to visible matter.  And this is why concrete earthly leaders (and one's own parents) tend to be so compelling and influential for man.  And this truth about incarnality underscores Calhoun's deep point about the moral influence of leaders, for good or for ill, on their people. 

God's Word tells us that He predetermined and predestined the elect and the reprobate before the beginning of the world (Ephes. 1:4). He tells us the full number of the elect will undergo spiritual rebirth or salvation or regeneration before the Judgment (Rom. 11:25). He tells us He uses different means for bringing different people finally to Him (Joseph, Gen. 50:20; Moses, Exod. 3:10; Rahab, Josh. 2:1). 

And this, dear reader, I know from personal experience, since years ago,  I, Winston McCuen, your author, was brought to the Lord Jesus Christ -- in large part by reading Calhoun.  Specifically, the Lord drew me to Himself by Calhoun's brilliant and pious descriptions of the operations of Providential natural laws in politics, as in the present case concerning the moral influence of governmental structure. 

And so, in the end, Calhoun's claim in his Disquisition that governmental structure is the most powerful cause of moral character is a causal claim that may be beyond human reckoning and comfirmation.  Still, there is so much historical empirical evidence to support it that it cannot be dismissed as the mere favored prejudice of a great statesman and political philosopher. 

And so, the question as to the most powerful cause of moral character may have to wait and get its definitive answer in the After in heaven, when Calhoun and other true philosophers will commune directly with the Lord Himself.

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A native South Carolinian and proud son of Confederate veterans, Winston McCuen, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Furman University, holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University,  is a John C. Calhoun scholar, and is a Senior Certified Metallurgical Welding Engineer..  He is the son of  Dr. William Garrison McCuen, Sr. and Anne Ballenger King McCuen.