Wilfred M. McClay is the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College, where he is also professor of history. Among his books are the award-winning Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, and Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America. Prof. McClay has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and was a 2022 recipient of the Bradley Prize. He received his B.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis, and his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University.
AS: Many could be forgiven for believing that the Declaration of Independence was a proclamation of victory in the Revolutionary War, but the war would continue for another seven years. Why did the Continental Congress take such a gamble so early in the war?
Wilfred McClay: Let me add to your question the fact that the war had been fully underway since April of 1775, sixteen months before independence had been declared, and the Declaration of Independence adopted. So there is a sense in which it wasn’t that early in the war. But yes, it was a cheeky thing for them to do, especially when they concluded by pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
But the real answer to your question involves the fact that the Declaration was, among other things, a press release to the world, explaining the former colonists’ reasons for taking up arms, and justifying their becoming a politically independent entity. The Patriots well understood that their chances of defeating the world’s greatest military power were slim, unless they were able to enlist the aid of one of Britain’s jealous rivals. The French fit that label especially well, since only a little over a decade had passed since the French had been humiliated in war, and lost the bulk of their North American empire to the British. They were spoiling for revenge. And the lofty language of the Declaration, especially of the Preamble, with its language of universal natural rights, was perfectly calculated to appeal to liberal French sensibilities. The gamble paid off handsomely.
Leaving aside the guillotine and attempts to change the calendar, what would you say is the most glaring philosophical difference between the American and the French Revolutions?
I would say that the chief difference is related to those in your question. The American Revolution did not seek to eradicate enemies or overturn the government and revolutionize the social order in anything like a comprehensive way. Instead it sought to restore the status quo existing before the French and Indian Wars, which meant a restoration of their customary rights as Englishmen. That status quo included many years, in some cases more than 150 years, of self-government. In their view, it was the British, not them, who were changing things. The British were attempting to consolidate an empire that had grown up in a haphazard way, without central direction, under a regime that Edmund Burke called “salutary neglect.”
There were many other differences, but that difference seems the most important to me. In a word, it was a largely conservative revolution. This is perhaps less a philosophical difference than a dispositional one. But that disposition is well revealed by the fact that most of the grievances listed in the Declaration involve violations of customary rights enshrined in English law, rather than violations of natural law.
The idea of the “consent of the governed” goes back to ancient Greece, limited though that was. How did the founders’ construal of that consent differ? Was it ultimately their appeal to a higher power to secure rights? Or was it that they imbued it with a purpose: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?
The answer here can be seen in comparing the Declaration of Independence with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the comparable document of the French Revolution. They are very similar, which is not surprising, since Jefferson and Lafayette were great friends, and Jefferson was a consultant to Lafayette in the drafting of the French Declaration. But there are some powerful differences. Where the American Declaration locates the source of rights in “Nature and Nature’s God,” the French Declaration locates sovereignty in the “nation.” Where the American Declaration grounds the legitimacy of government in the consent of the governed, the French locates it in la volonté générale. The concept of la volonté générale comes from Rousseau—the words are lifted from his Du contrat social—and is generally translated into English as “the general will.” This is not the same thing as a majority vote or opinion. Rousseau even says that those who do not follow the dictates of the general will must be “forced to be free,” since freedom is not possible apart from the general will.
The point here is that, unlike the French ideal, which inhabits a thick concept of republicanism in which there is little room for strictly individual rights, and no room for a Biblical concept of a providential deity, the American approach begins with the assumption that our individual rights are an endowment from God, the property of each individual person, and are unalienable, which means that they are inherent in the being of that person, and cannot be taken away or given away.
The left has the 1619 Project and the right has a postliberal movement with its contempt for the supposedly failed “liberal” founding. They seem to be opposite sides of the same coin—the founding was a mistake or based on an evil or erroneous foundation. As a historian, how do you account for this phenomenon? Is it just a matter of no longer teaching American history as something to be proud of?
There are lots of things going on here. The 1619 Project was a journalistic hoax, which nearly all reputable historians disavow, but they do so quietly, since they understand which way the academic-political winds are blowing. There are a few exceptions to this, notably Gordon Wood and Sean Wilentz, to whom all honor is due for their willingness to call this out. I do think that there is something important going on, given the extent to which a certain kind of 1619 view has taken hold in the culture, as part of the “racial reckoning” that we have been undergoing. But that reckoning cuts both ways. There was the George Floyd phenomenon, and an uptick in the perennial discussion about reparations for slavery; but there has also been a surprisingly rapid unraveling of the DEI phenomenon in corporate and academic America, and the blatant fraudulence of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, which has done a lot to discredit them and their cause.
As for the “ill founded” argument, I think it is always worth entertaining ways that we should rethink our premises, even about the Founding. There is a great deal about our current economic and social arrangements that is less than optimal, and in some respects intolerable. I am glad that people on the right and left are concerned about this, and exploring alternatives. But almost without exception, these critics fail to present us with plausible substitutes for our existing institutions. My own rather Augustinian view is that our institutions are imperfect, but less bad than the others on offer; and that they will not function properly without the strong countervailing force of religious conviction. I should add that this is not anything like integralism, which I reject categorically.
We have gone far enough down the road of moral erosion for me to feel that this view has been proven to be correct. It is not a question of “ill founding.” We have betrayed our excellent Constitution far more than we have been victimized by it. So the task before us is not one of making the world over again, à la French Revolution, but one of bringing about steady improvement, something that a self-governing people is capable of doing, using the guardrails that the Constitution and our ancestral faiths provide.
In addition, I would add that the way history is being taught, or not taught, shares much of the blame in all of this. A coherent society needs to be a community of memory, not just an aggregation of self-interested individuals. But we have precious few remaining shared symbols and shared memories, and it sometimes seems that the instruction of the young in history, in the rare instances in which it actually occurs, is designed to distance them from the past rather than bring them into shared possession of it.
You recently co-edited a book called Jewish Roots of American Liberty (reviewed in this issue of R&L). George Washington’s famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I., wished everyone “safety under his own vine and fig tree” and that “there shall be none to make him afraid.” There’s certainly much to make us afraid these days, especially for our Jewish neighbors. If you could assume the role of a Washington today, what would you say to your fellow Americans to allay their anxieties about the almost civil-war-like divisions among us?
As I explain in the introduction to Jewish Roots, the book was initially conceived as part of an effort to convince Jewish day-school teachers and leaders that they need to include American history as part of their curriculum, precisely because of things like Washington’s letters to the leading Hebrew congregations in the country after becoming the first president under the Constitution. Washington made the point that it was not mere toleration of the Jewish “other,” but support for Jews’ natural rights of freedom of religion, that would govern the policies of the new American nation. And it is true that America has been a haven for the Jewish people, unmatched in that respect by any other host nation in their long and hard history.
So we didn’t start out intending to write a book addressing the rise of anti-Semitism. But the book has appeared after October 7, 2023, and that has made a great difference. What started out as a book primarily directed to Jews is now a book primarily, or at least equally, directed to Christians and other non-Jews. And we (I very much include my brilliant colleague and coeditor Rabbi Stuart Halpern) have gathered together the work of a number of very distinguished authors who made a pretty compelling case for the Hebraic roots of American ideas and culture, and the value of them to all of us at precisely this historical juncture.
Now for some fun questions: (a) What book(s) have you read at least three times, and why?
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, because it is the single best book on America. I have read C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity a dozen times, and always get something new out of it. And Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book The Sabbath, which was a revelation to me, and will be to all Christian readers. (I was introduced to it by a Seventh-day Adventist friend.)
(b) If you could blow up one public building, à la Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, without endangering life or risking imprisonment, which one would it be?
What a great question, and yet difficult to answer, because the United States is such a target-rich environment. Do I only get one? I think every library building at every university where I have ever taught would be a candidate. And just about every building designed by Frank Gehry. But I’ll settle for one, as the question requires: The J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC, the home (for now) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I say “for now” because there is talk that the current FBI Director wants it torn down. May it be so. It is hideous, in ways that make the Bastille and Alcatraz elegant by comparison. Its “brutalist” design is true to its name, and manages to evoke all our deepest fears about our government and its transformation into a surveillance state. Taking it down would be a blow for freedom.
Although conscience demands that I state clearly that I don’t think much of Howard Roark as a moral exemplar, and, to return to the French Revolution, blowing things up is not generally a good way to effect a moral revolution.
(c) What’s your favorite B&W film, and why?
That’s easy. My Man Godfrey (1936). It was the film that made my wife and me fall in love. I also am very partial to movies featuring Asta, whose actual name was Skippy, the wonderful wire fox terrier who resembles my own dog Argos. Some of Skippy’s biggest movies were The Thin Man, The Awful Truth, and Bringing Up Baby, all from the 1930s.
I know there are many great B&W movies, serious ones, and I don’t mean to leave all of them out. But I guess I have a penchant for screwball comedies.
