Dialectic is defined as the association or interaction of ideas, forces, arguments, etc., that conflict and compete.  The term describes well the American political environment and two-party system.  Politically speaking, what provides the parameters or bounds for dialogue to take place and what serves as reference to both sides, is the written Constitution of the United States, as well as the history relating to it.  Only once did the dialectic rupture, and that was during the Civil War.  Dialogue was suspended and the corresponding two-party system collapsed.  People are accustomed to thinking that North and South fought each other, but folks above the Mason-Dixon Line were Yankees and Republicans, while those below it were Rebels and Democrats.  The Constitution did not serve as common reference again for normal peacetime political dialogue until the end of Reconstruction.  Even then it took a century for ideas to exceed geography as the primary determinant of party affiliation.  The reason the country resumed organic political union as well as it did is that Northerners and Southerners were also Americans.  The Confederate States of America (CSA) Constitution was nearly identical to that of the Union.  Hence my view is that the Civil War settled discrete points of disagreement but did not radically alter American political culture, including federalism.  Certainly by the late nineteenth century, the republican dialectic had more or less resumed unabated if slightly changed.

            Cross-nationally, Americans are still the most Whiggish, classically liberal or libertarian people among the democratic nations.  The United States is the only democratic country without an electorally viable socialist party, for instance.  Believe it or not, Americans are less supportive of the welfare state than citizens of any other nation.  This is because distrust of a strong state was at the core of revolutionary ideology, and this article of faith has continued to influence American political dialogue on all sides.  Socialism assumes the need for a powerful state to control the economy and is thus antithetical in key respects to American political tradition.  Moreover, equality in America has, until very recently, meant meritocracy; equality before the law; equality of opportunity regardless of social origin; assumed equality before God.  Classical liberal values, including high regard for private property, for civil and religious liberty, for limited constitutional government -- these have mostly negated the development of class consciousness and have made citizenship a matter of the heart and mind, rather than of ethnicity.

            The American republican, ideological dialectic amounts to a range of competing positions within this Whiggish philosophical tradition, which have been restricted by the bounds of a written Constitution.  Indeed, extremes frequently represent the strict or loose interpretation of at least somearticles of the Constitution -- for instance, the commerce clause.  The Constitution was itself the emanation of older political tradition, just as it was also the fruition of the Revolutionary period, in particular.  Americans were clearly the inheritors of a long republican tradition received mostly through the filter or lens of English Whig thought and Country party practice.  Always a minority in Great Britain, the English libertarian strain was, for various demographic, historical and environmental reasons, in a majority in colonial America.  When the Tories were sent packing in 1776, the United States began political life as a nation of Whigs.  This helps to explain America’s relatively narrow political spectrum, as well as the unparalleled stability of her political institutions.  Newcomers were assimilated into this political tradition.  Indeed, adherence to Whiggish political principles was the most important measure of becoming “American.”  American identity is still preeminently a political one.  When Federalists and Anti-Federalists debated ratification of the Constitution, they took sides within this same philosophical tradition.

            One important conclusion one gleans from understanding there is a tradition and from knowing that both Federalists and Anti-Federalists were part of it, is that both sides to the ratification debate then become part of the American Constitutional tradition.  Remember, no anti-Constitutional party emerged in American politics.  Anti-Federalists continued to participate, though mostly as strict constructionists.  They would eventually become associated with the states’ rights cause, as the federal government expanded its role and sectional controversies increased.  The same (or clearly derived) Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments would emerge and reemerge under the various guises of different political parties and movements.  Indeed, it is my conclusion that the Federalists and Anti-Federalists and their organized counterparts in the First party system established the ideological dialectic within which political debate has been conducted since and from which policy positions derive their legitimacy.  This is true for the Second party system when parties became vehicles of mass appeal and popular participation (instead of just participation by the political elite), as well as for the Third party system after Reconstruction.

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he serves as State Director of the Republican Freedom Coalition (RFC).  This article is from his forthcoming book, Horse Sense for the New Millennium scheduled for release in September (iUniverse, Inc., 2011).  Email: Wes@WesRiddle.com.