traditional American democracy,--which was that of a rampant
individualism, checked only by a system of legally constituted rights.
The test of American national success was the comfort and prosperity of
the individual; and the means to that end,--a system of unrestricted
individual aggrandizement and collective irresponsibility.

The alliance between Federalism and democracy on which this traditional
system was based, was excellent in many of its effects; but
unfortunately it implied on the part of both the allies a sacrifice of
political sincerity and conviction. And this sacrifice was more
demoralizing to the Republicans than to the Federalists, because they
were the victorious party. A central government, constructed on the
basis of their democratic creed, would have been a government whose
powers were smaller, more rigid, and more inefficiently distributed than
those granted under our Federal Constitution--as may be seen from the
various state constitutions subsequently written under Jeffersonian
influence. When they obtained power either they should have been
faithful to their convictions and tried to modify the Federal machinery
in accordance therewith, or they should have modified their ideas in
order to make them square with their behavior. But instead of seriously
and candidly considering the meaning of their own actions, they opened
their mouths wide enough to swallow their own past and then deliberately
shut their eyes. They accepted the national organization as a fact and
as a condition of national safety; but they rejected it as a lesson in
political wisdom, and as an implicit principle of political action. By
so doing they began that career of intellectual lethargy,
superficiality, and insincerity which ever since has been characteristic
of official American political thought.

This lack of intellectual integrity on the part of the American