For Americans from Adams to Longfellow, one reason why the militia was fundamental was a lesson that 1775 and 1861 had in common: there are times when men must take up arms and fight for our liberties. Adams was deeply skeptical of the claim that that was something that could ever be changed.
I rather doubt that that is the message Ryerson intended to convey. And yet it is the implication of the text. That raises a deeply troubling question, one that, I suspect, we would rather not have to ask. Is the Whiggish view of history true? Is it in fact the case that humanity can progress fundamentally in a way that creates a world in which it is never necessary to take up arms in defense of one’s homeland and one’s liberty? One certainly would like to think so. But perhaps that belief is merely a hope, akin to religious faith.
Is it possible to reduce the message of Lexington and Concord to one that says we ought to be roused and prepared only for fights of the nonphysical sort? Only if history is a ratchet, with progress from actual fighting to more peaceful forms of political contention (or even progress away from political conflict in general) locked in.
Taking such progress for granted is perhaps one of the factors that make it harder to sustain. Given the historical tendency of the Whig view, we cease to think about better and worse in government, and instead think of “forward” or “backward” in history, a change which may, if we are not careful, lead us to embrace changes that undermine liberty but are presented as “forward” in history, or “necessary” in light of other changes. Changes that transform our structure of government, our understanding of the rights of men, or even our notion of the nature of human life and social order are presented as no less binding than previous generations’ view of right, so long as they are branded as “better.” But calling something “forward” can easily be a way of stealing a base.
If this is the case, we might ask, for example, what powers may the unelected parts of our government assume without becoming an aristocracy? In the 1760s, Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts argued that “the establishment of a certain, sufficient, and independent Civil List, is not only expedient, but necessary to the welfare of the American Colonies.” The colonists generally feared that the gentlemen appointed to such a civil list (duly credentialed gentlemen paid independently of the elected government would govern on their own behalf, threatening their liberties.) Is our administrative state too much like that? It has been presented as progress, rather than as a movement away from the principles and practices upon which our republic rests. But is it? How one answers that question turns, to a great degree, upon the question of how deep the continuities of history are.