Vol. 1 no. 1
This spring the national debt of the federal government of the United States exceeded ninety percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Some commentators suggest that crossing this threshold may usher in political turmoil, economic panic, and social chaos. Apocalyptic prediction aside, this event seems to signal the end of what the libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard called the “welfare–warfare state.” In this election year, Americans seem intent on changing leaders and charting out a new course in the pursuit of happiness. In this inaugural issue of Arator we shall go back to the eighteenth century for guidance on this weighty matter.
First allow us to introduce ourselves. Arator is a new journal of scholarship in Southern history, thought, and culture, and is intended to be a forum for thoughtful and learned discussion in the enduring concerns of the American South. Articles on all relevant topics are welcome, especially submissions that are written from within the Southern tradition itself and that can be appreciated and enjoyed by scholars of all fields of Southern scholarship.
An “arator” is a tiller of the soil; and the cultivator behind animal and plow and under the glory of the sun has long been the symbol of responsible caretaking of family and the community of families.The arator knows that the common good cannot be secured save furrow by furrow. Whether there is a common good is not up for discussion. The only real question is about the means towards it, the path we best score.
With this in mind we present three articles exploring the ideas and relevance of three seminal thinkers, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, and John Taylor of Caroline, from across the Anglo-American political tradition. At first glance one may be surprised to find the Tory David Hume keeping company with Thomas Jefferson and John Taylor. Nevertheless, the commitment of each of these men to locality and subsidiarity unites them across the political divide. Hume was committed to a humane polity made secure by society’s “little platoons” buffering the individual and local from the impersonal actions of imperial government. Jefferson and Taylor dedicate their careers to securing the farmer and planter on their land. Both of these men were influenced by the intellectual climate of their day; they also exercised considerable influence, especially Jefferson. For these men the common good and the pursuit of happiness were intimately bound up with one another. Life in Virginia taught this lesson; thus Taylor and Jefferson spoke from the heart of their state and its historical experience.
Taylor and Jefferson viewed happiness as a level of material self-sufficiency that allowed one to engage in public affairs directed to the common good. Freedom allowed one to pursue this vision of happiness, whose ultimate end was the preservation of the common good. How much better suited is this view of happiness and community to a self-governing people then the desire for cradle to grave security and materialism infecting so many in our time.
––John F. Devanny Jr.