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In mid 2010, I engaged in a spontaneous conversation in passing with a man who told me that he was the manager of the diving facilities of the Rockford Country Club in Illinois. I was stunned to learn that that country club had only two black members out of what must have been at least a thousand, if not more. He told me there were not many “people of color in positions” in the city. I stood there stunned. In 2010, people still have that mentality? He said the city was twenty years behind.  I would say more something more like forty. Yet strangely, he noted that because families had changed, he had recently changed the dress code in one of the dining areas so kids from the pool could be accommodated. So, we are to believe that the situation of blacks hasn’t changed, but families have. To be sure, the family structure and dynamics had indeed changed in the last quarter of the twentieth century as women entered the workplace en masse and the number (and proportion) of diverces increased. However, it is unclear to me how these changes translate into making a dining area “informal."

The caucasion manager’s selective view of societal change—being no doubt convenient for him—struck me as strange. I got the impression that people in that city must be averse to (or scared of) virually any kind of change. How is it, I thought to myself as he spoke, that people could find so much satisfaction in the status quo? The manager told me that status and race were still important in that city. Relatedly, he characterized the city of 150,000 as a southern town interlarded in the north. His country club was the epitome of consciousness based on status and race.  Moreover, that club evinced what both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson called the artificial aristocrisy, which is comprised of wealth and birth.  This kind of elitism is distinct from the natural sort, which the two American founders took to be based on virtue and talent. Racism, and the segregation that ensues from it, is of the artificial sort.

Lest any kind of segregation be excoriated against, it should be noted that it can be quite natural for polite people to want to segregate themselves from the vulgar. There is indeed a marked difference in how people have been raised, and in how they conduct themselves.  This is not to say, however, that manners are on the side of the country club, for arrogance and elitism are quite rude qualities.  It seems to me that politeness can be reckoned as a virtue, and thus placed in the natural aristocrisy.  Perhaps education too, or at least valuing it, is also akin to virtue. The city in which the country club is located is at least historically heavily blue-collar.  Traditionally, the people holding such jobs felt threatened by education, and thus looked down on it.  Is it not natural that a highly educated person would rightfully want some distance from being disvalued?  There is, I submit, a natural aristocrasy that legitimates the natural grouping tendency of human beings.  We tend naturally to segregate ourselves. It is difficult to generalize against this propensity.  A mother of young kids is apt to segregate her family from a known child molester (one of the Catholic churches in the city had one as a priest). Ex-smokers are apt to segregate themselves from people who impose with their addition.  Furthermore, people with common interests are apt to associate. An apologist for the country club might say that it is composed of members who have common interests and generally get along. In this respect, it seems quite natural. However, it is not clear to me that these qualities cannot pertain to people of different races. Such artificial delimiters are perhaps why artificial aristocrisy is so squalid; there is also a rather significant opportunity cost to it. Sadly, the manager seemed utterly unaware that he subscribed to it at all, yet fully sure of himself nonetheless.

A venture more useful than bashing presumption at a country club involves coming up with a criterion on which “good” from “bad” segregation can be determined. Generally speaking, segregating a virtue from its associated vices is justifiable. Immediately a problem can be detected. Namely, although there are a cluster of virtues on which most people would agree, there is no fixed number. Furthermore, people such as the dining manager at that country club can use a virtue (e.g., gaining a vocational position through talent and effort) to attempt to justify what is really just garden variety racism and elitism.  In short, segregation of virtue from vice, while in itself laudable, can involve a slippery slope that can essentially whitewash segregation that could be considered as a vice.  Can we trust in nature, such that the natural associative instinct can be distinguished from the squalid instances of segregation?  Furthermore, are there certain virtues that can be deemed as legitimate sources of segregation—such virtues being agreed to explicitly or tacitly in a social contract?  In modern society, segregation by race is explicitly excoriated against, though I’m not sure if it is implicitly agreed to by all. There might be a natural instinct to associate with similar people. Just as people include physical appearance in determining whom to date, external features could be part of the mix in how humans are hardwired to associate. Likeness might be associated in evolution with survival as like is not apt to fight with like.  However, external features are an imperfect indicator of whom a person is apt to get along with—though not irrelevant.  So modern man may well have to sometimes choose to override instinct in the knowledge that going by virtue can have more survival value.  Similar values can trump similar skin-color, even if the clubby vestiges of racism make it more difficult to trust across the artificial lines even in the twenty-first century.

In the constitutional convention of the United States in 1787, the property-interests were well-represented. Even so, a fear of a plutocracy was voiced by those property-protectors as well. While one might conclude at first glance that the wealthy delegates were duplicitous, their position is not self-contradictory, even if the bias toward wealth is discomforting for those of us who value representative democracy.

Governeur Morris, on July 5, asserted that property is “the main object of Society.” (1) Rutlidge, on July 5, concurred, maintaining, “Property was certainly the principal object of Society.” (2) Hamilton, on June 26, argued that the “inequality of property constituted the great & fundamental distinction in Society.” (3) King, on July 6 averred that “property was the primary object of Society.” (4) In Morris’ view, property is thus “the main object of [Government].” (5) Hamilton articulated this view in the Federalist by writing that the adoption of the Constitution will afford additional security “to the preservation of [republican] government, to liberty and to property.” (6) “I am convinced,” he writes, “that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity and your happiness.” (7) So his statement that “the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty” can be read as a plea for a General Government primarily to protect property interests. (8) Butler, on July 11, claimed likewise that government is “instituted principally for the protection of property.” (9) At the very least, these remarks evince a reductionism wherein society and government were viewed in terms of wealth. Shouldering a minority view on this point, Wilson, on July 13 in the convention, “could not agree that property was the sole or the primary object of [Government] & society. The cultivation & improvement of the human mind was the most noble object.” (10) This object, he suggested, is a personal right. (11) As much as this object is laudatory, it is not the object of government, which I contend is to provide and ensure order, which goes beyond the protection of property. If there is a higher purpose, government can express and operationalize societal ideals, which can thus orient whatever order government provides.

The primary result of the delegates’ property-centric view was the formation of a General Government of the U. States to counter the risk that State legislatures would act democractically at odds with the interests of the wealthy. Just a year before the convention, the Massachusetts legislature had attempted to act in the interest of debtors (i.e., unpaid soldiers who were still expected to pay on their farm debts; the representatives sought to stop this injustice at the expense of the creditors). Shays’ Rebellion was the unhappy result. Govereur Morris, on July 2, alluded to this affront on property interests in stating, “Every man of observation had seen in the democratic branches of the State Legislatures, precipitation—in Congress changeableness, in every department excesses [against] personal liberty [,] private property & personal safety.” (12) However, what if private property is acquired unjustly at the expense of another’s liberty? In other words, liberty may run counter to the interests of the rich.

Madison, on June 26 in the convention, remarked that “we had not among us those hereditary distinctions, … nor those extremes of wealth or poverty which characterize [the modern States in Europe]… . An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, & secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings… . a leveling spirit… the future danger.” (13) Leveling would actually be in line with liberty if wealth has been acquired unjustly, as for example, under duress. Moreover, too great an inequality of wealth can threaten the viability of a republic. For example, in 1985, the top five percent in the U.S. held $8 trillion in wealth. By 2007, they had $40 trillion. Besides being in part from the dot.com and housing bubbles wherein asset values were overvalued, the concentration of wealth cannot but undermine representative democracy wherein each person has one vote. Interestingly, even as they sought to protect their wealth from being leveled via representative democracy, the delegates also feared that the U. States would end up as a plutocracy (i.e., ruled by the wealthy who would be our aristocracy). Governeur Morris, on July 2, expressed the following. “Let the rich mix with the poor and in a Commercial Country, they will establish an oligarchy. Take away commerce, and the democracy will triumph. Thus it has been all the world over. So it will be among us.” (14) Madison reports that Morris feared “the influence of the rich.” (15) That the U.S. was even then an extended republic on the scale of an empire was thought, at least by Morris, to strength the ability of the rich to rule.  “The schemes of the Rich,” he maintained, “will be favored by the extent of the Country. The people in such distant parts can not communicate & act in concert. They will be the dupes of those who have more knowledge & intercourse.” (16) Govereur Morris, on July 2, maintained that “The Rich will take advantage of their passions & make these the instruments for oppressing them. The Result of the Contest will be a violent aristocracy, or a more violent despotism.” (17)

Madison reports that Morris’ “creed was that there never was, nor ever will be a civilized Society without an aristocracy. His endeavor was to keep it as much as possible from doing mischief.” (18) To contain such mischief (and to protect property-rights), the delegates wanted the proposed U.S. Senate to represent the interests of the wealthy (as well as wisdom and the state governments—a combination they problematically assumed would play well together in the Senate). Govereur Morris, on July 2, claimed that “The Rich will strive to establish their dominion & enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. The proper security [against] them is to form them into a separate interest.” (19) Accordingly, Davy, on July 6, urged that “wealth or property ought to be represented in the [second] branch.” (20)

The Senate was to be a conservative institution, wherein the vested property interests must sign off on any reform.  This could partially explain why passing health-insurance reform in 2010 was so arduous (and why extant health-insurance companies were able to kill off a competing public option). It could also explain why the wealthy could insist that their tax cuts be extended even as the U.S. Government was facing another deficit over $1 trillion also in 2010.

In short, the delegates to the constitutional convention were concerned that a “leveling danger” not be allowed to redistribute wealth even as they feared the advent of a plutocracy as essentially aristocratic governance. Government should protect wealth but not be run by it. In modern terms, this position might seem familiar as: CEO’s like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs should not run the government, but the latter should not be used by those without to take from the wealthy. Yet as the CEOs’ agents in government essentially operate in the interest of the corporations and the wealthy, does not the government’s orientation to property already evince a plutocracy by a moneyed aristocracy? If so, Jefferson and Adams, who were for a natural aristocracy of talent and virtue rather than money (the latter being an “artificial aristocracy,” which the two founders believed was taking hold in the U. States even in the early 1800s), would doubtless demur. It is telling for us that government protecting wealth is virtually taken for granted among the American people even as the fear of an impending plutocracy and moneyed aristocracy is nearly absent. Any balance from the delegates’ two fears has dissolved in favor of property. The bias is so engrained in American society and government that it has become invisible.

1. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 244
2. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 245
3. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 196
4. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 247
5. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 244
6. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1, in Jacob E. Cooke, The Federalist, Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961, p. 7
7. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1, in Jacob E. Cooke, The Federalist, Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961, p. 6
8. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1, in Jacob E. Cooke, The Federalist, Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961, p. 5
9. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 268
10. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 287
11. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 287
12. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 233
13. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 194
14. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 233-34
15. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 235
16. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 235
17. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 235
18. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 251
19. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 233
20. James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, pp. 248