The story of the common sense of Democracy and the American Constitution s not quite one of neat intellectual fusion. Slippery and elusive, common sense on the subject followed different paths that never quite intersected. In Revolutionary America and France, it was not enough to establish democracy by declaring the rational principle that ‘all men are created equal,’ or to call this ‘self-evident’, as Jefferson did in the Declaration of Independence. It was necessary to attribute to ‘all men’ (if not, yet, all people) sufficient cognitive ability to understand the principle and act on it – that is to say, to acknowledge their common sense.
Even as this affirmation of common sense fostered democracy, it immediately started to undermine democratic practice. For while the farmer, the artisan, the shopkeeper and the soldier were all held to possess common sense, other men were not, and therefore faced possible exclusion from the democratic community: for instance, the ‘academician’, the ‘maker of books’ and the philosopher. ‘Too much learning,’ as Thomas Reid had said, ‘is apt to make men mad.’ French counter-revolutionaries (and their British allies) used the language of common sense to deny the legitimacy of elected assemblies and call for the return of the king. Robespierre used it to condemn his Girondin enemies to the guillotine.
In the United States, less violently, the young John Quincy Adams used it to portray Jefferson as a French-style revolutionary, and 30 years later, Jacksonian populists turned it with great success against Adams himself. More presently, conservative American radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck use it to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama. (Beck, as it happens, is the author of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.)
Even as this affirmation of common sense fostered democracy, it immediately started to undermine democratic practice. For while the farmer, the artisan, the shopkeeper and the soldier were all held to possess common sense, other men were not, and therefore faced possible exclusion from the democratic community: for instance, the ‘academician’, the ‘maker of books’ and the philosopher. ‘Too much learning,’ as Thomas Reid had said, ‘is apt to make men mad.’ French counter-revolutionaries (and their British allies) used the language of common sense to deny the legitimacy of elected assemblies and call for the return of the king. Robespierre used it to condemn his Girondin enemies to the guillotine.
In the United States, less violently, the young John Quincy Adams used it to portray Jefferson as a French-style revolutionary, and 30 years later, Jacksonian populists turned it with great success against Adams himself. More presently, conservative American radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck use it to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama. (Beck, as it happens, is the author of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.)
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