Mr
...hem. Contrast for a moment the “velvet revolution” with the American Revolution, and one will appreciate the magnitude of their dilemmas in Czechoslovakia. In the United States the ruling class of Tories largely fled to Canada or Great Britain during the struggle. Accordingly, the patriots were left free to build a new nation without having to set a pattern either of bloody purges or of pernicious intestine and interested conflicts that originated prior to the motive force, and therefore prevailed over the moral appeal, of union. This is the providential dispensation that has been denied to Czechoslovakia. Now they are searching for one like it. Even without an accomplished constitution Czechoslovakia has been compelled to undertake extensive economic reforms aiming to build a free economy. (The lesson of Federalist 10, by the way, suggests how improbable this is!) Economy minister Klaus, one of many gifted intellectuals directing this noble venture, has taken a commanding role in this regard. Nevertheless, it remains true that what he has been able to accomplish thus far has been best described by one keen observer as “state capitalism.” One might imagine this, too, to result from the inertial drag of Bolshevism. It is rather the case, however, that foreign investors and western aid agencies may be more responsible, the one in order to minimize risk and enjoy monopoly profits and the other from long established quasi-socialist practices. Consider, for example, the difficult situation of Slovakia, the easternmost region in which the Soviet Union concentrated most of its defense-related heavy industry (they made T-72 tanks!) .The government has negotiated with a firm from a northern European country to acquire operating control of one of these firms. If that should happen, however, the increased efficiency that would result would mean axing the jobs of a large percentage of the plant’s work force. The foreign firm is demanding the establishment of a complete, Scandinavian model, social security program to protect these workers before it will invest in the venture. Yet another example of the pressures that derive from expanded contact with the West under Czechoslovakia’s new freedom may be found in pressures now being felt from the World Health Organization. The communist regime carried out systematic AIDS testing and reporting. Unlike the rest of the world, there the disease seems to be reasonably controlled. I have been told that WHO has come to free Czechoslovakia with the news that, to be acceptably modern, it must shift to confidential, anonymous testing! More dramatically, perhaps, the Czechoslovakians have received the advice of many foreign advisors in their constitution-making process. Prior to the arrival of our team, they had extensive consultations with a team led by prominent Americans associated with a Washington, D. C. organization whose chief goal is to alter the American system from a presidential to a parliamentary one. Thus, the American model was carried to Czechoslovakia by its professed opponents. Among the things these advisors accomplished early were to convince the Czechoslovakians to begin with a “bill of rights,” which has been done, and to establish a “supreme constitutional judicature,” which has also been done. Although it remains an open question what the unified legislature will look like, and what kind of executive power the government will boast, the country already has the full array of personal guarantees and an independent judicial body whose task it is to enforce them, over and above every political consideration. Something like a politburo has been imposed, in other words, now only awaiting the creation of adequate political institutions over which to preside. Every informed American will recall, of course, that the “Bill of Rights” was the next to last accomplishment in our tradition, and the last accomplishment, judicial review, still should not be regarded as “judicial supremacy.” Accordingly, Czechoslovakians have been subjected to a false analogy from the American experience. It is in the face of such a variety of external pressures and internal dilemmas that Czechoslovakia attempts to accomplish both economic reform and constitutional development. These tasks would be difficult if they had to face only the ordinary difficulties. For example, the shift to a free economy means a shift in people’s work habits as well. Shopkeepers must discover the idea of serving consumers and therefore opening and closing at hours convenient to shoppers rather than to themselves. Employees must discover a connection between the performance of their tasks and their wages—especially service employees. There are already a few sterling examples of entrepreneurial spirit driving folk willing to work hard to improve their lots. A free economy, however, is one in which this spirit sets the tone rather than stands out as an exception. We would have learned this lesson from American ghettoes even if we hadn’t already known it. In politics, similarly, the idea of national union must come actually to inspire the citizens of Czechoslovakia if they are to enjoy a common constitution. That the country is far from this point may be gauged from the fact that the very word, nation, to them describes not the polity, the political union, the integrated state, but rather the separate status of Czechs and Slovaks. They speak of the Czech nation and the Slovak nation, which two “nations” seek somehow to form a single state. No one in Czechoslovakia seems, however, to have articulated a compelling conception of common citizenship sufficient to fuse these two nations into one. [2] This is the rock on which our constitutional deliberations foundered. But one Slovak participated in the conference. Others had been invited and slated to attend, but we unfortunately lost their participation. Accordingly, we listened mainly to Czechs bewraying the obduracy of Slovaks. Granting as we must the reality of these social tensions, and recognizing as no one can fail to do the economic discontinuities between the two regions, it nevertheless remains the case that a constitution properly so-called is far less likely to be discovered in a bargain splitting the differences between them than in a transcendent acknowledgment of overriding fraternity, “a focus of loyalty that is higher than the nation.” [3] In the words of one participant, what is needed is a “supra-national principle of identity” to supply the stability required for constitutional development. I much doubt, however, whether this transcendent principle many now seek is adequately represented by a romantic longing for the return of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as Scruton expressed it. The constitutional difficulty I describe does not so much inhere in the fact that the Czechs complained about their political opponents as that their complaints were insufficiently political. As we remarked at one point in our conference, the way in which we resolve Aristotle’s recognition both of families or tribes and of individuals as the building blocks of the polity is to observe that he regards the family as basic when the question is who benefits, cui bono, from the polity, and he regards the individual as basic when the question is who participates, methexis. Czechs may be Czechs and Slovaks may be Slovaks when it is time to ask how one will benefit from the Constitution, but all must be Czechoslovakians when it is time to ask to whom does the constitution belong. The first, tentative steps toward a constitution have proposed the idea of two republics, Czech and Slovak, confederated for national purposes and operating by a principle of concurrent majority (a majority in each republic voting in the same way) in order to carry any law or act. In effect, this is only a proposal for tribal unanimity as the basis of government, the return of Poland’s old liberum veto—a completely unworkable idea. Unfortunately, nowhere today is there a visible alternative to this proposal, and only six months remain to complete the constitution. It appears, then, that Czechoslovakia will not succeed in its first attempt at a post-communist constitution. This is, perhaps, not cause for alarm. The United States began with a similarly unworkable confederation scheme before the Constitution rescued the nation from political imbecility. Before we become too sanguine about Czechoslovakia’s ability to complete a similar eleven or thirteen year interval between revolution and ultimate constitution, one would do well to recall that the Balkan peninsula is a much less secure geographical setting than the United States enjoyed. It is by no means certain that Czechoslovakia’s neighbors will be as accommodating to her as the United States’ neighbors had to be to her at the end of the eighteenth century. In fact, our visit was timed to correspond with the planned, final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia. I inquired about this event everywhere, and was assured that the withdrawal had been completed without a hitch. Nevertheless, I saw not a single evidence of such movements having taken place. Nor did I see any Soviet troops. Every barracks I passed seemed deadly still, empty, save the occasion on which I observed a large number of motor pool vehicles in an apparently empty garrison. Czechoslovakia has one powerful advantage the United States lacked. While the leadership cadres in each bear striking resemblance for wide learning, the American founders enjoyed no prior historical example on which to found themselves. It was manifest as we read and discussed The Federalist Papers how the mere existence of that wondrous work had altered the moral calculus. Our discussion began from the assumption that republican government was possible for Czechoslovakians. The American accomplishment was to prove this principle for all mankind. The only question was whether the Czechoslovakians would discover the political and moral means by which to accomplish the work. They are ready to perform this work, if one may judge by the extraordinary examples of their learning. I had not realized prior to this trip that the dissenters in Charter 77 (and presumably others, such as the Jan Huss Society) had maintained a parallel university in Czechoslovakia. Where I thought they had read samizdat only in the form of political tracts, they in fact pursued systematic study in history and political philosophy—indeed, in the liberal arts. They did this “underground,” even as the regular curriculum in Marxism-Leninism dominated the established university system. The result: we conferred with people fully as well prepared, and probably largely superior, to colleagues of the highest training we expect to meet with in the United States—and despite very little direct exposure to the United States and other countries. One such devotee had managed to read every number of the William & Mary Quarterly for almost twenty years! Yes, the leaders with whom we met possess the intellectual tools for their tasks. It nevertheless remains true that the task of making a community, a single people, out of any number whatever—e pluribus unum—poses rather a moral challenge than an intellectual challenge. We can identify the James Madisons, Alexander Hamiltons, and John Adamses of modern Czechoslovakia. We could not discern their George Washington. I do not doubt that Providence has raised up a George Washington for Czechoslovakia, at least if it intends that this be a free country. I say only that we Americans did not succeed in identifying him. The reason for this may perhaps be bound up in the answer to my opening question, which belies the common assumption that the communists “extinguished every form of belonging” among the people. George Wa...