Federalist Principles

III. The Challenge

Young people do not know their traditions or the institutions that support their social and political life, even the smarter ones who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Adults do not know these principles in detail either and thus have difficulty transferring them to their children, grandchildren or friends. Most Americans today assume a centralized government headed by professional experts is necessary to direct and regulate economic and social life, even as they are cynical regarding its ability to deliver what it promises. People are unaware of how America worked at its beginning and why it has survived and prospered longer than any existing nation. Most colleges and universities do not teach or even know the principles and institutions that provided for this success. As a result few people are aware of the alternatives or even hear messages or read books or articles that advance and promote the institutions that made America unique in world history.

Reversing these trends will prove difficult. The only solution is to communicate those principles in an appealing, systematic, easily available and focused manner, and translate them through appropriate intellectual tools to influence potential future civic leaders. It is a mission that must be advanced or Western civilization and American institutions will die. The specific mission of the Center for Federalist Leadership is to teach America’s future civic leaders the importance of philosophical understanding as essential to true leadership, specifically the Federalist thinking of America’s founders.

The source for the mission is the already existing and successful Signature Series. Bellevue University has developed and taught this Western civilization and American values course through its campus and on-line programs since the 1980s. Years of experience at Bellevue University have transferred these principles and institutions into concrete form. Western vision arises in Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Christendom and establishes itself in Europe, being transferred through medieval England to American before it dims in the continent of its origin. During its colonial period in the new world, these ideas were nurtured into concrete institutions in legislative bodies, local governments, voluntary associations, religious institutions of great diversity, in a context of relative freedom, tolerance and the traditional rights of Englishmen.

In the meantime, England turned against the very principles and institutions it transferred to America and provoked a revolution to defend them by its colonial settlers. This abuse created a colonial preference for free institutions and a suspicion of government that first led to the establishment of an independent American government wholly decentralized to its thirteen states. This proved inadequate and led to a limited and enumerated powers Constitution, separation of powers, and federalism, still with a primary reliance on active local government and voluntary community where citizens directly determined their own fate with their neighbors, as described in the marvelous picture painted of the period by the intrepid Frenchman, de Tocqueville. While this reliance on free institutions has become attenuated, the data show the voluntary spirit and its institutions remain more vital in the United States today than elsewhere.

In 1985, a grant from the Teagle Foundation established a “Signature Series” in Western vision and American values at Bellevue University outside Omaha, Nebraska to begin telling this story of American uniqueness. In the Fall of 2001, the original program was fully revised and improved. A book of readings for the course was modified several times and now represents both an academically respectable work and, more importantly, an invaluable aid to students and others in comprehending the values and institutions of their civilization. An instructors’ manual was refined several times and is now a product that effectively assists professors in teaching the course in a consistent manner. In January 2003 a required instructors’ training course was tested and adopted on-line. An accompanying student textbook, based upon the manual and the on-line lectures, was published in 2004 as “In Defense of the West” by the University Press of America.

By now, thousands of students in scores of classroom and on line courses have been taught about the importance of American values and institutions in sustaining its government, society and economy. But it is only one among very few and is only oriented to the general student body of one schools. A Center that reaches to the future civic leaders of the entire nation is required to have maximum affect on America’s future.

What is unique about the Bellevue Center is its focus upon the Federalist ideals of freedom, diversity and individual responsibility in a philosophical framework that broadens a professional orientation into a philosophical one that is the basis for true leadership.