America was Founded on (Upper-Left) “Whig” Principles
By: Lloyd Sloan & Bob Wittmann
February 2024
The 1776 Declaration advocates equal rights for all and small limited government. These were known as “Whig” principles by America’s founding generation, such as Jefferson and Paine.
Thomas Jefferson wrote people are “naturally divided into two parties”, Whigs and Tories. The Whigs “identify themselves with the people.” The Tories “fear and distrust the people” and “draw all power from them into the higher classes.”
The Democratic Party was founded upon “Whig” policy: Andrew Jackson’s staunch opposition to the National Bank, which privileged the “Eastern elite”. (Jefferson had earlier opposed the Bank as unconstitutional; Hamilton argued the opposite.)
The Whig Party formed against Jackson, but the name was misleading except for its opposition to slavery (the original American sin); then in 1854 the Whigs betrayed the anti-slavery cause. The Republican Party formed as a result, and it not only ended slavery, but passed one of the great “upper-left” policies in American history: the Homestead Act of 1862. This gave government land to pioneer farmers (the bulk of America’s lower and middle classes). It shrank government land to benefit lower-income small farmers. It promoted individual self-reliance, not welfare-state dependence.
Since the Frontier closed (officially in 1890), America has seen an (industrialized) “Tory” counter-revolution against the founding “Whig” principles! America should consciously recreate those conditions that forged the original frontier democracy: a middle-class society of self-reliant equal members with little assistance or interference from the governing class.
Why (Upper-Left) Whigs are orange?
The Upper-Left Whig Mt. Rushmore (from left to right): William of Orange, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Friedrich von Hayek
CULP embraced the color orange for the silliest of reasons: William III of the 1688 Glorious Revolution was known as William of Orange. 1688 was the earliest application of the “whig” principles found in John Locke.
CULP uses Upper-Left and Whig and “Orange” labels as equivalent. The label “classical liberal” could be used by others and is essentially the same. We avoid it for two reasons: (1) it is a bit awkward (2) it drifted into socialism unable to find small-government solutions to the wealth inequality problems caused by industrialism (J.S. Mill and Bertrand Russell being examples)