American Political Thought

This course is a study of the development of American political ideas, through critical analysis of the writings of intellectuals and political leaders from the American Founding to the present. As our central theme, we will focus on the traditions of American Political Thought (APT) as simultaneously theorizing freedom and liberty on the one hand, and intense, often violent forms of domination on the other, especially domination on the basis of race. Consequently, we will devote time to both classic readings in APT (the Founders, Tocqueville, Lincoln, etc.) and to multiple strands of US political thinking that challenge the dominant narratives of APT. In analyzing the competing traditions of equality and inequality in theory, we will also explore the connections between this theory and practices of equality and inequality.

This article revisits Jeffrey Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency in the age of Trump, discussing the debates to which it originally responded, its core thesis and empirical evidence, as well as its impact on political science in the last three decades. The article’s second half turns to a recent critique of Tulis’s thesis by Ann C. Pluta, which manifests many of the misunderstandings that have persisted since The Rhetorical Presidency’s original publication. Habits of thought revealed in Pluta’s misunderstandings, I argue, are emblematic of the political culture that is amenable to the simplistic yet politically effective appeals characteristic of rhetorical presidents like Donald Trump. Elements of the broader political-science world that are on display in Pluta’s article are symptomatic of political pathologies sustained and aggravated by the culture of the polity that political scientists inhabit and purport to study—the culture of the rhetorical presidency.

In rightly framing Thomas Jefferson as the champion of Baptists, scholars have tended to frame Baptists as Jeffersonians due to their mutual defense of the First Amendment. However, this telling of Baptist and American history is incomplete, as it neglects the overwhelming historical evidence that America’s Baptist leadership, though aligning with Jefferson on the issue of religious liberty, were in fact predominantly and distinctly Federalist. By presenting a more complex picture of Baptist politics, this article will therefore offer a corrective to the traditional narrative of Baptists in early America.

Conventional understandings of Catholicism, especially the claim that the pope held temporal power over all civil rulers, presented a signal challenge to early American Catholics’ civil and religious liberty. Yet reform-minded Catholics in the North Atlantic world asserted their independence from the temporal powers of external authorities, including the pope. Catholics who participated in the American founding, such as Charles Carroll of Carrollton and John Carroll, drew from an intellectual tradition of conciliarism that was rooted in Catholic thought yet compatible with republicanism. The Carrolls’ public support of the nation’s foundational documents and their development of the American Catholic Church presented to the broader political and religious public a Catholic tradition that advocated not only a republican view of temporal independence but also a juridical, nonhierarchical understanding of church and state. Catholics of this sort were not a foil to American religious and political arrangements; instead, they fit their beliefs within the ideologies of the American founding and thereby answered Protestant charges that Catholics should be legally penalized. These conclusions offer compelling reasons to include the conciliarist tradition within the “multiple traditions approach” of American founding historiography.

I n recent decades, the concept of "the people" has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of "the people"-what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions-and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work, The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive-affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory, Souls draws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

Throughout U.S. history, the two major political parties have switched positions many times on a variety of issues, including whether the United States should intervene more or less in foreign affairs. Are these changes simply the product of historical contingency, or are there structural factors at work that can help explain these developments? To improve our understanding of American party ideologies, this paper applies a historical institutional approach to the question of party ideology development, and shows how party control of government institutions influences the evolution of party ideologies. Specifically, this paper finds that changes in party control of the presidency can help explain changes in party ideologies with respect to foreign policy.

Prior to the Civil War, racial exploitation was at the heart of the Anglo-American strategy of political and economic development. Put simply, the Anglo-American state successfully redistributed wealth from Native Americans and African Americans to white males and their families. Native American land was expropriated and sold at low prices or given to Anglo-American settlers fueling the agrarian economies of both the North and South. Chattel slavery deprived African Americans of both the fruits of their labor and their basic human rights. But it also underpinned the rise of cotton production in the South, a major driver of American economic growth in the antebellum period. These developments were not an accidental product of white racism, but the result of a political economy strategy, which created a dual American state: a contract state, premised on the rule of law, that promoted the growth of a prosperous, liberal democratic society of Anglo-Americans, and a predatory
state that financed white liberal society through its ruthless exploitation of Indian lands and African American labor.

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) and United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936) have long been considered landmark cases on presidential power. Yet despite being decided within 1 year of each other, they appear contradictory. Humphrey’s Executor limits presidential authority, while Curtiss-Wright expands it. This article argues that we can understand these seemingly inconsistent outcomes by examining the constitutional thought of the man who wrote both of them, Justice George Sutherland. Examining Sutherland’s thought throughout his career, we see that his conception of executive power was highly contextual. Based on his understanding of the origins of the Union and the Constitution, he drew a distinction between domestic and foreign policy. This has major implications for his views on executive power and presidential authority, allowing the president much more discretion in foreign affairs, while circumscribing the executive’s control of domestic administration, effectively enshrining the “two presidencies” thesis into constitutional law.

Koncepcja bezwarunkowego dochodu podstawowego uzyskuje w ostatnich latach coraz większe poparcie. Co zaskakujące, wspierający ją różnią się zupełnie poglądami politycznymi, wyznawaną filozofią i krajem pochodzenia. Zwolenników bezwarunkowego dochodu podstawowego można znaleźć zarówno wśród tych, którzy nigdy nie optowaliby za zupełną transformacją społeczeństwa, w którym żyją, jak i wśród ruchów społecznych będących w pełni przeciwko utrzymaniu status quo. Także w kręgach akademickich, zarówno wśród myślicieli liberalnych, republikańskich, ekologicznych jak i feministycznych, znajdziemy zainteresowanych oraz popierających propozycję wprowadzenia bezwarunkowego dochodu podstawowego. Dyskusję nad tą instytucją rozpoczęto niezależnie od siebie w państwach takich jak Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki Północnej i Chile, Australia i Szwecja, Turcja i Republika Południowej Afryki. Różnorodność jej apologetów skłania do przyjrzenia się tej instytucji i odpowiedzeniu sobie na pytanie, co stanowi źródło tej popularności.

The British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott was one of the more sophisticated conservative thinkers of the twentieth century. 1 However, while he was once a fairly well-known and reasonably widely-read figure in America, since the 1980s his profile this side of the Atlantic has continually waned. Today one is more likely to hear Friedrich von Hayek, Russell Kirk, or Ronald Reagan invoked than Oakeshott. Indeed, over the past few generations, American conservatives have become increasingly deaf to Oakeshott's characterization of conservatism as a disposition that informs and inflects thought and action, rather than an ideology or a policy agenda. Exploring this notion and the foundation upon which Oakeshott built it tells us something interesting and consequential about the state of conservatism in America. In particular, it illuminates how American conservatism has come often to partake of the ideological style it had once purported to oppose. Whether or not one believes that Oakeshott's ideas ought to be more prominent in American conservative thought and practice-and my aim here is not to offer a resolute argument either way-serious consideration of his thought poses fundamental questions of identity, character, and purpose for contemporary conservatives.

One of the more striking features of the Black Lives Matter movement against racialized police brutality has been the focus on violence inflicted on " black bodies. " On one hand, the language of " black bodies, " as opposed to simply " black people " or " black personhood, " makes the issue of racial violence more visceral and immediate to white audiences otherwise indisposed to perceive black pain as a moral problem. On the other hand, it represents a theoretical challenge to dominant understandings of pain, suffering, and individuality based on liberal subjectivity. Exemplifying both these aspects, Ta-Nehisi Coates's recent work, Between the World and Me, provides a deep philosophical reflection on the moral and political problem of " black disembodiment. " This article tracks the theme of disembodiment in Coates's book by foregrounding the role that feminist theories of embodiment play in his exploration of the contemporary black condition in America.

This set of notes is aimed at structuring an ongoing conversation about W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk.  After an initial, mostly unguided session, each subsequent session would begin with a recap of our previous discussion.  That way, we could preserve continuity in our exploration of the text, while also allowing that exploration to be guided by student participation.  The goal of these notes was thus to frame our previous conversation in such a way that the next conversation could grow out of it in a flexible but productive manner.

[NB: These notes were prepared as part of a class taught by Prof. William Schweiker at the University of Chicago, for which I served as the Teaching Intern.  Any references to particular participants have been altered in order to preserve student privacy.]

Michael Zuckert's dismissal of Burlamaqui and Hutcheson as inspiration for the Declaration of Independence is fatally flawed.  Burlamaqui said exactly what Zuckert doubts that Burlamaqui could have said regarding the purpose of government (to secure rights).  Zuckert's attempt to explain the "pursuit of happiness" in terms of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding fails, because Zuckert's two chosen examples of parallel documents both echo Hutcheson and Burlamaqui (but not Locke) on obtaining happiness; and the 1776 congressional definition of happiness includes virtue, in common with the Ciceronian tradition of Hutcheson and Burlamaqui, in opposition to Locke.  In this Ciceronian tradition, rights are derived from duties, and virtue is the "perfection" of human nature, with happiness as the result.  This view is prominently expressed by Burlamaqui's student Vattel, whose "The Law of Nations" was carefully followed by the Continental Congress as it went through the procedure of establishing and then declaring independence.

Trump’s rise is symptomatic of American people, particularly in rural southern and interior Western communities in the Jacksonian tradition, increasingly embracing the idea of being freed from the burdens of global leadership. Many overseas are concerned we are witnessing a historical watershed with the direction of U.S. hegemony and the post-war liberal world order beginning to change.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

Vattel's thought has received far too little attention in relation to the Declaration of Independence.  In this essay I survey who has said what in this regard.  I demonstrate the relevance of Vattel to American revolutionary argumentation, and show the similarities between his thinking and the language of the Declaration of Independence.  This essay also rebuts John Phillip Reid's dismissal of the relevance of natural law to the colonial argument against parliamentary usurpations.

"Thomas Paine frequently evoked discourses relating to the dissenting Protestant tradition as a means to mobilize support for the American Revolution. His extensive reliance on religious language has been largely neglected in the historical writing on Common Sense and the resulting historiographical gap has developed for a number of reasons, including the common perception of Paine's own personal hostility toward revealed religion and a tendency for historians to become polarized between liberal and civic republican interpretations at the
expense of others."

Scholars have not reconciled Emerson’s anti-political individualism with his newly rediscovered abolitionism. I unite the apolitical and political Emerson by showing this separation is temporal. Solitude prefaces politics. I first explain Emerson’s solitary contemplation as imagination that reveals interpersonal obligations. Second, I show how these obligations draw the thinker back to politics, and in Emerson’s case, to abolitionism, where he advocated small conversations to encourage others to contemplation and then action. Conversation did not convert hostile slaveholders, but third, I note Emerson admired the abolitionists who attempted this moral suasion in the South at great personal risk. Their political activism exemplified self-reliance while in society.

Later interpreters have usually described Gifford Pinchot and John Muir as defining two different conceptions of nature: "conservationism" and "preservationism." While the difference between these conceptions is significant, it plays a much less central role in guiding practical proposals than is typically assumed. This article highlights the independent influence and importance of contrasting conceptions of politics, and of the appropriate division between public and private worlds, to shaping the arguments and proposals of these two early environmentalist leaders. This new understanding permits a reinterpretation of the commonalities and disagreements between Muir and Pinchot and raises a new set of questions for environmentalism and American political thought.

This groundbreaking book challenges the dominant view of ideology held by both political scientists and political commentators. Rather than viewing ideological constructs like liberalism and conservatism as static concepts with fixed and enduring content, Professor Verlan Lewis explains how the very meanings of liberalism and conservatism frequently change along with the ideologies of the two major parties in American politics. Testing a new theory to help explain why party ideologies evolve the way that they do, this book traces the history of American political parties from the Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans of the 1790s to the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans of today. Ideas of Power shows us how changing party control of government institutions, such as Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, influences how party ideologies develop.

The dramatic action of Melville's Billy Budd, set in 1797 during a confrontation on the high seas between the British Empire and the revolutionary French Republic, raises fundamental questions about the legitimacy of capital punishment, the duties and obligations of authority, and the natural rights of citizens. The martial trial and harsh execution of sailor Billy Budd, in particular, has long been the subject of scrutiny by scholars, lawyers, and judges interested in reflections on the law in literature. Beyond the judicial questions associated with this case, we sense that Melville is purposefully opposing the authoritarian form of military justice enacted by Edward Fairfax Vere, captain of the British man-of-war H.M.S. Bellipotent, with republican principles of justice implied by the name of the English merchant ship Rights-of-Man, whence the impressed Budd originally hails. Vere's dilemma in the enforcement of his official duties, especially in wartime , centers upon his public support for the death penalty as punishment for Budd's conviction of the murder (manslaughter) of the Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, despite his private sympathy for Budd himself and his thoughtful consideration of the evident involuntary intent of the condemned man's fatal act. Vere's private speculations about Budd's innocence, to which we as readers are privy, would seem to be a confession, warranting our own condemnation of an otherwise upright Captain and judge for the excessive enforcement of the letter of the law. However, as Captain, his obligations to the law as promulgated—and his principal concern for the welfare of the State (his ship as microcosm of the body politic)—equally demand our attention. By his subtle representation of Vere's capital dilemma in Billy Budd, Melville captures the inevitable tension between the protection of natural right within the social contract and the obligations of political justice, expressed through the execution of the laws within legitimate institutions, even (or especially) when a philosophic perspective would counsel clemency.

Throughout the revolutionary struggle, American leaders used the phrase "safety and happiness" to summarize their views on governmental legitimacy. The terms "safety" and "happiness" were defined in the Congressional Resolution of May 10 and 15, 1776, establishing de facto independence. "Safety" corresponds to "life, liberty, and property"; while happiness is summarized as "internal peace, virtue, and good order." This definition of happiness -- drafted by John Adams -- encapsulates the contents of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. The elements of this definition of happiness reappear in English common-law jurisprudence, in Cumberland's Treatise of the Laws of Nature, and in Burlamaqui's Principles of Natural and Politic Law.

The definition of "theocracy" has perplexed scholars for many centuries.  Some argue that theocracy exists only when religious leaders are also the actual, official political leaders and, as such, impose their particular theological views on the populace at large.  This essay argues that effective control of a polity by religious leaders and their theology is dispositive, regardless of the governmental organization that exists on paper.  For example, Roger Williams pointed out that in many theocracies (including that of seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay) "the Magistrate is but the Ministers Cane through which the Clergy speaks . . . ."  "The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody" (London, 1652), 131.  The present essay was incorporated, with some additions and revisions, into Appendix B of Alan E. Johnson's book "The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience" (http://www.amazon.com/First-American-Founder-Williams-Conscience/dp/1511823712/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436397728&sr=1-1).  For a summary of some of the points in this book, see the author's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlUZaehYk7WmwW8v9oBMzQ) about Roger Williams, including an interview (https://youtu.be/mGRl5lIbdYY) with the author about this book.

Note:  The sentence and citation on page 5, n.1, in this article referring to John M. Barry's book on Roger Williams should be qualified by Barry's remarks elsewhere in his book:  "Technically, the Bay was not a theocracy. Consistent with the admonition to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and to God those which were God’s, the plantation prohibited a minister or church officer from simultaneously holding a government office. (For this reason some historians have argued that Puritan Massachusetts actually advanced the concept of separation of church and state.) But if not a theocracy, Massachusetts was theocentric."  Barry, Roger Williams, 169.  As discussed in this article, I disagree with the position that Massachusetts Bay was not a theocracy.

The American Democratic Party, as it exists today, is a far cry from the democratic liberalism of John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. JFK was no ‘liberal’ by today’s standards. Rather, his was a Lockean philosophy founded on ideas of liberty and equality, combined with the principles of economic responsibility. The young president was an ardent proponent of stimulating the private sector and consumer demand through tax-cuts, and slashing tariffs and regulations that restricted free trade. The present Democratic Party, the institution of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama, would consider JFK a minority-wing outsider at best. Clinton, who promises to continue the Obama legacy, would presumably add to the $20 trillion debt accumulated under the Obama administration. There are many analysts who argue that the politics of the Democratic Party are moving the United States to the radical left fringes. The Party of European Socialists drafted a Declaration of Principles on November 2011 summarizing their agenda. A comparison with the goals of European socialists and the statements and legislative initiatives of the Democratic Party are nearly identical.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story " Young Goodman Brown, " a tale of Puritan society revisited, is in many ways a reflection on the American founding and has much to inform partisans of contemporary debates over American exceptionalism. In a remarkably parallel story, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) offers its own insights into triumphal American culture, this time in the context of unipolar millennial dreams. This article attempts to draw heretofore unseen connections between these two Gothic re-imaginings of America, mainly through the lens of gender and sexual fantasies that were, and are, anathema to both Puritan and contemporary society.

Much of the political theory literature on Thoreau is divided, with one camp focusing on resistance and civil disobedience, while the second concentrates on withdrawal. This bifurcation is not borne out in Thoreau’s texts, and it can lead to a mischaracterization of Thoreau as an essentially instrumental thinker and an idiosyncratic political actor. In this article I argue against this bifurcation of withdrawal and resistance, maintaining that Thoreau’s exit was simultaneously a mode of resistance. His “resistant exit” has double political significance because it was instrumental and expressive. In addition to the change that it can produce in the individual, Thoreau’s resistant exit is consequential because the action itself symbolizes opposition.

into that hole, we can never empty the meaning from Whitman's poetry, we can never sufficiently interpret ittry as we might to read and understand it. And yet, with a kind of childlike naïveté and enthusiasm, that is what we, too, must attempt to do. But to speak of Whitman in the vivid and vibrant language that Whitman deserves requires that I borrow liberally from his poems and prose, quoting him oftenneither interpreting nor elaborating, but echoing the Chorus of his Song. The Emersonian Call: A Poet for America So let me begin by returning to the end of the last lecture, before the break by Professor Charara, who paraphrased a line attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The poet transcends the particular," he said, "through intense self-absorption." In other words, it is the transcendence of particularity through the utter and direct engagement or immersion of the self, within the self, that gives birth to an articulation of the universal. Emerson, in his 1844 essay titled "The Poet," wrote this: "The poets make all the words, and therefore language is the archive of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the Muses For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was made at a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolizes the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. [S]o language is made up of fossils, of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the thing because [s]he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf [grows] out of a tree." "The poet's...expression is [thus] organic, or, the new type which things themselves take when liberated." "This insight, which expresses itself by what is called imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or the circuit of things through forms...The condition of true naming, on the

تحاول هذه الورقة سبر أغوار قضية بيت المقدس وما يحيط بها من ملابسات وأطراف كما تبدو في مذكرات ثلاثة من صناع القرار الأمريكان، وهم: كونداليزا رايس وهيلاري كلينتون وروبرت جيتس. وقد اعتمد هذا الاختيار تنوعا في التوجه والمنصب، فالأولى من فريق الرئيس جورج بوش الابن والحزب الجمهوري، والثانية من فريق الرئيس باراك أوباما والحزب الديمقراطي، والثالث لم ينتم لحزب منهما وإن كان جمهوري المزاج إلا أنه مخضرم خدم في عهود الجمهوريين والديمقراطيين معا، كذلك فإن الأولى عملت كمستشار للأمن القومي ثم وزيرة للخارجية فجمعت بهذا بين منصبين أمني ودبلوماسي، والثانية عملت وزيرة للخارجية وهو منصب دبلوماسي، والثالث عمل وزيرا للدفاع وهو منصب عسكري فضلا عن أنه عمل سابقا كمدير للاستخبارات الأمريكية فجمع بين المنصب الأمني والعسكري.

This essay deals with the ambivalent relationship between Carl Schmitt and the United States, focusing on the subject of International Relations. In the first paragraph, I summarize the place held by the U.S. throughout Schmitt's works: although he obviously sees America as an enemy, he is nevertheless an admirer of its imperial policy, and draws inspiration from the Monroe Doctrine when he shapes his concept of Großraum. In the second paragraph, I sketch the intertwining of political and theological themes in Schmitt's referring to the U.S. as an incarnation of biblical figures (the katechon and the Antichrist). Finally, I present some considerations on Schmitt's connection with two important émigré scholars, Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger, who were somewhat influenced by his works.

The dissertation examines the meaning of the public or common good considered as an end or purpose of government in the public debate over the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Federalists and Anti-Federalists assert that the purpose of government is to both promote the public good and protect individual rights. What did they mean by the “public good” and related phrases? An extended commentary and textual analysis of the published writings of five Federalists (John Dickinson, Oliver Ellsworth, Noah Webster, Tench Coxe, and James Wilson) and five Anti-Federalists (Agrippa, Centinel, Federal Farmer, Impartial Examiner,and Brutus), the dissertation examines the way in which the notion of the public good played a significant part within the larger themes of federalism, representation, liberty versus licentiousness, and union during the ratification period.

Neither side’s understanding of the protection of individual rights as the purpose of government completely forecloses the notion of the promotion of the public good. The uniquely federal nature of the Constitution obscures the deeper understanding of the public good of Anti-Federalists and Federalists alike, but both sides—especially the Federalists—provide plenty of evidence. The Anti-Federalist view of representation emphasizes that the public good must be truly public without making clear how the public good differs from majority will; the Federalists emphasize the public good must be truly good, the product of sound deliberation. The Federalist argument includes the explicit claim that liberty is not license, but tied to a common notion of virtue, or what is truly good for all. The Federalists argue that there is a public good for all the states combined and thus the federal government must have supreme power over matters relating to commerce—and commerce is spoken of as intrinsically connected to morality and virtue—for the sake of this national public good. Although the Federalist notion of the public good is severely limited in scope, remaining in some way open as to the final purpose of human beings or the ultimate questions about what is truly good, it is nonetheless much more than the notion of an interdependent collection of private goods.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. articulated a covenant foundation for the United States. He called this covenant, the " Beloved Community. " King described citizen obligations as opportunities to experience divine love by freely choosing to sacrifice individual interests for the common good and atone for past injustices. The Beloved Community, contrary to the argument of Barbara Allen, operated largely outside the broader covenant tradition in a way that renders the Beloved Community incompatible with contemporary efforts to fit King into secular democratic theory.