Dangerously Moderate
Sometimes, the safe bet is a losing proposition
This is an installment of “Sestercenntenial Moments,” marking the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and its memory in our national life. For more on the background of the series, see here.
In 2001, I got a job as a high school history teacher. (I guess that was a long time ago, but I think of anything that has happened in this century as relatively recent.) I initially misunderstood some of the language in my contract, which I thought was short-term, but the principal who hired me was reassuring: “You’re going to be here a long time.” I loved the school—the location, the students, and, especially, my colleagues. As I became an increasingly seasoned veteran, I particularly savored some of my younger ones. There was one, a charismatic self-described radical, who a number of times described me as a “friend,” which I found flattering. Another had been my child’s babysitter. A third was a protégé of my wife’s and I helped convince his spouse to take a job at the school as well. I was closer to some of these people than others, but it felt great to be part of a community and to raise a glass at Friday afternoon happy hours at our local watering hole.
About a decade ago, the school was gripped by waves of internal conflict that waxed, waned, and then waxed again with greater intensity. There had always been faculty-administrative tensions—not unusual at any school—though these had been sharper than most. Now they grew sharper still, and marked by stronger cross-pressures from colleagues as well as administrators to conform to ideological litmus tests around race and gender. This wasn’t unusual either in the Age of Trump, but again, the intensity was stronger, abetted by a kind of shadow government whose goals involved subverting the school’s leadership and orchestrating student protests that would likely have occurred in any case but maneuvering them into confrontational directions that resulted in repeated shutdowns in regular school operations. People I considered friends and allies in a shared educational enterprise became opponents, though never enemies.
Whatever their politics, teachers tend to be temperamentally conservative in the sense that they tend to say put, in part because their modest but steadily rising salaries price them out of the job market. The prophecy of the principal who hired me—long since gone, followed by three successors, themselves long since gone—was right: I was there a long time. But not as long as I expected to be. When an escape hatch opened, I reluctantly seized it, jumping ship just as Covid hit. Sharks were circling. I had fended some off, but for how long?
I’m glad I left, not only because my new perch proved satisfying, but also because my old school is in worse shape than ever, on its third head of school in the four years since my departure. While the issues remain multifaceted and resist easy solutions, I’m convinced the core problem remains that shadow government. The institution will never turn a corner until its head and board of trustees muster up the will and imagination to overthrow it.
I bring all this up because I kept thinking about it when, in my recent studies of the American Revolution, I came across the case of Joseph Galloway. Had things been a little different, perhaps he would have been considered a Founding Father. Galloway, a longtime friend and ally of Benjamin Franklin, was the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and led the fight to free the colony from the control of the Penn family. Galloway —a native Pennsylvanian who married into money—was 43 years old in September of 1774 when he was elected to the First Continental Congress. He had spent much of the previous year ill and suffering from depression, and so was not actively involved in the heated discussion in Pennsylvania surrounding the Boston Tea Party and the resulting Intolerable Acts. Which may be why, historian Mary Beth Norton speculated, he failed to apprehend the gathering radicalism that was growing in what was still a divided colony.
Galloway was one of those people who went into the First Continental Congress still believing it was possible for the colonists to mend fences with His Majesty’s government. To that end, he introduced a proposal on September 26 for a new model of governance in America. Under its provisions, the thirteen colonies would run themselves internally, with a “president-general” appointed by the King alongside a “Grand Council” elected by colonial legislatures to handle matters of broader imperial concern. A kind of proto-Canadian model, you might say.
It was a reasonable proposal. But by September of 1774, it was too late to reflect the increasingly militant disposition of the Congress, especially in the aftermath of the Suffolk Resolves that represented that latest escalation of a New England assertion of independence that was drawing continental support. Galloway’s proposal was voted down.
From this point on, he was increasingly perceived as conservative, reflected in a series of writings—some anonymous, some not—resisting the revolutionary tenor of American politics. In 1775 he refused to join the Second Continental Congress and became an avowed Loyalist. He nevertheless remained close enough to Franklin for the Sage of Philadelphia to entrust Galloway with his personal papers when he went to Paris to be the new U.S. ambassador to France. (They were later confiscated by the British.) Galloway headed the civil government of Philadelphia when the city fell under British occupation in 1777, and left for England when the imperial army evacuated the city in 1778. He was convicted of treason in exile, and never returned to America, dying in 1803, the year Thomas Jefferson made the U.S. a continental power via the Louisiana Purchase.
There are of course any number of reasons why Galloway’s situation was different than mine, beginning with the more consequential conflict in which he was involved. One could describe me as a traitor to my school, which I fled, though I have not been in active rear-guard opposition to it the way Galloway was to the American Revolution. What I do relate to, in a way I realize isn’t exactly flattering, is clinging to a moderate position while the world was changing. The positions we take are often a matter of principle, yes, but also a matter of temperament: a preferred way of seeing the world. Sometimes, the safest—and, yes, best—course is in the middle. But not always. “Lay down your money and play your part,” Bruce Springsteen once noted in “Hungry Heart,” not an injunction but rather an observation about human nature. To greater or lesser degrees we temper or embrace our instincts and hope for the best. Which should usually involve a measure of humility, as well as a recognition that sometimes things just don’t go your way despite your best efforts, intentions, and beliefs. You can only hope to live long enough to experience a happy ending or two.