Posted on 07/16/2002 2:09:32 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
If you haven't stepped inside a college classroom of late, you ought to. There you will see your taxes doing some of their "best" work; there you will discover from whence cometh the appellation "rebel," so graciously attached to our Founding Fathers. I first heard it in an undergraduate American history class, two decades ago.
The instructor, a devout Marxist, began the first day of instruction by quoting the preamble of the North Vietnamese Constitution; emphasizing that their sacred document echoed verbatim a quote from our sacred Declaration of Independence - to which he followed up with this left hook: "And we fought these guys in Vietnam?!"
His disgraceful defense of mass murdering communism, set the theme for a semester of disinformation. Our Founders, he taught, were not unlike modern communist revolutionaries: they were drunken, skirt-chasing, hotheaded, hypocritical "rebels" who would resort to whatever means necessary to achieve their "holy," self serving ends. That is, they would lie, they would rabble-rouse, they would revolt, and they would kill - just so long as they took care of "number one."
This was, in summary, tax-funded scholarship at its best!
Similarly, round two of the lie, a modern branch of socialism, the fascist, futuristic Third Way (1) adds this: Just like the communists, the founding parent/rebels were visionaries who saw the need to, and did in fact overthrow the existing order - a feat which must be repeated in our time - that is, if the we wish to avoid "a blood bath," and secure peace, prosperity, and democracy for the 21st Century.
More poppycock!
Now let's clear the ranch of all this bull about American "rebels" overthowing the existing order. Just what does a Communist or Third Wayer mean when he speaks of the existing order?
In two words, he means this: "private property" - and attached to that: anything which defends private property - namely, as Marx enumerated: "religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law." As well as "eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society." And two more: "the family," and "nationhood."
To overthrow the existing order, the communist founder observed, a movement must "[abolish] eternal truths, ... all religion, ... all morality, [and] instead of constituting them on a new basis; ... [act] in contradiction of all past historical experience."
What does this mean?
Edmund Burke noted in his famous "Reflections on the Revolution in France": "All ... nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing originally or by enforcing with greater exactness some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners and a system of a more austere and masculine morality."
To overthrow the existing order, is to overthrow the accumulated knowledge, traditions, and patterns of history.
This had never before occurred, until the French Revolution, which provides the ultimate contrast to the American Revolution.
This revolution, praised by communists today, is the quintessential revolution, for its brutal, bloody totality. Crushed were property, religion, legal traditions, social graces, you name it. Broken was the pattern of history, and established a new order under a "secular" constitution.
"[They exhibited] total contempt ... [for] all ancient institutions," said Burke. And their supposed "liberty," "[resembled] a madman," or else "a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights ... [who] act[s] over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys ..."
Ultimately, this is what it means to overthrow the existing order, to make criminality and immorality, the law. That is why Burke denounced that communist styled revolution as a false revolution.
The American Revolution, is the exact antipode of the French, the Communist, or the Third Way revolution.
The word revolution, in its old sense, was "a round of periodic or recurrent changes or events - that is, the process of coming full cycle, or the act of rolling back or moving back, a return to a point previously occupied." (2).
Jefferson suggested in 1776, "Is it not better now that we return at once unto that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man?"
He understood what a revolution was. He was referring to returning to the government of the ancient Anglo Saxons of the 4th Century AD, and beyond to the ancient Israelites and their system of judges.
So who are these people kidding? What order, and what law did the Americans rebel against and overthrow? Private property, equality, local self government, limitations of powers, divisions of powers, taxation (by consent), natural rights, the preeminence of God's law, common law, trial by jury, and laws against theft, murder, deception, profanity, and so forth, were their heritage, not their invention.
As Edmund Burke noted about this "true revolution," the Founders built a more glorious structure upon the ancient traditions of English law.
So I say in tandem with Edmund Burke - in defense of the Founders - to the Communist, Third Wayers, and every other blood thirsty cabal of today: "Rebels they were not!"
Footnotes
1. The Third Way is a subtle attempt to move toward a fascist totalitarian world order, by offering a "safe middle-ground" between "compassionate" communism, and "greedy" capitalism - hence, the "third way," or else, "compassionate conservatism," or whatever name of the day works best. Since the early 1990s the Republican Party, "new" Democrats, the EU, and the UN have joined hands in this bipartisan slide into tyranny. The Third Way calls for the abolition of the US Constitution, representative government, majority rule, the existing "intolerant" moral order - and its narrow definition of the family.
2. Kirk, Russell. "Rights and Duties: Reflections On Our Conservative Constitution," Dallas, Spence Publishing Company, 1997.
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
"Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ."
We have staked the whole future of American civilization... We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind.... to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"To overthrow the existing order, the communist founder observed, a movement must "[abolish] eternal truths, ... all religion, ... all morality, [and] instead of constituting them on a new basis; ... [act] in contradiction of all past historical experience."
Sounds kind of like what the Supreme Court has done over the past 40 years.
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