Posted on 08/24/2010 8:40:14 AM PDT by AccuracyAcademia
Having spent an inordinate portion of the summer reading the academic jottings of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, it is refreshing to remember that there is another lady on the federal bench who really does know what it is all about.
That would be U. S. Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown. At the 46th annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society, she very succinctly described America’s founding principles. I had the pleasure of hearing those remarks in person which The Fund for American Studies received her permission to transcribe.
“The historian Jacques Barzun divides the last 500 years into three eras: The years 1500-1660 were dominated by the issue of man’s relation to God; 1661-1789 by debating an individual’s status and the mode of government; 1790-1920 by the question of how to achieve social and economic equality,” she reminded Society members at the April meeting in Philadelphia. “The American Revolution falls into the second category; the French Revolution is in the third.”
“That is, the American Revolution represented the culmination of religious consciousness applied to the designs of government, while the French Revolution heralded the beginning of the secular age. And this discontinuity in worldview has made all the difference.
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
“Sister Revolutions” is a good book for those interested in the differences between the American and French revolutions.
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