Two Revolutions, Two Views of Man

Conservative Underground | July 6, 2010 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

TWO REVOLUTIONS, TWO VIEWS OF MAN
By Jean F. Drew

As every American schoolchild has been taught, in Western history there were two great sociopolitical revolutions that took place near the end of the eighteenth century: The American Revolution of 1775; and the French, of 1789. Children are taught that both revolutions were fought because of human rights in some way; thus bloody warfare possibly could be justified, condoned so long as the blood and treasure were shed to protect the “rights of man.” The American schoolchild is assured that the American and French revolutions were both devoted to the expansion of human rights and thus were equally noble revolutions. Moreover, it is widely believed that the French Revolution was an evolution from the American one.

Rather than simply accept these ideas uncritically, comparison and contrast of the two revolutions can shed some light on what turns out to be their stark differences — as to inceptions, ostensible goals, foundational ideology, and respective outcomes.

Inceptions
There is a famous Pythagorean maxim (c. sixth century B.C.): “The beginning is the half of the whole.” That is to say, inception events have a way of profoundly influencing the course of events that follow from them; and so their analysis can give insight into the character of their development in time, and even of the motivations they configure. Less obviously, an inception event is itself the culmination of a train of social, political, and cultural development that finally “erupts,” or takes evident shape, as a concrete beginning, or precipitating event of what follows. At that point, a situation of no return has been reached: “The fat is in the fire.” There is no turning back….

And so, let us take a look at the beginnings of two revolutions:

The American:
“In London George III and his cabinet, their confidence bolstered by their huge majority in Parliament, moved toward a confrontation with the Americans. On February 2, 1775, [Prime Minister Frederick, Lord] North introduced a motion to declare the province of Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and asked the King to take steps to support the sovereignty of England. The opposition, led by Edmund Burke, decried this move as a declaration of war. But the measure passed by a majority of three to one. George III was immensely pleased….”

The King decided to send some 1,000 reinforcements to Boston, far short of the number that Governor General Thomas Gage had wanted.

“…The King and his ministers still refused to believe Gage’s assessment of the odds he faced…. Colonel James Grant — who had served in America, at one point in the same army with George Washington [in the French and Indian Wars] — declared he was certain the Americans ‘would never dare to face an English army.’… In this spirit the King … ordered Lord Dartmouth to draft a letter telling Gage that it was time to act.”

Gage promptly acted. Thanks to his spies, he knew that the Colonials were accumulating military stores at Concord, including large quantities of gunpowder. So Gage decided that a swift march on Concord to seize the powder as well as the fourteen cannon said to be in the town “would have a crippling, even demoralizing impact on the Provincial Congress’s plans to form an Army of Observation to pen the British inside Boston.”

From this decision ensued, on April 19, 1775, the opening shot — “the shot heard ’round the world” — of the American Revolutionary War, at North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts at about 8 o’clock in the morning.

Although the Colonials already knew the British were coming to Concord and Lexington sooner or later, and for what purpose, and that the incursion would come by a night march (rare in that day) — the Americans proved early to be remarkably effective spies — what they did not know was the specific date, or whether the British forces would be moving by land — over Boston Neck — or by sea — in longboats across the Back Bay. Hence the famous signal of “one if by land, two if by sea” posted at the Old North Church, wherein observers were keeping an eye on British troop movements.

It turned out to be “two”: The British forces, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were subsequently debarked at Cambridge across the Charles River, from longboats attached to H.M.S. Somerset then standing guard over the Boston Harbor ferryway. This was a force of some 700 men composed of light infantrymen and “fearsome” grenadiers. From thence the body proceeded overland, on a much shorter march than would have been the case had they approached Concord via Boston Neck. The route from Cambridge to Concord led straight through the heart of the neighboring town of Lexington.

As soon as the news came that the British were moving, Paul Revere set upon his famous midnight ride “on a fast mare,” traveling west at high speed to warn the people of Concord and the surrounding towns that the British were coming. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes likewise fanned out on horseback, spreading the alert to all within earshot.

The folks at Concord, having thus been warned, working feverishly overnight, managed to remove all the military stores to safe locations. The locals felt confident they could handle the threat: After all, the town had 600 drilled and trained Minutemen on spot, and there were some 6,000 other Minutemen and Militia — a body composed of all able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 60 — within fairly easy reach of Concord town who were already pledged to come to her aid in the event of the outbreak of actual hostilities.

The people of Concord evidently figured a show of force would suffice to deter the British officers from doing anything rash. But really what they were relying on was their expectation — based on their understanding of the so-far prevailing rules of engagement, frequently tested — that British troops would never open fire on their fellow citizens — i.e., the Colonials themselves, who were British subjects also — unless they were fired upon first. And the Americans did not intend to fire first.

In this assessment of the situation on the ground, they were sadly mistaken. In the approach to Concord, the Brits had provoked a bloody engagement at Lexington Green in which “the British light infantry unquestionably fired the first volleys, killing eight men and wounding ten.” Then the British forces continued their march into Concord, to secure the bridges of the town: The British commander Smith had detached four squadrons to visit a prominent local farm to see whether contraband might be stashed there; and feared his troops could not safely return if the North Bridge were under the control of the Colonials. In defense of the bridge, the Brits again fired first. For a moment, the Americans could not believe this was happening. “‘Goddamn it,’ one man shouted, ‘They are firing ball!’” Then their commander, Major Buttrick, “whirled and shouted, ‘Fire fellow soldiers, for God’s sake fire.’” The Americans sustained six casualties at North Bridge, all fatal. On the British side, “Two privates were killed and a sergeant, four privates and four officers were wounded.”

Then the Brits cut their losses and in disorderly retreat high-tailed it back to the security of their barracks in Boston — empty-handed. Their mission was a failure: They had not found, let alone confiscated, any military stores.

But the American Revolutionary War was officially ON….

* * * * * * *

The French:
“History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had just time to fly almost half naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

“This king … and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded…. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell…. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings….”

And thus, the French Revolutionary War was officially ON….

On the question of origins — beginnings, inceptions, precipitating events — it would appear that the American and French Revolutions do not seem to resemble one another very much. It’s difficult to draw a common understanding of what human rights might be on the basis of such disparate evidence.

On the one hand, it’s possible to see that perhaps human rights had something to do with the defense of Concord: People coming together to protect and defend their lives, liberty, and property against the tyranny of George III, who then was most corruptly usurping the ancient “rights of Englishmen” not only in America, but also back in the home isles — as the Colonials were very well aware.

People today do not appreciate how close was the tie with the “mother country” at the time, through the printed word: In that day, the London presses were offloading their publications directly onto American ships bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as soon as the ink was dry. It was from the London press that the Colonials learned of the usurpations of individual liberty that good King George was perpetrating at home, not to mention in their own backyard. They wanted no part of it.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to see what human right is implicated in the inception event of the French Revolution — unless it be the right to commit regicide. Or maybe the right to agitate and deploy mobs as instruments of social and political change….

In the end, “Citizen Louis Capet,” formerly known as King Louis XVI of France, was tried and convicted of treason by the National Convention and was guillotined on 21 January 1793 — the only French king in history to fall victim to regicide. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was also tried and convicted of treason: She was executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months after her husband.

Ostensible Goals
It seems clear that the Americans were not seeking to kill the king, or to overthrow the traditions of the British constitutional monarchy. Rather, they were seeking a complete, formal separation from it — because they were motivated by the conviction that their historic liberties were being systematically violated by George III.

By 1775, the Americans already had a tradition of local or self-government going back some 150 years. When the king sent in his governors, who ruled autocratically as directed by himself and his council, the Americans were outraged. The maxim “no taxation without representation” was but one expression of their revulsion for what they perceived as the wholesale destruction of the historic liberties of British subjects in America. The Sons of Liberty at Boston, notably including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, eloquently argued for total separation from the British Crown — not the most popular idea at first. But the events at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge caused many to reappraise their position on this matter. In the end, complete separation was the idea that prevailed, and which was finally achieved….

So what was this notion of liberty that had the Americans so exercised? John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, writing in Cato’s Letters — serially published in The London Journal in 1721 and after, which was avidly read in America at the time — describe human liberty as follows:

All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....

Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.

The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....

These were the ideas that had earlier inspired the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which the great British philosopher and political activist, John Locke (1632–1704) — a thinker enormously respected in America — was the intellectual father. Above all, Locke’s ideas constitute a theory of the individual human being. This is the same theory that inspired the American Revolution of 1775: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Indeed, it appears the author of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) was strongly resonating to Locke’s essential political ideas in these passages.

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) — the great Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist, and philosopher (who as already noted was sympathetic to the American cause) — also articulated the historic rights of Englishmen, and of all free peoples universally, as follows:

“…If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; the law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in political function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. But as to the share of power, authority and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.

“If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can a man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?”

This last point draws attention to Burke’s understanding that the foundational rights of man declared by the French philosophes — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité — are purely abstract rights indicating no sign of understanding of, or connection with, the actual development and maintenance of a just civil society. In other words, the philosophes envisioned man abstractly, or to put it another way, as abstracted from both nature and society as if this abstract man stands as a total end in himself, as sacrosanct, beyond any demand of society which nature assigns to him as inescapable part and participant of it. It seems the philosophes first reduce the human being to an abstraction — by taking him entirely out of the context of historical experience and traditional understandings of natural law going back millennia. Then, with man having been so abstracted, from there it is easy to dissolve him into an abstract mass: The individual is no longer the natural or even “legal” bearer of rights; rather, the legal bearer of rights is now the mass, the “group”— mankind at large or however else defined.

There is a further consideration regarding the original American founding that we should remember today: The British colony at Massachusetts was not established by means of military power — which is the usual way that states of whatever description acquire new territories. Instead, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by religious refugees: They were dissenters from the Church of England, the established church of which the reigning king was titular head.

Beginning with Henry VIII and extending to all his successors, the king of England entirely combined in his own person both the fundamental secular and spiritual authority of British society. But, when religious pilgrims on November 11, 1620, at Provincetown, Massachusetts, ratified what has been described as the first written constitution in human history, the Mayflower Compact, they were acting in resonance to a spiritual authority superior to that of the then-reigning king, James I — or of kings in general.

Just by making the voyage to America, the religious refugees were repudiating the authority of the king over their spiritual lives. Once there, the secular authority of the king was of absolutely no help to them. They had to shift for themselves, and basic survival was the highest priority: Almost the majority of the original colony perished during their first New England winter. They were forced to place their reliance entirely on themselves, on each other, and on God. The Mayflower Compact, moreover, made the pilgrim’s primary reliance on God perfectly explicit. Its first five words are: “In the name of God, Amen.”

Hold that thought while we turn to the French experience.

For centuries, the foundation of French society, culture, and politics had been the idea of the Etats General, of which there were three “estates”: the aristocracy, whose head was the King; the Church, whose head was the Pope; and everybody else; i.e., your average, everyday, common, “small” people….

What is known is that when King Louis XVI was decapitated, the social force of the French aristocracy was effectively decapitated with him. Also it is known that in the four-year period between the invasion of the queen’s bedchamber and the execution of the king, some 16,000 French men and women were guillotined at Paris — mainly aristocrats and other well-off people — as “enemies of the State.” Also all Church lands (probably accounting for some twenty percent of the total French real estate) and property were forcibly confiscated by the State, now reposed in a body called the National Assembly, composed by the Third Estate, the “people” of France. Thousands of clergy — bishops, priests, monks, and nuns — were murdered.

In effect the Third Estate utterly destroyed the other two: That’s the French Revolution in a nutshell.

Foundational Ideology
The French Revolution managed to kill off the first two Estates — and with that, evidently hoped to extinguish forever all aristocratic and theological ideas, pretensions, and powers regarding questions of the human condition. Indeed, the general expectation then seemed to be the Third Estate, the people, unchained from past “superstitions” and “repressions,” had at last come into its own sphere, where it could finally define and exercise true human “liberty.”

But the people were not some sort of homogeneous mass. Rather, there is a natural hierarchical order within the Third Estate similar to that found in both the aristocratic and theological estates.

In France at the time, at the top of this natural hierarchy were the people with expertise in manufacturing, commerce, banking, and law. They were the beneficiaries of the rising tide of the Enlightenment, as plentifully nourished from the side of Newtonian science.

In the rank immediately below them were the skilled craftsmen. Below this, relatively unskilled laborers. Then, the “least” of the people, the peasants/serfs who mainly were the impoverished suffering victims of the feudal order then embraced by both the aristocracy and the Church.

Thus within the Third Estate there were marked disparities of wealth, opportunity, education, talent, and ability. Yet the doctrine of Egalité erases all such distinctions: An Einstein and the most ignorant day laborer were considered “equal.” All were “equal” in the National Assembly too. On this basis, the doctrine of Fraternité, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is blind and silent regarding the problem of: how the victims of the revolution become “non-brothers” in the first place, such that they could be destroyed with impunity by the mob, or condemned as “enemies of the state” by the National Convention and sent to the guillotine. On this basis, the doctrine of Liberté seems little more than a defense of gratuitous, passionate license that is immensely destructive to society.

Burke’s analysis of the situation in France, the condition of the National Assembly, and their combined implications, retains its extraordinary political noteworthiness to defenders of Liberty in our own day:

“It is no wonder therefore, that it is with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.

“They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’ Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament [modification], and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration….”

Burke again reminds us a few pages later on that there is deep danger in relying on abstract rights when it comes to the organization of a just — that is “liberal,” in the sense of liberty, the root idea of classical liberalism — political society:

“The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.”

In Burke’s view — and I daresay in the view of his contemporary American readers — the French Revolution was a

“… usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.”

“Excuse me … if I have dwelt too long on this atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men….”

Clearly, Burke understands the French Revolution first and foremost as a “revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” — that is, it was preeminently a social, not a political revolution. Certainly that was not the case with the American Revolution. Indeed, Bernard Bailyn, eminent professor of Early American History at Harvard, has asked a tantalizing question: Was the American Revolution a revolution, or was it an evolution?

The prevailing American view at the time did not reject the ancient British tradition of natural liberty under natural law; it was rejecting King George as the traducer and usurper of this tradition. They didn’t want a king or a pope; they wanted a system of self-government that had already been in long usage in America. Ultimately they wanted a Constitution exclusively devoted to the defense of human liberty under just and equal laws. Which if history was of any guide meant that the action of the State had to be kept minimal in its scope by well-defined authority.

Most colonial Americans, being heirs of the same ancient, natural-law cultural tradition as Edmund Burke, likely would have agreed with him about this:

“…We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould on our presumption….”

The allusion to Rousseau here is particularly instructive. Rousseau held that man is born perfectly good: He is born the “noble savage.” But as soon as he is in the world long enough, he becomes subject to a relentless process of corruption that makes him “bad” — because of the “bad institutions” of society, including churches and states, educational systems, economic organizations, and so forth. Man is victimized by society and powerless against it. “Bad institutions” are entirely to blame for human misery.

In short, Rousseau’s doctrine is directly opposed to the natural law doctrine that human beings are responsible (within limits) for whatever happens to them. Natural law theory holds that individual human beings alone have the ability to choose, decide, act; and that they are responsible for the decisions they make. And this implies the objective existence of good and evil. It also requires a universal (divine) spiritual authority to underwrite the foundational truths of the natural and moral worlds, thus to bring them into correspondence in human reason and experience.

In short, the Americans were not disciples of Rousseau…. He stands their theory of man on its very head.

Two Views of Man — Then and Now
The two revolutions have theories of man that are diametrically opposed, based on the idea of what constitutes human liberty, of the source of human rights. What Locke and Burke and the Americans held in common was the belief that human rights are the gifts of God, and are therefore inseparable from human nature itself. In other words, these rights inalienably inhere in concrete individual persons, each and every one, equally.

In contrast, on the French revolutionary view, human rights are the province of an abstraction known as “mankind.” Its doctrine is the Rights of Man — not the equal, inalienable rights of actual men. It sets up scope for the idea of “group rights,” as opposed to the idea of rights divinely vested in the individual person in such a way as to constitute his or her very own human nature. Under the French Revolution, the “metaphysicians” — Burke’s term for intellectual elites — would guide the rest of us in our understanding of such matters. In short, our rights as human beings ineluctably would be what politically powerful elites tell us they are. There is to be no higher standard of truth than that.

In the so-called post-modern world, the revolution that works overtime to kill truth wants to destroy it at its root — at the Logos. Rather than engage in fully free and fair debate, the entire project of the French Revolution seems have been the delegitimation of the idea that there is an “objective” standard by which Reality can be ascertained and judged, the root criterion for the discernment of good and evil in the actual world, by which human beings, acting according to reason and experience, can guide their lives in fruitful ways — or do the opposite. In short, once the concept of good and evil is destroyed, the human being has no firm guide by which to navigate his own personal existence.

Instead of the perennial question of good v. evil, in the post-modern world some “metaphysicians” tell us there is no objective truth at all — which logically follows from the presupposition of the “death” of God which they have, like Rousseau, already achieved in their own minds. The description of human reality thus boils down to a competition of amoral human “narratives,” or skilled opinions; but in the end still opinions. And under the principle of Egalité, one man’s opinion is just like any other man’s, neither good nor bad.

It appears we have among us today “metaphysicians” who desire, in the words of the great Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot, to contrive and execute “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And then to impose them on humanity. To succeed in this project, first they have to discredit the foundational motivating ideas of the American Revolution….

To speak of the Now: The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution — to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity — on grounds that it is a “system of negative liberties” that has outlived its usefulness.

Indeed, it appears that he is doing everything in his power finally to drive a silver stake through the very heart of American liberty — the historic liberty of We the People of the United States of America, and that of our Posterity — for which the Constitution originally was “ordained and established.”

©2010 Jean F. Drew

ENDNOTES
¹ Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, David Fideler, ed., Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988, p. 97.
² Thomas Fleming, Liberty!: The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 104f.
³ Fleming, p. 105.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Fleming, p. 112.
⁶ Fleming, p. 118.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, New York: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1982, p. 105f. Note: Because this edition is a facsimile of the original publication of 1790, I’ve taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation.
¹⁰ John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, Cato’s Letters, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995, p. 406ff.
¹¹ Burke, p. 87–88.
¹² Burke, p. 85–86.
¹³ Burke, p. 89–90.
¹⁴ Burke, p. 116.
¹⁵ Burke, p. 119; emphasis added.
¹⁶ Burke, p. 127–128; emphasis added.

[Alamo-Girl]

I am thrilled to hear you have a similar testimony, dear brother in Christ and "Rocky Ridge" kid!

[stfassisi]

I attend Mass more often than any Protestant service in the area because our elderly Catholic cousin is in a wheelchair and needs help.

Good News! I'm happy to hear this!

Truly, there are many doctrines in the Catholic belief which grate against my spirit, e.g. closed communion

There is a reason,and it's not that your being judged by the Church either.Here an excerpt from a simple dialog taken from thisrock.com

OBJECTOR: But why can’t the Church just say, "Come all Christians!" and make no further judgments?

CATHOLIC: Because the Church has a responsibility to teach what Scripture teaches. Think of it this way: If the Church allowed everyone to take Communion, it would be giving up its responsibility to teach what Christ and his apostles taught. If Scripture says that receiving communion is a fellowship or a sharing in the body and blood of Christ, and the Church allowed a person to receive it who didn’t believe in it this way, then the person is engaging in a act of lying, even if he is not aware of it as lying. By his actions he is saying that he believes what the Catholic Church says is true, but in his mind he doesn’t believe it. The Church does not want to put anyone in the position of having to lie with their actions, so it insists that a person receiving Communion must believe in the Eucharist in the way that the Catholic Church teaches.

if God led me to become Catholic, I would.

Since you attend Mass,I think you will become a Catholic someday. This gives me one more exiting thing for me to pray for ,dear sister. :) I was once a protestant,so you never know.

I am a bakery shop kid

Is this one of your cakes.LOL!

;

I wish well well in your search for truth,dear sister

[stfassisi]

Correction...
I wish well well in your search = I wish YOU well in your search

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights and the picture of that beautiful cake, dear brother in Christ!

I have heard the closed communion explanation before (and the close communion explanation from Lutherans) - but it doesn't satisfy because the priest or minister cannot know the mind and heart of the ones who do or do not partake of the cup and the bread.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of [that] bread, and drink of [that] cup. - I Cor 11:28

But I don't wish to derail this thread into a sidebar on closed communions. It is enough that we have each made a statement.

May God ever bless you, dear stfassisi!

(Now for some coffee and pastries - I've suddenly become hungry ... LOLOL!)

[TXnMA]

"I wish YOU well in your search for truth."

You obviously missed the whole point of A-G's post: she, very clearly, has already arrived at the truth -- without having made any detours through a church hierarchy, intervention of "saints", dispensations from anyone in "Apostolic succession', bead-fumbling, etc., etc....

She like I, found her way directly to Christ -- through direct input from God via the Bible. We were like rifles -- loaded, cocked, sights on the target, firmly stabilized by slings -- and all it took was "recognizing how to release the safety" for us to "hit the X-ring".

And all that came through the WORD -- not some human-staffed and imposed organization. IOW: no church required. Specifically, no Church required...

Sorry if the above makes you feel superfluous and your Church unnecessary. If so, however, you are taking valuable first steps, and I "wish YOU well in your search for truth."

[Alamo-Girl]

She like I, found her way directly to Christ -- through direct input from God via the Bible. We were like rifles -- loaded, cocked, sights on the target, firmly stabilized by slings -- and all it took was "recognizing how to release the safety" for us to "hit the X-ring".

And all that came through the WORD -- not some human-staffed and imposed organization. IOW: no church required. Specifically, no Church required...

Truly, I am full of love, joy and peace exactly where I am.

Thank you so much for sharing your testimony and insights, dear brother in Christ!

God's Name is I AM.

[kosta50]

[Re: You've got to learn to stop making statements which can be easily checked and refuted, expecting to carry the day by sheer bombast."]

This is was in response to my assertion that in the 18th century English nouns were routinely capitalized, inlcuding the Declaration of Independence. The self-appointed censor-general who tracks my posts with admirable passion  even provided a link to show me that I was wrong, hence the "easily checked and refuted"  comment.

But if the particular individual bothered to preach what she preaches she would have learned that the document that handwritten draft that was approved on July 4th, 1776 (which was signed only by the John Hancock (president of the Congress) and Charles Thompson (Secretary), and was immediately sent to a printer a few blocks away for immediate distribution. The printed copies made by John Dunlap, a printer, on July 4th, 1776, are  known as the Dunlap broadsides (hi-res link) pictured below in reduces resolution.

 

The original handwritten Declaration John Dunlap used is lost, so the only copy of the Delcaration that is actually a July 4th copy is the Dunlap printed version. One thing that is immediately clear from looking at the hi-resolution image is that it apparently capitalizes nouns, such as Course, Events, etc. 

The so-called Goddard broadsides were officially printed in January 1777, showing signatures of all participants in the drafting and approving, while maintaining idential capitalization of the July 4th, 1776 Dunlap version.

The handwritten copy we usually associate with the "original" Declaration of Independence is a commissioned copy ordered by the Philadelphia Congress on July 19, 1776 in order for all participants to sign it. It's cursive text shows somewhat lesser tendency to capitalize every noun compared to the official July 4th printed versions but a high resolution copy leaves no doubt that such  capitalization is still present (see hi-res here), as evidenced by words such as Form, Men, Trade, etc.

Some other copies,such as the Boston broadsides follow the handwritten custom. And, for what it's worth,  this little article on English Capitalization – Rules and Regulations says of the 18th century capitalizations

Soon many writers capitalized every noun they found important. Consequently, in some books all or most nouns were being capitalized

So, I stand by my original statement. And so much for my censor-general telling me "You've got to learn to stop making statements which can be easily checked and refuted, expecting to carry the day by sheer bombast" with which you so wholehearteldy agreed but without ever realizing that his own advice might perchance bite both of you.

[kosta50]

"One great Advantage of the Christian Religion is that it brings the great Principle of the Law of Nature and Nations, Love your Neighbour as yourself..." -- John Adams Diary 46, Sunday, August 14, 1796, Pg 52)...

Very impressive. However, his "Christianity" is not what mainline Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc.) ands for. His Christianity is akin and in fact a derivative of Arian "Christianity" which is about as Chrisitna as Mormonism.

Just because he used the same words doesn't mean he used the same concepts as Triniatrian Christians!

He was a member of the 18th century Unitarian church which in those days professed that the Bible is not divinely inspired, that God is one Person (i.e. only the Father), thereby denying the divinity of Christ. And for all but some peripheral "Christian" offshoots, Christianity is defined by the belief that the Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal, one and the same God, equally divine, yet distinct hypostatic realities.

He and Thomas Jefferson therefore used terminology that did not clash with the terminoogy of the rest of the members of the Congress who were true Christians but did not share all their beliefs.

[grey_whiskers]

BFD.

So what you're saying, is that John is mythical, since he only appears in the Bible; that there have been numerous substitutions and mistranscriptions which render translations of the Bible, and the events related in it, suspect; but that for the Declaration of Independence, with the Original Handwritten Copy^TM LOST, we can infer from a printed (and hence, likely more formal) COPY, that we know the original capitalization, infallibly.

Nice try, child.

Oh -- did you bother to read up on the Scripture verses from both Old and New Testament, condemning and/or restricting slavery? Or read up on the history of the Church's campaigns against slavery, from the noted abolitionist (not apologist) Harriet Beecher Stowe?

[kosta50]

[to my passionate critic's remarks you wrote] Thank you for this wonderful material. A great deal to digest.

She takes issue with my statement that the Bible legitimizes slavery. To this she responds "the Old Testament forbids Jews from enslaving other Jews (Leviticus 25:39-42; see also Jeremiah 34:8-10)."

This was of course not due to some avant-garde humanistic notions of the ancient Jews, but because of the notion that Jews can be servants (slaves) only to their God.

In fact, only a verse hop further, the same Leviticus 25 says (my emphasis)

"⁴⁴'As for your male and female slaves whom you may have--you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you."

So pagans in the region are legitimate slave material according to God's own words.

Not so long ago, I was told by a very active Protestant Freeper on another thread that biblical slavery was not immoral because it was not a chattel-type of slavery as the American slavery was (!). This, of course, is yet another straw man.

This lady must not have done her Bible reading thoroughly, I suppose, since none other than the same Leviticus 25 says

"⁴⁵'Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession.

 ⁴⁶'You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.

To be sure, the Bible approves of slavery of any kind, including the worst chattel-type (where the slave is actually a property owned and passed on as inheritance), as long as the slave is not a Jew!

In other words, since Leviticus is one of the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and therefore dictated to him by God word-for-word, it is God (not Moses through inspiration) who is establishing not only chattel-type slavery in Leviticus 25, but one based on race/religion.

Because the Bible says it's okay to own slaves as property, it must be morally acceptable to any Jew or Christian (that is, if they believe Leviticus is God's very word, as they claim) as one's faith in God would oblige them to do so.

My beloved self-appointed censor-general further builds her straw man by citing 1 Corinthians 7:21, 23 which read, respectively:

"...if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of it"

"You have all been redeemed at infinite cost: do not become slaves to men"

adding a comment "So it seems slavery is meant (at most) for those outside an active covenant with God."

Which in those days was most of the world. So, she seems to be suggesting that it's okay to be a slave if you are not "born again" which is no different than the OT saying you can own a slave a song as he is not a a Jew. I suppose racism and slavery go hand in hand, don't they, and all thanks to the Bible it seems.

So, it is really interesting where the Church got its ideas that a man is free as a matter of self-evident (I suppose biblical) truth! Thus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the pillars of Patristic thinking (when he was not following Origen's universal salvation Gnostic beliefs) on which the catholic and orthodox Church rests, assails slavery on biblical grounds!:

"You condemn man who is free and autonomous to servitude, and you contradict God by perverting the natural law. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept." [Gregory of Nyssa, IV Homily, Commentary on Ecclesiastes]

It makes you wonder if this (4th century) bishop ever read Genesis 9:25-27, or the already mentioned verses in Leviticus 25. :) 

Happy digestion.

[Diamond]

To be sure, the Bible approves of slavery of any kind, including the worst chattel-type (where the slave is actually a property owned and passed on as inheritance), as long as the slave is not a Jew!

In other words, since Leviticus is one of the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and therefore dictated to him by God word-for-word, it is God (not Moses through inspiration) who is establishing not only chattel-type slavery in Leviticus 25, but one based on race/religion.

Because the Bible says it's okay to own slaves as property, it must be morally acceptable to any Jew or Christian (that is, if they believe Leviticus is God's very word, as they claim) as one's faith in God would oblige them to do so.

Why do you include Christians in the Old Covenant?! And if the Old Covenant tolerated or even approved slavery, what is that to you? You seem to take for granted that there's something morally wrong with it. Why? On what grounds do you oppose whatever they did then?

So, it is really interesting where the Church got its ideas that a man is free as a matter of self-evident (I suppose biblical) truth! Thus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the pillars of Patristic thinking (when he was not following Origen's universal salvation Gnostic beliefs) on which the catholic and orthodox Church rests, assails slavery on biblical grounds!:

"You condemn man who is free and autonomous to servitude, and you contradict God by perverting the natural law. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept."
[Gregory of Nyssa, IV Homily, Commentary on Ecclesiastes]

It makes you wonder if this (4th century) bishop ever read Genesis 9:25-27, or the already mentioned verses in Leviticus 25. :)

Certainly with the breadth of your intellect and scope of your knowledge you are aware of the Biblical distinction [on its own terms] between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So why do you ignore that crucial distinction here? But again, on what philosophical grounds do you think there is something wrong with racism and slavery, assuming that you do?

Cordially,

[stfassisi]

You obviously missed the whole point of A-G's post: she, very clearly, has already arrived at the truth

When I wrote to AG "I wish you well in your search for truth" it was said in the Spirit of kindness and NOT judgment. Since NO person posses knowledge of "all knowing truth" (including you or I),it's very obvious the spirit you were in with your response is a spirit of pride or ignorance of good will!

I wish you well in your search as well

[Alamo-Girl]

I imagine that each of us being content as we are in God's love are speaking to one another like Paul in the following verse.

And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds. - Acts 26:29

Truly, I would that everyone could see through my eyes. And I can imagine no better spiritual vision than what He has already given me, though at the same time I do not doubt that I am not seeing all that could be seen.

Nevertheless I am fully content and peaceful as a sheep in the Good Shepherd's care.

The LORD [is] my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. - Psalms 23

God's Name is I AM.

[YHAOS]

“The self-appointed censor-general who tracks my posts with admirable passion . . . ”

Since your quarrel seems to be with grey_whiskers it’s a wonder you didn’t bother to ping him (or her, as the case might be). But I have summoned him should he wish to defend himself.

“So, I stand by my original statement.”

And I by mine. To verify that Barnhart’s was not a lone exception, I went to the Online Etymology Dictionary and found virtually the identical language: creator c.1300, "Supreme Being," from Anglo-Fr. creatour, O.Fr. creator (12c., academic and liturgical, alongside popular creere, Mod.Fr. créateur), from L. creator "creator, author, founder," from creatus (see create). Translated in O.E. as scieppend (from verb scieppan; see shape). Not generally capitalized until KJV (emphasis mine). General meaning "one who creates" is from 1570s.

If these dictionaries had not found the capitalization of Creator significant we must presume capitalization would not have been mentioned. Etymological Dictionaries do not customarily make frivolous points. Your own reference takes the trouble to note that “many” writers capitalized every noun they thought “important.” It must be believed that the noun Creator, meaning God, would have been thought important.

In the closing days of the Constitutional Convention Franklin wrote a speech to be read to the Convention by another party, due to Franklin’s frailty. There was some discussion whether a copy Madison had was authentic. Farrand’s research turned up another copy virtually identical to Madison’s copy save some difference in the capitalization! So here we have an example of where the speech differs only in capitalization from copy to copy. But, I know of no instance where Creator, meaning God, was not capitalized in the Founding Fathers’ writing.

[YHAOS]

“However, his "Christianity" is not what mainline Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc.) ands for.”

You sound like a church prelate; obsessed with dogma. No church dogma could have inspired the American people to their revolutionary act. The issue was the Christian values infusing The Declaration.

“[Adams] and Thomas Jefferson therefore used terminology that did not clash with the terminoogy of the rest of the members of the Congress who were true Christians but did not share all their beliefs”

Oh! the perfidy, the deception! Adams and Jefferson did not subscribe to the dogma. No! they merely subscribed to the Christian values upholding The Declaration. At one point in our conversation, you seemed to think Adams an impeccable authority on the spirit that moved the American people to revolution. Now, you’re not so sure, it seems.

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles." (John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 20 June, 1815, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh Editor, in 19 volumes). Not the dogma. The values.

"And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence." (John Adams, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1797). Not the dogma. The values.

“[t]he rest of the members of the Congress,” you say, “[w]ere true Christians . . .” Indeed. Glad to hear you admit that fact . . . finally. And, the Christian values they embraced were indistinguishable from those of Adams and Jefferson. Not the dogma. The values.

"But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776). Not the dogma. The values.

“. . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” (George Washington, Farewell Address, 17 September, 1796, para 27 (see the complete paragraph for a more thorough exposition of this thought). Not the dogma. The values.

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" (Benjamin Franklin, 1787, when he was 81, from a speech given at the Constitutional Convention) Not the dogma. The values.

Even those of a later time understood that it was the Christian values, not the Christian dogma: “A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.” (Calvin Coolidge, “The Inspiration of the Declaration,” Speech at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926). Not so much today, I guess, but there are still those of us who understand that it is the values of Christianity . . . not the dogma.

I told you before. I tell you again: “And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity (emphasis mine), in which all those sects were united; and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all these young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence.” (John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, dated June 28, 1813, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh Editor, in 19 volumes). The values, not the dogma.

You’ve nothing left to argue but dogma. The values leave you twisting in the wind.

[kosta50]

Why do you include Christians in the Old Covenant?!

For the same reason Christians insist on the Ten Commandments.

You seem to take for granted that there's something morally wrong with it. Why? On what grounds do you oppose whatever they did then?

To me morality is a set of socially agreed upon standards of conduct that constantly evolve and vary from culture to culture. In our present-day Zeitgeist and Weltanschauung, slavery is considered immoral because that's what we currently believe.

you are aware of the Biblical distinction [on its own terms] between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So why do you ignore that crucial distinction here?

I believe I answered that already. The Ten Commandments are part of the 613 mitzvot God mandated in the Torah. On what basis are, then, the Ten selected as morally 'biding' to Christians and the rest are not?

Moreover, this poses a problem with Judaism, which is seen as part of the moral and ethical continuum of Christianity (i.e. the so-called "Judeao-Christian tradition").

It seems reasonable that, being under the Law, every observant Jew is obligated by faith in God to believe that stoning someone to death would be a morally acceptable and legally mandated punishment, just as he or she would have to accept that owning non-Jewish slaves is morally justifiable.

I believe vast majority of observant Jews would deny that. But on what basis? besides, the New Covenant was promised only to the Jews (the two Jewish kingdoms House of Israel and the House of Judah), not to the Gentiles.

[YHAOS]

“She takes issue with my statement that the Bible legitimizes slavery.”

Again, you take issue with grey_whiskers, but post to me. You obviously want desperately to change the subject from the Christian values that drove the American revolutionary act and send me galloping down a sidetrack. If you wish to argue the Christian failure to end slavery, take it up with grey_whiskers.

With respect to slavery and the Christian values of the Founding Fathers, I will say one thing:

When the Founding Fathers came on the scene in the last half of the Eighteenth Century, slavery raged endemic throughout the colonies. When the last of the Founding Fathers departed from the scene in the first quarter of the Ninteenth Century, slavery was a crippled institution limited to one part of the new United States and doomed ultimately for extinction. The concurrence with the era of the Founding Fathers was no coincidence.

[kosta50]

I was responding to your post, not hers. Had you not made a comment I would have ignored hers, as I do, and as I told her I would. Believe me, she will find my posts (that's what she does, religiously it seems) with our without my pings.

It must be believed that the noun Creator, meaning God, would have been thought important

Apparently, based on capitalization alone, no more than any other word, such as Course or History, or Men, etc., all of which are equally capitalized. That's why I said capitalization of the word Creator in and of itself is not significant in that period.

But, I know of no instance where Creator, meaning God, was not capitalized in the Founding Fathers’ writing

Because it is treated as a proper name, just as George and John and Dick and Harry. They are all capitalized every time because they are proper names. Nothing special about that. Now, if the text used dsitinguishing capitalization, such as, say, the CREATOR, or the LORD, that would indicate distinction different from an ordianry noun.

God is capitalized simply because it is a proper name, like Christ (which simply means annointed), Allah or Buddha, Brahman, Baal, or Rah, or Satan, etc. If God is referred to as deity, there is no gramamtical reason to capitalizae it. Vatican documents routinely never capitalize divine pronouns as most Christians do (i.e. He vs. he, Him vs. him), because they are not considered proper names.

[grey_whiskers]

“The christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origin is, that the christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun”

I prefer G.K. Chesterton; more specifically, his short story The Eye of Apollo:

So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, or whatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun with the naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new pagans would only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagans knew that mere naked Nature-worship must have a cruel side. They knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind."

[kosta50]

The concurrence with the era of the Founding Fathers was no coincidence

It was a world-wide movement which started with the French Revolution (even though Napoleon re-reinstated it). The British picked up the banner for political reasons and led the way first by abolishing slavery in Trinidad in the 1830's. The anti-slavery movement grew and exerted it pressure and eventually brought down slavery in the US as well. At the same time American industrialist had no moral problems with 16-hour a day child labor or practically slave-like conditions in which people lived and worked in northern industrial quarters. It was a politically correct thing to do in those days to oppose slavery, damn the workers, if you get what I mean. Nothing new under the sun. Just the same old double standards as usual. If you don't want to be a social nobody you have to go with the flow. It ha snothign to do with Chbristian principles.