Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by 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.
You have any examples to back this up?
You don't answer direct questions; for instance, what does the word "good" mean to you? What does "evil" mean to you?
#507 kosta to betty boop: "Without looking up a dictionary definition, I would say that to [me] it means something which is implicitly or explicitly beneficial. Evil, on the other hand, is that which is implicitly or explicitly injurious.
Only ten post ago and you don't remember? This is what you call not answering the questions directly? Reality check time, betty boop, big time.
These seem to be pretty direct and simple questions.
And they seem to be pretty simple and direct answers from me.
But no response from you!
Well, I can't help you there betty boop. Perhaps you need to read more. Or pray more, whatever helps. But it is clear that your accusations are baseless and these types of nonsenses you post is what detracts form the topic.
And it seems you're constantly trying to change the subject anyway.
No betty boop, what changes the subject is debunking your unsubstantiated allegations, like now. We are not talking about the topic but about your clearly unfounded claims.
I understand you to be saying that societies are completely free to establish their own criteria...to make whatever changes to them that seem justified
Yes they are, and that's self-evident and easily demonstrable.
(justified by what? the coercive demand of a powerful ruler or ruling group?)
No, I am talking about the society in general. Think of what was considered morally acceptable 50 years ago in this country and what is today. Then think what was morally acceptable in 1776 and what is today.
But this sort of thing strikes me as necessarily a rule of men — which as you know, was something the Framers deeply deplored.
On earth people rule. I don't know of any other rule on this planet. Do you? They decide what is right and what is wrong, individually or in groups. The Founding Fathers included. They felt that what King George was doing was wrong, but many Colonists disagreed. The Framers simply held to a different standard.
Why do you suppose the Framers deplored the idea of a rule of men? Why were they so committed to a rule of law instead?
Because they did not believe in the Bible-backed idea that all authority on earth is from God and must not be questioned. The main Framer, Thomas Jefferson, specifically referred to St. Paul—the chief protagonist of the all-authority-is-from-God idea—as the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
And is not the "rule of law" also the rule of men? All they did was substitute one ruler with many. We still end up with 0bamas.
Stop being such a cry-baby and THINK for a change.... Stop making these discussions "about me" — who is allegedly being so mean and abusive to kosta!!!
Unlike you, I can substantiate my posts. Unlike you, I am not in the habit of disparaging you for your opinions or associating you with imbecils as you do me (see your post #510). Comparing me to idiots who can't differentiate math from musical notes is not being "allegedly mean" or abusive. That is being mean and abusive.
And what prompted you to liken me to a Laputan was nothing more than my opinion (which you solicited) of what good and evil mean to me personally.
Otherwise, our conversations are a complete waste of time and energy.
I told you pretty much the same thing long time ago, but I wouldn't expect you to remember it given that you don't even seem to recall what happened only ten or so posts ago.
kosta wrote [at #507]: "Without looking up a dictionary definition, I would say that to [me] it means something which is implicitly or explicitly beneficial. Evil, on the other hand, is that which is implicitly or explicitly injurious.
Beneficial/injurious to whom? And why? Who gets to decide what is beneficial or injurious if there is no common, agreed standard of judgment?
And if the standard of judgment is to be your "Good = beneficial and Evil = injurious," you instantly fall into a quagmire of moral relativism. For "one man's good is another man's evil." [E.g., the "might (physical power) = right (to oppress weaker others)" argument of Plato's Gorgias.] Who/what can adjudicate competing claims of this type? Do the weaker others have a right not to be tyrannized, or do they not?
You use the language of "implicitly or explicitly." But what can be implicit or explicit about something that hasn't even been identified yet?
I asked you the two questions, which IMHO you still have not answered. You speak of "beneficial" or "injurious" as if they were mere abstractions; that is, without evidencing any awareness of (1) to whom something is beneficial or injurious or (2) recognition that there is a standard by which to judge such matters that is completely independent of human preferences. If people were free to simply make up their own standards, on the fly as it were, that would be tantamount to having no standard at all.
Of course, although I'm almost totally sure you and I disagree about this, (2) recognizes the existence of universal moral law. The world is the way it is because it is structured by universal laws, physical and moral.
It seems you want to move beyond the moral law, to exist "beyond good and evil."
At least it seems you don't take the moral law very seriously....
Why is that?
lol. You gotta admit, that's pretty funny coming from you, Kosta.
The majority of your posts come in the form of questions to other FReepers.
Doncha think?
Adjustment, concession, accommodation.
The only [sic] possible compromise with evil is abject surrender (see Ayn Rand).
Ayn Rand...hmmm; let's not go there. The reality of life shows that such absolute statements are abjectly false, or just plain unrealistic.
I take your point just the same. I agree that Madison did not literally mean evil with his “necessary evil” remark. It was more a rather unartful “term of art.”
Or simply things that we would normally not prefer, things that are less than the ideal choice, even hurtful.
Which is why I remarked that, despite their remarkable and unmatched achievement, the Founding Fathers didn’t quite hit it square on the screws.
Well said. No one is perfect.
Knowing that the perfection of Mankind is not possible, they nonetheless sought to better the condition of the United States. My conclusion is that they hit it better than anyone who came before, or has come since. I take it from your remarks that you agree.
Yes, and by a long shot.
Referring to the phrase ‘a more perfect union,’ you ask how can perfect be made more perfect. I’ll not insult you by assuming you fail to understand the meaning of the phrase “a more perfect union.” So, I’ll simply ask what you meant by that query.
It's an oxymoron. That which is perfect cannot be made more perfect. In the best case, it is an inelegant way of saying better.
You’ve said a mouthful there, and you would find it instructive to examine exactly what values have been attacked in the Progressives’ drive to demolish, brick by brick, what the Founding Fathers had built, and try to also divine the reason for their attacks against specific values. But, never mind. You’ve demonstrated repeatedly that you don’t want to go there.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
you speculate a misunderstanding or an adulteration of the Rousseau philosophy. Perhaps an adulteration occurred, but I don’t think there was any misunderstanding. The vast majority of the French people were too ignorant to be guilty of a misapprehension of either liberty or reason.
And you think public in general is much better informed about current issues? Do you think the pubic at large is much smarter than the French revolutionaries were? Polls seem to think not by a wide margin. Cable news and other telecommunication devices seem to have done very little to make people "smart." Here is what one research group found:
Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public's news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.
On average, today's citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago.
The vast majority of the French people were too ignorant to be guilty of a misapprehension of either liberty or reason. They were all too happy to serve the interests of the thugs who took control of France
So, what has changed. People don't vote on issues. We have special interest groups who block-vote for a candidate up to 98% simply because he is "one of them."
And so I feel perfectly entitled to ask Kosta questions, and to expect answers. I have some more questions for him, borrowed from Eric Voegelin for the occasion:
...[W]hy do important thinkers like Comte or Marx refuse to apperceive what they perceive quite well? why do they expressly prohibit anybody to ask questions concerning sectors of reality they have excluded from their personal horizon? why do they want to imprison themselves in their restricted horizon and to dogmatize their prison reality as the universal truth? and why do they want to lock up all mankind in the prison of their making? — E. Voegelin, "Remembrance of Things Past," Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 12, p. 304f. Emphasis added.Why indeed???
Thank you so much, dear sister in Christ, for writing!
People do. And they do have an agreed standard to which they agree, usually based on their narrowly defined interests.
And if the standard of judgment is to be your "Good = beneficial and Evil = injurious," you instantly fall into a quagmire of moral relativism.
I never said morality was anything but relative. By being a product of a man-made society it can only be relative. Without a society there is no morality.
[E.g., the "might (physical power) = right (to oppress weaker others)" argument of Plato's Gorgias.] Who/what can adjudicate competing claims of this type? Do the weaker others have a right not to be tyrannized, or do they not?
Might is right in reality. We just dress it up in fancy terms to make it look benevolent. You can bring Platon and his imaginary cosmic entities inot this, but I have news for you: they don't exist, except as ideas. There is no such "thing" as Morality floating up in the air.
You use the language of "implicitly or explicitly." But what can be implicit or explicit about something that hasn't even been identified yet?
What? You asked what "good" means to me? The answer is: that which to me appears or is perceived, implicitly or explicitly as benefinical. is that not a direct and complete answer to your question? Or is it just not to your taste?
I asked you the two questions, which IMHO you still have not answered.
Because I didn't answer them to your satisfaction? I know I answered them. You asked for my opinion. I gave it to you.
You speak of "beneficial" or "injurious" as if they were mere abstractions; that is, without evidencing any awareness of (1) to whom something is beneficial or injurious or (2) recognition that there is a standard by which to judge such matters that is completely independent of human preferences
Obviously to whom it applies is to the person answering the question. And what standard are you talkling about? Where is that standard except in human heads?
Well, they do make up their standards, and when a group of people agree that this is their standard as well, then it becomes the common standard.
At some point in our history, the common standard was that the country should be divided along racial lines, equal but separate. Then someone decided to change that standard, and convinced others that this was the way to go. That wasn't so long ago.
Likewise, when the Founders were writing their magnum opus, slavery was the standard, which they actually opposed but were unable to abolish because there was no sufficient political will for that to happen. Another example that the society dictates what is morally upright.
Of course, although I'm almost totally sure you and I disagree about this, (2)[?] recognizes the existence of universal moral law
Yeah, we do disagree on that because there is no evidence of any "universal moral law" in the world; nor is it possible to prove that it "universal moral law" actually "exists" as some imaginary hypostatic entity somewhere in the Platonic cosmos.
At least it seems you don't take the moral law very seriously....
I do. It effects how I live, and what others ca do to me. I am very much aware that the tolerance introduced by the Founders did not take into account that the American society of their day will be radically altered in not such a distant future.
But the changes introduced into the society since then have created a situation where we are facing the real possibility of some communities in the United States eventually introducing sharia law, or that Christians get arrested for advocating Christian books in public (happened already in Muslim-predominant city in the US).
Or that millions of illegal aliens get rewarded for their illegal activity with a citizenship of the country whose laws they loathe; or that any anchor baby dropped on US territory automatically get American citizenship, etc. Isn't this in line with the Founding Father's ideals? sadly I think it is.
All this is a product of the unrestrained rights and freedoms introduced by the Founding Fathers and their liberal philosophy that served their purpose at that time, except that now they seem to work exactly in the opposite direction they were intended to work back then.
I think the Founding Fathers, in their desire to rid the Colonies of what they perceived as morally wrong (tyranny of their supposedly God-appointed King) opened a flood gate that accomplished by a slow process two and a quarter centuries later what took the French Revolution only a few years to achieve.
But, ironically, today it is France that is forbidding burkas and deporting illegally settled Gypsies, while we can't even imagine banning burkas, nor actually enforcing the illegal immigration laws, but rather find it "morally upright" to offer amnesty to those who are illegally here and prefer those who hate America (whether they call themselves Christians, such as Rev. Jeremiah Right, or Muslims) to built their monument of victory on the 911 Ground Zero. Where does this self-destruct phenomenon come from and how does it differ from what the French anarchy achieved except that we do it by the "rule of law?" LOL!
Do you have anything factual to back this claim up or is this just your unsubstantiated opinion?
And this is possible — HOW??? If standards are narrowly defined according to personal interests, then what is there to agree about?
You speak as if you were some kind of "law giver," kosta — evidently you aver statements as if they were already the laws of the universe, without putting up one single shred of evidence to back them.
Case in point: you wrote —
Might is right in reality. We just dress it up in fancy terms to make it look benevolent.Shades of Callicles here! He, the "advocate" of the "might = right" school of thought, confronting Socrates, who will have none of it....
Near the end of Gorgias, that surly cur Callicles threatens Socrates' life. And evidently makes good on it; as we find out in the Apologia.... Evidently the matter in contention is not some idle divertissement, but literally a matter of life and death.... Then and now.
Your answers to my questions so far are neither direct nor complete. It's not a matter of my personal taste; it's a matter of evidence, of logic, of reason.
I don't want your "opinion," Kosta. Doxa is not Logos.
You wrote:
And what standard are you talkling about? Where is that standard except in human heads?If the standard is "in human heads" at all, it is because it first exists in natural reality. If it weren't there already, "human heads" couldn't discover it.
Obviously Voegelin's questions do not apply to me. I don't know whom he had in mind when he wrote those. Let me guess: he was referring to Hitler's Germany? Wasn't he?
So, I see your label-maker works even when it is supposedly turned off. First you compare me to Laputan idiots and now to Hitler's Germany? I can't wait to see what's next.
What did I do to "deserve" dishonor? Because I said the society makes up morality; morality doesn't exist in nature; what is moral is relative; good is what we personally perceive as beneficial, etc.
How does this, in your peculiar mind, justify asking me "why do they expressly prohibit anybody to ask questions?" Can you back this up with examples?
why do they want to imprison themselves in their restricted horizon and to dogmatize their prison reality as the universal truth? and why do they want to lock up all mankind in the prison of their making?
Maybe you should ask yourself that question.
That was no kind of "standard," kosta. It was a rebellion against the universal standard. For purely pecuniary reasons.
No, not specifically in "Remembrance of Things Past."
Perhaps you have in mind his essay, "The German University and German Society."
You don't have to know HOW your TV works in order to know that it works.
Obviously, people agree on specific issues, such as race, sex, form of government, justice, etc. That is a fact, betty boop.
What is "just" in some societies is not just in others. That is also a fact. Put two and two together and you come up with a factual conclusion that justice is relative to the society in question, and that the each society has come up with a standard by some means.
You speak as if you were some kind of "law giver," kosta — evidently you aver statements as if they were already the laws of the universe, without putting up one single shred of evidence to back them.
The evidence is the REAL world around you which you may have left long time ago. The only ones who have no evidence are people who claim there are hypostatic entities, such as the Universal Law and Morality floating around in cosmos.
Oh that somehow "proves" might is not right? Such as America being the superpower has nothing to do with America having some influence in the world? No, of course not. Get real. Maybe reading current political events would be more helpful then some 2500 year-old Greek philosophical escapades.
I don't want your "opinion," Kosta.
Then don't ask me for my opinions.
If the standard is "in human heads" at all, it is because it first exists in natural reality. If it weren't there already, "human heads" couldn't discover it.
Oh yeah, Donald Duck exists in natural reality as a cosmic Platonic hypostasis. Otherwise Walt Disney could not have discovered him. LOL!
Oh yeah, it was all money, like slavery, right? Well then what changed? Was profitable any more>?
How about homosexuality? Up to the mid 1960's for example in England it was "against the law" to be gay. In our country they were officially diagnosed as sexual deviants, people who had a peculiar mental illness. Today the society treats it as the "other" normal [sic]. Was that pecuniary as well?
So, who are the people he addresses his questions to? I don't see the quote you reference.
Well you tell me. All I know is that a whole lot of people who "lobbied" the publishers of psychiatric diagnostic manuals to expunge all references to homosexuality as a "diseased" or "deviant" condition [back in the 1970s] are still highly paid and highly regarded "experts" today (if still living) — in academe and elsewhere. If not they themselves, then their students.... They are the recipients of the "spoils of victory" in a culture war they are determined to dominate, in which they fully expect to prevail against all dissent. By hook or by crook. For the ends justify the means....
[Personally, I suspect that homosexuality has less to do with psychopathology than it does with pneumopathology.... the latter seems to me always involves a sense of grievance against God and the Order He created.]
Nowadays, if it ain't about money, it's about power. And "power" has a magical way of transforming into pecuniary gain for power seekers. Always at other people's expense.
You can't defend yourself against such social predators if you have no truth to stand on. They create "second realities," by which to eclipse the world in which I actually live. But I cannot live in a second reality! For it has no Truth.
Still there are people who evidently believe that if you tell a lie often enough, it acquires a semblance of truth by virtue of sheer repetition.
Do you believe this, kosta?
The quote is at the bottom four lines of p. 304 in the facsimile at your link, and carries over to page 305....
Go look again.
Anyhoot, what's your point? Are you suggesting that I "cheat" WRT my sources???
As to the people Voegelin is addressing in this piece, well I'd opine: Any person interested in preserving his reason and his sanity, in the bedlam of an age that's lost its moorings....
Certainly that would include little moi.
A social system is a complex system; a TV set is a simple system. Why/how do you find any direct comparison between them for your present purposes?
No, Donald Duck doesn't "exist in natural reality as a cosmic Platonic hypostasis." Donald Duck exists as a fictional creation of Walt Disney's mind (a spiritual entity), based to some extent (but not too much) on a naturalistic model or example of "duck," an actual observable creature often found in barnyards or on bodies of water....
If you cannot apperceive the difference between "Donald Duck" and a phenomenal duck, then kiddo, I'd have to say you're pretty far gone already....
Betty,
Please read my earlier post at 520.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.