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.
It is indeed an excellent read, Teacher317! Vazsonyi definitely connects the two revolutions to their respective "views of man," that is their respective systems of thought regarding the nature of man and the world.
He very usefully sees the glaring differences between them in terms of "Anglo-American" vs. "Franco-German" systems of thought. The two revolutions spawned, from their respective philosophical systems, wildly divergent outcomes. To my way of thinking, a look at the respective "results" tells you a lot about the quality and truthfulness of the underlying systems of thought.
Regarding "the French Connection" Vazsonyi wrote:
In order to trace the origins — and the curriculum — we must go back at least as far as the eighteenth century when political thinking in France laid the foundations for the monumental fiasco known as the French Revolution. In the same number of years it had taken in America to travel the road from the Declaration of Independence to the signing of the Constitution (1776–1787), the French went from beheading their king to the coronation of their new emperor (1793–1804). The mindless slaughter that filled the gap was the translation of French political philosophy into practice.The French line of thinking led to Marxism, socialism, communism, progressivism. The American line led to a system of ordered liberty under a written Constitution promulgating just and equal laws for all citizens alike — as individuals, not as members of some group, to be variously favored or disfavored as (manipulated) "public opinion" shifts.The words of the French Enlightenment affected people in ways that no set of ideas had, perhaps, since the Bible. The names Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau are forever enshrined in the minds of educated people. The twenty-eight volumes of Diderot's Encyclopédie became the new model for the systematized presentation of knowledge and thought. To Montesquieu we owe the articulation of separated powers in government. Voltaire, many still believe, was endowed with the clearest and most incisive mind of the age; and few remained unmoved by the power of Rousseau's pen.
Montesquieu derived his advocacy of the separation of powers from the British model. Voltaire unequivocally admired John Locke and Isaac Newton, attributing British successes to the freedom of political discussion and to the use of reason to evaluate empirical evidence. But it was Rousseau's Social Contract and his judgment of man as "corrupted and rotten to the core by society and its institutions" that came to dominate French prescriptions for the future....
Brilliant as Rousseau was, he failed to understand that one ought not to demolish without immediately reconstructing; one ought not to disseminate ideas which have no foundation in the human experience. But then, that was precisely the difference between the French Descartes and the English Locke, as Voltaire noted. The former advocated the application of reason before; the latter, after the event.
Apart from unparalleled self-importance, Rousseau's fatal mistake was the proposition that man was in need of, and capable of, perfecting, which was exacerbated by his emotive dismissal of institutions. Once man's need and ability to be perfected are espoused, the way is clear for those who "know just how to do it" — which is why the Anglo-Scottish approach always focused on the improvement of conditions and institutions, rather than of man. If, as Rousseau suggests, institutions, in and of themselves, are corrupting, their role has been permanently undermined.
And that is why the French Revolution of 1789 failed to accommplish a positive goal; it did not have one. It merely sought to demolish the existing. Man was still "in need of perfecting"; societal institutions were still the "source of corruption." Unsurprisingly, a cacaphony of ideas, agendas, events, and power brokers erupted. Consequently, it became a matter of transitory opinion whose head ought to be chopped off by the guillotine, and control of the executioner elevated to being the "next hope of the people." Danton countenanced the massacres until he was beheaded on orders of Robespierre, and Robespierre was himself beheaded a few months later. In the absence of workable institutions, it was only matter of time before a supreme ruler would have to restore order and govern France once again. Bonaparte crowned himself emperor in 1804.
Even more decisive for posterity, however, was the spectacle of mass executions in an effort to eliminate entire categories of people — clergy, royalists, aristocrats. The unprecedented bloodbath conjured up new ways of manipulating history. Marx was the first to recognize its unlimited potential. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot showed the world how it could be done on a truly massive scale. [p. 94ff]
Despite French prominence in the "Age of Reason," the events as they unfolded in France were determined by the rule of emotion. In America, the choice was determined by study, experience, and contemplation.
The French aimed to eliminate — the old order, the ruling class, the church. Americans, as soon as independence permitted, endeavored to build a society that would embody the noblest, time-tested, most successful principles known to man....
It was in France — not in America — that a giant experiment began, and continues in our time. America was established almost instantaneously — not as an experiment, but as a nation. (p. 98)
Vazsonyi is a true authority about what it's like to be on the "receiving end" of a revolution. Hungarian-born, he was there when Nazi tanks rolled into Budapest in 1944; he was then eight years old. In 1947, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest — Vazsonyi charges FDR of having "ceded" Hungary to Stalin at Yalta. Then, in 1956, the aborted Hungarian Revolution, when Soviet tanks again rolled into Budapest. On each of these occasions, a couple hundred thousand people "took the long walk" (i.e., were murdered by their new "masters") — mainly the political class and intellectuals. Vazsonyi eventually managed to escape from Hungary, landing in America; he became a naturalized citizen in 1964. He also founded the Center for the American Founding; and is a world-class concert pianist.
In this book, Vazsonyi is warning us of what can happen here in America, if we don't get our political/philosophical thinking straight — by going back to the Founders and, in particular, to their timeless views of God, man, and society.
Vazsonyi writes, "It is astonishing and frightening how little time it took both in Russia and in Germany to accomplish [their murderous, collectivist goals]. Demolishing what centuries have built does not require even a single generation."
On that happy note, let me close with the observation that the reigning political elite in America and their enablers are most definitely on "the French model," not the Anglo-Scottish/American one. And most notably, that includes the sitting POTUS.
When are we going to throw out these bums?
Thank you so much, Teacher317, for recommending this wonderful book!
Those who deny the divinity of Jesus or the Trinitarian nature of God are not Christians. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarists, deists, agnostics, etc. are not Christians. Some of the key authors and players of the Declaration were known to fall into one of those groups.
the Revolutionary Act were founded on Christian values. They [Founding Fathers] should know. It is they who created it.
The Declaration is not specifically Christian, implicitly or explicitly.
Elsewhere in this thread you’ve declared that might always makes right
That's the way the world is, whether you understand it or not. Might prevails. If you have the might, you write the rules.
And, I must express my absolute astonishment that you seem unable to comprehend that the Founders’ expression ‘a more perfect union’ refers not to the impossible task of improving perfection, but simply means constructing a union more closely approaching perfection.
In a poetic sense, perhaps, but not in a legal document. Grammatically "more perfect" is an oxymoron . To form a more perfect union suggests the union that exists is already "perfect." If Jefferson wanted to say to form "an improved" or "better" or "more equitable" union or words to that effect, then he should have said so plainly.
With respect to Ayn Rand and your suggestion that we not go there because “the reality of life shows that such absolute statement are abjectly false, or just plain unrealistic,” I would ask you that do these abjectly false absolute statements include such absolutes as might always makes right?
In the real world we "settle" things by compromising with our adversaries and even enemies. Therefore a compromise with a nemesis is not always abject surrender to it. Only Christianity calls for abject surrender to evil by teaching that we "not resist the evil." [cf Mat 5:39]
On the other hand, might is right without exception, which can easily be demonistrated as the universal law.
Apparently, you are not aware that America is rapidly changing in the direction that favors the "French model" and that it has to do with the demographics. The American population is rapidly becoming alienated to the principles and beliefs of the Founding Fathers.
It is a mathematical certainty that in not such a distant future this country will be dominated by groups that traditionally favor the "French model" and seek to transform this country into the country that resembles the countries they left behind. Their goal is not to assimilate into something that is alien to them, but to take over—ironically, with the help of the system they seek to destroy.
Hi kosta!!! Except for the "mathematical certainty" part, I generally agree with this statement. This is what the raging culture war has been all about ever since the 1960s. That war is still undecided.
But if the "French model" finally wins, America as we know it will cease to exist. It's just that simple. The only system of liberty under just and equal laws on the face of the planet will die.
As inhospitable as the principles and values of the Judeo-Christian tradition are to you personally — and I think you've made that clear enough by now — American is founded on them. If that foundation is "gone," then so is America.
Thanks so much for writing!
p.s.: Balint Yazsonyi certainly did not come here to transform America into something resembling his native land of Hungary. He came here because he genuinely admired and respected the American system, and has probably done more to support and uphold it than most Americans these days. He definitely is not on the "French model...." He'd been victimized by it too many times already; he knows what an intellectual sham it is — though a mortally dangerous one.
Yes; of the animal kingdom.... "Survival of the fittest" and all that jazz.
Your observation strikes me as a great pretext for the long-predicted "war of all against all".... "Nature bloody in tooth and claw," etc., etc., ad nauseam. The law of the jungle in the Public Square....
French Revo Redux.
Do you really think human beings should be regarded exclusively as animals? If you do, then how could you ever account for the fact that, though an animal in his physical nature, man is also "ensouled," and is rational; he has mind; he thinks, and he communicates his thoughts in complex natural languages. No animal other than man is capable of doing this.
Are we going to have to drop this fact down the old memory hole, just so your thesis — which implicitly calls for the total reduction of the human being to the purely physical — can be correct?
Oh, it is a mathematic certainty, betty boop. By 2050, mere forty years from now, white (European) Americans will no longer be a majority, but will dip to 46% of the population. By contrast, in 1960, mere fifty years ago, white (European) Americans comprised 85% of the American population.
Right now, the American birth rate is below replacement rate, and almost 90% of population growth is due to the immigration. One in eight (12.5%) babies born in the US is a US citizen (by birthright) whose parents are illegal immigrants.
It is also a fact that the groups that have the highest natality rates (Hispanics and blacks) traditionally vote for the progressivist and liberal candidates and the political philosophy that generally is closer to the "French model" than to the Founding Fathers' model.
This is what the raging culture war has been all about ever since the 1960s. That war is still undecided.
The outcome is pretty certain; we are just marking time. There are no signs of any dramatic change in the course this country has taken to change that fact.
But if the "French model" finally wins, America as we know it will cease to exist.
That seems to be the direction in which we are moving. The progressivist left doesn't even hide the fact that it embraces the "French model."
As inhospitable as the principles and values of the Judeo-Christian tradition are to you personally — and I think you've made that clear enough by now — American is founded on them
America was founded on the principles of Enlightenment which are broad enough to incorporate Christian values but is not specifically, implicitly or explicitly, Christian. In fact, I personally find a lot in common with the Founding Fathers' attitude towards religion and God, as well their views of the Bible and even Paul! :)
The progressivists are already rejoicing over the death of America. As Simon Talley of the Daily Iowan writes in "The 'browning' of America", it is a "done deal":
"For those who fear the “browning” of America or the loss of some Anglo-Saxon 'cultural' identity, all I can say is, sorry. Between now and 2050, the vast majority of population growth will come from racial minorities. By 2050, the America that many on the right are so nostalgic about will be a thing of the past."
No, betty boop, might is right in all cases, including human. The strong prevail and they get to write what is right.
Your observation strikes me as a great pretext for the long-predicted "war of all against all".... "Nature bloody in tooth and claw," etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Now you are just being a drama queen. I never suggested any of that.
French Revo Redux
Hardly.
Do you really think human beings should be regarded exclusively as animals?
Not at all. That doesn't change the fact that might prevails in all instances and for all times and in all things.
If you do, then how could you ever account for the fact that, though an animal in his physical nature, man is also "ensouled,"
Being "ensouled" is a postulate and not a fact.
and is rational; he has mind; he thinks, and he communicates his thoughts in complex natural languages. No animal other than man is capable of doing this.
I agree. Man is much more developed that other animals in that regard.
Are we going to have to drop this fact down the old memory hole, just so your thesis — which implicitly calls for the total reduction of the human being to the purely physical — can be correct?
I don't remember making such a "thesis". I was merely observing that might prevails and sets the rules and can be said to be one of those "universal laws" for all times.
And yet it is a fact that human beings have for millennia believed that humans have souls, that there is an afterlife, and Dike — Justice — is the fundamental law of the universe. As evidence for this, may I mention the anonymous text, "Dispute of a Man, Who Contemplates Suicide, With His Soul" — from the Egypt of the First Intermediate Period (c. 2000 B.C.), an early literary reflection on the experiences of life, death, and immortality.
And then I could mention the Pamphyllian Myth, the Myth of Er, of Plato's Republic, in which a man descends into Hades, and sees the judgment of souls going on there; and then is permitted to return to the world to tell his fellow men of what he has seen.
"Soul" may be a "postulate" to you, given the basic form of your thinking (reductionist and skeptical). But your thinking does not determine reality — even though you might like it to.
Another fact: If you are right about the non-existence of souls, then some seven millennia of human history — experience, thought, artistic creations of all descriptions, etc., regarding this issue — is WRONG. And we all had to wait for you to come along to set the record straight — at last.
You wrote:
...might prevails in all instances and for all times and in all things.If that were true, Hitler would still be in power. Or at least he would have been until his death by natural causes.... After his death by suicide, Hitler's "truth" fell apart. The point is Justice is stronger than might. Right is stronger than might.
Truth is incalculably more powerful than might. It is also more powerful than opinion — doxa — including your opinion.
All the collective might of the human race past, present, and presumably future, cannot eradicate the truth of the human soul. Only a fool would try.
Have to go eat dinner now; but I'll be back....
It is true, because ultimately more might came against Hitler, than he could muster.
This argument is the argument for consciousness and it simply dethrowns materialism. Karl Popper said, (paraphrasing) that the brain is a magnificent piece of equipment we carry for life which allows us to access the physical world. As C.S.Lewis said when asked if he had a soul, he responded, "No, I am a soul, I have a body."
Yet those very men whose Christianity you deny, themselves declare Christian values to be the foundation of the Revolutionary Act, and of the document they created. But, you seem to believe that you know better than they what was in their minds. A man, who apparently believed similarly as you, turned on the American people, betrayed their trust by denouncing everything they held sacred, in the mistaken thought that he could sway them to any way of thinking he wished, discovered he could not, and died with their scorn and in disgrace. Would that no better fate should await you, but I defer to the Lord’s will on that issue.
Despite the Founding Fathers’ declarations, no curiosity is aroused in your thoughts, no wonderment disturbs your mind, over the blatant discrepancy between what you assert and what the Founders themselves declare. One must think that you should pause to consider so blatant a contradiction in your construct, but seemly not.
Even John Adams, the very epitome of what you trumpet to be an example of the Unitarian denial of Christianity, embarrasses you:
“. . . The general principles On which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite, and these principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. “And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity, 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. Now I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature, and our terrestrial mundane system. I could therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present information, that I believed they would never make discoveries in contradiction to these general principles . . . ” (letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh Editor, in 19 volumes).
So you plow straight ahead, head down, eyes averted, propounding an absurdity so preposterous that even the old Latins had no name for the fallacy.
“The Declaration is not specifically Christian, implicitly or explicitly.”
Yet the men who wrote it and voted on it (and the people who sent them to Independence Hall) declare the document to be explicitly Christian. Whom would you have me believe?
“That's the way the world is, whether you understand it or not. Might prevails. If you have the might, you write the rules.”
Did the Romans write the rules for the Christians? Who prevailed? . . . Roman might? . . . or Christian faith? It’s people like you (and Rand Paul) who encourage people to believe that resisting evil is futile. You remind me of the Amsterdam lady who announced, “all war is stupid.” I asked her if that included the Dutch war for independence from Spain. I asked her if we stupid Americans should not have sent our General Eisenhower and several million GIs over to liberate Western Europe in 1944. The lady had no answer, but I could tell from her eyes that no amount of instances would sway her from her belief. Just as I an sure none can sway yours.
“In the real world we "settle" things by compromising with our adversaries and even enemies.”
In the “real world” some political compromises are possible, though I can think of none presently that offer any hope for success. In the “real world” I asked you if abjectly false absolute statements such as Rand’s included absolutes like “might always makes right.” You had no answer.
That makes it a belief, not a fact. Just as I said. Just because you believe something doesn't mean it exists.
But your thinking does not determine reality — even though you might like it to.
Neither does yours. I do, however, differentiate my beliefs from facts.
Another fact: If you are right about the non-existence of souls, then some seven millennia of human history — experience, thought, artistic creations of all descriptions, etc., regarding this issue — is WRONG.
I did not say souls did not exist; I said that enosoulment is a postulate, not a fact. There is a huge difference.
You wrote: ...might prevails in all instances and for all times and in all things. If that were true, Hitler would still be in power
No, because Hitler was opposed by a greater might. The might of the Allies prevailed.
Truth is incalculably more powerful than might
Nonsense. The victors write the truth; their version of it.
It is also more powerful than opinion — doxa — including your opinion.
Then we are in the same boat, because it is more powerful than your opinion as well. And "doxa" means a lot more than just opinion. It actually means praise as in orthodoxa, the right praise, not the right opinion.
All the collective might of the human race past, present, and presumably future, cannot eradicate the truth of the human soul. Only a fool would try.
The truth of the human soul is that it is a postulate. Show me a soul and then call it a fact. Just believing in Santa doesn't make Santa real, except in the minds of naive children—and apparently some childish adults.
kosta50, the color of the skin is irrelevant.
The issue is how Americans see themselves. As Condi Rice pointed out in a wonderful convention speech, Americans must see themselves as individuals.
The unalienable Creator-given rights apply to the individual. We each, individually, have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And by extension, the individual freedom of religion, speech, bearing arms and so forth.
Whether learned by their culture or a state religion (or non religion) or whether by having it drilled into their heads in our K-12 public education system, the individuals who surrender to a hive-mind are the problem - particularly if the hive sees itself as a victim class.
Just my "two cents" ...
Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, re-wrote the New Testament, threw out what he didn't like, called Paul the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus, etc. Do you really think one can reject Paul, two thirds of the New Testament, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinitarian God, and still be a Christian? Ridiculous!
Jefferson tells me what was in his mind, and the 2 billion mainline Christians tell me what is Christianity. Thomas Paine tells me what was in his mind and he was no Christian. Just as Glenn Beck tells me he is a Mormon, which means he is no Christian because as a Mormon he believes God the Father used to be a man and has a body, that Jesus and Satan are brothers, that one can baptize the dead, etc.
How gracious of you. All this because I state a simple fact that there is nothing Christian, implicitly or explicitly stated, in the Declaration. If you can find one reference to the Bible, Christ or the Holy Trinity in it, please be so kind to point it out to me.
And what's this veiled threat and the presumptuous condemnation about? Are the Founding Fathers infallible? Is it against the law to interpret them individually? You make it sound as if having a different opinion of the Fathers is treason if not blasphemy? Get hold of your emotions and pipe down your presumptuous attitude.
You quote Adams but conveniently ignore Jefferson, or Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and others, and amazingly fail to see that their private correspondence is one thing and what they wrote into the Declaration is another.
As for Adam's Christianity, yes, the Unitarists consider themselves Christians, and so do Mormons, and Arians, and Donatists, and Bogomils, and Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
Christianity is a belief in Jesus being the divine Logos (John 1:1). Anything other than that is not Christianity but a Christian cult.
Adams writes to Jefferson " I answer, the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united...and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence" and I ask you where are those principles spelled out in the New Testament?
But they don't say what is specifically Christian about it! You can believe whomever you want, critically or uncritically, that is your prerogative. I am not asking you to believe me; I am stating my opinion and you yours. No one is after you, twisting your arm and washing your brain, persecuting you. If you feel someone is after you, perhaps a medical consult might be helpful for that condition.
Yes, as a matter of fact they did. It was the power of the imperial Roman decision that made Christianity a state religion and prohibited all other religions.
No, actually it's Jesus who says "do not resist the evil." (Mat 5:39).
Well, you have interesting dissociative associations, it seems. Maybe you can point me to where I assert such a ridiculous thing. I am a retired Naval officer and neither I nor the people I served with thought war was something "smart." Necessary,yes, but not smart. Only someone truly stupid could say war is something smart, or stupid for that matter.
I answered you. Rand's "choice" was no choice, so the question is not valid. My statement that might is always right is not a choice but a simple fact: might always prevails.
It can be relevant or irrelevant. It's a factor. What we do with it is what matters.
As Condi Rice pointed out in a wonderful convention speech, Americans must see themselves as individuals
They do, but they also see themselves as members of a particular group, as well as members of a particular nation. So, the collective image is just as important, if not more important, to some for a variety of reasons. When 95% of a certain group vote as a block it is pointless to speak of individualism. It is hive-mind at work.
kosta50, the color of the skin is irrelevant
The only reason I mentioned demographics was not to emphasize skin color but in response to betty boop's observation that the only country with liberty will disappear in the near future and be replaced by the "French model."
The commentary by the upbeat New Iowan syndicated columnist only reiterated betty boop's prediction, except as something eagerly awaited by the new and presumably "open minded" generations. The nostalgics were basically told "sorry, losers, too bad, so sad."
America was ethnically 85% of European origin, Protestant faith, and Ango-Saxon culture, just 50 years ago, and as such the thinking was in line with the thinking and the culture of the Founding Fathers. It was a fertile ground for such system to grow and sustain itself.
In less than a century, this country will be 46% European in origin. Simple regression analysis shows that by 2156 there will be no one Europeans left here. The prevailing cultures that seem to be gaining ground are not fond of European roots but rather see them as the source of oppression that are to be discarded the sooner the better and replaced by their own.
Looking at countries where these groups come from, and the tenacity with which these cultures refuse to assimilate, should give us a glimpse of what will replace the founding principles on which this country was built.
The writing is on the wall. It has nothing to do with individualism or inalienable rights, A-G. It has to do with a mathematical certainty of the changes set in motion by what betty boop correctly called "culture wars" and the might is right inevitable outcome.
At this point, it is not them who are expected to assimilate but those who have been here all along. Native Americans may get vicarious satisfaction observing that what goes around comes around, that the very people who once cleansed this continent of the Natives are now being pushed out themselves by a new wave of newcomers and may end up living in reservations of their own, or completely disappeare as another culutre vanquished and relagated to the dusbins of history.
no one Europeans = no Europeans
dusbins = dustbins
It is a fact that the universal "default position" of the human race during the historical period (~7 millennia and counting) is belief in God (or the gods), and belief that human beings have souls. The evidence for this is overwhelming. For instance, among other things already pointed out in my last, funerary rites are a universal phenomenon among humans of all cultures. Even today.
What exact distinction do you draw between the existence of the soul and "ensoulment?" You say the latter is a "postulate." You wrote, "I did not say souls did not exist." Okay; does that mean you are prepared to say that they do exist? And if they do, does there not need to be a process of "ensoulment" of the body?
Is it simply that you dismiss soul as a fiction — because it cannot be directly observed? — and therefore rule out "ensoulment" in principle — one cannot instantiate a fiction??? Is this what you're driving at? If so, what's the point? Your view is completely anhistorical and counter to the evidence of human experience.
Why are you "right" about this, and all humanity that lived before you "wrong?" Are you Darwinist enough in your thinking to believe that human evolution means that man is "smarter" today than he was, say, back in the first millennium B.C.? And therefore, you must be "smarter" than, say, a Pythagoras, a Plato, an Aristotle? Because you are more evolved, and therefore more "fit?"
I wrote that if it were true might prevails in all instances and for all times and in all things, Hitler would still be in power. And you replied that Hitler was removed by greater might (i.e., the Allies), and therefore "might makes right."
But this obvious fact masks the point I was trying to make: The might of Hitler leveled an historically Christian nation, with an established Church no less, to a state of barbarism in just a couple of years. Does this mean that Hitler was "right," because he had the "might?"
You wrote: "The victors write the truth; their version of it." Jeepers, kosta — you cogitate like a commissar! You are straight out of the French Revolution.... LOL!
There is no such thing as a version of truth. There is only ONE Truth, for the universe is ONE. "Versions" of truth that depart from this one Truth would be false in principle. The falsity can be upheld only by force, by might. But this only further corrupts the world of human experience, of human society. So how can might be right?
You wrote:
And "doxa" means a lot more than just opinion. It actually means praise as in orthodoxa, the right praise, not the right opinion."Doxa" is the Greek root for the English word "doctrine." Orthodoxa means "right or correct doctrine." I'm unaware the Koine word doxa denotes "praise." Though I do recognize that Greek words can be pretty "compact symbols," carrying multiple cognate meanings. But to Plato, it's clear "doxa" meant "opinion," and usually false opinion. My own view follows Plato's.
"Doctrine" (doxa) is a formulation or codification of Truth seen — it is not the Truth itself. Because it is not, it can be false. But Truth never is false.
In any case, accepting your translation, there is never any "'right praise" for a lie.
Good grief, I gather from your last paragraph that you regard me as some kind of "childish adult" because I do not agree with you that the soul is a "postulate."
You want me to "show you a soul?" Why don't you try looking inward and see if you can find one there? :^)
THX THX for the ping.
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