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.
‘Nevertheless they all signed it and therefore gave their consent to the wording, which has no Christ, no triune God or even the word God in it. It’s a deist document. It’s not a Christian document. Period.’
By that argument, none of the signers of the Declaration were Christians. Including the Roman Catholic Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
They all learned how to read from the same textbook which defines very specifically the Judeo/Christian God as "Creator" - and then in the Declaration of Independence they use the word "Creator" and you propose two centuries later that they meant something else.
You may qualify for appointment to the Federal bench by the Obama administration.
The letter John Adams wrote is as clear as it can be. It unmistakeably says that the "Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".
In other words, the Government of the United States is not a theocratic government; it is not influenced by or based on, or promoting Christian (or any other) religion because this country was not implicity or explciitly defined as a Christian nation in the Declaration of Independence, nor is her Constitution in any way, shape or form identified with any religion or deity.
What is a christian?...
This is such tomfoolery. The Founders did not want to specifically mention the Triune God of Christianity. They could have but they chose not to.
You may qualify for appointment to the Federal bench by the Obama administration
Reaching real low now, aren't you? Desparation?
Which you have just managed to make even more interesting, dear YHAOS!
Wow. Your evidence here is on-point excellent.
Thank you ever so much for this invaluable/priceless contribution to the present dialogue!
No that's not the argument. For reasons known to them, they chose not to identify the newly independent country with any specific deity/religion.
With due respect, kosta, I think you find what you want to find and see what you want to see.
DING! DING! DING!
AND THE AWARD OF THE DAY FOR DISCERNMENT GOES CLEARLY TO
YHAOS.
However, given that it was such an easy call, the trophy shall be made out of gilded paper mache.
LOL.
Oh my-o-my-o-my!!!! Yikes, I think so too!!!! [Loved the way you said it.]
But "whar the hail" is kosta in these proceedings? Has he nothing to say? Unfortunately, he is often/usually short on evidence. I hope that will not be a problem this time.
Thank you for your encouragement, dearest sister in Christ!
A-G: Either you need to back this up with contemporary documents or else you are reading their minds
LOL! Are you implying they were forced? I am presuming that if they were free enough to declare independence from King George, they were free enough to write their Declaration as they wanted it to read.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
in which case your qualifications for a Federal bench appointment by the Obama administration just went up another notch.
If this wasn't idiotic it would be funny. Just because I don't agree with you makes me fit for appointment by the Obama administration? That's truly pathetic.
The letter which Adams wrote to the Moslem was a diplomatic document, that is, he was LYING for his country, like any good diplomat.
Thanks for posting this Betty Boop. You and Alamo Girl post some of the best orginal content to digest on the site. Thanks again.
The following are from Paine's Age of Reason:
Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.
. . . .
THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is, the 'new' Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator.
. . . .
Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.
. . . .
If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled, and as it were crouded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands.
. . . .
Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the system of the universe is.
. . . .
As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be believed that be organized the structure of the universe in the most advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.
. . . .
Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.
. . . .
BUT, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years. Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power of the Creator!
. . . .
The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left to do it for ourselves.
. . . .
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.
The charges Jefferson was an infidel, a Jacobin, a deist and/or an atheist were made by Jefferson's Federalist opposition in 1800 and 1804. To them, he was all those things. They were neo-Calvinists, the last of the Puritans. Oliver Wolcott, who signed both the DOI and Articles of Confederation wanted the north to pull out of the union if Jefferson were elected President. But Christian clergy who were for Jefferson gave sermons refuting those charges. Jefferson was a heretic but he was a Christian heretic. Anti-trinitarians were common at the time. Harvard was full of them. Yale went the other way, into Neo-Calvinism In 1804 Jefferson even hired a minister, David Allen, to go to Federalist Connecticut and preach that if Jefferson were re-elected, Jesus Christ would return to earth.
One would have to be spiritually blind to trust the Freemason Thomas Paine- who tried to make Freemasonry out to be similar to Christianity.
From Thomas Paine...
“The christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origin is, that the christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun”
“As the study and contemplation of the Creator [is] in the works of the creation, the Sun, as the great visible agent of that Being, was the visible object of the adoration of Druids; all their religious rites and ceremonies had reference to the apparent progress of the Sun through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and his influence upon the earth.”
“The worship of the Sun as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause, “Time without limits,” spread itself over a considerable part of Asia and Africa, from thence to Greece and Rome, through all ancient Gaul, and into Britain and Ireland.
Smith, in his chapter on the antiquity of Masonry in Britain, says, that “notwithstanding the obscurity which envelopes Masonic history in that country, various circumstances contribute to prove that Free-Masonry was introduced into Britain about 1030 Years before Christ.”
Writings of Thomas Paine published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1896.
Thank you so much for your encouragement, dear Captain Beyond!
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.