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.
Praise God for your kind words.
Of course, I agree with you about freedom vs license.
"For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" -- 1 Corinthians 3:7
"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." -- John 15:16"Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee" -- Psalm 65:4
It just makes more sense to me to believe that whatever occurs does so because God has ordained everything in this world, one way or another, for His glory. He creates vessels of wrath fitted to destruction to display His judgment and vessels of mercy which He had before prepared to make known the riches of His glory (Romans 9.)
What if every man was born with the ears and eyes, but then some choose to shut them up against all the freely available evidence that God is Lord and Master of all creation from beginning to end?
But no one is born with ears to hear or eyes to see since all men are fallen and none is righteous but God. New ears and eyes are gifts from God which are given to those He regenerates by the Holy Spirit.
It makes me happy to believe God is in charge. That way I know whatever happens, "all things will work for for the good of those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28.)
Thus I rest in God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit: If I don't have the answers, I'm entirely confident that God does. And maybe someday He will share them with me. But probably not in "this" world.... Whatever the case, God's will WILL be done, in heaven and on earth. I'm entirely confident about that, too. And with this understanding comes peace — and joy.
AMEN!
God's blessings be upon you, dear sister in Christ!
And to you, Betty. All God's blessings.
Evidently, while you were posting it I was in the process of confirming what you so accurately suggested was my testimony vis-à-vis Creation ex nihilo. And I was delayed getting back to this thread. So, my apologies.
From the beginning of the sidebar, my spiritual sense is that the present challenge centers on the Name of God, i.e. Who God IS.
And Who God IS is a revelation which is to say, it cannot be known by mere mortal reasoning, sensory perception or Bible reading.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. - Matthew 16:15-18
Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and [that] no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. –I Corinthians 12:3
The father, son and holy spirit appear to be a committee..
Unless there is some kind of modalism involved..
I have no problem with that.. Whatever is... Is.. Whatever ain't..... Ain't..
I beg to differ, dear kosta:
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: — Romans 1:20In what way does DNA "build itself?" How do you know this?
A supernova is not a "catastrophe" in my book. A star exploding is simply a star at the end of its stellar life cycle. All things in nature pass away; i.e., die. But the death of a star distributes essential heavy elements into the universe, which, on the large view, has the effect of supporting conditions that maintain life. When humans die, we don't call that a "catastrophe." Why would it be catastrophic for a star to die?
You aver that "Others, however, have to invent god so they can 'create' their own version of truth." To which I reply, God is not "invented." He is discerned. I discern that His truth is already in the world, and that it can be perceived and understood by man. So on this point, we disagree. And probably will continue to disagree.
You know the old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."
If the horse is thirsty, he will drink. If not, then not. This analogy goes to the recognition that you "are not thirsty," and so don't "drink" the water that is offered to you.
You wrote:
Scientific evidence is a small part of the puzzle. It must never be believed absolutely. Big bang will be replaced in another generation or two with a new theory, each having a little of the truth but none all of it.New scientific theories do not so much "replace" earlier theories; rather they usually build on the existing theories, making corrections based on new evidence and observations.
In any case, Einstein's general relativity theory did not "replace" Newtonian mechanics. Einstein was careful to build on Newton's magnificent formalism; he just showed, among other things, that at very high velocities (i.e., velocities approaching the speed of light, which are not normally observed in ordinary four dimensional spacetime conditions) that the Newtonian physics will not completely account for the behavior observed. Newton's physics still work great in the 4D spacetime "block." Certainly Newtonian theory was not "replaced" by Einstein's work.
Your position seems to be that if you don't "know everything," then you really can't know anything at all (i.e., with reasonable assurance of validity), so why bother? That is an impossible standard, epistemologically speaking.
BTW, I do not "believe" in talking donkeys.... Although they may appear in fictional works and, thus, have a kind of phenomenal reality — though not that which pertains to real flesh-and-blood donkeys.
I hope you're enjoying your visit to Seville! Lucky you!
Thanks so much for writing, dear kosta!
I suggested before to Kosta that he should have a child. Then he might understand much better that the universe says plenty about God and it sure doesn't come from us.
My husband says it was when he first held his son that he finally understood what God's free grace actually meant. Nothing in his life could have merited or earned the splendid gift of a child.
"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice." -- John Calvin""Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." -- Augustine
BETTY TO KOSTA: Your position seems to be that if you don't "know everything," then you really can't know anything at all (i.e., with reasonable assurance of validity), so why bother? That is an impossible standard, epistemologically speaking.
That does seem to sum up Kosta's view of things which as you've said is a self-defeating exercise in frustration.
I guess it comes down to what we're most comfortable with - doubt or trust.
"Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and [that] no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." –I Corinthians 12:3
AMEN. Yet Bible-reading, made knowable by the Holy Spirit, is the way God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." -- 2 Timothy 3:14-15 "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
Christ, the word of God made flesh. Scripture, the word of God made known.
Indeed, the people Jesus is addressing below were physically hearing Him, but they could not spiritually hear Him. They did not have "ears to hear."
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
AMEN. I was just reading John 8 this morning...
"He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God." -- John 8:47
That's quite an indictment. But the glory of God is such that anyone with a contrite heart who asks for new ears to hear the truth and new eyes to see the truth will not be turned away because it is the Holy Spirit working within them to desire such things, and thus they were always "of God."
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." -- John 10:27-28"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me;
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. - Revelation 1:8
AMEN!
Thx for your splendid comments and ping.
Best wishes to you all, this horse is dead.
I guess that's right, dear sister in Christ!
However, I do note: That which we doubt can have no claim on us.
Our dear kosta seems to be a pretty good psychologist. I wonder whether he has ever truly, deeply contemplated the problem of doubt.
Thank you ever so much for your astute insights!
Per #893: “That which we doubt can have no claim on us.”
My! What a captivating discussion you are having here, dear boop. Thank you for including me.
Puts me in mind of Tocqueville:
“It is clear from the works of Plato that many philosophical writers, his predecessors or contemporaries, professed materialism. These writers have not reached us or have reached us in mere fragments. The same thing has happened in almost all ages; the greater part of the most famous minds in literature adhere to the doctrines of a spiritual philosophy. The instinct and the taste of the human race maintain those doctrines; they save them often in spite of men themselves and raise the names of their defenders above the tide of time. It must not, then, be supposed that at any period or under any political condition the passion for physical gratifications and the opinions which are superinduced by that passion can ever content a whole people. The heart of man is of a larger mold; it can at once comprise a taste for the possessions of earth and the love of those of heaven; at times it may seem to cling devotedly to the one, but it will never be long without thinking of the other.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Volume II, Second Book, Chapter XV, pg 146)
To this, Tocqueville says a page earlier: “Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means of teaching men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest benefit which a democratic people derives from its belief, and hence belief is more necessary to such a people than to all others. When, therefore, any religion has struck its roots deep into a democracy, beware that you do not disturb it; but rather watch it carefully, as the most precious bequest of aristocratic ages. Do not seek to supersede the old religious opinions of men by new ones, lest in the passage from one faith to another, the soul being left for a while stripped of all belief, the love of physical gratifications should grow upon it and fill it wholly.” (Ibid, pg 145)
“In the passage from one faith to another,” many seek to replace the Judeo-Christian tradition in America with a materialistic faith that bears none but a bitter fruit that dumps one out on a desolate landscape. We know that such is not the case with friend kosta. He seeks a more fulfilling answer, but much of what he argues sends many off to that desolate landscape mentioned above. So, he can hardly expect less than emphatic dispute.
BTW, FWIW, after my own fashion, I do believe in talking donkeys. They provide a sometimes much needed comic relief (and it is often the case that with it, comic relief brings its own profound truth).
Betty boop, why should I believe him? Paul gives me no evidence that he can see and understand that which is aoratos, or unseen/invisible—even divinity itself?
If you can see and understand divinity, then describe it for me.
In what way does DNA "build itself?" How do you know this?
DNA can be observed replicating itself. Is DNA "alive"? Viruses, which are nothing but ribonucleic acid, are "alive" only in parasitic form, when they invade a body. Otherwise they are "dead".
A supernova is not a "catastrophe" in my book. A star exploding is simply a star at the end of its stellar life cycle.
In your post 870 you said that Cataclysmic events do not change the underlying structure of the universe. They are temporary departures from it. And when they blow over, we get back to the status quo ante.
I disagreed with this because that which is destroyed in a cataclysmic/catastrophic event (a violent upheaval), there is no return to status quo ante, concluding that cataclysmic events change the reality irreversibly. When you show me that an exploded star can return to status quo ante and be the same star it was before it exploded, I will accept your opinion.
All things in nature pass away; i.e., die. But the death of a star distributes essential heavy elements into the universe, which, on the large view, has the effect of supporting conditions that maintain life.
That is not returning to status quo ante, bb. That is "recycling."
When humans die, we don't call that a "catastrophe."
Because there is no return to status quo ante, bb. I don't see anyone ecstatic when a beloved one dies, especially a young one. Often people say "it's a shame," or "how sad!" and words to that effect. There is no "happy, happy, joy, joy" at death of a beloved one.
No one is ever too joyous at the prospect of that person being "reconstituted" somewhere to the status quo ante and living in bliss. I don't see Christians lining up to die as soon as possible or sending their children to play in traffic. There is an inherent disconnect between what Christians profess and how they react to death. Death is a catastrophe, bb, judging by how people react to it, no matter how much religious or cosmic romanticism is poured out to ease the pain .
You aver that "Others, however, have to invent god so they can 'create' their own version of truth." To which I reply, God is not "invented." He is discerned.
Same thing, different words. The source of this "discernment" is still a human being who claims to "see" and "understand" the invisible. Real things are discerned by everyone, not some. Try a hot stove top and see how many people can touch it without "discernment".
I discern that His truth is already in the world, and that it can be perceived and understood by man. So on this point, we disagree. And probably will continue to disagree.
That is obvious and a given. But since I am the one who is "blind" to, and unable to "understand" the unseen I ask that those who claim they can to please describe what they see and understand in real terms. Until then I will maintain that humans have a limited knowledge and cannot know everthying there is in this world because of its sheer size and complexity.
I will also maintain that we cannot telepathically know what is on other planets until and if we ever reach them physically (fat chance), because there is no magical crystal ball, a cosmic Google search engine, that answers all our questions in an instant.
You know the old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."
Maybe it's because there is no water to drink bb. :) Maybe it's because the water is only imaginary and, to paraphrase David Frost, "the horse must think it queer to stop and drink without any water near."
New scientific theories do not so much "replace" earlier theories; rather they usually build on the existing theories, making corrections based on new evidence and observations.
That's another sweeping generlaizaiton, imo. Some evidence builds on existing theories, refines them, but other evidence replaces existing theories altogether, such as ism the case with the Steady State Theory, or the theory of infectious disease. The Big Bang of today is for all practical purposes a different theory from the original Big Bang, etc.
Your position seems to be that if you don't "know everything," then you really can't know anything at all (i.e., with reasonable assurance of validity), so why bother? That is an impossible standard, epistemologically speaking.
My position is simply that if we can't know everything we can't know everything, bb. :) That means we know something, but not everything. Given the size of the world and the mystery it holds for us, what we do know is pretty much nothing for all practical purposes. All our knowledge really amounts to a little more than nothing on the cosmic scale. In reality, what we do know cosmologically is pretty much a theory, and an ever-changing one at that.
BTW, I do not "believe" in talking donkeys.... Although they may appear in fictional works and, thus, have a kind of phenomenal reality — though not that which pertains to real flesh [sic]-and-blood donkeys.
Fictional work? A talking donkey is in the Bible, a real "flesh and blood donkey."
I hope you're enjoying your visit to Seville! Lucky you!
Thank you. Beautiful churches, good food, wine that is not dry (!), and air that is incredibly clean and fresh. I am overdosing on oxygen. And music to die for.
I seek neither to replace one for another, nor do I wish to "convert" anyone, nor do I expect praise. I simply ask of those who claim to see and understand the unseen divinity to describe it for me in real terms.
There is a way to explain (for those who will listen with their heart) how it is that Jesus would be God yet pray to The Father in Heaven. In the process of this analogizing, the nature of God, to some extent, will be revealed.
Assuming first that God IS, The Creator, The Holy Spirit, and Jesus, it is a function of what work God is doing by which we may focus upon which of the three expressions of God. Here's how:
Starting with something simple, if you were a two spatial dimension being, having only length and width, any third direction of spatial expression would be unknowable to you via your senses. Now, if higher dimensional being wanted to explain what a pencil is or anything with 3D spatial characteristics, the only way you could sense the 3D object is where that 3D object intersects your 2D world.
As a pencil--for instance--passes through your 2D plane, you look at the intersection intensely and perhaps imagine how adding up all the sensed intersections would sum up to a 3D object. But you could only sense where the 3D object intersects your 2D world. Jesus focused Philip's attention upon this same problem in John Chapter fourteen, where Jesus told Philip (paraphrasing), 'If you've seen me you've seen the Father, because all you can see of the Father is what you see in me, for I am in the Father and the Father in me.' Literally, what Jesus was teaching Philip was that human limits in dimensional sensing allow Philip to see only the amount of The Father that is in Jesus.
Now let's apply that to the expressions of God in Three persons, the Trinity, and see how the work that God is doing helps to focus us upon which of His personage is the essence. God's name is I AM. I take that to mean He is timeless, and therefore the Creator of dimension time and dimension space. It is a human trait to which we must analogize, but it helps to imagine that God imagined Whom Jesus would be as an expression of God, then God created space and time and all that there is in the known and unknown universe. That Creation process is by God greater than the creation.
The balance of forces is so delicate for the universe which has brought forth Jesus that God as Holy Spirit sustains it all in this extremely delicate balance.
So we have God The Creator bringing into existence time, space, and all that there is in the universe, holding it all in an extremely delicate balance by His Holy Spirit, so that God as Jesus can eventually come forth within the Created universe. Three expressions of One God, indentified by the work He is doing, the reality He is expressing.
The Bible tells us that God in Jesus made Himself a little lower than the angels (in expression and sensing). As God became flesh and dwelt among us, He had to limit the expression of Himself in order to 'fit' within the limits of our space and time.
HOWEVER, as God He retained the knowledge of what the forces are that His Holy Spirit sustains to keep the dynamic universe operating. Knowing the physical laws in total allows Him to do things like feed 5000 with but a few loaves and fishes.
Literally, everything that is happening is happening because God is sustaining the delicate balance which allows the universe to continue in existence without collapsing or quickly dissipating.
If you knew the complete physical laws of the universe, including the way God is sustaining the whole in delicate balance, you would be 'seeing what God The Father is doing.' Because the universe is in delicate balance yet is dynamic in nature, events can occur and so long as the physical laws of His universe are not violated, choices by living things can be made.
Here is another analogy which might help this explanation. Suppose you were privy to a pair of time binoculars, by which when you look through them you can see an object as it is expressed in spacetime for the next three hours, displayed before your eyes in total as you look through the lenses. Perhaps the lenses run a rapid movie of what is actually coming over the next three hours when you look through the lenses at an object located in the dynamic universe. You could literally say that you are seeing what God is doing, since it is His Holy Spirit that sustains the entire dynamic process of spacetime! Now, how much more power would you have if you comprehended the entire set of laws by which the entire universe is sutained?
If there are other unsensed expressions of dimension time, that as a 'knowing being' you were privy to as you dwelt upon the earth, perhaps you could moved between locations in time, perhaps leaving a stone tomb without rolling away the stone.
In a dynamic universe, if you could step 'sideways' in spatio-temporal expression because of your understanding of the volume of time in which the plane of present exists moving linearly from past to future, the planar location of the insides of the tomb in spacetime move on, leaving you outside of the tombs insides, able to step back into spacetime or remain in the where/when to which you stepped 'sideways'!
Now, perhaps the question bubbling up in your mind is 'so you're saying there is no free agency, we are stuck on a track doing that which God has already determined will be?' And my immediate answer is, no, because God chose, as one of the characteristics of this universe, that He would sustain the processes and the physical aspects while leaving open the choices living things can make which effect the universe He is sustaining ... God's Holy Spirit sustains the spacetime bubble we sense, but He allows us to alter/affect the dynamic expression within that bubble of spacetime since we in our limits cannot change the forces He is sustaining across the entire universe.
We have free choice, to a point that is limited by our temporal and spatial limits as 4D beings, physically. BUT, we are greater than 4D because we are alive, and the expression of life and spirit choice of right and wrong are dimensionally greater than 4D, yet occur within the universe which God Created(Creates) and which His Holy Spirit sustains in the delicate balance we sense and even the portions we cannot sense. To my thinking, that phenomenon of thoughts being real yet outside of 4D and effected/effecting 4D, tells me the Universe God Created/Creates is greater in dimensional expressions than we can sense directly.
And there are realms of reality which we cannot sense, which are referred to in the Bible, old and new testament. Daniel Chapter five will reveal one such realm, which is accessible to Jesus before and after the resurrection but is not accessible to us because we do not see what the Father is doing in sustaining that other realm, because we are merely 4D spatio-temporal beings where our physical senses are concerned.
Oh thank you so much for your kind words, dear YHAOS! With which you bring this thread back full circle to the article at the top.
In a nutshell, the article compares and contrasts the Anglo-American with the Franco-German philosophical traditions, with their respective ramifications for social and political life. The Anglo-American view traditionally, historically, is "under God." It holds God to be the creator and source of human rights, and also as the primary law-giver in the universe. In contrast, the Franco-German view seeks to describe a universe without God.
I have to thank dear kosta for his exemplification of the Franco-German approach.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear YHAOS! I'm delighted you have found this discussion captivating!
Indeed, dearest sister in Christ, contemplation of the holy Names of God is magnificently instructive! There is no better way to come to an understanding of the divine Power that made and continues to rule this universe and the world of men, from Beginning to End.
And indeed, His was/is indubitably an ex nihilo creation.
Thank you ever so much for your outstanding essay/post!
To God be the glory!
You’ve not heard of an Irish wake? Or of the similar gatherings of black families and friends? I must have near a hundred recordings of the music played by Negro bands as they march back from the burial of a loved member of their community. There must be similar happenings from other cultures about which members of our forum could inform us should they chose.
I mention this not to be picky, but to indicate that human action is much too involved to be so lightly dismissed. Status quo ante is apropos here. The death of a family member may have its momentary effect, but it does not alter the fabric of society any more than does the death of a star alter the structure of the Universe.
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