And I only mention it because I highly doubt that most of the people acting as if they know, know either.
How many "Founding Fathers" were there, anyway?
And in the first place, when are we going to stop using that goddam ridiculous phrase "Founding Fathers"?!
Jefferson was a Deist who acted and spoke exactly like a Christian in public. Adams was a Christian. Franklin and Paine were atheists, and that's all I know for sure.
No, I also know that most of the people living in the original 13 States were Christians.
Okay, I'm done using the phrase with begins with 2 f's, and I'm going to say "leaders of the Revolution" instead. Are you with me? Good.
How many people are we going to count as leaders of the American Revolution? Was it exactly all of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, and no one else? There were 56 of them -- quick, can you name them all? Let's face it, very few of you could name more than 6 or 7 without cheating with Google first. And by "you" I mean: very few of you who are going around saying: "The Founding Fathers were mostly [fill in the blank with the answer about religion you just pulled either out of your ass or out of a book or TV show or website whose conclusions you find convenient]."
But anyway, there were millions of people living in the future 13 States in 1776, 56 is a ridiculously low number of people to say were in what could be called leadership positions. The 56 signers of the Declaration were not acting entirely on their own, they answered to some other powerful colonists and had to take those other people's opinions and plans into account. 39 people signed the Constitution. Do you know what all of them believed concerning religion? No. Those 39 plus 16 others were delegates to the Constitutional Convention. According to Franklin T Lambert, of those 55, 49 were Protestant and 2 were Catholic. (I sure wish I knew what the other 4 were! Don't you?)
In other words, if most of them were theists or deists, they kept it to themselves, like Jefferson did. Maybe most of them were theists or deists. Secretly. As in: we're all just guessing about this, with the exception of a few of the Revolution's leaders like Jefferson and Adams who really opened up about religion in private letters which have survived and become public.
Showing posts with label american revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label american revolution. Show all posts
Friday, October 23, 2015
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Revolutions
The poor and/or the more well-off among the ruled have had it with the rulers and they explode:
In the 2nd century BC in Rome, Tiberius Gracchus, a Senator, thought that the state favored the wealthy too much to stay stable, and attempted to shift things in favor of a broader power base. His popularity with small farmers was tremendous, and appalling to the upper class. His fellow Senators had him killed in 133 BC. The following century is called the Roman Revolution, but it's not the kind of revolution I have in mind here. It was the opposite of a struggle on behalf of the ruled: it was the attempt by one tyrant after another to consolidate all authority in the state into his own hands. Eventually, the man we know as Augustus succeeded in this. The ill-fated attempt at reform by Tiberius Gracchus -- that I would call a revolution.
Spartacus led a revolution of slaves which occupied a large chunk of Italy from 73 to 71 BC. This revolution was crushed, but it was impressive. Later revolutionary movements have named themselves after Spartacus.
To what extent were the Cathar movement and the Hussites and other Medieval uprisings political revolutions, and to what extent were they religious movements? Good question. I don't know.
Martin Luther's rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church was mistaken by many peasants in Germany as a rebellion against all political authority, and they rose up in large numbers, thinking they had Luther's support. On the contrary, Luther was appalled by this disorder and urged the aristocrats to crush the uprising and punish the leaders severely, which they did.
Nevertheless, many people continued to associate Protestantism with revolution. Luther was dead in the 1560's when the mostly-Protestant United Netherlands began to revolt against the very, very Catholic Spain, so we don't know what he would have made of the Dutch Revolution. By 1609 at the latest, the Netherlands were for all practical purposes an independent country. A revolution which succeeded for once! In 1648 Spain finally recognized the Netherlands' independence. After many other nations had.
Between 1640 and 1688, the English deposed and executed King Charles I and secured some civil rights from King William III and his co-ruler Queen Mary II. The term "English Revolution" means different things during this era to different people.
The American Revolution, 1775 to 1783, or 1764 to 1787, or pick out your own dates, was led by people who thought of themselves as Englishmen who merely insisted upon the constitutional rights which had been granted to Englishmen by William and Mary in 1688.
The French Revolution, 1789 to -- when? -- was led by people who thought they were emulating the American Revolution, but who went much further in overturning the old order, far enough to horrify many American leaders. When did the Revolution end? Was Napolean revolutionary, or did his rule represent reaction and the end of the true revolution? People argue about such things.
The leaders of the Russian revolution (1917-1991) generally admired the French revolution, had various views of the American revolution, and greatly admired Abraham Lincoln.
In 1918, just months after the Russian Revolution began, the German government collapsed, the Kaiser fled, and various local governments were in charge of different parts of Germany. The most powerful single political party was the SPD, the German Social Democratic Party, which had been Karl Marx's party. The SPD did not remain a single party for very long. Some of its members wanted to join the international Revolution -- usually known as the "Russian Revolution." They ended up breaking away from the SPD and renaming themselves, first the Sparticists, and then the KPD, the German Communist Party. The remaining SPD produced many of the leaders of the Weimar republic and the Bundesrepublik, is still around, and has been at times much less Leftist than what Marx had in mind.
I don't know much about the Chinese Revolution. Sorry.
The Vietnamese revolutionaries (mid-19th century to the present) fought occupation first by the French, then by the Japanese, then the French again, then the US until the occupation ended in the 1970's. I'm sure this experience has colored Vietnamese attitudes toward the American and French revolutions.
Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader of Cuba since 1959, greatly admired the US. After overthrowing Batista in 1959 with overwhelming popular support, he tried to ally his government with the US. The US rebuffed Castro, not the other way around, and then and only then did Cuba became the ally of the Soviet Union, and anybody who tries to tell you any different is -- wrong. (I felt like writing something much ruder than "wrong" there.)
Ditto for the Sandanistas, who ruled Nicaragua from 1978 to 1990 and have remained one of several parties in the country since then. Almost ditto: Nicaragua and the US actually were cool from 1979 until Reagan took over from Carter in January 1981 and started the whole Iran-Contra-Cocaine boondoggle.
And there have been many more revolutions! Who's next?
In the 2nd century BC in Rome, Tiberius Gracchus, a Senator, thought that the state favored the wealthy too much to stay stable, and attempted to shift things in favor of a broader power base. His popularity with small farmers was tremendous, and appalling to the upper class. His fellow Senators had him killed in 133 BC. The following century is called the Roman Revolution, but it's not the kind of revolution I have in mind here. It was the opposite of a struggle on behalf of the ruled: it was the attempt by one tyrant after another to consolidate all authority in the state into his own hands. Eventually, the man we know as Augustus succeeded in this. The ill-fated attempt at reform by Tiberius Gracchus -- that I would call a revolution.
Spartacus led a revolution of slaves which occupied a large chunk of Italy from 73 to 71 BC. This revolution was crushed, but it was impressive. Later revolutionary movements have named themselves after Spartacus.
To what extent were the Cathar movement and the Hussites and other Medieval uprisings political revolutions, and to what extent were they religious movements? Good question. I don't know.
Martin Luther's rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church was mistaken by many peasants in Germany as a rebellion against all political authority, and they rose up in large numbers, thinking they had Luther's support. On the contrary, Luther was appalled by this disorder and urged the aristocrats to crush the uprising and punish the leaders severely, which they did.
Nevertheless, many people continued to associate Protestantism with revolution. Luther was dead in the 1560's when the mostly-Protestant United Netherlands began to revolt against the very, very Catholic Spain, so we don't know what he would have made of the Dutch Revolution. By 1609 at the latest, the Netherlands were for all practical purposes an independent country. A revolution which succeeded for once! In 1648 Spain finally recognized the Netherlands' independence. After many other nations had.
Between 1640 and 1688, the English deposed and executed King Charles I and secured some civil rights from King William III and his co-ruler Queen Mary II. The term "English Revolution" means different things during this era to different people.
The American Revolution, 1775 to 1783, or 1764 to 1787, or pick out your own dates, was led by people who thought of themselves as Englishmen who merely insisted upon the constitutional rights which had been granted to Englishmen by William and Mary in 1688.
The French Revolution, 1789 to -- when? -- was led by people who thought they were emulating the American Revolution, but who went much further in overturning the old order, far enough to horrify many American leaders. When did the Revolution end? Was Napolean revolutionary, or did his rule represent reaction and the end of the true revolution? People argue about such things.
The leaders of the Russian revolution (1917-1991) generally admired the French revolution, had various views of the American revolution, and greatly admired Abraham Lincoln.
In 1918, just months after the Russian Revolution began, the German government collapsed, the Kaiser fled, and various local governments were in charge of different parts of Germany. The most powerful single political party was the SPD, the German Social Democratic Party, which had been Karl Marx's party. The SPD did not remain a single party for very long. Some of its members wanted to join the international Revolution -- usually known as the "Russian Revolution." They ended up breaking away from the SPD and renaming themselves, first the Sparticists, and then the KPD, the German Communist Party. The remaining SPD produced many of the leaders of the Weimar republic and the Bundesrepublik, is still around, and has been at times much less Leftist than what Marx had in mind.
I don't know much about the Chinese Revolution. Sorry.
The Vietnamese revolutionaries (mid-19th century to the present) fought occupation first by the French, then by the Japanese, then the French again, then the US until the occupation ended in the 1970's. I'm sure this experience has colored Vietnamese attitudes toward the American and French revolutions.
Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader of Cuba since 1959, greatly admired the US. After overthrowing Batista in 1959 with overwhelming popular support, he tried to ally his government with the US. The US rebuffed Castro, not the other way around, and then and only then did Cuba became the ally of the Soviet Union, and anybody who tries to tell you any different is -- wrong. (I felt like writing something much ruder than "wrong" there.)
Ditto for the Sandanistas, who ruled Nicaragua from 1978 to 1990 and have remained one of several parties in the country since then. Almost ditto: Nicaragua and the US actually were cool from 1979 until Reagan took over from Carter in January 1981 and started the whole Iran-Contra-Cocaine boondoggle.
And there have been many more revolutions! Who's next?
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Christianity, The Enlightenment, The American Revolution And The French Revolution
Person A asserted that the leading minds of the Enlightenment were "almost all devout believers," and that the Enlightenment was an attempt to better understand God by using science to better understand His creation. I responded, and I quote:
"Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire -- all devout believers? Hm. Another view is that they were all atheists, and came as close as they dared to openly saying so, often getting themselves into serious trouble just for suggesting it between the lines ("I advance masked," Descartes said. Will we ever know just exactly what he meant by that?), bravely preparing the ground so that later atheists could express themselves openly without getting tortured and burned alive for it."
(Of course, other leading minds of the period, such as Pascal, Leibniz and Newton, were in fact devout believers. And Berkeley was either a Christian or fooled some people into believing that he was. He was an Anglican-Irish Bishop, after all. I don't see anything in his philosophical speculations about consciousness and perception which is incompatible with atheism, but perhaps that's just me. The point is that the Enlightenment as a whole cannot be categorized as either pro- or anti-religion or pro- or anti-Christian, things simply weren't that clear-cut.)
At this point person B jumped in and said that "the Atheistic/Humanist Enlightenment French Revolution" resulted in "Robespierreian" slaughter, whilst Christian Enlightenment brought forth "Free America." And he greatly startled me by asserting that "Franklin & other Founders (who deeply understood implications of various philosophic thoughts) warned the American Revolution inspired French philosophers not to cut Christianity out of their model, that otherwise the coming French Revolution would fail." I'm writing this blog post instead of responding to B. Although I feel that perhaps I should respond to B. The Stoic side of me says I should, that it is my often-unpleasant duty to try to educate dullards, that that is what I can, and should, contribute to society. Of course, the Epicurean part of me not only avoids morons but strongly urges people I like to do the same. I'm here being Epicurean and avoiding getting all dirty by wrestling a pig.
So, "Free America." My immediate thought was that African and Native Americans might not think of America as particularly free. Many from both groups fought with the British against the rebels in the American Revolution. England and France and many other countries emancipated slaves long before the US did. "Free." Unions have faired much better in most of Europe than in the US. I have a feeling that B believes the "right to work" actually amounts to more freedom for workers, and that unions, with their much higher wages, health insurance, protection from mistreatment and unwarranted dismissal, somehow oppress workers.
Be that as it may, did Franklin warn French philosophers not to divorce themselves from Christianity, or the French Revolution would fail? I'm having trouble substantiating this. For one thing, to what extent did Franklin foresee the French Revolution? He died in 1790 when it was barely underway. He supported the movement to give full legal status to French citizens who weren't Catholic which finally came to success when Louis XVI signed the Edict of Versailles in 1787. Was this advocacy deism/stealth atheism, or everyday Protestant partisanship? Franklin's views on religion aren't at all clear -- not to me, at least. At times he seems like a tiresome pious old schoolmarm, lecturing the American Revolutionaries for not praying enough as a group, and at times he seems like a deist neocon in that he advocates traditional Christianity for "the masses" but not for clever people (such as himself of course) who see through it all. I suppose it's possible that he gave that sort of neocon-type advice to this or that French philosopher between bouts of chess and lechery. (Can you tell I'm not as impressed by Franklin as many others have been? Good.)
So, one, I can't find evidence that Franklin really did advise anyone who was planning the French Revolution to keep Christianity in it, and two, more importantly, I don't particularly care if he did. Many American atheists seem to have the unfortunate habit of treating the public and private utterances of the Founding Fathers, Tom Paine and Mark Twain as if they were Holy Scripture, quoting them as if the quotes were sufficient to settle disputes of all kinds. I don't.
"Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire -- all devout believers? Hm. Another view is that they were all atheists, and came as close as they dared to openly saying so, often getting themselves into serious trouble just for suggesting it between the lines ("I advance masked," Descartes said. Will we ever know just exactly what he meant by that?), bravely preparing the ground so that later atheists could express themselves openly without getting tortured and burned alive for it."
(Of course, other leading minds of the period, such as Pascal, Leibniz and Newton, were in fact devout believers. And Berkeley was either a Christian or fooled some people into believing that he was. He was an Anglican-Irish Bishop, after all. I don't see anything in his philosophical speculations about consciousness and perception which is incompatible with atheism, but perhaps that's just me. The point is that the Enlightenment as a whole cannot be categorized as either pro- or anti-religion or pro- or anti-Christian, things simply weren't that clear-cut.)
At this point person B jumped in and said that "the Atheistic/Humanist Enlightenment French Revolution" resulted in "Robespierreian" slaughter, whilst Christian Enlightenment brought forth "Free America." And he greatly startled me by asserting that "Franklin & other Founders (who deeply understood implications of various philosophic thoughts) warned the American Revolution inspired French philosophers not to cut Christianity out of their model, that otherwise the coming French Revolution would fail." I'm writing this blog post instead of responding to B. Although I feel that perhaps I should respond to B. The Stoic side of me says I should, that it is my often-unpleasant duty to try to educate dullards, that that is what I can, and should, contribute to society. Of course, the Epicurean part of me not only avoids morons but strongly urges people I like to do the same. I'm here being Epicurean and avoiding getting all dirty by wrestling a pig.
So, "Free America." My immediate thought was that African and Native Americans might not think of America as particularly free. Many from both groups fought with the British against the rebels in the American Revolution. England and France and many other countries emancipated slaves long before the US did. "Free." Unions have faired much better in most of Europe than in the US. I have a feeling that B believes the "right to work" actually amounts to more freedom for workers, and that unions, with their much higher wages, health insurance, protection from mistreatment and unwarranted dismissal, somehow oppress workers.
Be that as it may, did Franklin warn French philosophers not to divorce themselves from Christianity, or the French Revolution would fail? I'm having trouble substantiating this. For one thing, to what extent did Franklin foresee the French Revolution? He died in 1790 when it was barely underway. He supported the movement to give full legal status to French citizens who weren't Catholic which finally came to success when Louis XVI signed the Edict of Versailles in 1787. Was this advocacy deism/stealth atheism, or everyday Protestant partisanship? Franklin's views on religion aren't at all clear -- not to me, at least. At times he seems like a tiresome pious old schoolmarm, lecturing the American Revolutionaries for not praying enough as a group, and at times he seems like a deist neocon in that he advocates traditional Christianity for "the masses" but not for clever people (such as himself of course) who see through it all. I suppose it's possible that he gave that sort of neocon-type advice to this or that French philosopher between bouts of chess and lechery. (Can you tell I'm not as impressed by Franklin as many others have been? Good.)
So, one, I can't find evidence that Franklin really did advise anyone who was planning the French Revolution to keep Christianity in it, and two, more importantly, I don't particularly care if he did. Many American atheists seem to have the unfortunate habit of treating the public and private utterances of the Founding Fathers, Tom Paine and Mark Twain as if they were Holy Scripture, quoting them as if the quotes were sufficient to settle disputes of all kinds. I don't.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
The Founders Of The US, And Religion
As Alcoholics Anonymous has taught us, a basic first step toward handling a problem is acknowledging that that problem exists. As essential part of acknowledging the existence of a problem is recognizing the true nature and dimensions and severity of that problem. A lot of today's atheists are failing to acknowledge that a real church-state divide has not yet existed in many countries, including the US, despite the famous lip service paid to a supposed such divide in the Constitution.
(And please don't even get me started on those dopey smug Brit atheists trying to tell us how secular the UK is, God save their Queen, Dei Gratia Regina.)
Atheists today triumphantly quote antireligious passages from Thomas Jefferson, ignoring -- if they ever realized to begin with -- that 1) those passages come from private letters by Jefferson, and that publicly he was an Anglican vestryman in perfectly good standing who while President led weekly prayer meetings of members of Congress, in the Congress building, and 2) that Jefferson hardly spoke, privately or publicly, for all of the Founders, many of whom were wild-eyed Bible thumpers by any measure.
If Jefferson and other Founders had been anywhere near as boldly critical of religion in their public statements as Jefferson was in his private letters -- and possibly in a deliciously scandalous conversation or two in a Paris salon while he was Ambassador to France, conversation which traveled no more than a block or two during his lifetime -- now that would've been something. (Something which resembled the French Revolution much more closely than the American.)
But alas no, Jefferson and the other Founders were not atheist firebrands who would stand out sharply from the American political climate of today, they were careful not to offend the sensibilities of the pious and in that respect they would fit right in.
In short, the secular Golden Age of the early US, about which so many atheists rhapsodize these days, like many if not all Golden Ages, never really happened. Oh, if only.
(And please don't even get me started on those dopey smug Brit atheists trying to tell us how secular the UK is, God save their Queen, Dei Gratia Regina.)
Atheists today triumphantly quote antireligious passages from Thomas Jefferson, ignoring -- if they ever realized to begin with -- that 1) those passages come from private letters by Jefferson, and that publicly he was an Anglican vestryman in perfectly good standing who while President led weekly prayer meetings of members of Congress, in the Congress building, and 2) that Jefferson hardly spoke, privately or publicly, for all of the Founders, many of whom were wild-eyed Bible thumpers by any measure.
If Jefferson and other Founders had been anywhere near as boldly critical of religion in their public statements as Jefferson was in his private letters -- and possibly in a deliciously scandalous conversation or two in a Paris salon while he was Ambassador to France, conversation which traveled no more than a block or two during his lifetime -- now that would've been something. (Something which resembled the French Revolution much more closely than the American.)
But alas no, Jefferson and the other Founders were not atheist firebrands who would stand out sharply from the American political climate of today, they were careful not to offend the sensibilities of the pious and in that respect they would fit right in.
In short, the secular Golden Age of the early US, about which so many atheists rhapsodize these days, like many if not all Golden Ages, never really happened. Oh, if only.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The American Revolution
So, the Roanoke colony failed in the late 1580's, and then Jamestown was founded in 1607 and the Plymouth colony in 1620, and gradually the English began to establish themselves in the Western Hemisphere. By the 1630's there was a college, Harvard, in Massachusets, by the 1670's the English power had supplanted the Dutch at New Amsterdam, and so it went, and the English colonies grew by leaps and bounds, crowding against the French settlement to to the north and West and against the Spanish to the south and West long before the American Revolution.
Was English rule in the colonies always, inevitably going to become intolerable to the colonists -- there was Bacon's Rebellion in the late 17th century -- or would the colonists wished to have remained British subjects in the absence of the specific mismanagement of things insyigated by the mad king George III and his ministers?
You asking me? I don't know. It seems to be the current fashion among historians to regard the colonists as Englishmen, who wanted nothing more than to enjoy the rights which Englishmen in England took for granted. But this view contests, has always contested against the opinion that the colonists were intrinsically different from Englishmen, which opinion prevailed from time to time in the past, and may or may not be the prevailing opinion in the History departments again in another few decades. (I'm not going to make a prediction here; a careful examination of predictions of the past has led me to the point where the only prediction I feel inclined to make is that in the future many people will continue to predict many things and that they will usually be wrong.) It seems to me that perceptions and historical depictions of the American Revolution are particularly fraught with preconceptions and political argument That very often the Revolution is described as being what the individual historian wants it to be: the precursor in spirit as well as in time to the French Revolution, or utterly distinct from it, associated with it only through ignorance. Truly a victory for freedom for ALL people; or the business dealings of a small clique of WASP's, plus a few of their cronies of Dutch descent; or something somewhere in between. I suppose that to a large extent it is legitimate to argue the Revolution is also what it became, whether the Founding Fathers had it in mind or not. On the other hand, does it make sense to see a fulfillment of the promise of 1776 in 1863, when slavery was abolished in the British Empire long before 1863?
I tend to see a lot of the rhetoric about American freedom, specifically American freedom, as somewhere between dubious and downright ridiculous. It seems to me that it amounts to a large extent to the Smithian freedom for a small group of capitalists to squeeze the rest of us, and for the rest of us to either play ball, or starve, or rot in prison. Nice freedom, Ben, George! Thomas may have been a little more progressive than that, or maybe I'm still looking at Thomas through rose-colored glasses. Thomas didn't free his slaves, after all, stirring though his writing often was.
Accurately or not, a lot of Enlightenment philosophy and highfalutin' rhetoric was associated with the American Revolution since well before 1776, and with the Dutch, English, Mexican, Russian, Chinese and Nicaraguan revolutions as well. The problem is, a lot of that Enlightenment philosophy doesn't make any sense, doesn't have much relation to reality. Man is not born free, he is born covered in slime and blood and usually screaming in horror, and in need of constant care and supervision. I subscribe to the Hobbesian, not the Lockeian and Rousseauian view of nature. Freedom is something which we ATTAIN to some degree if we are fortunate, and consists in no small degree of OVERCOMING nature.
Except that it's nowhere that simple either. For instance, I see no reason for this arbitrary distinction between "natural" and "man-made." As if we were somehow apart from other animals. Singled out by God for a special destiny or some such nonsense. I don't think that the arbitrary nature of the distinction between "man-made" and "natural" has occurred to most people yet.
So anyway, the blather of Locke and Rousseau about the supposedly noble nature of man in "nature," corrupted by awful, awful civilization, was in the air a lot during the American Revolution, and perhaps even more so in Europe in the observation and misunderstanding from afar of the American Revolution. The French Revolutionaries, many of them anyway, may have believed that they were doing exactly the same things that the American Revolutionaries had done.
I could go on. Happy holiday.
Was English rule in the colonies always, inevitably going to become intolerable to the colonists -- there was Bacon's Rebellion in the late 17th century -- or would the colonists wished to have remained British subjects in the absence of the specific mismanagement of things insyigated by the mad king George III and his ministers?
You asking me? I don't know. It seems to be the current fashion among historians to regard the colonists as Englishmen, who wanted nothing more than to enjoy the rights which Englishmen in England took for granted. But this view contests, has always contested against the opinion that the colonists were intrinsically different from Englishmen, which opinion prevailed from time to time in the past, and may or may not be the prevailing opinion in the History departments again in another few decades. (I'm not going to make a prediction here; a careful examination of predictions of the past has led me to the point where the only prediction I feel inclined to make is that in the future many people will continue to predict many things and that they will usually be wrong.) It seems to me that perceptions and historical depictions of the American Revolution are particularly fraught with preconceptions and political argument That very often the Revolution is described as being what the individual historian wants it to be: the precursor in spirit as well as in time to the French Revolution, or utterly distinct from it, associated with it only through ignorance. Truly a victory for freedom for ALL people; or the business dealings of a small clique of WASP's, plus a few of their cronies of Dutch descent; or something somewhere in between. I suppose that to a large extent it is legitimate to argue the Revolution is also what it became, whether the Founding Fathers had it in mind or not. On the other hand, does it make sense to see a fulfillment of the promise of 1776 in 1863, when slavery was abolished in the British Empire long before 1863?
I tend to see a lot of the rhetoric about American freedom, specifically American freedom, as somewhere between dubious and downright ridiculous. It seems to me that it amounts to a large extent to the Smithian freedom for a small group of capitalists to squeeze the rest of us, and for the rest of us to either play ball, or starve, or rot in prison. Nice freedom, Ben, George! Thomas may have been a little more progressive than that, or maybe I'm still looking at Thomas through rose-colored glasses. Thomas didn't free his slaves, after all, stirring though his writing often was.
Accurately or not, a lot of Enlightenment philosophy and highfalutin' rhetoric was associated with the American Revolution since well before 1776, and with the Dutch, English, Mexican, Russian, Chinese and Nicaraguan revolutions as well. The problem is, a lot of that Enlightenment philosophy doesn't make any sense, doesn't have much relation to reality. Man is not born free, he is born covered in slime and blood and usually screaming in horror, and in need of constant care and supervision. I subscribe to the Hobbesian, not the Lockeian and Rousseauian view of nature. Freedom is something which we ATTAIN to some degree if we are fortunate, and consists in no small degree of OVERCOMING nature.
Except that it's nowhere that simple either. For instance, I see no reason for this arbitrary distinction between "natural" and "man-made." As if we were somehow apart from other animals. Singled out by God for a special destiny or some such nonsense. I don't think that the arbitrary nature of the distinction between "man-made" and "natural" has occurred to most people yet.
So anyway, the blather of Locke and Rousseau about the supposedly noble nature of man in "nature," corrupted by awful, awful civilization, was in the air a lot during the American Revolution, and perhaps even more so in Europe in the observation and misunderstanding from afar of the American Revolution. The French Revolutionaries, many of them anyway, may have believed that they were doing exactly the same things that the American Revolutionaries had done.
I could go on. Happy holiday.
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