INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!
It's July 4th, and I'm spending it studying for regressional analysis!
Here's a thought:
I'm glad we had an American Revolution and not a French Revolution.
The American Revolution, or as Thomas E. Woods would call it, the "War of American Independence" was a conservative revolution. By "conservative" I mean, it sprang from the British tradition of liberty, freedom, rule of law, and other Enlightenment ideals which were learned from the historical experiences of the English and Scots. The tyranny of non-representative government and unlawful taxation were in fact what also triggered the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. The heirs of the republican democratic impulse which was cooped into the British model of constitutional monarchy went on to become American colonists, who were born and bred on British ideals. In short, the American Revolution was not the overthrow of colonial society, or a revolution of classes or peoples, but instead, as Sowell has written, the revolution of processes. The colonials fought to establish a system based on the prevailing orthodoxy on liberty consistent with the rule of law as learned from the wisdom of history, and free to develop further, in order to expand the franchise, end slavery, and accomodate a territorially growing nation.
"This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen. It was obvious from the nature of things, and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same spirit which... by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English Constitution; the same spirit which established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.
This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty, to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defense of their rights as men, as freemen."
- William Pitt the Elder
Contrast this with the French Revolution, also ostensibly based on Enlightenment ideals. However, this revolution was not so organically connected with well developed ideals of liberty as developed from within a tradition.
The French Revolution was the blueprint for all subsequent 'revolutions' since: The demagogues galvanize the masses in the name of seemingly self evident truths. The old order is destroyed. The new order devours itself. Even worse new tyrants come to power.
Check out Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
Basically, Burke could support an American Revolution, but reject the French not many years later based on the American revolution's continuity with tradition, and the French's seeming urge to destroy all traces of it.
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. "
-Edmund Burke
Here's a thought:
I'm glad we had an American Revolution and not a French Revolution.
The American Revolution, or as Thomas E. Woods would call it, the "War of American Independence" was a conservative revolution. By "conservative" I mean, it sprang from the British tradition of liberty, freedom, rule of law, and other Enlightenment ideals which were learned from the historical experiences of the English and Scots. The tyranny of non-representative government and unlawful taxation were in fact what also triggered the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. The heirs of the republican democratic impulse which was cooped into the British model of constitutional monarchy went on to become American colonists, who were born and bred on British ideals. In short, the American Revolution was not the overthrow of colonial society, or a revolution of classes or peoples, but instead, as Sowell has written, the revolution of processes. The colonials fought to establish a system based on the prevailing orthodoxy on liberty consistent with the rule of law as learned from the wisdom of history, and free to develop further, in order to expand the franchise, end slavery, and accomodate a territorially growing nation.
"This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen. It was obvious from the nature of things, and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same spirit which... by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English Constitution; the same spirit which established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.
This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty, to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defense of their rights as men, as freemen."
- William Pitt the Elder
Contrast this with the French Revolution, also ostensibly based on Enlightenment ideals. However, this revolution was not so organically connected with well developed ideals of liberty as developed from within a tradition.
The French Revolution was the blueprint for all subsequent 'revolutions' since: The demagogues galvanize the masses in the name of seemingly self evident truths. The old order is destroyed. The new order devours itself. Even worse new tyrants come to power.
Check out Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
Basically, Burke could support an American Revolution, but reject the French not many years later based on the American revolution's continuity with tradition, and the French's seeming urge to destroy all traces of it.
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. "
-Edmund Burke
posted by street theologian @ 9:48 AM
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