LINCOLN: "...the central act of my administration, and the great event of the 19th century." #Juneteenth

"Abraham Lincoln was not an original advocate of abolition. In fact we know that his journey to what he called 'the central act of my administration, and the great event of the 19th century' was a relatively slow, though continuous, one. ...

"African Americans had demanded freedom from bondage as early as the American Revolution, and in the 30 years before the Civil War a strong interracial movement had called for the immediate abolition of slavery and for Black rights. Lincoln himself came under enormous pressure from abolitionists and radicals within his own party during the first two years of the war to act against slavery. ...

"We know that Lincoln held at least two beliefs on slavery and race on the eve of becoming the president of the United States. He abhorred slavery as a moral and political blot on the American republic even though he did not advocate ... the abolitionist goal of immediate emancipation. But in viewing slavery as an unmitigated evil, he already shared important ground with abolitionists. ...

"With the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, abolitionists and radical Republicans immediately urged Lincoln to use his war powers to strike against slavery. They were doomed to disappointment. Preoccupied with retaining the loyalty of the border slave states and engendering Northern unity and support for the prosecution of the war, Lincoln insisted that his primary goal was the reconstruction of the Union and he gave short shrift to the abolitionist agenda. ...

"By the summer of 1862 [however], Lincoln decided to issue an emancipation proclamation. It was not simply that he was wisely biding his time and waiting for Northern anti-slavery sentiment to mature in order to move on emancipation. He himself had to be convinced of the failure of his appeasement ... [and] proposals for gradual, compensated emancipation ...

"For abolitionists, the president would become permanently identified with the moment of liberation, living on as an icon of Black freedom in African American celebrations of emancipation in years to come. ... The abolitionist insistence on tying the cause of the slave with that of American democracy influenced Lincoln’s overall conception of the war. He would immortalize this understanding of the war in the Gettysburg Address as the second American Revolution, as representing a “new birth of freedom” in the republic. The abolitionist interpretation of the war gave meaning and purpose to it in a way that simply a war for the Union never could. ..."

~ Manisha Sinha from her post 'Abraham Lincoln Wasn't Born an Abolitionist, He Became One'

"The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties"

The French Revolution caused a fundamental schism among Americans whom a decade before fomented their own Revolution: throwing off British rule with the help of the French Crown, who had now been toppled.

Without that help, the American Revolution would have been stillborn. "The French had no no doubt acted in their own self-interest in supporting the United States during the American Revolution," points out intellectual historian C. Bradley Thompson, 

not to mention their centuries-old hatred of Great Britain, but it is likewise true that the Americans almost certainly could not have won their war with Great Britain without the aid of France. In other words, the Americans’ debt of obligation to France was real.

But that royal regime who'd helped had now been swept away by the Parisian mob, and America's Founding Fathers were unsure whether to support the mob's revolutionary cause. Whether the obligation still applied. These were honourable men in a time in which honour mattered, and they wanted to keep their promises. There was one specific point that made answering the question crucial. And that was the question of treaties.

These honourable men began to debate the nature of treaties, and what moral obligations they imposed.

That's what makes their debate — a debate most publicly between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — so relevant to us today in New Zealand.

The specific issue that came to divide America [says Thompson*] concerned its two 1778 treaties with France [particularly once Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain]. During some of the darkest days of the Americans’ war for independence against Great Britain, the infant nation signed a “Treaty of Alliance” and a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” with France that were important factors in its eventual victory. Sentimentally, morally, and legally, the Americans owed a debt to France. ...
    The two immediate political questions under discussion in 1793 related to the treaties were: 1) were the Gallo-American treaties of 1778 still in effect in 1793, and 2) if they were still actionable, how or in what way did they apply to the current situation?
    What was most remarkable about the ensuing debate in America was that it quickly and automatically turned from a political-diplomatic debate into a moral-political-diplomatic debate about the moral nature and obligations of treaties. Specifically, the fundamental issue was reduced to this question: is the United States morally obliged to fulfill its treaty obligations with France?

That was the question America's first president, George Washington, asked Hamilton and Jefferson to answer. From that question "arose one of the most interesting and complex debates in American political history."

To answer this question, we must step back and ask a series of related or corollary questions. What is a treaty? Are treaties between nations contracts (we’ve already defined what a contract is in “Contracts and the Birth of a Free Society”), and, if so, what kind of contracts are they? If treaties are contracts, must they have identical constituent parts as do other contracts (e.g., property or commercial contracts), or are they a special kind of contract with different conditions and requirements? Who arbitrates treaties when they’re broken? And what were the precise terms of the two treaties signed by France and the United States in 1778 (see above)?
    To understand what a treaty is, we must define its essential characteristics and applications. Samuel Johnson’s 1773 'Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as a “Negotiation; act of treating” and as “A compact of accommodation relating to public affairs.” Noah Webster’s 1828 'American Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as “An agreement, league or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns, formally signed by commissioners properly authorised, and solemnly ratified by the several sovereigns or the supreme power of each state. Treaties are of various kinds, such as treaties for regulating commercial intercourse, treaties of alliance, offensive and defensive, treaties for hiring troops, treaties of peace, etc.”

These definitions encapsulate how treaties were understood in this age.

    By Webster’s definition, we see that treaties are contracts between sovereign nations. Treaties, like contracts, involve an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do or not do certain actions. The promise to do or not do something is a binding moral obligation, and to default on what one has promised is a dereliction of moral responsibility that causes a harm to the other contracting party.
    One major difference between treaties and contracts (at least up until the twentieth century) is that treaties, at least in the context of the eighteenth century, could not be enforced by a neutral third party. There was no international court system in the eighteenth century to adjudicate the violation of treaties. Hence treaties involved honour as the enforcement mechanism, but honour is a weak thread in questions of war and peace.
    Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both viewed treaties as contracts, or at least a certain kind of contract. The main question for Hamilton and Jefferson came down to this: how could the United States remain neutral in the conflict between France and England and still fulfil its treaty obligations to France? More specifically, did the two Gallo-American treaties of 1778 require the United States to defend France’s West Indian possessions? ...

Both Jefferson and Hamilton supported American neutrality. Both Hamilton and Jefferson wanted the new United States to do the honourable thing, to discharge their agreed obligations. And both Jefferson and Hamilton understood that — beyond "the discussion of treaties, alliances, diplomacy, foreign affairs, war, and international law (i.e., the law of nations)" — what their debate was about was "a philosophic contest over the nature of moral obligation," and what those obligations amounted to in this context. In short:

What is America’s moral obligations to uphold it treaties with France? In other words, what is the debt owed by the United States to France?

At bottom, and most relevant to us in New Zealand in the here and now, the question is: what is the nature of a treaty, and what long-lasting obligations does it impose?

Hamilton viewed "contracts with special moral obligations, but he did think treaties between nations were a special kind of contract with their own unique qualities and characteristics and thus with their own unique moral obligations that were somewhat different from those of regular contracts." Jefferson largely agreed. Like Hamilton he 

1) believed that treaties are a species of contract with traits like and unlike contracts between individuals; 

2) viewed treaties as defined by, and grounded in, the sanctity of moral obligations; 

3) supported American neutrality; and 

4) thought that only dire necessity could justify suspending or even renouncing treaties.

By "dire necessity" was meant that only if inevitable destruction would be the outcome. Given the nature the French Revolution, whose violence was only grown and whose outcome was still uncertain, they both came to the conclusion (for differing reasons) that alliance with the revolutionary regime posed too many dangers at present to be prudent.

That said, Jefferson saw the treaties with France as being agreements with the French people, not with the king — "that treaties are made between nations, not between their governments. This meant that nations may change their government or even their form of government without impairing their treaty obligations."

By the moral law of nature, according to Jefferson, the obligations of one man to another in a state of nature are carried forward to the state of society where the aggregate obligations of one society to another mirror those between individuals in and out of society. [Jefferson] argued that treaties between nations carry the same moral obligations via the moral law of nature as do contracts between individuals. But he then admited that some contracts, either between individuals or nations, can be broken when 1) “performance . . . becomes impossible,” and 2) “performance becomes self-destructive to the party.” Non-performance in the former “is not immoral,” according to Jefferson, and the “law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations” in the latter. ... nations can and should be judges in their own cause in international affairs

There was a "right to self-liberation" from a  treaty, said Jefferson, but it was limited to just three cases:

First, a nation that absolves itself from a treaty must face a “danger” that is “great, inevitable and imminent.” ...
    Second, the right of self-release was limited solely to those clauses in a treaty that would bring “great & inevitable danger on us” but not from the treaty as a whole. ...
    Finally, a nation’s right to self-liberation from a treaty or the relevant parts comes with a moral obligation “to make compensation where the nature of the case admits & does not dispense with it.” Jefferson does not explain what constitutes “compensation” or how or by whom it would be determined, but he does think that a non-fulfilling nation is morally bound to pay some kind of compensation for not fulfilling its treaty obligation.

Hamilton however saw the treaties as being with the banished Bourbon regime, and should be considered therefore "as 'temporarily and provisionally suspended,' particularly if such treaties proved to be “disadvantageous or dangerous.” That the French people had a right to change their government was unarguable; but that right imposed no "right to involve other nations," not even those "with whom it may have had connections, absolutely and unconditionally." 

In such cases, the contracting party had a moral right, according to Hamilton, to “renounce” such treaties as incompatible with and detrimental to their original purposes. In sum, Hamilton argued, “Contracts between nations as between individuals, must lose their force where the considerations fail.”

The two men came to similar conclusions as to what to do, but for different reasons. 

If Hamilton’s strategy were to anticipate future dangers by suspending the treaties or certain articles therein, then Jefferson’s strategy was to delay as much as possible how specific articles of the treaties were to be applied in the present. Here, then, is the core difference between Hamilton and Jefferson: the former wanted to temporarily suspend America’s obligations, whereas the latter wanted to temporarily postpone their obligations.

Importantly, however, neither wanted to repudiate their obligations altogether. They understood there was an agreement, and its terms must be honoured — once action was clear, and not at the cost of their own destruction. As Thompson sums up Hamilton's position: "a treaty is not a suicide pact."

What is most important about the Hamilton-Jefferson debate is not what it tells us about their views on international affairs, diplomacy, foreign policy, or even treaties, but what it tells us about the Founders’ views on the moral status of contracts in a free society. Contracts are the moral ligament that holds a free society together.

* * * * 

* All quotes hereafter from from Thompson's post 'American Schism: The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties'

More 1776, less 1984 [updated]

 

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

UPDATE:

“In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe.”

~ economist Jeff Hummel, from his article 'Benefits of the American Revolution: An Exploration of Positive Externalities'

"The principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence were my principles. They spoke to me across centuries and across borders. The country of my birth, a good and decent place, could never be my country. From the time I was a boy, I knew my future was in America. Shortly after I graduated from high school, I left Canada to become an American.
    "For the last 42 years I’ve resided in America’s universities, first as a student and now as a professor. Shortly after my arrival I discovered, first to my amazement and then to my disgust, that serious people no longer think true the principles that brought me to this country. Those ideas—individual rights, limited government, capitalism, and the pursuit of individual happiness—were, I was told by my professors, old fashioned and irrelevant at best and the source of much evil at their worst.
    "For almost 100 years America's intellectuals have waged a war of attrition against the core values of American civilization. College professors regularly teach that reality is unknowable, that truth and intellectual certainty are a mirage, that there are no moral absolutes, and that all cultures and ways of life are of equal worth.
    "Since becoming a professor, I have seen firsthand the damage that our college professors have done to American culture. The reigning moral orthodoxy of America’s schools, from elementary to secondary and post-secondary is the doctrine of moral relativism.
    "It should come as no surprise, then, that many of today’s young people are not merely confused about what is right and wrong, but also that they have no sense that any real difference exists between the two....
    "The United States was founded on the self-evident truth “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.” As a consequence of putting into practice and living by these principles the United States has become the freest, most just, most prosperous and most powerful nation in the history of the world.
    "But “[t]hese are the times that try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine noted in 1776. The question that now confronts us this: Do Americans still believe these principles to be true, and will they fight to defend them. What America needs most right now is a new moral clarity....
    " It is no longer sufficient to rely on filiopieties, flattering slogans, or folksy speeches of doughface conservatives. Philosophically rearmed, we will then be able to defeat the searing cynicism of those nattering nabobs who have been morally disarming America for several generations."

~ C. Bradley Thompson, from his 4 July post 'America, Seen from the Eyes of a Child'

"[John] Ridpath opens his essay [on George Washington] by considering America's fortune in so often having 'principled, moral leaders, directing this nation against history's tyrants and in pursuit of freedom and the rights of man' -- and I think he would agree that we could use such a leader now.
    "What I find so striking about this essay, aside from that very reverential awe is that Ridpath's words are radically different from those of so many today.
    "When is the last time, for example, you heard someone express authentic admiration for the character of someone running for President [or Prime Minister]? Who was the last political figure you heard touted as 'practical' that you would personally trust with anything important? When was the last time you heard someone famous held out as a moral example -- and wanted to live that kind of life here and now?
    "It's been quite a while for me, too."

~ Gus van Horn from his post 'Independence Day Inspiration' 

 

"It’s been a hard time for the American Revolution..."

"It’s been a hard time for the American Revolution.
    "It’s been smeared by the New York Times's 1619 project as a fight to preserve slavery. Juneteenth, a worthy event in its own right, is considered by some as a candidate to replace July 4, marking a supposedly more palatable and less flawed Independence Day. Statues of leaders of the Revolution have been vandalised and torn down.
    "This is wrongheaded, ungrateful and destructive. Ours is the greatest revolution the world as ever known. It succeeded where so many other revolutions have failed, delivered a severe blow to monarchy and aristocracy, inspired republican movements around the world and won the independence of a country whose power and ideals have influenced the course of history for the better."

~ Rich Lowry, writing in the New York Post on 'Saluting the American Revolution's Enduring Legacy'

"On July 4, 1776, the Founding Fathers declared to the world not only that the colonies would henceforth be independent from Britain, but also, and more fundamentally,

'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, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.'

    "This was the beginning of the first moral country on earth—a country in which individual rights were to be explicitly recognised and protected."

~ Craig Biddle, on 'What to Celebrate on Independence Day'

"American Revolutionaries were rebels with a cause. Despite the vicissitudes that befell them—the hardships of war, the blood and toil, the starvation, the imprisonment and torture, the destruction of home and property, the loss of family and loved ones, and finally death itself—American Revolutionaries refused to compromise, or to surrender their lives, their fortunes, or their sacred honour.
    "The moral universe they inhabited might seem like a foreign place to 21st-century Americans, but we forget its moral lessons at our peril. Their revolution is surely one of history’s greatest monuments to human virtue. It is ours to remember, celebrate, and restore.
    "Independence forever!!!"

~ C. Bradley Thompson, on 'Why I Love the United States of America'

[Hat tip Louise Lamontagne]

"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

On the weekend in which America should have had something to celebrate, a speech by former slave Frederick Douglass reminds us that the birth a nation dedicated to liberty was and still is something to celebrate for every being who aspires to be human ...

In an 1852 speech entitled, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July," Frederick Douglass described America's founders and its founding documents thus: 

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was ‘settled’ that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were ‘final;’not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times...
    Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it... take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery...
    Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.

. 

"Western civilisation is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming 'Westernised'."

This seems to me important: in the week that so-called defenders of western civilisation arrive here instead to impugn it, to take advantage of one of its highest values, it seems to me to be important to remind ourselves (or to learn, if we never have) what the nature of western civilisation really is. Would-be upholders of western values must not only understand their source and nature, they must know enough to defend them from both their obvious antagonists, and from those who (falsely) claim to defend them.

So what is the nature of western civilisation? To my mind, the clearest description is George Reisman's* :

The Nature of Western Civilisation
In order to understand the implications, it is first necessary to remind oneself what Western civilisation is. From a historical perspective, Western civilisation embraces two main periods: the era of Greco-Roman civilisation and the era of modern Western civilisation, which latter encompasses the rediscovery of Greco-Roman civilisation in the late Middle Ages, and the periods of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. 

Modern Western civilisation continues down to the present moment, of course, as the dominant force in the culture of the countries of Western Europe and the United States and the other countries settled by the descendants of West Europeans. It is an increasingly powerful force in the rapidly progressing countries of the Far East, such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, whose economies rest on "Western" foundations in every essential respect. 

From the perspective of intellectual and cultural content, Western civilisation represents an understanding and acceptance of the following: the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man; on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of the power of reason; the value and competence of the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights, among them the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state; on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation, and rising living standards; in addition, the importance of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody.

So much, so straightforward -- and so important too to realise that the defining characteristic of western civilisation is not one that is defined by race; that it is not defined by being (for example) "Anglo-Saxon." This is not just nonsense, it’s nasty – and in today’s interconnected and easily-led world, it’s dangerous nonsense.

The truth, as George Reisman so patiently goes on to explain, is that Western civilisation is neither Anglo-Saxon nor Semitic: it is in fact and in achievement the property of no particular race or of any particular ethnic group. This is of course one of its many great virtues -- that (while not yet being universal) western civilisation is fully universalisable; that is, it is open to everyone. In this sense, western culture is like an invitation to the dance, a welcome in.

I remember once trying to explain this to Tariana Turia, just before I headed off to see the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra under at Peruvian conductor perform a Russian concerto with a Chinese soloist and players from almost every other part of the world. "That," I said to her by way of exemplar, "is western civilisation in action." And so it was: it is the universalisability of the culture -- a culture that is blind to race or origin, and open instead to achievement.

She sniffed; you shouldn't, because it’s a crucial concept for would-be defenders of western civilisation to grasp. (And, sadly, one that to few of its alleged advocates do …).

The Universalisability of Western Civilisation
Once one recalls what Western civilisation is, the most important thing to realise about it is that it is open to everyone. Indeed, important elements of "Western" civilisation did not even originate in the West. The civilisation of the Greeks and Romans incorporated significant aspects of science that were handed down from Egypt and Babylon. Modern "Western" civilisation includes contributions from people living in the Middle East and in China during the Dark Ages, when Western Europe had reverted to virtual barbarism. Indeed, during the Dark Ages, "Western" civilisation resided much more in the Middle East than in Western Europe. (It is conceivable that if present trends continue, in another century it might reside more in the Far East than in the West.) 

The truth is that just as one does not have to be from France to like French- fried potatoes or from New York to like a New York steak, one does not have to have been born in Western Europe or be of West European descent to admire Western civilisation, or, indeed, even to help build it. Western civilisation is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming "Westernised." The rapidly progressing economies of the Far East are all "Western" insofar as they rest on a foundation of logic, mathematics, science, technology, and capitalism--exactly the same logic, mathematics, science, technology, and capitalism that are essential features of "Western" civilisation. 

For the case of a Westernised individual, I must think of myself. I am not of West European descent. All four of my grandparents came to the United States from Russia, about a century ago. Modern Western civilisation did not originate in Russia and hardly touched it. The only connection my more remote ancestors had with the civilisation of Greece and Rome was probably to help in looting and plundering it. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly a Westerner. I am a Westerner because of the ideas and values I hold. I have thoroughly internalised all of the leading features of Western civilisation. They are now my ideas and my values. Holding these ideas and values as I do, I would be a Westerner wherever I lived and whenever I was born. I identify with Greece and Rome, and not with my ancestors of that time, because I share the ideas and values of Greece and Rome, not those of my ancestors. To put it bluntly, my ancestors were savages--certainly up to about a thousand years ago, and, for all practical purposes, probably as recently as four or five generations ago. 

I know nothing for certain about my great grandparents, but if they lived in rural Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century, they were almost certainly totally illiterate, highly superstitious, and primitive in every way. On winter nights, they probably slept with farm animals in their hut to keep warm, as was once a common practice in Northern Europe, and were personally filthy and lice infested. I see absolutely nothing of value in their "way of life," if it can be called a way of life, and I am immeasurably grateful that my grandparents had the good sense to abandon it and come to America, so that I could have the opportunity of becoming a "Westerner" and, better still, an American "Westerner," because, in most respects, since colonial times, the United States has always been, intellectually and culturally, the most Western of the Western countries. 

Thus, I am a descendant of savages who dwelt in Eastern Europe--and before that probably the steppes of Asia--who has been Westernised and now sees the world entirely through a Western "lens," to use the term of the critics of "Eurocentrism." Of course, it is not really a lens through which I see the world. It is much more fundamental than that. I have developed a Western mind, a mind enlightened and thoroughly transformed by the enormous body of knowledge that represents the substance of Western civilisation, and I now see the world entirely on the basis of that knowledge. For example, I see the world on the foundation of the laws of logic, mathematics, and science that I have learned. And whenever something new or unexpected happens, which I do not understand, I know that it must nevertheless have a cause which I am capable of discovering. In these respects, I differ profoundly from my savage ancestors, who lacked the knowledge to see the world from a scientific perspective and who probably felt helpless and terrified in the face of anything new or unknown because, lacking the principle of causality and knowledge of the laws of logic, they simply had no basis for expecting to be able to come to an understanding of it.
[…]
There is no need for me to dwell any further on my own savage ancestors. The plain truth is that everyone's ancestors were savages--indeed, at least 99.5 percent of everyone's ancestors were savages, even in the case of descendants of the founders of the world's oldest civilisations. For mankind has existed on earth for a million years, yet the very oldest of civilisations--as judged by the criterion of having possessed a written language--did not appear until less than 5,000 years ago. The ancestors of those who today live in Britain or France or most of Spain were savages as recently as the time of Julius Caesar, slightly more than 2,000 years ago. Thus, on the scale of mankind's total presence on earth, today's Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Spaniards earn an ancestral savagery rating of 99.8 percent. The ancestors of today's Germans and Scandinavians [and Scots!] were savages even more recently and thus today's Germans and Scandinavians probably deserve an ancestral savagery rating of at least 99.9 percent. 

It is important to stress these facts to be aware how little significance is to be attached to the members of any race or linguistic group achieving civilisation sooner rather than later. Between the descendants of the world's oldest civilisations and those who might first aspire to civilisation at the present moment, there is a difference of at most one-half of one percent on the time scale of man's existence on earth. 

These observations should confirm the fact that there is no reason for believing that civilisation is in any way a property of any particular race or ethnic group. It is strictly an intellectual matter--ultimately, a matter of the presence or absence of certain fundamental ideas underlying the acquisition of further knowledge.

* These passages are excerpted from George Reisman’s pamphlet ‘Education & the Racist Road to Barbarism,’ which thoroughly explains and pretty much explodes the process and the arguments (or lack thereof) behind so-called multiculturalism (i.e., the notion that all cultures are equal). Spending an evening reading that would be far more valuable to you than throwing your money away being trolled by barbarians.
.

20-question American Revolution quiz

Consider this proposition: “One cannot really understand and appreciate American values and the exceptional nature of the United States of America if one does not have a thorough grounding in the history of the American Revolution.”

While you’re considering it, take the 20-question American Revolution quiz and see how much you do know [hat tip Charles Anderson].

And if you can get more than my own score, ahem, I’ll give you a loud cheer--and probably get you along to the next pub quiz.

Beer O’Clock: The American Beer Revolution

From Reason Online:

    In 1980, there were fewer than 50 breweries in the United States. Today, over 1,400 craft breweries help the U.S. produce more styles of beer than anywhere else in the world.  A new Reason.tv video explores the history of beer in America and shows how deregulation paved the way for the recent American beer revolution.
    European immigrants brought beer to America, building breweries wherever they settled. By 1870, there were more than 4,000 breweries in the U.S. But in 1920, prohibition decimated the industry. When prohibition ended, home brewing was still a crime punishable by five years in prison or a $10,000 fine.
    In 1979, consumer choice and freedom finally returned when the unlikely figure of President Jimmy Carter signed a law allowing individuals to brew small batches of beer at home. Innovative home brewers became entrepreneurs and opened craft breweries across the country. The craft brewing industry generated over $6 billion in sales and produced over 8.5 million barrels of beer in 2008.
    “The American Revolutionaries were beer drinkers who fought for a free society,” says Reason.tv editor Nick Gillespie. “Here’s to freedom, choice and great American beer.”

Nick insists that last is not an oxymoron. And here’s some evidence to back him up: Best Beer in America 2009 – not to mention some pretty cool graphics.

Watch Beer: An American Revolution right here:

 

The Resignation of George Washington – John Trumbull

Julius Caesar, Henry V, Oliver Cromwell: each of them used their military success, and the military forces with which they brought their victories, to attain supreme political power.  Once their military victories were achieved they donned the mantle of dictator.  Such was the way things were done for most of history, and would be done again after the event depicted here (Napoleon most famously only a few decades later).

But George Washington broke that mould.  After fighting off the British to establish, for the first time in history, a nation of free people, Washington tendered his resignation to the Congress – surrendering whatever ambitions to absolute power a lesser man might have harboured and, like Cincinnatus of legend, returned once more to the plough.

Painter John Trumbull, who worked as Washington’s aide-de-camp during the War, considered this resignation “one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the World.”  Years later he painted the scene in tribute.

The Seattle Art Museum has an interactive website bizzo giving a whole lot more information on the historical content of this piece.  [Hat tip Scott Powell of Powell History]

Happy July 4th!

As most New Zealanders won't know, yesterday (our time) was American Independence Day -- and today (our time) it's their time. 

Why does it matter?  Why does it matter to us down here at the bottom of the South Pacific that a bunch of gentlemen over two-hundred and thirty years ago pledged their "lives, fortunes and sacred honour" to erect the first government in history dedicated to the task of protecting individual rights -- as expressed in Thomas Jefferson's magnificent Declaration of Independence, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? 

Why should that matter to us?  As Michael Berliner explains, "Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit."  The principle of independence for which they fought is universal. 

The United States of America was the first and still the only country on earth to be founded upon the specific idea that human life and human liberty are sacred.  July 4th is a day when freedom's anthem is heard around the world!

Despite its occasional breaches in upholding the principle of human rights and human liberty consistently, it is for nonetheless for this that we all celebrate (or should celebrate) Independence Day. To found a nation upon the notion that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are sacred - to constrain government to act only in defence of those rights - was not just a unique event in human history, it worked like all hell; it worked because protecting those rights gave individuals the moral space, the freedom, within which to act and to flourish. It was not just that this made America and the world freer and more prosperous, it was not just that this protection for liberty gave a platform to criticise and remedy the breaches of the principle; it is it is the illustration that a country founded upon reason, individualism and freedom works. That liberty is moral. That liberty is right.

The Declaration was made on behalf of every human being.

Said Thomas Jefferson in the last letter he was to write, reflecting fifty years later on the Declaration of Independence and the July 4 celebrations that commemorate its signing:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Amen. And let those thoughts be heard around the world! For as one commentator said on this day last year, July 4th is not just a National Day for Americans because the Declaration of Independence really is "freedom's anthem heard around the world":

Whenever you hear news of people fighting for democracy, pause and give thanks for the Declaration of Independence. I am thankful every day that by blind luck I was born in this country. I want the whole world to have the comforts and the opportunities that have so enriched my life. When they tear down a wall in Berlin, when an oppressed group is granted a right in Latin America, when a business is allowed to exist in China, a protest is allowed in a former Soviet satellite, a woman attends a school in Afghanistan or a purple forefinger is raised in Iraq, I think to myself, “the world may not know all the lyrics, but they are definitely singing our song.”

And he's right. America's creation was the great political achievement of the Enlightenment: the full political implementation of the concept of individual rights, with a government constrained to protect them. [What are individual rights, and why do they need the protection of government?  Ayn Rand explains.  What specifically was the nature of the government the American founding fathers tried to erect?  Ayn Rand explains that too.]

With the exception of just a few words, the words could hardly be bettered today (although some of us have tried):

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. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and undeerstood. As David Mayer says:

To really celebrate Independence Day, Americans must rededicate themselves to the principles of 1776, and particularly to the absolute importance of individual rights – not the pseudo-rights imagined by proponents of the welfare state, but the genuine rights (properly understood) of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must also rededicate ourselves to the Declaration’s standard for the legitimacy of government – a government that is limited to the safeguarding of these rights, not to their destruction – and, with this, an acceptance of the principle that outside this sphere of legitimacy, individuals have the freedom (and the responsibility) of governing themselves.

If Americans are to use this day to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of 1776 as Mayer invites, then non-Americans might use it to take up Thomas Jefferson's challenge "to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded [us] to bind [ourselves], and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."

Human liberty is the most sacred thing in the universe, and today is the pre-eminent day in which to celebrate it, and to salute the authors of America's Declaration of Independence. To America's founders, I salute you!

NB:  Some final July 4 snippets for you:

• In one of those historic coincidences that resonates for centuries, 1776 wasn't just the year in which Thomas Jefferson published his Declaration of Independence, it was also the year that Adam Smith published his world-changing book, The Wealth of Nations.  Appropriate then that on July 4th the city fathers of Smith's home town Edinburgh have unveiled a statue of the genius.  Paul Walker has the details. [And an update.]
• 1,215 servicemen celebrated July 4th Petraeus style, by re-enlisting in a huge ceremony in Baghdad. "Fittingly," says Powerline, "the re-enlistment took place in one of Saddam's former palaces." [Hat tip Jeff Perren.]
• Consider the founders' ringing declaration of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property and happiness with the mealy mouthed suck-up-itude of the Obama clown, who on American patriotism is proud to declare "...the call to sacrifice for the country's greater good remains an imperative of citizenship..."  Pause for reflection.  As Myrhaf points out, the "call to sacrifice' is the regular call of those in power to make the people voluntarily enslave themselves to the state.  "Ideologically, Obama is just the latest mediocre representative of the collectivist counter-revolution to the American Revolution. The American Revolution stood for the Enlightenment values of individual rights, liberty and prosperity. The counter-revolution stands for collectivism, statism and sacrifice."
• For the very best version of Star Spangled Banner to play over a martini, or your Sam Adams, I recommend Licia Albanese's spontaneous combustion at a Mario Lanza ball a few years ago.  Fortunately, Lindsay Perigo was on hand to record the eighty-year-old drowning out the young tenor who was supposed to be taking centre stage.  Listen here. Magnificent!
• And of course, don't miss the Star Spangled Objectivist blog roundup at Kim's Place.

July 4th: Something for us all to celebrate

It's the Fourth of July (here in NZ at least, though not yet in the US). Time to begin celebrating American Independence Day - something for which there's something for everyone to celebrate, and not just Americans. Cox and Forkum link to the US National Archives who have an excellent Declaration of Independence site. From their introduction:

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. Here, in exalted and unforgettable phrases, Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country. We invite you to read a transcription of the complete text of the Declaration.

Michael Berliner hopes that this year "the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created [America'." Understanding the meaning of Independence Day explains why this day is something for non-Americans to celebrate too.

"Independence Day" is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution—and a nation—founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia, and Washington at Valley Forge, pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." For what? Not for mere separation from England, not—like most rebels—for the "freedom" to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain's tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What are these rights? The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that one's life belongs to oneself, not to others to use as they see fit.

The United States of America was the first and still the only country on earth to be founded upon the specific idea that human life and human liberty are sacred. It was for this reason that the United States were known as The Nation of the Enlightenment - a country founded at the time when reason and individualism were culturally at their height, and in whose name the country was founded. Continues Berliner:

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.

Despite its occasional breaches in upholding the principle of human rights and human liberty consistently, it is for nonetheless for this that we all celebrate (or should celebrate) Independence Day. To found a nation upon the notion that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are sacred - to constrain government to act only in defence of those rights - was not just a unique event in human history, it worked like all hell; it worked because protecting those rights gave individuals the moral space, the freedom, within which to act and to flourish. It was not just that this made America and the world freer and more prosperous, it was not just that this protection for liberty gave a platform to criticise and remedy the breaches of the principle; it is it is the illustration that a country founded upon reason, individualism and freedom works. That liberty is moral. That liberty is right.

Human liberty is the most sacred thing in the universe, and today is the pre-eminent day in which to celebrate it. To America's founders, I salute you!

PREVIOUS JULY 4 CELEBRATIONS AT NOT PC:
July 4th: When Freedom's Anthem is Heard Around the World
Yes, it's July 4!
July 4th: Celebrating Revolution
Still Celebrating the Fourth

July 4th: When freedom's anthem is heard around the world

Bernard Darnton's legal challenge to Helen Clark is intended as a reminder to all politicians in this country that they are not above the law, and that even in our present parlous state their are still some constitutional impediments to absolute rule.

It was thinking such as this, after all, that inspired the American War of Independence and the writing of the Declaration of Indepence that is celebrated today on July 4th. The message of the Fourth is an international one.

Springing from the same intellectual roots as was the 1688 Bill of Rights -- and nourished by the thoughts of John Locke that stood behind that landmark document -- Thomas Jefferson and his fellows declared themselves in rebellion against the British King who had enacted (they charged), a long string of usurpations and abuses against the colonists, which the Declararation went on to enumerate, and the colonists went on to remedy.

As John Locke had declared the right of rebellion in such circumstances, so Jefferson and his fellows claimed that right for themselves, and so began the American Revolution.

It was called a Revolution because -- like the wheel from which the term comes -- these revolutionaries were seeking not just to overthrow bad government, but to return again to good government. Their aim was to put Government by Right back in the saddle from whence it had turned.

Where Locke's 1688 Bill of Rights and the Glorious Revolution it accompanied brought Constitutional Monarchy to England, so the American Revolution and the Declaration and Constitution that accompanied it brought a Constitutional Republic to the United States. As constitutional scholar David Mayer affirms, the result was a Republic, not a Democracy -- a republic in which the Government was chained up constitutionally to act as the guardian of its citizens' rights and liberties, rather than left unleashed to savage them.

Said Thomas Jefferson in the last letter he was to write, reflecting fifty years later on the Declaration of Independence and the July 4 celebrations that commemorate its signing:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Amen. And let those thoughts be heard around the world! For as one commentator said on this day last year, July 4th is not just a National Day for Americans because the Declaration of Independence really is "freedom's anthem heard around the world":

Whenever you hear news of people fighting for democracy, pause and give thanks for the Declaration of Independence. I am thankful every day that by blind luck I was born in this country. I want the whole world to have the comforts and the opportunities that have so enriched my life. When they tear down a wall in Berlin, when an oppressed group is granted a right in Latin America, when a business is allowed to exist in China, a protest is allowed in a former Soviet satellite, a woman attends a school in Afghanistan or a purple forefinger is raised in Iraq, I think to myself, “the world may not know all the lyrics, but they are definitely singing our song.”

And he's right. America was the nation of the Enlightenment, and her Declaration crystallised the political achievement of the Enlightenment: the development of the concept of rights. With the exception of just a few words*, the words could not be bettered today (although some of us have tried):

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. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and undeerstood. As David Mayer says:

To really celebrate Independence Day, Americans must rededicate themselves to the principles of 1776, and particularly to the absolute importance of individual rights – not the pseudo-rights imagined by proponents of the welfare state, but the genuine rights (properly understood) of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must also rededicate ourselves to the Declaration’s standard for the legitimacy of government – a government that is limited to the safeguarding of these rights, not to their destruction – and, with this, an acceptance of the principle that outside this sphere of legitimacy, individuals have the freedom (and the responsibility) of governing themselves.

If Americans are to use this day to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of 1776 as Mayer invites, then non-Americans might use it to take up Thomas Jefferson's challenge "to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded [us] to bind [ourselves], and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."

New Zealand Libertarianz have provided such an opportunity with Bernard Darnton's reminder to NZ parliamentarians of the constitutional chains that do exist even in New Zealand, and they have provided it too with a Constitution for New Freeland -- a document intended as the full-fledged constitutional chain that the US Constitution promised to be but finally wasn't.

On this day, and at this time, I commend them to your attention, and I invite your own dedication to the principles of 1776 in your own chosen way. They are after all principles worthy of clasping to your bosom.

* * * * *

* I said above: "With the exception of just a few words, the words could not be bettered today." The main improvements needed would be to remedy the omission of property rights, of God's 'creation' of rights, and of the 'self-evidence' of rights. It seems churlish to carp, but as errors these are serious ones.

LINKS: Declaration of Independence - Hypertext Edition
A Republic, not a Democracy - David Mayer
The meaning of Independence Day - David Mayer
Constitution for New Freeland - Libertarianz
Darnton Vs Clark

TAGS: Politics-US, History, Constitution, Darnton V Clark

July 4th: Celebrating revolution

On July 4th, Mark Steyn reminds us that criticisms of the US for being 'unilateralist' are ever so slightly amusing when you realise that a position of 'unilateralism' is simply a euphemism for one of 'independence,' the concept for which the July 4 celebration is putatively held.

Why not abolish the holiday altogether, wonders Tibor Machan. A nation born in liberty now subjects itself to the very tyrannies and usurpations against which it once revolted, he says, so what is there to celebrate.

The Fourth of July ... is supposed to celebrate the Declaration of Independence and its revolutionary idea that it’s not governments, states, monarchs, kings, tsars, and the like who possess sovereignty. Rather we, individual human beings, are the sovereign ones. That idea was revolutionary then and, let me assure you, it is revolutionary now.

He calls for a recovery of the revolution in order to make the holiday meaningful. A first step might be an understanding of that revolution -- what it brought, and how it happened. What better time to learn (or re-learn) the history than today: constitutional scholar David Mayer has just the posts to help: he reminds us that the Founding Fathers brought about 'A Republic, not a Democracy'; he explains here how they went about doing it. And he reflects here on the 'Meaning of Independence Day.' Wonderful stuff.

[Hat tip to Stephen Hicks for the Mayer links.]
[UPDATE: I notice that on this July 4 No Right Turn is also celebrating the ideas that gave birth to the United States, and like Tibor he decries the present state of American liberty. Oddly enough, his reasons for thinking America needs a 'get well card' are rather different to those of Tibor.]