Was the American Revolution justified?

Two arguments can be made on behalf of Founders on this issue. The first argument is the sort of thing Claremont advocates would like because they’re into the Locke = Founders view. Locke translated Just War Criteria into Revolutionary Criteria which are mentioned in the Declaration itself.

Just War →Revolutionary Criteria

Proper Authority	The Majority of Colonists is represented by elected representatives in the 2nd Continental Congress
Just Cause	Repeated abuses e.g. body of the Declaration lists over 20 infractions committed by George III
Last Resort	Exhaust all legal appeals e.g. The Declaration of Rights and Grievances & Olive Branch Petition
Right Intention	Can’t replace something w/ nothing e.g. Articles of Confederation and eventually the Constitution
Appeal to Heaven	God judges the revolt e.g. the concluding paragraph of the Declaration says God will judge them for what they are about to do.

The Burkean/Kirkian argument is the founders fought for the “chartered rights of Englishmen” i.e. they fought for the CIVIL, not natural (Lockean), rights of the Glorious Revolution. The Founders, like Parliament in 1688, were conserving their legal rights against a revolutionary king, George III/James II. Thus the American Revolution, like the Glorious Revolution, was “prevented, not made” to quote Edmund Burke.

	Glorious Revolution	American Revolution
Old Ways	Chartered rights of Englishmen/Declaration of Rights Trial by jury Right against self-incrimination No search or seizure w/out warrant No excessive bail Right to bear arms	US Bill of Rights 6th amendment 4th amendment 8th amendment 2nd amendment
Innovation	James II wanted -standing army -toleration*	George III’s taxation without representation

While the English have some decent arguments for their side, these two arguments make the Founders case pretty reasonable.

Why would a Democracy support a Dictator?

An argument that opponents make against post WWII U.S. Foreign Policy is that the U.S. was hypocritical in its support of Freedom. One of the examples given is the U.S. overthrew Mohammed Mossadeq, who was the democratically elected leader Iran in 1953. The U.S. then installed the Shah of Iran, who ruled the regime as a despot. His despotic rule caused a backlash and in 1979 the Islamic Radicals revolted in the Iranian Revolution. Thus the rise of the Islamic Radicalism can be laid at the footsteps of the U.S. Foreign Policy or so the argument goes.

Dinesh D’Souza discusses this example in a debate with Ward Churchill. He points out that Mossadeq was appointed, not elected. And to top it off, he was appointed and ratified by the SHAH himself. Afterwards, a power struggle ensued between Mossadeq and the Shah and the latter lost. At that point, the doctrine of the lesser evil comes into play. Who is the lesser evil at the moment? On one side, you have Mossadeq, a Secular Socialist who would certainly ally with the Soviet Union and allow its influence to spread throughout the Middle East. (His nationalization of an oil company two years before confirms his Socialism.) And on the other side you have the Shah, a bad guy for sure, but one whose evils would be limited to a particular place. Given these options, the U.S. decision to support the Shah does not seem that sinister (I’m assuming here that the Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire is on the mark.)

In regards to Islamic Radicalism, D’Souza points out the Khomeini actually supported the Shah against Mossadeq in 1953. Given the options, it makes sense that a religious fundamentalist would support a king over a secular socialist. In that case, it is plausible the Revolution would have occurred regardless of what the U.S. did.

The issue comes up at the following points in the video:

104:30-106:30; 107:10-108:10
109:00-111:30

What's love got to do with it?

David McCullough’s success is the result of his ability to rehabilitate the reputation of Presidents (John Adams, Truman) who have been unpopular for sometime now. His mo is to focus less on their statesmanship, which is controversial, and more on their personal lives, especially their relationship to their wives. Thus, Adams and Truman’s stock with the public has gone up, not because of their handling of public affairs, but because of the love letters they sent their significant others.

McCullough’s book on Adams was made into an award winning series on HBO. The series was actually better than McCullough’s book because it focused more on Adams role in the great events of his time. His relationship with his wife is given less and less attention as the series progresses. And in the last two episodes, which deal with his Vice-Presidency and Presidency, it does not play an important part in the story at all. If McCullough should be praised, then it should be for revealing to Hollywood (and to the Academy) that there is a public who is hungry to learn more about our Founding Fathers. Who knew?

The “If only” school

Its tough being a Commie because the most famous instantiation of your philosophy, the Soviet Union, produced the Show Trials, Gulag, and Berlin Wall. You’re not going to win any popularity contests that way.

Consequently, the Red strategy is to argue that Stalin’s Russia was a distortion of Marxist-Leninism. “If only,” they say, “Trotsky had been in charge, then we would have seen the humane face of Communism.” The thuggish Stalin had the sophisticated Trotsky killed so the true teaching was never implemented.

Robert Service and Christopher Hitchens look into this claim on Uncommon Knowledge. Service argues that Trotsky would have been more aggressive than Stalin in pushing Communism globally. For Trotsky, the Cold War would have heated up as he would have disposed of the proxies and just invaded the countries directly. The topic is an interesting one because it bears upon the question of whether Communism should be taken seriously as an option today. And Chavez seems to be persuading many Latin Americans that it is viable as they “lurch to the left.”

Lincoln-Douglas Debates on moral relativism

Walk into any Barnes and Noble and you are bound to run into a book display celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Unfortunately, a book you will not find in that collection is Harry Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which was published fifty years ago. Jaffa was recently on Uncommon Knowledge and he talked about what originally drew him to him this debate. What Lincoln and Douglas are ultimately arguing about is whether morals are relative or absolute. Or to put it in Jaffa’s words, “Do the people make the moral law or does the moral law make the people?”

Take Douglas, for instance. His “popular sovereignty” argument is that slavery’s existence is simply a matter for the people in each state to vote up or down. And since the people's will is never unanimous, might or the majority makes right. This is just a variation of the doctrine of moral relativism which states that moral principles are a product of the people’s will. Thus morals are subjective and will vary from place to place which is why Douglas believes popular soveriengty is the solution to the slavery issue.

In contrast, Lincoln argued that the equality principle, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, is made by God, not man. The approval of slavery is a failure to live up to the moral law. This is a textbook presentation of moral absolutism.

What is especially interesting is how moral relativism is applied today. Cultural Liberals, who believe history is moving toward greater and greater freedom, usually presuppose moral relativism when arguing for their causes: abortion, gay marriage, etc. Yet they would think Lincoln, not Douglas, belongs in their pantheon of heroes. If the L-D Debates reveal anything, it is that such Progressives should reevaluate their first principles. The rock of moral absolutism can better secure human rights than the shifting sands of moral relativism.

The Opium Wars & Drug Legalization

MercatorNet has an excellent article outlining the history of the Chinese Opium Wars. What I want to focus on here is the last stage of the history. Due to the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, China was forced to legalize the importation of opium which eventually led to the domestic production of the drug. Here is the result:

The prevalence of opium consumption in China skyrocketed in the 19th century,
from about 3 million opium smokers in the 1830s, to 15 million opium addicts by
1890, or about 3 percent of the population at the time. According to the Chinese
delegation to the International Opium Commission of Shanghai (1909), this
increased to about 21.5 million by 1906. Others put the number close to 40
million people in 1890, or about 10 percent of the population, growing to
unknown levels from there. According to official Chinese figures, opium
consumption affected 23.3 percent of the male adult population and 3.5 percent
of the female adult population of China in 1906. Other estimates ranged from 13
percent to 27 percent for the male adult population of the country. By any
estimate, China was consuming between 85 percent and 95 percent of global opium
supply at the beginning of the 20th century. Never before or since has the world
known a drug problem of this scale and intensity.

Drug Legalization led to a proliferation in its use. This seems to be a rather obvious fact and a reader might wonder why the author chose to belabor the point with so many statistics. It might be because this obvious fact is not so obvious to many today. I have come across several people who deny this claim, though it seems self-evident to me.