Posted on 09/19/2010 9:50:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
EXCERPT :
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Imagine that thousands of American citizens, wanting to leave the mainland in search of a better life and to populate a large, uninhabited island a thousand miles off the west coast of the U.S., petition the U.S. Government to live on the island under U.S. jurisdiction, ruled by a Federal Governor. The Government agrees.
No sooner have the emigrants planted the Stars and Stripes on the island than they strike gold, build up a healthy trade with the mainland, and become hugely wealthy. However, the Japanese, wanting to expand their sphere of influence and enrich their coffers, invade the island. The U.S. successfully defends the island in a major, protracted war which costs many American lives and drains the U.S. Treasury.
To offset the massive cost of the war and of guaranteeing the island's security (a cost which has produced large tax hikes for Americans on the mainland), the U.S. Government imposes a modest tax on coffee imported by the islanders. Some islanders refuse to pay, claiming that as they have no right to vote for members of the U.S. Congress, the Federal tax demand is unwarranted. They seize a U.S.-registered ship in the island's port and jettison its cargo of coffee into the sea. They also assault IRS officials, riot, and torch the Governor's mansion.
When a detachment of U.S. Marines is sent to the island to restore order, some islanders confront them with loaded rifles and with cannon stolen from the local Federal Armory. Shots are exchanged. besieged by the rebel islanders.
SNIP
The U.S. Government demands that the rebels lay down their arms and respect U.S. law. The rebels (representing perhaps only a third of the island population) refuse and declare independence,
SNIP
A full-scale war between the rebel islanders and the U.S. ensues.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE.
The author claims that the American Revolution was NOT in the Christian Just war tradition.
He gives the above hypothetical story to illustrate the patent injustice of the American Revolution.
bfltr
The Declaration of Independence laid out the arguements in favor.
RE: The Declaration of Independence laid out the arguements in favor.
I believe that author is aware of the declaration. His entire argument (academic of course) is that the declaration was not necessary.
Given where we are today with our corrupt anti-constitution government, it’s getting hader and harder to say we’re better off than we would have been had we remained under King George’s rule.
He’d be right except for a few “details”:
(1) The “islanders” were subject to unaccountable corrupt governors appointed by a corrupt dictator in collusion with a corrupt parliment.
(2) The islanders tried for years to get that corrupt dictator to listen to them. The dictator didn’t.
And other “details.”
IOW, the author’s premise is fatally flawed due to cherry picking of facts to fit his preconceived conclusion.
What’s this garbage doing in the Spectator?
I always laugh when I read this. These folks have little knowledge of either history or the Bible.
RE: Given where we are today with our corrupt anti-constitution government, it’s getting hader and harder to say we’re better off than we would have been had we remained under King George’s rule.
The country that King George ruled isn’t doing any better today and an argument can be made that is doing even worse!
Revolutions are mostly about who shall have the power to oppress.
Unjust? Why, that’s positively ... Augustinian.
My curiosity sufficiently piqued, I’ve seen fit to Google Mr. John Keown.
Lo and behold, he’s Catholic, and quite the vociferous one at that. Can’t quite decide whether to try to co-opt the Founders by claiming Vatican influence or to discredit them, it seems.
Get over it, guys. Our Revolution was a profoundly Protestant act and our Constitution is a profoundly Protestant document, that has led to much good in the world at large.
The author is aware of the Just War argument propounded by Thomas Aquinas.
Here is his argument in the article against his critique, Mark Tooley...
Tooley, rightly, recognizes important authorities in the just war tradition like St. Thomas Aquinas and notes that Aquinas allows for resistance to a tyrannical government unless greater harm is created thereby.
But Tooley has failed to show either that the British were tyrannical or that overthrowing British rule (by initiating what turned into a world war) did not create greater harm. He simply assumes what he needs to prove.
Where does Aquinas teach that colonists (or, indeed, non-colonists) may justly rebel if they are taxed without representation? (Where, indeed, does he teach that there is even a right to representation?) I may add that a number of the eminent scholars who have kindly read and endorsed my paper include leading authorities on St. Thomas. My paper follows the just war tradition according to Thomas, not Tooley.
Tooley repeats that Burke opposed the “suppression” of the colonists. I repeat that Burke, whatever he thought of the wisdom of taxing the colonists, voted to affirm Britain’s right to tax them. Tooley cites the British constitution, but according to that constitution the King in Parliament, the supreme law-making body, had the sovereign right to legislate for the colonies in all matters, including taxation.
The truth is, King George’s Britain was in many ways, a better, freer country than either the US or Britain is today...
We should not forget that the battle of Lexington/Concord [which started the Revolutionary war] was over weapon-confiscation;the analogy to today would be if the federal army rolled into a state and demanded access, accountancy & regulation of the materiel of the State Police [I would say National Guard, but then people might be able to argue that equipment belongs to the Army itself and I want to constrain the debate to the relevant aspects]. Now, because the equipment of the State Police was bought and paid for by the State it could refuse such access to the Army.
That would be the modern-day equivalent of the conditions wherein the actual war of the Revolution was sparked. Though there are some differences, such as the Second Amendment [supposedly] guaranteeing the ability of the State to have a militia [because it guarantees the people themselves the Right of Arms].
{Note: Guarantee /= Grant; the Bill of Rights does not generate/grant any right, it acknowledges preexisting ones.}
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
OK. But Jefferson was a polite man.
No doubt the author also feels that India gaining independence from Britain was “unjust.”
It wasn’t? Why not? What could possibly be different?
>The truth is, King George’s Britain was in many ways, a better, freer country than either the US or Britain is today...
I tend to agree, if only because words meant things back then. {As opposed to today where questioned leaders say “it depends on the meaning of ‘is’” when they don’t merely laugh and say “are you serious?”}
This.
Also, our current Government is imposing more crap on us than King George did and we still aren't literally "up in arms" over it.
Yet.
Getting closer every day.
history is written by the winners of war, not the losers, this is nothing more than the revisionism of the holocaust did not happen.
In the case of India, we rolled up into a foreign country and took it over, ruling over them in place of their native leaders.
In the case of the American colonies, the colonists were British settlers and their descendants and therefore were not foreigners....
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