Was the American Revolution justified?

[Thom18]

Well, while looking (and failing to find) my espresso this morning, I stumbled across some actually decent tea. It puts on a show while it “brews” (it’s a “ball” of flowers that unfurl with moisture). If that’s the kinda tea they were providing, I might think differently…

 

[HomeschoolDad]

–If a person is a “monarchist,” is a rebellion against the king ever justified? And if so, when?

It would be virtually impossible to justify it. He would have to be one really horrible king. Think of a father who tortures, beats, and does even worse to his own children, and won’t stop. Then extend the analogy, mutatis mutandis, to a king and his subjects. Again, probably 20-30 percent of the colonists didn’t think George III was all that bad, otherwise they wouldn’t have been loyalists.

–For that matter, why be a monarchist? Why would someone favor one-person rule where the ruler is not picked by the people, and is replaced by generational succession?

Many, including myself, see monarchy as the model that most resembles the communion between Christ and His Church. Think of how a monarch could have addressed the situation in this country the past two hellish weeks.

There’s actually quite a few good arguments in favor of monarchy from a political and economic perspective. At the end of the day I am a monarchist for two reasons: in the paraphrased words of Charles Coulombe I’d rather be ruled by a person who fears he’s going to go to hell if he treats me wrong than as a taxpayer to be milked dry by politicians; and most importantly because as Homeschool Dad pointed out and I fervently believe, it is the model that most closely aligns with our Catholic faith as Christ is our King.

My thinking is very close to, and much influenced by, the writings of Charles Coulombe, with whom I corresponded briefly many years ago. (He sent my wife a copy of an article about ghosts he’d written for Fate Magazine, she was an avid Fate reader.) His analogy, which you cite, is wonderful.

I can think of many reasons monarchy is terrible. No check and balance on power; power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely; every few years or decades there’s invariably a war over who is the rightful king; it creates a system of justice where some are more equal than others; good work is not always rewarded and bad acts are often unpunished; the list goes on.

Ideally, with a Catholic king, the Holy Father would be that “check and balance”. And as a practical matter, monarchs have parliaments and cabinets.

And Charles loved Camilla instead. What WAS he thinking?

He simply loved her. When they were both free to marry, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. I’m sure she’s a decent enough person. Comparison with Diana is a very, very high bar, really quite unfair to Camilla (or to most women), and I refer at least as much to charisma and personality, as I do appearance. Charles and Camilla are just average, reasonably attractive Britons, come across as quite pleasant, home-oriented people.

 

[VonDerTann]

How would a monarch - an absolute one, unfettered by a parliament - have dealt with protesters like in the last 2 weeks? IMHO by ordering the military to shoot them.

Just one guy’s opinion.

I’m not antagonistic to monarchy. I am however unimpressed with the idealization of monarchy as some sort of “best form of government.” It’s merely tyranny with a different name, accompanied by profound hope (perhaps wishful thinking) that the monarch will be a good one. I suppose a monarchy where the monarch is a mere figurehead and real power is wielded by a parliament might be acceptable, but that’s not really a “monarchy,” now, is it?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

How would a monarch - an absolute one, unfettered by a parliament - have dealt with protesters like in the last 2 weeks? IMHO by ordering the military to shoot them.

No, possibly more like the king assuring his subjects that he loves and cares for all of them without exception, black, white, whatever. He could try to bring peace and reconciliation. He could go to the site of the tragedy and pay his respects. Needless to say, we haven’t seen anything remotely like this in our present circumstances.

I’m not antagonistic to monarchy. I am however unimpressed with the idealization of monarchy as some sort of “best form of government.” It’s merely tyranny with a different name, accompanied by profound hope (perhaps wishful thinking) that the monarch will be a good one. I suppose a monarchy where the monarch is a mere figurehead and real power is wielded by a parliament might be acceptable, but that’s not really a “monarchy,” now, is it?

Well, it is, but it isn’t. Any wise monarch would seek the counsel of the best and the brightest, and would want to hear the concerns of all his subjects. A parliament is an efficient way of securing the latter. And as I noted above, in the case of a Catholic monarch, the Holy Father would be kind of like a “recourse of last resort”, seldom to be invoked, but could call upon the king to ponder his own eternal fate for ruling malevolently. Pope St Pius V even took the extreme step of absolving subjects of their allegiance to Elizabeth the Virgin Queen — he essentially dethroned her. 1570 was one heck of a year — Regnans in excelsis, Quo primum, and Lepanto on the horizon in a few months!

Regnans in Excelsis - Papal Encyclicals

 

[VonDerTann]

We’re going to have to agree to disagree.

Any wise monarch would seek the counsel of the best and the brightest, and would want to hear the concerns of all his subjects.

–Since when are all monarchs wise? Historically, many have been any of egomaniacs; the tone-deaf; playboys, or whatever - let alone the truly wicked or depraved. And since when is an advisor likely to tell an absolute monarch something other than, “your idea is brilliant, sire!,” regardless of what the idea is? For that matter, I’d think most monarchs would be groomed to see themselves as the best and brightest, at everything.

He could try to bring peace and reconciliation. He could go to the site of the tragedy and pay his respects

–Or he could just order the military to shoot. That’s at least as likely a result as any other.

I cannot get around the reality that any monarch is by definition the law unto himself or herself, changeable and fickle on a whim.

Yeah, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

And since when is an advisor likely to tell an absolute monarch something other than, “your idea is brilliant, sire!,” regardless of what the idea is?

Just got to say it, we’re seeing quite a bit of that, mutatis mutandis, in that elected, non-hereditary quasi-monarchy we call the Presidency, the past four years.

And the sad part is, re-electing him is the only way we can even have a ghost of a chance of securing at least some protections for the unborn through the Supreme Court for what may be several decades. The Democrats win the White House and the Senate, and it’s game over. Then we’ll be like all the other Western democracies, abortion rights the law of the land for God only knows how long.

High Noon if there ever were such a thing.

 

[VonDerTann]

I’m actually quite bothered by the trend wherein generations of the same families become de facto monarchies via election - whether the Bushes; the Kennedys; Mario Cuomo and his son Andrew; etc.

 

[Inquisitor85]

No, possibly more like the king assuring his subjects that he loves and cares for all of them without exception, black, white, whatever. He could try to bring peace and reconciliation. He could go to the site of the tragedy and pay his respects. Needless to say, we haven’t seen anything remotely like this in our present circumstances.

An elected President can do this, theres literally no societal reason he can’t. That the current US President won’t showcases some of the problems with the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As for establishing a monarchy in the US, I’m sure if you asked Lizzy very nicely she’d consider an annexation.

 

[VonDerTann]

Competence is in the eye of the beholder.

Further, I’m American but it always seemed to me that Diana was LOVED by many millions, British and non-British alike, in a way the present Royal family could only dream of - in fact, I think that’s one reason the royals didn’t like her (simple jealousy).

I’ll always remember the throngs of people lined up for miles as the hearse carrying her remains drove by.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

As for establishing a monarchy in the US, I’m sure if you asked Lizzy very nicely she’d consider an annexation.

I really don’t think HM The Queen would want to take on our problems.

Commonwealth membership might be an option, but many if not most Americans would absolutely freak out — assuming they understood what that even means. The typical American neither knows, nor cares, that there is even such a thing AS the Commonwealth.

 

[VonDerTann]

“Maudlin nonsense” and crocodile tears? That’s rather a mite cold, no? Maybe people really loved her.

We agree on lots of things, but this isn’t going to be one of them.

 

[Hume]

Diana would have made an incompetent monarch in my view. Also she could never have been more than Queen consort and could not have ruled in her own right. The sentimentality around this woman has always amazed me.
[/quote]

Dying has a huge part to do with it.

Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Guy Fawkes, you name it, all enjoy increased legend because we didn’t get to see them past their peak and age into quiet, normal lives in the increasingly disinterested public eye after their fame faded.

 

[VonDerTann]

So your argument is, “people threatened to kill themselves when she died; they didn’t kill themselves; therefore she wasn’t loved.”

BBC’s history site put her as #15 on women who changed the world, in 2018.

We’ll agree to disagree.

(Plus is there really ANYONE in human history - other than Jesus Himself, who was divine - who in person wasn’t just a bit less than depicted, hagiographically?)

 

[VonDerTann]

You’re probably right!

I’d like a few things from life. When I go, the last one would be “a doom worthy of song.”

 

[HomeschoolDad]

The tragic history of Ireland vis-a-vis the UK is totally different from the American experience with Britain. If you would go to Walmart on any Saturday afternoon and ask twenty people at random “would you support the United States joining the Commonwealth?”, I am confident that 19 of them would say “what’s the Commonwealth?”. If you asked that same twenty people “would you support the United States joining the British Commonwealth of Nations, which has Queen Elizabeth as its head?”, I would say 17 of them would still have no idea what you were talking about, and the other three would say something like “you’re crazy, we fought a revolution to get away from that country, we’ve got our freedom because of it”. Americans typically don’t have vest-pocket knowledge of anything substantial about other countries, and they do not want to have that knowledge. There is an educated, globally conscious class in this country, and thank God for that, but by and large, Americans’ fundamental knowledge begins and ends in the immediate geographical area where they’ve lived, traveled, gone to school, and so on.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Agreed. I imagine that the typical European has a vague idea of New York City, Florida, Texas, and California, and that’s about it, just like the typical American has a vague idea of England, France, Germany, and Italy, and that, too, is about it. We do export our culture in a massive way, something that does not happen as much (British musicians and, to a lesser extent, actors excepted) in the opposite direction.

 

[BlueMaxx]

So I’m reading a book by Christopher Ferrara entitled Liberty: The God That Failed and it got me thinking. In the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, one finds this:

401. The Church’s social doctrine indicates the criteria for exercising the right to resistance : “Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave and prolonged violation of fundamental rights, 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted, 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders, 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution”.[824] Recourse to arms is seen as an extreme remedy for putting an end to a “manifest, long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country”.[825]

Yes…

 

[Tis_Bearself]

1. Bit late to worry about it now, innit?
2. I didn’t fight in it, wasn’t around then, and I’m not aware of aspects of it being used to oppress or harm anyone today, so how is this my problem?

 

[StudentMI]

Everywhere Tories were deprived of civil rights and freedom of speech and press; they were especially taxed and arrested for the duration of the war on mere suspicion and without benefit of habeas corpus. They were herded together and shipped into prison camps far from British lines, in which they were sometimes forced to work for the Revolution; they were tarred and feathered, banished, and their lands and properties were confiscated by the State. Sometimes they were even executed. They were forced to take test oaths, they were disenfranchised and barred from public office, and they were generally forbidden to practice as professional men. In many cases, family punishment was imposed, and relatives or absent Tories were jailed for the behavior of their errant kinsmen and held hostages. Local vigilante action kept watch on suspected Tories and imposed harsh penalties on them. Banishment from the country — with little money allowed to be taken out — was a favorite punishment for Tories and suspected Tories.

Murray Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, Vol IV.

 

[FiveLinden]

As a non-believer I always put a tick beside the ‘replaced a theocracy with a secular society’ box. The American revolution gets that tick.

But as someone with an interest in Catholic; just war’ theory, no I don’t see how it can be justified. But that applies to nearly all wars.

The outcome had the revolutionaries lost, by the way, is one of those very few few cases in which alternative histories are testable. The outcome is called ‘Canada’.