The fireworks are days past, but I still think it might be worthwhile to pass on this historical review of the reason for the colonies separation from the British Empire and the prayer requests. It is really helpful for understanding the history we were celebrating.
Doug Wilson is right that the colonists asserted a bona fide constitutional argument regarding parliamentary representation. And I have no problem with the colonial argument (then or now).
That being said, the position of the metropolitan parliament in the British empire was constitutionally ambiguous: did 1688 vindicate the right of representation in parliamentS (the colonists’ view), or did it vindicate the right of representation in THE Parliament in London (the metropolitan view).
To a certain extent, I thought Doug pointed to the ambiguity by describing two different legal cultures developing on either side of the Atlantic.
Of course, what I’m not clear on (the big John Adams bio raised the issue for me but didn’t answer it) is why the colonists demanded the dissolution of their relation to the king. Using force to make a king do what you want has a long tradition behind it. Why complete independence?
My understanding is that it evolved. During the 1760s the colonists argued for colonial parliaments in union with the king.
But the king acted as the executive authority on the part of the metropoliant Parliament, and refused to recognize the colonial “parliaments” through the 1770s.
By the time of the 1776 Declaration, the king, too, was the enemy of the American parliaments. (See the complaints against the king in the Declaration.)
An interesting counterfactual (but not too likely) if the king had originally sided with the colonial legislatures against the metropolitan Parliament.
And of course settling the legal question doesn’t necessarily settle the ethical question, including the application of just war criteria.
I don’t know nuthin’ about the requirements of a just war in that context, but I might note that the colonists weren’t fighting for representation as an “abstract” matter.
They belived that governments existed to secure “safety and happiness” for the people. So how do you find out what government policies might be best calculated to provide for that safety and happiness?
You could ask the people directly, but that’s too clunky. So you have representative government.
The colonial argument evolved this way: Even if we (American colonists) were represented in the English parliament, it still wouldn’t suffice. Communication was too slow for that parliament to supply what representative legisaltures were supposed to supply — policies that were calculated to secure the safety and happiness of the colonists.
That’s, then, what the Declaration complained about.
As I said, thought, I have no idea whether or how that fits into “just war” categories.
Right. But, historically, in terms of Christian ethical reflection, even granting that the government of England was failing to provide for safety and happiness, that failure isn’t sufficient in itself to justify disobedience, let alone violence or acts that would provoke military response.
There are several different sets of ethical criteria to apply in this case: principles regarding the extent of required submission to estabished government, principles setting limits upon disobedience, criteria for discerning “tyranny,” the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, and just war criteria.
I don’t know enough of the historical details to draw a fully informed judgment about this particular case, though I would likely take some convincing.
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Right, I don’t have a beef w/ the just-war categories — I don’t know enough about them to engage more substantively.
Hmm, how about this: What if a “constitution” expressly granted a people the right to revolt in circumstances less compelling that the just war doctrine? (It may sound weird, but there is language of this sort in several state constitutions, at least there was historically.)
Further, every office holder had to consent to the terms of the constitution in order to hold office. Therefore, every magistrate had consented to the permissibility of revolt in some circumstances otherwise not permitted by the just war doctrine.
More generally, does a constitutional grant of a right make any difference?
In the context of the American Revolution, everyone granted that 1688 established the constitutional principle of representation. The quibble was over what sort of representation. Did the American colonists have no more right, then, against the British government than, say, the serfs had against the Czar, even though the British constitution granted them rights not shared by the serfs?
And a final thought: Why do the colonists have the burden of proof on the just-war question in your mind? I mean, why don’t you impose the burden of proof on the British authorities? If you say, well, the Brits were the “real” authorities in the colonies, then you’ve answer the substantive legal question over which the war was fought.
If the colonists’ claim were true, then the colonial legislatures were the legitimate policy-makers for the Americans, and the Brits initiated war illegally.
So instead of thinking, “Golly, since the Americans could not have borne the burden of proof to my satisfaction that their war against Britain was justified, then I must side with the Brits,” why don’t you think this way, “the Brits have not borne the burden of proving that their military actions against the Americans was justified, therefore, absent compelling proof by the Brits, I must side with the Americans”?
(I think it was Justice Brennan who once observed something to the effect that where the burden of proof lies is often determinative of the outcome in a case.)
In this context it is somewhat ironic that the godfather of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, sided with the Americans in their dispute with the English.
The post I removed was pretty much the same as above — I made a couple of corrections and additions.