tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977100651062963844.post695878065340761529..comments2024-03-28T23:50:49.886-05:00Comments on Throne, Altar, Liberty: The Tory and PatriotismGerry T. Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12137796641408373451noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977100651062963844.post-6541711509737109852015-09-04T06:55:20.442-05:002015-09-04T06:55:20.442-05:00I would certainly argue that the Thirteen Colonies...I would certainly argue that the Thirteen Colonies were wrong to withdraw their loyalty to the Crown. Their position was absurd. They accused Crown and Parliament of tyranny at a time when there was hardly a more "liberal" - in the more general sense of respecting and protecting the rights and freedoms of their people - government to be found. To say that it was legitimate to revolt against this government was to say that it is legitimate to revolt against any government, anywhere, at any time, a recipe for revolution and anarchy. The Declaration of Independence was Lockean drivel - men are not created equal in any sense that is self-evident, quite the contrary, governments do not derive their authority from the consent of the governed any more than parents derive their authority from the consent of their children, and the rights to life, liberty, and "the pursuit of happiness" were not at stake in the dispute between the colonists and London. The Boston Tea Pary was a farce, organized, not because London had imposed some oppressive new tax on the colonies, but because they had done the exact opposite, lowering taxes and thus reducing the income of the tax collector who organized the Tea Party, which involved the illegal seizure and destruction of private property. The real issue was the royal decree guaranteeing that the people of Quebec could keep their French language and Roman Catholic religion, which the Puritan colonists found intolerable. <br /><br />This same issue was brought up by the Parliamentary Whigs in 1774. Dr. Johnson's response was brilliant:<br /><br />"No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous complaints, that the protestant religion is in danger, because "popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec," a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened to zealot to be ignorant:<br /><br /> That Quebec is on the other side of the Atlantick, at too great a distance to do much good or harm to the European world:<br /><br /> That the inhabitants, being French, were always papists, who are certainly more dangerous as enemies than as subjects:<br /><br /> That though the province be wide, the people are few, probably not so many as may be found in one of the larger English counties:<br /><br /> That persecution is not more virtuous in a protestant than a papist; and that, while we blame Lewis the fourteenth, for his dragoons and his galleys, we ought, when power comes into our hands, to use it with greater equity:<br /><br /> That when Canada, with its inhabitants, was yielded, the free enjoyment of their religion was stipulated; a condition, of which king William, who was no propagator of popery, gave an example nearer home, at the surrender of Limerick:<br /><br /> That in an age, where every mouth is open for liberty of conscience, it is equitable to show some regard to the conscience of a papist, who may be supposed, like other men, to think himself safest in his own religion; and that those, at least, who enjoy a toleration, ought not to deny it to our new subjects.<br /><br /> If liberty of conscience be a natural right, we have no power to withhold it; if it be an indulgence, it may be allowed to papists, while it is not denied to other sects."Gerry T. Nealhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12137796641408373451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977100651062963844.post-56942686356262563572015-09-04T06:35:54.319-05:002015-09-04T06:35:54.319-05:00Reverting to a previous discussion of the roots of...Reverting to a previous discussion of the roots of socialism, I had pointed out the wrathfulness of the socialists at the unjust distribution of property. Now, envy and wrath are classically linked together in the vice of odium, usually but inadequately translated as "hatred". <br /><br />"Envy is the vice in which the good of another is seen as a bad thing because it is not yours." while "wrath is a tendency to attack the good in others, or the good of others, as if the good itself were a provocation, because their good is difficult for you in some way."<br /><br />Wrath is self-limiting since it only seeks to "correct the wrong". It is a vice since it is done in an excessive manner. <br />Gyanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09941686166886986037noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977100651062963844.post-5916947158472876362015-09-04T06:22:34.264-05:002015-09-04T06:22:34.264-05:00A brief initial comment if I may be so permitted:...A brief initial comment if I may be so permitted:<br />You say that the American revolution grew out of the <br />"out of the kind of patriotism Dr. Johnson had dismissed as false" and that<br />"He defined a patriot as “he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest” <br /><br />Question: were the American Founders not public-spirited men? Why exactly their patriotism to America be derided? <br />The American Founders held to the doctrine that citizenship may be alienated. But the English tradition is that subject-hood can not be so alienated. <br />Could you argue that to be a subject is always to be a subject? That the colonists were WRONG to withdraw their loyalty to the English Crown?Gyanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09941686166886986037noreply@blogger.com