I received a great deal of comments on my latest LRC article. (A surprising number of them were fellow Texans and Houstonians. Hmm.) Kevin Carson writes,
“It goes back to the failure of the Levellers to create a decentralized republic and abolish feudal control of the land. As it was, for a time in 1647 when the agitators were at the peak of their power in the Army and Cornet Joyce arrested the king, Cromwell would have tap-danced naked and jerked off to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to appease the Levellers. At the time, some Leveller writers were proposing a teardown of all enclosures in living memory, and guaranteeing the right of copyhold tenants as a de facto freehold.
“Had they succeeded in this libertarian alliance of tradesmen, peasants, and soldiers, England would have been a republic with a written constitution, in which almost all power was decentralized to counties and hundreds. It would have been a nation of distibutive property ownership by peasant small-holders, like France after 1789. And there would not have been a central government with the power to pass Navigation Acts or to impose governments on Virginia, Plymouth and Massachusetts-Bay. The industrial revolution would have taken place in a country where the majority of the population had independent access to means of subsistence, and the working classes were not subjected to the equivalent of an internal passport system and forbidden to associate. So it’s safe to assume that industrial organization would have been considerably different.
“And America, left to grow in its own way, would have been a lot different….”
Some others are pasted below…***
Reading down through you great piece When Did the Trouble Start? at break neck speed, I kept smiling more and more. Then your picture appeared at the bottem and I Laughed out loud!!! It was perfect!
Thanks! Well done, here here, and God save the King. Let’s see… which King would that be? Henry the VII??? LOL, time for us all to brush up on that Euro history.
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You write:
“Incidentally, Maybe Hamilton is not the arch-villain, and Jefferson not the libertarian hero, that we’ve thought all these years. After all, didn’t Hamilton prefer a limited monarchy, or at least an aristocratic republic?”
I trust you won’t mind when I share my opinion — a different one — here. I sometimes suspect, in his basic moral inclinations, Hamilton was in no small degree the foreshadow of a neocon; and Jefferson, of a social dem. But what about Aaron Burr? I like to fancy, he’s something like a blend of monarchist and populist; a thing per-haps more than most alternatives, suitable to the American terrain.”
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Your article was quite an interesting read.
You’re pushing the date back even further than von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who said (the quote may not be 100% correct, as I returned the book to the library, and hence “deprived” myself of the means of double-checking it):
“For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.”
– Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “Leftism Revisited”
However, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn did in fact go as far back as to Wycliffe and Hus, predecessors of Martin Luther (cf. your reference to the “Protestant Reformation”, in his review of leftism in history.
In “Leftism Revisited” von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also suggested that the U.S.A. might have been a success if a genuine “regimen mixtum”, which drew its power from different sources, had been set up.
What I am a little puzzled by is that you in your article jump directly from 1861 back to 1803. What about the election of Andrew Jackson? Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn mentions this as a watershed in American history, when American democracy was born. There is at least one reference in “Leftism Revisited” on this theory. However, I don’t have it as I returned the book to the library.”
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This article epitomizes what is great about the Lew Rockwell website. Opinions, assertions, and explorations are anchored in a solid foundation of history. I gotta agree, that the trouble likely started in the sixteenth Century, with that pesky Protestant Reformation. Under Catholicism, people accepted their lot in life … as dirt farmers and serfs. But the Protestant Reformation gave birth to the malcontent agitators bent on expansion and empire. With their mantra of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Snuff out some lazy, itinerant natives. Import some African slaves. Add a little Monroe doctrine and Manifest Destiny. And shazam, you have the free-ist country the world has ever known. God bless America!
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Thanks for your fun article…I needed that…
However, it should be plain to any observer that the trouble started with the damned Redskins…when they accepted beads for their land…shoulda told those Old White Europeans to turn around and GO HOME, YANKEE!
In your foto, that stuff you had in your glass is what I’m ready for now…..
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I want to compliment you on your superb column today. You’ve obviously spent a great deal of time to study and think things through. You’re exactly right in your chain of reason. The root cause of the problem was the Protestant revolt and the ultimate elevation of man to the final arbitrator of right and wrong based on his subjective beliefs and feelings.
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No, no, no, you’ve still got it wrong. It was those bloody barons mucking about at Runymede who couldn’t leave good King John alone. Envy drives everything.
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Coincidentally, I am almost through the 9 Hilaire Belloc history books published by TAN books.
He blamed the Reformation, and most specifically, Calvinism, for our modern ills.
His book, “The Crisis of Civilization”, goes most in depth on this.
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Your thesis about the Protestant Reformation is not so whimsical or far-fetched as you make out. Hilaire Belloc made it 83 years ago in Europe and the Faith, but then he was a Catholic Traditionalist, not a Libertarian.
Interesting article. Keep writing.
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Sir, E. Tupper Saucy has written a well argued book, “Rulers of Evil,” arguing that the Jesuits and Roman Catholics wanted a federated America et al. Other people intimate that the Vatican is behind the bankruptcy of America.
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The Protestant Revolution was key to the advancement of the Christian faith. It corrected many of the problems that plagued Catholicism.
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Well, perhaps if pope Leo X hadn’t decided to finance the construction of St. Peter’s by simoney, Martin Luther would have remained an obscure ugustinian monk, nicht wahr?
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Excellent commentary! The last final point about the Protestant “deformation” is absolutely true although never said by commentators. Good for you for speaking the truth. The so-called Reformation reformed nothing. It has led to the dissolution of high western culture into the depravity we have today.
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I’d vote for the trouble starting with Israel’s demand for a king. No, maybe it was with Nimrod’s tower in Babel and the collectivism he wrought. Well, if you think about it, it was Adam and Eve in the garden, trying to force God into making them Gods, too. I guess the drive to rule others goes waaaaaay back, but thanks for a thought-provoking essay.
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Great essay! I’ve been having this debate with some of my “patriot” friends for years now. I’m no historian either, but I keep running back the same line you do in this writing!
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[and my favorite,…]
Stephan, your column today ‘When Did The Trouble start?’ is excellent, excellent. You put in a nutshell what took me years to discover. Now if your readers checked out every item that you highlighted they would have a real education.
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[And a few that go in the “uhhhh, okay” file]
Well, you skipped the “French and Indian War” (Seven Years War in Europe). How could you do that? The American War of Independence was merely the final act of that imperial, expansionist, war with the period in between being no more than an armistice.
I will also warn you now, (before you dig yourself an infinitely deeper hole) that European history is an incredibly complex cesspool to plunge into. I specialized in it for 11 years in college (fascinating stuff though). Eventually you will stumble back into the late Roman Empire (Western) and then back to the Early Republic which is contemporary with Hellenistic Greece ( this includes Alexander and his Successors) which leads you to Ancient Greece and Persia which is just a short trip forward in time from Egyptian history and Sumner and all that other stuff and minutiae (like Hittites, Assyrians, Medes, Philistines, Moabites, Gilgamesh, etc, forever). Then you get into all the “Age” stuff; (Iron, Bronze, Neolithic, Paleolithic, etc). You get a pretty entertaining story (lots of moral lessons, tragedy, comedy, grandeur, gore, sex, etc) but, unfortunately no sure fire “Golden Age”. Well, for some people maybe; sort of; depending on your definitions.
If you happen to find one (Golden Age; not Gilded) let me know. Switzerland looks pretty good from a distance, but I’ve never lived there. Might not be so great up close. Venice looked pretty good too; a few hundered years ago if you lots of money (and could hang on to it). If you have a lot a money (or whatever passes for money) most places can be pretty nice. That appears to be a general rule thoughout history. It also seems to be about the closest thing to a “constant” that you’ll get.
Anyway, good luck working your way back, but be careful. You’ve been warned.
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Don’t drink and go to meetings
10:43 pm on September 8, 2003
