DAMON LINKER NOVEMBER 30, 2009
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Conservatives would have us believe that they hold a monopoly on common sense. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and many other right-wing rabble-rousers regularly portray themselves as defenders of the good, old-fashioned common sense of average Americans against an out-of-touch liberal elite. A growing cadre of ambitious politicians likewise aims to lead a crusade in the name of “commonsense conservatism.” Glenn Beck has even gone so far as to publish a runaway bestseller that explicitly piggybacks on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to argue against the danger of “out-of-control government” and the forces of organized foolishness that would foist it on the American people.
The unanimity is impressive. But it is also ridiculous. The fact is that the right’s appeal to common sense is nonsense. Unfortunately, though, it is a form of nonsense with deep roots in the American past and a very long history of political potency. Whether it continues to prove effective in the future will depend in no small measure on how cogently the rest of America responds.
The United States is a nation founded on an egalitarian creed—on the supposedly self-evident (commonsensical?) truths that all men are created equal and that all legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. In such a nation, public appeals to authority would be much less persuasive than they had been throughout most of human history. Tradition, the divine right of kings, the will of God as interpreted by his designated clerical representatives—in America none of these authorities would benefit from the deference they have typically enjoyed in other times and places. Add in the ever-increasing social pluralism of modern life, and it becomes perfectly understandable why political actors and commentators in the United States would seek to win public disputes by appeal to the only authority still available—the authority of the people and their common sense. Whether such appeals are coherent is another matter.
In Common Sense, Thomas Paine famously inaugurated the American tradition of attempting to win contentious public arguments by praising the good judgment of average citizens. When Paine’s incendiary pamphlet first appeared, in January 1776, the colonies were divided about whether to declare their independence, with many colonists still loyal to the crown. Those on both sides of the issue recognized that taking up arms against the King of England demanded justification. Those who favored revolution did so for complicated reasons flowing from the ineptness of George III’s rule, which was increasingly viewed as arbitrary, dictatorial, and contrary to the economic interests of the colonies. A few, including Thomas Jefferson and Paine himself, went further, to supplement their case with abstract philosophical arguments about natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But regardless of the rationale, it was almost universally acknowledged that proposing insurrection against British rule was a profoundly radical act—one involving a dramatic break from precedent and tradition. And yet Paine chose to portray the case for rebellion as transparently obvious—based, in fact, on nothing more than “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” Today Paine’s tract is thought to have done more than any other piece of writing to foment the American Revolution.
Not everyone was convinced by its argument, however. Later that same year, loyalist Lt. Col. James Chalmers penned a scathing polemic against Common Sense titled Plain Truth. In his own pamphlet, Chalmers ridiculed Paine’s presumptuousness in professing to speak for commonly held views in the colonies or good judgment in general. In Chalmers’s view, Paine’s position was a particularly irresponsible example of “quackery,” not an accurate reflection of common sense, which clearly pointed in the opposite direction—toward reconciliation with the English throne. The Revolutionary War thus began with dual acts of excommunication from the ranks of common sense, showing with vivid clarity that the concept was originally devoid of content, merely expressing the desire of one party in a dispute to claim as much popular support as possible for his side.
The Paine-Chalmers debate was the first in a seemingly endless series of rancorous clashes in the early republic over contradictory appeals to common sense. By the mid-nineteenth century, these clashes increasingly focused on the issue of slavery and Southern Secession from the Union. Readers of the Northern press during the 1860s were regularly informed that their opposition to the expansion of slavery was commonsensical, that Abraham Lincoln was a font of “homespun common sense,” and that Southerners were “as deaf as madmen” to common sense. Yet the view from the Southern states was, quite naturally, the reverse. In late 1860, for instance, the Charleston Mercury newspaper spoke for many in the South when it editorialized that “no man of common sense” could doubt that “the time for action” against the North had arrived.
While politicians and editorialists throughout the rest of the nineteenth century continued to employ the empty rhetoric of common sense, a group of Protestant theologians worked to provide the concept with some content. Drawing on the Scottish tradition of Common Sense philosophy—which asserted that commonly held opinions are our most trustworthy guide to truth—writers connected to the Princeton Theological Seminary naively suggested that spontaneous universal concord on every matter of moral, scientific, and spiritual significance should be possible. Men and women need only open their eyes to apprehend directly the timeless, objective, self-evident truth about all things: God, nature, right and wrong.
For these theologians, the very idea of a genuine (as opposed to a spurious) conflict between reason and faith, science and religion—let alone between opposing political views—began to seem inconceivable. They thus tended to trace disagreements to defects in the mind or morals of whomever dissented from prevailing religious, scientific, social, cultural, or political opinion. Maybe the dissenter had succumbed to the sin of pride, which led him astray. Or perhaps he made an innocent error of reasoning, or got caught up in futile metaphysical speculation. And then there was the most ominous possibility—that he was seduced by unbelief or false religion. Whatever the case, the disagreement was assumed to flow not from the intrinsic complexity of either the world or the nature of the mind but rather from an accidental failing rooted in a particular individual or group—a defect that could potentially be removed, thus restoring the inevitability of universal agreement based on self-evident common sense.
And yet by the turn of the century, whatever cultural, moral, and religious consensus prevailed in the United States seemed to be collapsing on multiple fronts. The nation’s cities were filled with impoverished immigrants, many of them from non-Protestant (and in the case of Jews, non-Christian) cultures. At the same time, industrialization was transforming American life in unpredictable ways, disrupting small-town life, driving the young to seek their fortunes in those same cities, exposing them to unimaginable moral temptations and objectionable ideas. Meanwhile, the nations schools were beginning to introduce Christian children to disturbing new unbiblical theories about the origins of the human race. For many, the suggestion that human beings evolved from apes sounded both morally monstrous and fundamentally unscientific—a form of demonic speculation wholly divorced from a properly commonsensical study of the natural facts. And then there was the rise of theological liberalism—or “modernism”—in some of the nation’s leading churches, which showed that not even the nation’s Protestant clergy could maintain agreement on the fundamentals of the faith.
The political and cultural history of the American twentieth century was shaped in countless ways by two movements that arose in direct reaction to these destabilizing trends: populism in politics and fundamentalism in religion. “Common sense” now became a term of flattery, offering praise for the religious and cultural outlook of Americans who continued to uphold the naïve views defended by the Princeton theologians. These were the views of those who lived in small, homogeneous agricultural communities and who believed their way of life to be under assault by the decadence and corruption of urban economic and political elites. Populist leader William Jennings Bryan used the term “common sense” in this way during the 1890s, and he revived it at the end of his life when, in the Scopes Trial of 1925, he passionately defended the right of fundamentalist Protestants in Tennessee to insulate their children’s commonsense (i.e., literalistic) reading of the Bible from corruption at the hands of overly educated biology teachers, who wished to expose their students to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Though the verdict in favor of creationism was overturned on appeal, Bryan’s effort to defend the simple common sense of average citizens against the godless pretensions of educated elites was a populist time-bomb that would eventually explode in the American public square.
That explosion took place in the decade following the Second World War, with the paranoid anti-communist crusade of Joseph McCarthy. The Republican senator from Wisconsin may have overreached in his efforts to root out Communists and thereby turned himself into a one of the most reviled figures in American political history, but he also unintentionally managed to unleash a wildly influential style of politics. In the words of its greatest chronicler, historian Richard Hofstadter, this style of politics is best described as an anti-intellectual “dynamic of dissent” against artists, actors, and academics that proved to be “powerful enough to set the tone of our political life” for years to come. Those who followed in McCarthy’s footsteps have tended to believe that “the plain sense of the common man . . . is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise acquired in the schools.” Universities and colleges, by contrast, as well as any institution in which intellectuals exercise influence, are “rotten to the core,” since they fail to pay adequate obeisance to the intuitive wisdom of average Americans. For the McCarthyite tradition, nothing is more morally destructive than the arrogance of the educated, who are “pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish,” and very likely “immoral, dangerous, and subversive” of common decency no less than of sound judgment.
This is the catechism of the muscular “common sense” populism launched by Joe McCarthy. It has inspired the racist rantings of George Wallace and countless other opponents of segregation and black civil rights. It has motivated Rush Limbaugh and the dozens who imitate him on talk radio and cable news, from O’Reilly and Beck to Hannity and Michael Savage. And it has empowered the religious right in its ongoing efforts to turn back the secular drift of American society and culture since the 1960s. All of these sundry projects grew out of McCarthyism, and all of them understand themselves to be championing the common sense of the American people against the machinations of corrupt and decadent elites.
The McCarthyite style of invoking common sense entered the American political mainstream at the very moment when McCarthy himself was on the verge of self-destruction. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a moderate Republican, yet he learned something important from the Wisconsin senator about the uses of populist appeals. As president, Eisenhower went out of his way to align himself with “common sense and common decency,” and he delighted in taking potshots at the pretensions of scholars, experts, and “eggheads.” On one memorable occasion, Ike even offered his own definition of an intellectual—a man “who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.” Plain-spoken average Americans apparently suffered from no such debility.
By the time Eisenhower’s vice president (Richard Nixon) ascended to the White House in 1968, the Republican establishment had mastered the art of appealing to common sense as a way to gain grassroots electoral advantage. Nixon’s own vice president, Spiro Agnew, spearheaded GOP efforts to portray Republicans as defenders of common sense against the slothful decadence of the counterculture, while Nixon himself spoke in 1973 of the need to temper America’s idealism (in his condescending words, its “warmhearted impatience”) with “another equally American trait—and that is levelheaded common sense.” With this statement, Nixon employed both forms of commonsense rhetoric: he identified his own position with common sense, presumably relegating his critics to the camp of the innately foolish, and he flattered those Americans who longed to blame the country's problems on a bunch of pampered college students and the elitist snobs who ran the Democratic Party.
But it was Ronald Reagan who took the appeal to common sense to a whole new level in American politics—combining with greater skill than anyone before him a rhetoric of populism with the conviction that his agenda was self-evidently right. Reagan honed this synthesis in a series of provocative lectures throughout the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, speaking out, in the name of common sense, against the establishments of both political parties. In his two terms as president, Reagan frequently portrayed his crusades in favor of cutting taxes and increasing spending on national defense as expressions of the common sense of the American majority. This is certainly how he described his presidency in his farewell address to the nation, delivered on January 11, 1989. In these remarks, the president cast the so-called Reagan Revolution as The Great Rediscovery—a “rediscovery of our values and our common sense” after a protracted period of confusion during which the nation lost its way, embracing manifold forms of sophisticated foolishness.
In this as well as in other ways, George W. Bush went out of his way to recapture the spirit of Reagan. But he did more than embrace the Reagan legacy. With the help of his advisor Karl Rove, Bush moved beyond Reagan, to portray himself as the authentic voice and sincere champion of the grassroots “dynamic of dissent” that Richard Hofstadter first identified in McCarthyism and that had exploded in power and influence during the intervening decades. For much of the Bush presidency, staunchly conservative talk radio and cable news, right-wing Internet weblogs, and reactionary evangelical pastors uncritically conveyed and defended the administration’s position on foreign and domestic policy, while whipping their audiences into a populist frenzy and channeling it into enthusiastic, almost ecstatic support for the president. Everything about Bush—from his economically libertarian and socially conservative policies to his swaggering gait, mannered Southern drawl, and studied inarticulateness—was intended to convey the message that he was “one of us,” an average American bringing his hard-won common sense to bear on the most challenging problems of our time, many if not all of which could be traced to the influence of the godless liberal elites who “really” run the country from their decadent enclaves in New York and Hollywood.
It was in the crucible of the 2004 election campaign that Bush sought to identify his administration’s policies most fully with common sense. Bush set the tone for the election cycle in an early remark about judicial appointments: “We need common-sense judges who understand our rights were derived from God. And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench.” Having established that common sense yields the jurisprudence favored by the religious right, Bush encouraged his party to champion common sense in other areas as well. The plank in the 2004 Republican Party platform that supported permanently banning gay marriage described the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act as a “common-sense law.” Congressional Republicans defended their efforts to renew the USA Patriot Act as a “common-sense approach to improving domestic security.” Meanwhile, the Bush campaign repeatedly attacked his Democratic opponent John Kerry for “opposing common-sense measures like the ban on partial-birth abortion.” And then there was the constant stream of advertisements that repeatedly portrayed Kerry as an elitist snob.
Today, with the GOP tearing itself apart over public policy, the right appears to agree about little besides the political necessity of continuing to praise the good, old-fashioned common sense of average Americans and contrasting it to supposedly out-of-touch, over-educated outlook of liberal elites. Indeed, some (like Sarah Palin) have doubled down on the appeal to common sense, placing it at the core of their political ambitions. Whereas Republicans once used populist flattery to get themselves elected so that they could accomplish specific public-policy goals, they’ve now began to treat such flattery as an end in itself, as a form of ideologically vacuous identity politics.
Such appeals are unlikely to succeed, at least at the national level—and not only because there simply are no longer enough culturally alienated white people in the United States to catapult a presidential candidate to victory. The deeper reason why the appeal to common sense is liable to become a dead end in the coming years is that research in numerous fields—including artificial intelligence (The Open Mind Common Sense Project, The Cyc Project), linguistics and cognitive science (Ray Jackendoff, Steven Pinker), and psychology (Jonathan Haidt)—has the potential to transform the way we think about common sense, and not in a way that is likely to vindicate the right-wing approach to the topic.
Take Haidt’s work in psychology, which identifies several moral ideals—harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity—that appear to be broadly universal across cultures and history. If (as seems likely) scientific research one day demonstrates that this list, or one like it, contains the sum total of human common sense, it will be intellectually interesting but politically irrelevant. Such a finding would imply, after all, that the only individuals who lack common sense are those who show no care for another person, no attachment to fairness, no loyalty to or respect for anything or anyone, and no admiration for purity of any kind. The only people who could be said to lack common sense, in other words, would be certifiable sociopaths.
Accordingly, Haidt claims to have found that American liberals and conservatives merely differ on which aspects of common sense they prize most highly—with liberals tending to esteem fairness and care and conservatives leaning toward loyalty, respect, and purity. If this finding ends up being confirmed by further studies, it would show not that one ideological outlook or another is more commonsensical than other, but rather that the content of common sense is somewhat fluid or changeable within certain broad parameters—and that to a considerable extent it mirrors our political opinions and ideological commitments (or vice versa).
That Americans disagree with one another on political and cultural matters is not an indication that those on one side or the other are out of touch with common sense. On the contrary, it is a consequence of our freedom—our freedom to disagree, to think for ourselves and to stake out political and ideological positions consonant with our divergent histories and experiences of the world, as well as with the differing natural tendencies and capacities of our minds. As an attempt to gain electoral advantage by demagogically short-circuiting open-ended public debate among equal citizens, the appeal to common sense deserves to be repudiated by all intellectually honest participants in American politics.
54 comments
Hmm, I don't think research results are going to sway one side in the "common sense" debate! That nit aside, I enjoyed this article. But as the world becomes more complex, every individual finds more and more things they don't really understand (TNR posters excepted, it seems). Simple explanations of complex things that one doesn't understand may become more popular and comforting, not less so, so Linker may even be underestimating the power of this appeal to "common sense".
- JEFF FREY
December 1, 2009 at 2:22am
jeff, right you are. basic commonsense tells us that supersymmetric string theory should hold sway. The Higgs Boson particle just doesn't make any common sense unless the Bosons and fermions are symetrical. I mean d'uh. How easy is that. Stupid liberals.
- blackton
December 1, 2009 at 11:52am
Very interesting article. As a fervent anti-anti-intellectual, there's a lot here that's up my alley. But I'm not sure that the notion of "common sense" itself is as useless or pernicious as suggested. There are certainly senses in which it is. Supposed common sense is no substitute for rational thought and should never be permitted to trump the verifiable fact of the matter. So, those who would deny scientific or historical fact or adhere to a belief about reality based on illogic or magical thinking should not be able to find comfort in the fact that the error is a widespread one. Such errors are not best seen as common sense but simply as common mistakes, like the belief that the capital of Kentucky is Louisville. Any effort to recast irrational or false opinions about reality as "common sense" must be strongly resisted -- and can be by reference to common sense itself. Another use, or misuse, of "common sense" that I agree is troublesome is the view that the right answer to any question -- factual, moral, prospective, historical -- is to be found by polling the masses. It is obvious -- common sense, even -- that many people can be wrong. If "common sense" means simply "the view of the most people," then it is pernicious and unjustifiably forecloses the common occurrence of common error and poor judgment. "Common sense" is a positive-sounding description and used to validate whatever it is you're talking about. But mere commonality doesn't validate anything except the proposition that the view is common. But there are some ways in which the notion of "common sense" can be useful. How do we argue? We try to find *some* common ground. When we disagree on the specific issue, we pull back a bit and refer to that broader reservoir of common attitudes, feelings, and opinions that we may share. We attempt to ground our contention in those common attitudes, and try to put our contention in terms that can be broadly understood and appreciated. We try to minimize the extent to which the contention is radical or counterintuitive or otherwise troubling. Instead, we try to make our contention seem like "common sense," and we might justifiably worry if we can't do that. Consider the relatively uncommon view -- in the U.S. anyway -- of religious skepeticism. A defender of religious faith has an easy if not particularly potent "common sense" argument to make: That is, look how many people believe! But that does not strike us a substantive argument. That's just a poll. Meanwhile, the religious skeptic has many arguments to make grounded in shared premises that, if they work, serve to show that the specific belief is inconsistent with the other things that people generally believe as matters of common sense. If the phrase "common sense" is merely used to validate b.s. when talking among those who already agree with you or yelling at those who don't, it's abused. If it is used to bridge divides, to make a contention less alien and more accessible, it is used well. If you are a politician or journalist or anyone trying to persuade a general audience, asking yourself whether your argument seems commonsensical or not is probably a good test of your rhetoric and perhaps even of the substantive merit of your position.
- jhildner1
December 1, 2009 at 12:37pm
Very interesting article. As a fervent anti-anti-intellectual, there's a lot here that's up my alley. But I'm not sure that the notion of "common sense" itself is as useless or pernicious as suggested. There are certainly senses in which it is. Supposed common sense is no substitute for rational thought and should never be permitted to trump the verifiable fact of the matter. So, those who would deny scientific or historical fact or adhere to a belief about reality based on illogic or magical thinking should not be able to find comfort in the fact that the error is a widespread one. Such errors are not best seen as common sense but simply as common mistakes, like the belief that the capital of Kentucky is Louisville. Any effort to recast irrational or false opinions about reality as "common sense" must be strongly resisted -- and can be by reference to common sense itself. Another use, or misuse, of "common sense" that I agree is troublesome is the view that the right answer to any question -- factual, moral, prospective, historical -- is to be found by polling the masses. It is obvious -- common sense, even -- that many people can be wrong. If "common sense" means simply "the view of the most people," then it is pernicious and unjustifiably forecloses the common occurrence of common error and poor judgment. "Common sense" is a positive-sounding description and used to validate whatever it is you're talking about. But mere commonality doesn't validate anything except the proposition that the view is common. But there are some ways in which the notion of "common sense" can be useful. How do we argue? We try to find *some* common ground. When we disagree on the specific issue, we pull back a bit and refer to that broader reservoir of common attitudes, feelings, and opinions that we may share. We attempt to ground our contention in those common attitudes, and try to put our contention in terms that can be broadly understood and appreciated. We try to minimize the extent to which the contention is radical or counterintuitive or otherwise troubling. Instead, we try to make our contention seem like "common sense," and we might justifiably worry if we can't do that. Consider the relatively uncommon view -- in the U.S. anyway -- of religious skepeticism. A defender of religious faith has an easy if not particularly potent "common sense" argument to make: That is, look how many people believe! But that does not strike us a substantive argument. That's just a poll. Meanwhile, the religious skeptic has many arguments to make grounded in shared premises that, if they work, serve to show that the specific belief is inconsistent with the other things that people generally believe as matters of common sense. If the phrase "common sense" is merely used to validate b.s. when talking among those who already agree with you or yelling at those who don't, it's abused. If it is used to bridge divides, to make a contention less alien and more accessible, it is used well. If you are a politician or journalist or anyone trying to persuade a general audience, asking yourself whether your argument seems commonsensical or not is probably a good test of your rhetoric and perhaps even of the substantive merit of your position.
- jhildner1
December 1, 2009 at 12:37pm
jhildner, I just think common sense should be defined for what it is, basic knowledge that people use in everyday life to survive, ie. look both ways before you cross the street, cook your meat properly, etc. come to think of it, we don't imbue the term "common knowledge" with anykind of the same power.
- blackton
December 1, 2009 at 12:54pm
In my view the "perversion" of which Linker writes and the rise to dominance of streaming electronic broadcast media are not unrelated. Television and film bombard us with a constant stream of ideas, in one direction, thus negating our ability to digest, contemplate, and respond to them. I can take a copy of one of Paine's documents and discuss it with a friend; this is virtually impossible to do with TV or movies. (Look how much more debate among commenters ensues from one of these static posts than from "TNR TV.") Electronic media fuck with our minds; their message are, by necessity, the antitheses of reasoned rhetoric. Because their primary purpose is to sell things, the simpler messages, the better. Hence, the modern "common sense," which stands without debate, or so it sez. Had cable been available in the eighteenth century, Paine either would have mastered it or been a nobody. Had he mastered it he would have sounded far more like Glenn Beck and far less like Thomas Paine. Tom Paine-era media dominate academia and much of the upper echelons of business. You don't see students learning more than a smidgen from videos, or corporation executives using video instead of PowerPoint, other than live web conferencing. You can't debate the efficacy of an anti-angiogenic agent using something that moves; you have to have something that doesn't move, that allows the idea to stop, float, be scrutinized in detail far beyond what is on the slide or page. Likewise, Thomas Paine's messages worked because his audience was able to scrutinize them far beyond their pages, to debate the implication of each idea, each sentence. It won't get better. Streaming media is the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, in my view.
- williamyard
December 1, 2009 at 12:56pm
Follow-up: ever read a screenplay or a transcript to a TV news program? Pretty banal, isn't it? Yet we're emotionally, physically moved by what we have seen on the screen. Words mean little, in these big pictures. Electronic media are pre-literate, primal media. They work by moving us emotionally, not by satisfying us intellectually. And here's the really bad part: we think we know what's happening to us. The media are gang-sodomizing our minds, and we think we're in control. Every time I see a photo of Rush or Beck or any other talking head on TNR I realize that the hooks have sunk in just a bit deeper.
- williamyard
December 1, 2009 at 1:03pm
Independently now of the precise meaning of Paine's "common sense" (and I won't get into that) -- and on how sad it is if Americans are loosing touch with that meaning -- this article has a point in denouncing absurd contemporary appeals to "common sense" which are nothing but manipulative moves. Anyway, before hastily dismissing "common sense", one should remeber also that all totalitarian "movements" were always very much against "common sense" and how much such "sense" (of course, not perverted by manipulation) can mean a protection against integral rationalizations of the world that come in very dangerous forms.
- luispc
December 1, 2009 at 2:47pm
great post luis. Totalitarian movements always want to round up all the educated people and those with (and I quote Palin) "big fat resumes."
- WandreyCer
December 1, 2009 at 3:57pm
I couldn't disagree more, luis. The Nazis placed great value on "gesundes Volksempfinden" (roughly, "heathy popular attitudes"), a Teutonic version of conservative common sense. The ordinary German citizen "knew" that Jews had stabbed Germany in the back at the end of WW1, to take one ominous example, and any actual evidence to the contrary had no real status when set against the common sense opinion held by the populus.
- ironyroad
December 1, 2009 at 5:22pm
Right you are, yard. The moving images trick our brains into feeling that we have experienced something, not just watched a canned version of it. I think luis's comment does apply to Marxist/Communist totalitarian movements, which have all seemed to try to redefine reality in the service of class struggle. Irony's comment about the Nazis reflects a difference between their denial of reality in the service of ideology, and the "we have always been at war with Eastasia" totalitarianism that Orwell modeled on Communist movements.
- JEFF FREY
December 1, 2009 at 5:46pm
«he Nazis placed great value on "gesundes Volksempfinden" (roughly, "heathy popular attitudes")"» That is so. But still they were very worried in demonstrating the scientific foundations of their world-vision, which is showed by their absurd specialists and reports on race. And if those empfinden are a "Teutonic version of common sense", you will surely agree that we are before a very different variety from Paine's. What Paine was asserting was that the moral sense that allowed for one to be a citizen in a democratic world was something potentially shared by all men. It is something very different from the resentful and excludent "sense" Nazi propaganda spread. As it is something very different from the also resentful and excludent sense these absurd Glenn Becks spread. In light of this I insist that to dismiss common sense altogether at least without recovering the distinction between Paine's common sense and Nazi gefüllen may mean a great cultural and political empoverishment. And to dismiss it insisting on an integral rationalization of the world means not only a great cultural and political empoverishment but a dangerous empoverishment.
- luispc
December 2, 2009 at 2:14am
That's a reasonable point, luis, but I think I'd want to underline that -- as I see it, at least -- the spurious racial 'science' in the tradition of Streicher and HS Chamberlain was a way of putting an respectable gloss on the racial paranoia and ethnic resentments of the lower-class Germans and Austrians. It was "Rassenwissenschaft" for the educated middle class, and "gesundes Volksemfinden" for the masses. To that extent, they are both arms of the same political tool -- except the folksy variant has deeper psychological roots and is therefore something that can be appealed to on the emotional level. I agree of course that that is not what Paine meant by common sense -- he meant a kind of quick ethical grasp of the relationship of justice and power, something that human beings have (?) or can learn by experience. Paine assumed that any reasonable person would understand that the power of the Crown had to be rolled back for any kind of justice to happen. To be fair, however, Edmund Burke was not shooting far from the target when he noted that societies can become legitimately attached to symbols that don't necessarily hinder progress -- that is, you don't need regicide for the future to be different. It's worth thinking about the fact that several of the most socially free and advanced nations in Europe -- e.g. the Netherlands and Sweden -- are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies, but still. I think the Spanish monarchy has been -- so far, at least -- a guarantor of constitutional stability and accountability.
- ironyroad
December 2, 2009 at 4:47pm
"It's worth thinking about the fact that several of the most socially free and advanced nations in Europe -- e.g. the Netherlands and Sweden -- are monarchies. Constitutional monarchies, but still. I think the Spanish monarchy has been -- so far, at least -- a guarantor of constitutional stability and accountability." From a political point of view ( and I don't intend on debating the common sense issue, here) the above is correct. I believe that it was Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws who said that the best government was a moderate one irrespective of the regime ( he meant democracy, monarchy or mixed).
- jacksondyer
December 3, 2009 at 3:46pm
and btw, how can anyone defend "common sense" in an Einsteinian universe? And Irony is right that "The Nazis placed great value on "gesundes Volksempfinden" (roughly, "heathy popular attitudes"), a Teutonic version of conservative common sense." This wasn't just true of the Nazis but of every fascist ideologue including communist ones. (It seems that Marxist dialectic didn't penetrate very far in the thinking of proletariat.) As for Tom Paine he was a potential demagogue as John Adams clearly saw who had minimal influence on Constitutional thinking, if he had any.
- jacksondyer
December 3, 2009 at 5:12pm
Perhaps the vision of Tom Paine as a mere populist is reductionist. As reductionist as Burke's understanding of him was. Indeed, I tend to understand Paine in light of a fundamental difference. A difference Burke doesn't grasp (the first European that would understand such a difference would be Tocqueville) between the violent, resentful spirit of the French Revolution and the innocent foundational spirit of the American Revolution. In other words, I tend to understand Paine in light of a political culture and of a Revolution that did not exploded in opposition to something (it was not builted against an old world to be destroyed ) but that was egalitarianly shaped anew in a new world. A political culture that can be equated precisely with a shared "common sense", i.e., with the assumptions (in Gordon S. Wood's words) "that every person had a natural moral or social sense that compelled him to reach out to others (...); that people were citzens, not subjects, and were born with equal natural rights; that the people created written constitutions that defined and limited their governments (...); that because people were naturally sociable, society is practically autonomous and self-regulating; and that people were free and independent to pursue happiness in their own way". This kind of "sense" was not understood by the elitist Burke. As a European witnessing the French Revolution, Burke could only see in Paine's revolutionary and democratic impetus an impetus for violence and destruction, i.e., an impetus similar to the impetus of the French Revolution (an impetus from which the American Revolution was blessfully free). I believe that the present resort to the idea of "common sense" by the Glenn Becks of this world profoundly betrays, not only Paine, but the spirit of the American Revolution. Indeed, the new "common sense" is filled with Reagan clichés (including, most importantly, Reagonomics clichés) that should be evaluated in themselves and not confused with foundational "self-evident truths". If instead of doing that, Americans that react to Glenn Beck react to "common sense" pure and simply (if they confuse Paine with Glenn Beck, Jefferson with Reagan, 1776 with 1980), that will mean, not only that they are forgetting the DNA of their political culture (and that's what I mean by a great political and cultural empoverishment), but that they are falling into the trap that was set up for them by these propaganda mongers that falsely identify themselves with Paine and pretend to restate "common sense"...
- luispc
December 4, 2009 at 10:40am
What a long response by Luis and it's besides the point. Talking about the lack of common sense. luispc "Perhaps the vision of Tom Paine as a mere populist is reductionist. As reductionist as Burke's understanding of him was." Who cares about Burke in this context. The anme of Tom Paine's pamphlet was given by a friend of his. It is a politicla pamphlet and not about "common sense." As a political pamphlet it contributed very little to the revolutionary cause. Luis has told himself a fairy tale about the American Revolution which he uses to attack the supposed "short comings" of America today.
- jacksondyer
December 4, 2009 at 1:44pm
«Luis has told himself a fairy tale about the American Revolution which he uses to attack the supposed "short comings" of America today.» Did Luís told himself that tale? Perhaps. Anyway I believe that that's the "tale" the men of 1776 told themselves and that they believed in it, at least Jefferson and Paine, followed by Lincoln and Roosevelt. Until a moment America surely believed in it too, teaching it in highschools and devoting it monuments in Washington. I like to think that it still believes in it, knowing that the moment it stops believing in it, it will no longer be the America of the Democracy described by Tocqueville. And one correction: I do not intend to attack the supposed shortcomings of America today! The issue here is if those that invoke today Paine's "common sense" are doing it with propriety and if Linker is right when attacking generally "common sense" (including Paine's, not distinguishing it from Glenn Beck's) On Burke, see reference above by Irony.
- luispc
December 4, 2009 at 2:23pm
"Did Luís told himself that tale? Perhaps. Anyway I believe that that's the "tale" the men of 1776 told themselves and that they believed in it, at least Jefferson and Paine, followed by Lincoln and Roosevelt." They didn't believe in Tom Paine tale nor did they all believe the same tale. You assume a unity of point of view which isn't there. Jefferson and Lincoln, for example, had very different view of the aims of government not to mention on slavery. Jefferson idealized the yeoman farmer; Lincoln who knew about farming first hand, did not. I won't even get into the views of 20th and 21st century Presidents. Reagan and Bush also believed that they were following in Jefferson's footsteps. That they shared and share a similar view of American principles.
- jacksondyer
December 4, 2009 at 2:32pm
"You assume a unity of point of view which isn't there." "Jefferson and Lincoln, for example, had very different view of the aims of government not to mention on slavery. Jefferson idealized the yeoman farmer; Lincoln who knew about farming first hand, did not." The basic unity of Jefferson and Lincoln can be found in the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln expressly told that he had never had a political thought not shaped in those words. And he justified the Civil War in the firm defense of a Nation "devoted to the proposition" that men are "created equal" The unity of point of view is exactly here. On the propositions of the Declaration of Independence, in particular, of its first proposition. "Reagan and Bush also believed that they were following in Jefferson's footsteps. That they shared and share a similar view of American principles. " Yes, perhaps. But the America they were shaping, at least in Reagan's case, was the Hamiltonian America, the imperial America. And their moral code was very much shaped within a Smithianism that was totally alien to Jefferson. I fear the invocations of Jefferson by Reagan and Bush were inspired by a neo-conservative thought (Straussian) that knew the power the same would have among Americans... but that did not believe in their truthfulness, in their intrinsic legitimacy. Quite the contrary: it nihistically despised America's foundational truths and reconstructed their history as a hedonistic history that left the way open for Smith... (well, this is a long conversation...)
- luispc
December 4, 2009 at 2:46pm
luispc "The basic unity of Jefferson and Lincoln can be found in the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence." Well, they also both spoke English and they were both Americans. It was the defense of the constitution as well as unity of the Nation that animated Lincoln. In the debates with Douglass he spoke eloquently against slavery but not in favor of equality which is it these debates make such painful reading for many Black students.
- jacksondyer
December 4, 2009 at 11:27pm
A difference Burke doesn't grasp (the first European that would understand such a difference would be Tocqueville) [is] between the violent, resentful spirit of the French Revolution and the innocent foundational spirit of the American Revolution. To be blunt, luis, I think that statement is pure nonsense. I would be very interested in any quotation from Burke that you believe supports such an assertion. In particular, I'm wondering how you square that proposition with Burke's 'Speech on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775.'
- ironyroad
December 5, 2009 at 1:43am
«To be blunt, luis, I think that statement is pure nonsense. I would be very interested in any quotation from Burke that you believe supports such an assertion.» I would advise a comparative study between Burke and Tocqueville, between their assessments of the American Revolution and the American Democracy. To be blunt.
- luispc
December 5, 2009 at 7:43am
It was the defense of the constitution as well as unity of the Nation that animated Lincoln. In the debates with Douglass he spoke eloquently against slavery but not in favor of equality which is it these debates make such painful reading for many Black students. It's strange, Jackson that you look at Jefferson and Lincoln exactly with the eyes that a marxist inspired culture critic looks. Desconstruction of domination and all that... Does that grasp America's political culture, its common sense and the animating nature of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence? I doubt.
- luispc
December 5, 2009 at 7:50am
"It was the defense of the constitution as well as unity of the Nation that animated Lincoln. In the debates with Douglass he spoke eloquently against slavery but not in favor of equality which is it these debates make such painful reading for many Black students". It's strange, Jackson that you look at Jefferson and Lincoln exactly with the eyes that a marxist inspired culture critic looks. Desconstruction of domination and all that... Does that grasp America's political culture, its common sense and the animating nature of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence? I doubt.
- luispc
December 5, 2009 at 7:50am
And going back to Irony. If you wish to share with us your insights on that Speech, I would be very much interested and honoured.
- luispc
December 5, 2009 at 7:51am
Gladly, luis. But first, some back-up for your contention that Burke saw the American Revolution the way he saw the French Revolution, please. Before moving on to Tocqueville, it seems more pertinent to compare how Burke saw the two events, don't you think? So, where do you see evidence that Burke regarded the American Revolution as manifesting the same "violent, resentful spirit" with which he later characterized the French Revolution? Because I don't see it in the "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies."
- ironyroad
December 5, 2009 at 1:18pm
Luispc “It's strange, Jackson that you look at Jefferson and Lincoln exactly with the eyes that a marxist inspired culture critic looks.” Which cultural critic do you have in mind, Luis? Marxism comes in many flavors, do they are all off the mark on most issues. My view of Jefferson and Lincoln are far from being “Marxist.” “Desconstruction of domination and all that...” This is not what I said, and you creating a straw man to criticize. “Does that grasp America's political culture, its common sense and the animating nature of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence? I doubt.” American political culture is not based on “common sense,” or on “self evident truths.” This is far too simplistic a view of the American Republic.
- jacksondyer
December 5, 2009 at 2:01pm
«where do you see evidence that Burke regarded the American Revolution as manifesting the same "violent, resentful spirit" with which he later characterized the French Revolution?» I see it in his polemics with Paine. And I see it in his utter rejection of democracy, in his idea that equality was not natural but a violence that "perverts the natural order of things". From this stance he had to condemn both the American and the French Revolutions. Does Burke, in that Speech, praises America for the foundation of a political society on an egalitarian creed? I doubt it. On the comparison between Burke and Tocqueville - that led them to make very different assessments of the French Revolution and that led the second to truly understand the wonder of Democracy in America in the early 19th century -, I'll use the synthesis made in Strauss/Cropsey (695-696): "Whereas Burke could not believe that democracy was in accord with nature, and hence must be traced to a perversion by theorists, Tocqueville believed that democratic claims were at least partly natural to men, hence always available to be endorsed by theorists (...). In complete disagreement with Tocqueville, Burke does not consider that democracy is a possible regime". I guess that Tocqueville understanding of Democracy in America and of its wonder has paradoxically to do with his aristocratic education: he truly understood the aristocratic spirit present in the Ancients, a spirit that had led them to always consider aristocracy (government by the few, those who can possibly be the most worthy) as the best regime. In America, Tocqueville saw an entire new possibility, something that had never been observed: the possibility of a spirited democracy, of a democracy that did not reduce everything to the lowest common denominator, but that was based on ideal of man as "created equal" and inherently on an ideal of "indefinite perfectability of man". An egalitarianism that was not violent or resentful but that was attached to freedom and self-government as places of indefinite virtuosity. No matter what Burke may have said on that speech, I suppose he did not grasp this. Or he would deny his entire thought. Anyway, I would still appreciate if you shared your insights on that Speech if, for you, the same reveals something truthful on Burke or on America that I'm missing.
- luispc
December 6, 2009 at 2:59am
Selections from Burke's speech: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/burke10.txt "Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. [Footnote: 15] IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE. [Footnote: 16] We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit potuit cognoscere virtus. [Footnote: 17] Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision that when in the fourth generation the third Prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation which, by the happy issue of moderate and healing counsels, was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one--if, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarcely visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him: "Young man, there is America--which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, [Footnote: 18] show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day! Excuse me, Sir, if turning from such thoughts I resume this comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province called for L11,459 in value of your commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was L507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the Colonies together in the first period. I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular details, because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce with our Colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object, in view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were to detail the imports, I could show how many enjoyments they procure which deceive the burthen of life; how many materials which invigorate the springs of national industry, and extend and animate every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed; but I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. I pass, therefore, to the Colonies in another point of view, their agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a million in value. Of their last harvest I am persuaded they will export much more. At the beginning of the century some of these Colonies imported corn from the Mother Country. For some time past the Old World has been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, [Footnote: 19] had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 10:39am
Where is the resentment? "In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your Colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the great contests [Footnote: 24] for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues, have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles." There is more....
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 10:43am
Again: "If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least co-eval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the Northern Provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the people. The Colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these Colonies has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, who have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed...."
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 10:45am
Finally, for now: "Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this description, because in the Southern Colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these Colonies which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them [Footnote: 25] not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude; liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. [Footnote: 26] This study readers men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze....."
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 10:47am
"No matter what Burke may have said on that speech, I suppose he did not grasp this. Or he would deny his entire thought." Luis, Burke and Tocqueville were writing sixty years apart from very different perspectives, so it isn't surprising even at the most basic level that they had some different views. However, the question is not whether Burke and Tocqueville had different attitudes toward political democracy -- they did. The question is whether Burke regarded the American revolutionaries as manifesting the same "violent, resentful spirit" that he saw later in the French Revolution. You suggest he did. I suggest he did not, and I advance the text of the Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies to support that. I have yet to see any evidence to back up your assertion. JD picked out some of the exact quotes I was going to paste, in fact,
- ironyroad
December 6, 2009 at 2:23pm
Burke's ideas, Irony, are similar to those of Montesquieu and Locke in as much as the all believed that manufacturing, commerce, and trade made the world of the moderns very different from that of the ancients. It also acted as a natural leveler. John Adams belonged to their company and Jefferson of the 1770’s did not, though later on under the influence of Adams he began to moderate his views. Before that Jefferson’s thought with its emphasis on self sufficiency and reliance on the land held values closer to those of the ancients.
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 3:46pm
Interesting speech. Still, with a very different reading from the spirit behind the American Revolution from Paine's. The key words, it seemed to me, are a "love of freedom" endorsed by the "Colonists" as "descendants of Englishmen". Yes, a narrative according to which a good system of government would be possible after the the pernicious fire of the Revolution had been estinguished... This was not of course the narrative inhabited by Paine and by Jefferson and later understood by Tocqueville. For these, the American creed was ultimately based on fundamental equality and not on freedom (liberty was understood not as a value in itself but as a normative consequence of a basic respect for equality as inherent dignity). For these the American Revolution was not a mere colonial rebelion of Englishmen; it was understood as a "world historical event" based on universalist principles that expressed the true moral sense of man as man (see Gordon S. Wood on Paine and Jefferson on this). And, most importantly, for these a Revolution as the American was not a fire to be extinguished in order to give way to good moderate government of "free Englishmen", only transposed to the other side of the Atlantic. That Revolution was an ethical foundation with a permanent framing meaning (something that was articulated by Hannah Arendt in On Revolution), i.e., something that had to be permanently inhabited by each generation of citizens. Something that shaped their moral sense, their common sense, and turned each one of them (each one of them as egalitarianly citizen) into vigilant keepers of their institutions if justice was to be kept alive. For Burke, this had an egalitarian and populist meaning that he would find contra-natura in his "freedoms of the Englishmen" disposition. Going back to the resentful note, you seem to have reacted particularly to a passage of mine in which a say the following: "I tend to understand Paine in light of a fundamental difference. A difference Burke doesn't grasp (the first European that would understand such a difference would be Tocqueville) between the violent, resentful spirit of the French Revolution and the innocent foundational spirit of the American Revolution." With all the differences I see between Paine and Burke and between Tocqueville and Burke, I never said (you can read my passage again) that Burke was resentful or that he saw the Americans has resentful. I said that he did not grasp something that Tocqueville grasped (I think truthfully): the difference between a Revolution such as the French and a Revolution such as the American. The difference between a virtuous egalitarianism tied to an ideal of "indefinite perfectability of man" and a destructive egalitarianism more interested in resentfully abolishing an old world than in building a new one. A difference between a "common sense" that meant the moral sense of man as man and a populist destructive "common sense". After reading that speech, as interesting as it is, I maintain that he did not grasp that difference. If Burke sees a difference in the American political world he never ties it to the virtuosity of an egalitarian Revolution based on the moral sense of man as man. This, I insist, would be contra-natura for Burke. He can only see something good in the American political world after understanding it as a mere continuation of the aristocratic "freedoms of the Englishmen" world. That is, Burke can only see the American political world in a good light after annuling its most important originality and its most distinguishing feature. Thanks again for that speech. This was interesting.
- luispc
December 6, 2009 at 4:06pm
A more polished version of my post: Interesting speech. Still, Burke's understanding of the American political spirit is very different from Paine's. The key words, it seemed to me, are a "love of freedom" endorsed by Americans as "descendants of Englishmen". Yes, a narrative according to which a good system of government would be possible after Englishness had been restored... This was not, of course, the narrative inhabited by Paine and by Jefferson and later understood by Tocqueville. For these, the American creed was ultimately based on fundamental equality. It was not based on freedom. Liberty was not denied, of course. But it was not understood as value in itself, rather as a normative consequence of a basic respect for equality as inherent dignity. Plus, for Jefferson and Paine, the American Revolution was not a mere colonial rebelion of Englishmen; it was understood as a "world historical event" based on universalist principles that expressed the true moral sense of man as man (see Gordon S. Wood on this). And, most importantly, for Jefferson and Paine a Revolution as the American was not a fire to be extinguished in order to give way to a good moderate government of "free Englishmen", only transposed to the other side of the Atlantic. That Revolution was an ethical foundation with a permanent framing meaning (something that was articulated by Hannah Arendt in On Revolution), i.e., something that had to be permanently inhabited by each generation of citizens. Something that shaped their moral sense (their "common sense") and turned each one of them (each one of them as egalitarianly citizen) into vigilant keepers of their institutions if justice was to be kept alive. For Burke, this had an egalitarian and populist meaning that he would find contra-natura in his "freedoms of the Englishmen" disposition. Going back to the resentful note, you seem to have reacted particularly to a passage of mine in which I say the following: "I tend to understand Paine in light of a fundamental difference. A difference Burke doesn't grasp (the first European that would understand such a difference would be Tocqueville) between the violent, resentful spirit of the French Revolution and the innocent foundational spirit of the American Revolution." With all the differences I see between Paine and Burke and between Tocqueville and Burke, I never said (you can read my passage again) that Burke was resentful or that he saw the Americans as resentful. I said that he did not grasp something that Tocqueville grasped (I think truthfully): the difference between a Revolution such as the French and a Revolution such as the American. The difference between a virtuous egalitarianism tied to an ideal of "indefinite perfectability of man" and a destructive egalitarianism more interested in resentfully abolishing an old world than in building a new one. A difference between a "common sense" that meant the moral sense of man as man and a populist destructive "common sense". After reading that speech, as interesting as it is, I maintain that Burke did not grasp that difference. If Burke sees a difference in the American political world he never ties it to the virtuosity of an egalitarian Revolution based on the moral sense of man as man. This, I insist, would be contra-natura for Burke. He can only see something good in the American political world after understanding it as a mere continuation of the aristocratic "freedoms of the Englishmen" world. That is, Burke can only see the American political world in a good light after suppressing its most important originality and its most distinguishing feature. Thanks again for that speech. This was interesting.
- luispc
December 6, 2009 at 4:29pm
"Burke's ideas, Irony, are similar to those of Montesquieu and Locke". I couldn't disagree more. Unfortunately I don't have the time to develop. But how can one understand Burke's political ideas as similar to Locke's when Burke finds equality to be contra-natura and Locke bases its political system on equality, equating it with justice?
- luispc
December 6, 2009 at 4:31pm
And Locke bases HIS political system, of course.
- luispc
December 6, 2009 at 4:32pm
" But how can one understand Burke's political ideas as similar to Locke's when Burke finds equality to be contra-natura and Locke bases its political system on equality, equating it with justice?" John Locke, Luis, held stock in a company that traded in slaves: "The Royal Africa Company." You need to stop relying on secondary sources and do a little more research into primary ones.
- jacksondyer
December 6, 2009 at 4:54pm
"With all the differences I see between Paine and Burke and between Tocqueville and Burke, I never said (you can read my passage again) that Burke was resentful or that he saw the Americans as resentful." I apologize for misreading you, luis, if you didn't mean that, but still I'd say that the basic gist of your original comments was clear: Burke's attitude to the American Revolution in the mid-late 1770s maps onto his reading of the French Revolution in 1789, and that puts him the other side of a line from Tocqueville and Paine. I don't believe that to be the case, and I'd suggest a comparative reading of "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies" and "Reflections of the Rev. in France" would bring the important distinctions to light. Furthermore, although I don't disagree when you write "He can only see something good in the American political world after understanding it as a mere continuation of the aristocratic "freedoms of the Englishmen" world. That is, Burke can only see the American political world in a good light after suppressing its most important originality and its most distinguishing feature" -- I don't believe that was what was at issue. We weren't discussing why Burke might have seen the American events with a different eye than the one he turned on the French crisis a decade-plus later (as assessment which I'm now pleased to see you concurring in); we were discussing whether Burke saw both revolutions as involving the same combination of class rancor, ideological challenge, and violent resentment.
- ironyroad
December 6, 2009 at 6:09pm
Are the "Two Treatises of Government" a secondary source?
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 2:05am
Irony, if you say that we were discussing "whether Burke saw both revolutions as involving the same combination of class rancor, ideological challenge, and violent resentment" it seems to me you are still misreading what I said above. Again, I talked about a difference that Burke didn't grasp. Not about a difference that he made. If, for Burke, there is a difference between the French and the American Revolution (a difference between a contra-natura Revolution and a Revolution of "English descendants"), it is not made in the terms made by Tocqueville (i.e., the latest is the one who distinguishes a violent, resentful Revolution - the French - and a Revolution based on a foundational spirit based on an universalist, egalitarian creed). Further, I really can't understand how can you say that Burke was on the same side of the line with Paine and Tocquevile (which is, you will agree, a very original reading) simultaneously agreeing that he saw the American Revolution as a mere continuation of the aristocratic "freedom of the Englishmen" world. Seeing the American Revolution in this light means to "revise" totally its meaning for Paine as later grasped by Tocqueville.
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 2:16am
luis, I said "the other side of the line," not "the same side of the line."
- ironyroad
December 7, 2009 at 2:41am
But didn't you say, right away, "I don't believe that to be the case"? Quoting from you: "Burke's attitude to the American Revolution in the mid-late 1770s maps onto his reading of the French Revolution in 1789, and that puts him the other side of a line from Tocqueville and Paine. I don't believe that to be the case" So, if you don't believe that to be case, you believe them to be on the same side of the line. Or not?
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 5:47am
Anyway, if you do look at Paine and Tocqueville as being on a different side of the line from Burke, it seems we agree on something. Those different sides led them to distinguish the American Revolution in different ways. Paine and Jefferson fought for it (and later Tocqueville stood in wonder before the democracy implemented by it), believing in it as a political expression of the moral sense of man as man (an egalitarian creed shaped in the Lockean tradition). Burke looked favourably at the American political world in the 1790's, understanding it in a totally different light, i.e., revising it as a mere colonial rebellion intended at keeping the aristocratic "freedom of the Englishmen" world (as showed in that speech). This is the way in which I understand them as standing in different lines or sides. Do you agree with this approach?
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 6:20am
Luis is the perfect casuist. He always changes the terms of a debate to suit his preconceived notions. He makes it seem above as if Tom Paine were the equal in importance of Jefferson which he wasn’t.
- jacksondyer
December 7, 2009 at 11:07am
What terms of the debate did I change, Jackson? From top to bottom, it seems to me, the debate was on the meaning of Tom Paine's "common sense". From top to bottom I have defended that that "sense" was to be understood as a moral sense of man as man and that it was not to be confused with the propagandistic "common sense" of the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of contemporary America. And from top to bottom, I've defended that Paine's common sense epithomized the egalitarian spirit of the American Revolution, which was not grasped by Burke (even if the last didn't have a negative image of the American political world, as reminded by Irony, he interpreted the same in very different terms from Paine's or Jefferson's). And when did I say that Paine and Jefferson were of equal importance? To say that they both epithomize the egalitarian spirit of 1776 (and eventually to say, with Gordon S. Wood, that Paine articulated what Jefferson, as a man of action, didn't) does not mean to make a judgment on their relative relevance. I did not make this last judgment and if I had, I had surely pointed out that Jefferson is much more relevant in the American mind than Paine. On Locke, I'm still waiting for you to say if you believe the Two Treatises to be a "secondary source" in the above mentioned sense.
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 11:42am
Luis, when discussing the US Constitution that document is a primary source. All others are secondary sources, including Locke. The same when we are discussing Burke's views of the American revolution. His texts and letters are primary sources, those of de Tocqueville are secondary sources. Now, when discussing Locke's or Jeffersons' views of liberty their own conduct in relation to the liberty of others is also a primary source of understandign. Hence the fact that Locke invested in the slave trade or that Jefferson owned slave is a point worth discussing. Did common sense tell them that in a slave holding society owning slaves was permissable no matter one's own private views on the matter? As to the terms of the debate as Irony said pointed out in his post (12/06/2009 - 6:09pm EDT | ironyroad) how you changed the terms the debate about Burke's view of the American Revolution.
- jacksondyer
December 7, 2009 at 2:30pm
I am familiar with the concept, Jackson. My question was if Locke's Two Treatises are a "secondary source" when accessing Locke's thought... Are the Two Treatises of less importance than his stocks? Well, do check your portfolio or who knows what future generations will accuse you of defending: from children's labor to environment destroyer, probably? Well, on Jefferson as a slave owner, is that the image of him that led 20th century Americans to build him a memorial? Were they glorifying slave trade and slave ownership? These kinds of arguments, with all due respect, are old marxist delegitimating arguments... The answer to the same was accutely given by Hannah Arendt in On Revolution. Arendt said, when reacting against what she named "the Historian's trap", that when looking upon the past, if foundational moments are at stake, we should not look upon the rotten bits of the ones involved (rotten bits they inevitably have as men of their age who were not monks departed from the world...). We should look upon their prospective meaning as triggered by the same and experienced by future generations. If we do not do this, we'll surely be unable to grasp the meaning of the same events (and inherently their actual historical relevance as a prospective relevance), ending up with a kind of curiosity wax museum... On Burke as a primary source of the American Revolution, I'm not sure that's the case. He wrote on it in the 1790's. I'm not sure his works should be understood as more authorative than Tocqueville's, who had not an animus for or against the French Revolution and who was not inherently obsessed with opposing it the traditions of "the descendants of Englishmen". And even if one considered Burke as a primary source (simultaneously considering the event as much more lenghty), surely Paine's and Jefferson's works should be considered first...
- luispc
December 7, 2009 at 4:30pm
A very interesting discussion, guys, which caused me to go take that anthology of Burke's writings down from my shelf and actually read some of that fascinating "Conciliation with the Colonies" speech. I'll be out of the loop for a couple of weeks.
- ironyroad
December 7, 2009 at 5:00pm
"Arendt said, when reacting against what she named "the Historian's trap", that when looking upon the past, if foundational moments are at stake, we should not look upon the rotten bits of the ones involved (rotten bits they inevitably have as men of their age who were not monks departed from the world...). We should look upon their prospective meaning as triggered by the same and experienced by future generations." Oh, and I am sure that if Arendt said it it must be true. Provided of course you can tell us what "the rotten bits of the ones involved" are in our (oops, excuse me, in my) posts (since your posts are immaculate examples or prospective thought. Arendt by the way is also a secondary source when it comes to constitutional issues.
- jacksondyer
December 7, 2009 at 11:11pm
I don't understand what you mean, Jackson. Arendt was making a point on the irrelevance of exploring those "rotten bits" of the founders (such as slave ownership) if one wants to understand the meaning of the Revolution. This Revolutionary meaning should be understood for what it was at the moment of the Revolution: a prospective meaning desirably inhabited by future generations. It was their complete lack of understanding of a Revolution such as the American (a Revolution without enemies in the Schmittian sense, a Revolution oriented at building the future and not at destroying people associated with the past) that led Marxists to totemically insists in subjects such as slaveownership (and, also, I learn now, on stock ownership). Thus creating a wax museum and not truly an understanding of the American Revolution. Arendt on the American Revolution is not even a secondary source, it seems to me. That hasn't stop her from making a very important point on the relevant perspective of the present when looking upon past foundational moments.
- luispc
December 8, 2009 at 2:26am
luispc “I don't understand what you mean, Jackson. Arendt was making a point on the irrelevance of exploring those "rotten bits" of the founders (such as slave ownership) if one wants to understand the meaning of the Revolution.” These were not just “rotten bits.” In any case, you were making a point, citing Arendt, for the necessity of reading history prospectively. This is at best debatable. Just because and historical event led to social betterment doesn’t make that event moral or just. WW2 led to a more peaceful Europe. Ought we to see the war as a desirable event because it helped future generations live in peace? The significance of the event cannot then be seen solely in “a prospective meaning desirably inhabited by future generations.” And please stop bringing up red herrings like Marxists readings of history or Schimmittian readings of politics. I have no interest in either of these two thinkers. Marxists aren’t the only ones who believe in factoring in slavery as an failing of the American independence movement. A number of important American thinkers at the time, such as Emerson, also thought so. Finally, Arendt is not an “original source.” This is just plain nonsense.
- jacksondyer
December 13, 2009 at 11:45am