Two weeks ago, we saw Lincoln at the cinema. It is a wonderful film; I particularly enjoyed the mellifluent personal insults hurled by Tommy Lee Jones in the character of Thaddeus Stevens. The film capably portrays the fear of the Southern Democrats that, if those whom they had oppressed were given even the slightest freedom, then the flood-gates would burst and the Negro would rise up against the White Man. I can’t help feeling that this fear lives on, and was revealed over the past six months, as it had been four years ago. But that’s a topic for a future posting.
The next morning, I read about the growing confrontation between President Mohammed Morsi and the Egyptian judiciary (see BBC News or Washington Post). Similar struggles between ethnic and sectarian groups can be seen in Iraq, the other southwest Asian fledgling democracy as can struggles between government, judiciary, and military in Pakistan, a not quite so fledgling democracy in south Asia.
The political struggles of the 13th Amendment (see also Wikipedia) must have been a mere fraction of those involved in constructing the Constitution itself and its first ten amendments. And yet, it seems that the early Americans were able to concoct a political arrangement relatively quickly, and with surprisingly little ensuing bloodshed, compared with the efforts going on in today’s emerging democracies. Is this really the case? And if so, why?
The newly-minted United States had some advantages, including the fact that it was a new country. The residents of the thirteen colonies (at least those of European descent) did not have the long history of clannish and sectarian rivalry and suspicion that has complicated the construction of democracies in European and Asian countries. There were, of course, significant points of contention between the slave-owning south, with its dependency on the labour-intensive plantation, and the more industrial north. Anabaptists and Anglicans had trouble seeing eye-to-eye, and both mistrusted the Unitarians. But these rivalries were relatively recent, and the attention of Americans has always been short.1 Finally, the colonies had never had an independent existence, so it was easy to unite them against their common enemy: Britain.
Another factor that helped was the way the founders treated the Army and the topic of religion in framing the constitution: the influence of either of these on the political process was regarded with deep suspicion (at least by some in the Continental Congress). And with good reason: their experience was of a King and Parliament who used two methods to secure the compliance of the colonists: moral compliance through the church (of which the King was the head), and where that failed physical compliance through use of a standing army.
Examining the question of an Army first, take a look at Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution: “The Congress shall have the power ... To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; ...”. The limit of two years on appropriations for an army was to prevent the government being able to create a standing army for the subjugation of the people. The navy had no such restriction, for two reasons: a navy is inherently a force for projection of power, not useful for suppression of one’s own population; and a navy requires long term investment in order to construct a viable fleet. The army in those days did not require that kind of long term investment, and besides, the defence of the state was assumed to be provided for adequately by the militia, hence the Second Amendment.2
The First Amendment limits the influence of religion. For something that contains only 45 words (not forgetting its six punctuation marks), this piece of prose is amazingly packed with significance. Not surprisingly therefore, it has also sparked tremendous amounts of controversy. I am sure that in the coming months I will return to consider the First Amendment further, but suffice it to say for now that, revisionist “historians’” rants to the contrary, I am convinced that the First Amendment was a brilliant coup by a few of the framers to keep government separate from religion for the benefit of both. What we are seeing in Egypt provides, in my opinion, evidence of why this was so important: in order to ensure institution of a religious form of government, Mohammed Morsi has had to declare himself above the law, and is rushing a referendum on the new constitution despite significant opposition that continues today, two weeks after I started writing this post.
It would be interesting to look at the history of revolutions, specifically looking at the role of the army and religion (and, where it is pre-existing, the judiciary), comparing those that were ultimately successful with those that were not. For example, Britain itself played with being a republic in the second half of the 17th century. It is surprising how polarised historians are about this period, even today, all the way down to whether to call it a revolution or a civil war. Very briefly, King Charles I managed to create religious, political, and in the end military strife within his kingdom, for which he was rewarded with a trial3 for treason and executed. But the Parliament that subsequently attempted to govern the country was still torn by religious differences, with puritanical elements attempting to dominate. In the end, however, it was poor relations between the government (which shifted to a protectorate (some would say dictatorship) under the Lord High Protector Oliver Cromwell, and subsequently his son) and the New Model Army which led to the abandonment of Britain’s brief attempt at a Republic, and the restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II.4 I would conclude, therefore, that at least partially as a result of inadequate handling of the place of religion in government, and permitting a standing army to exert political power, the British Revolution can be declared to have been a failure.
I am far less well informed [read: am completely uninformed] about the French Revolution. Perhaps readers who are better informed can help me here. But I see far less influence of religion. And I would guess that the Americans had learned from the failure of the British, and the French had learned from the success of the Americans.
I was pleasantly surprised to read about the words of Abdurrahman Wahid, the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, in a wonderful article by Kelly James Clark: “Omnipotence needs no defense.” He goes on to explain, in the essay of that title in Clark’s book Abraham’s Children, that if we agree that God is omnipotent, then we have no right to claim that we are God’s defenders on earth: those who do are “either deluding themselves or manipulating religion for their own mundane and political purposes.” If our revolution (and continued governance) is to be successful, it would appear that it should be by the people for the people: leave religion to individual conscience rather than trying to claim it as your casus belli – for the latter course seems to be inevitably linked with increasing despotism.
2 Suffice it to say for now that I strongly disagree with the 5-4 opinion of the Supreme Court of the U.S. in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, and I am not alone in this disagreement: there were two strongly-worded dissenting opinions to this decision, which are part of the same document linked above. Throughout almost all of the Constitution, the framers considered their words to be sufficient to convey the reasoning behind the words. But in the case of protecting the right to keep and bear arms, the framers considered it necessary to preface their words with an explanation: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state”. Justice Scalia et al. felt that this preamble “announced the Amendment’s purpose, but did not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause (quoted from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment02/ downloaded 28 November 2012). I doubt that we will ever see eye to eye on why they felt this particular amendment needed “its purpose announced,” while the others did not. For example, the oft-forgotten Third Amendment: no announcement of purpose. Of course, there have been no Supreme Court decisions needed concerning this amendment.↩
3 The trial itself makes interesting reading: just like modern day despots, Charles objected that the court did not have jurisdiction to try him, since he was their monarch (he had, after all, asserted the Divine Right of Kings); the court, meanwhile, had to resort to very questionable legal practices in order to complete the proceedings, including forcibly keeping away members who did not agree with the forgone conclusion that Charles was guilty of treason.↩
4 Epilogue: If the country had been worried about Charles I’s Roman Catholic tendencies, the new Charles was worse: his Declaration of Indulgence meant that the good Protestants could no longer penalize Roman Catholics for their failure to believe in the “right” religion. Far worse was Charles’ successor, James II, who went so far as to convert to Roman Catholicism!!↩
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