Trammwerk
24-04-2005, 06:48
So I've been reading His Excellency, George Washington (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400040310/002-2763999-8034441?v=glance) by Joseph J. Ellis. It's a very interesting book which provides an incredible look into George Washington, one which does not seem to fall into the sandtraps hero-worship and idle speculation.
Of interest in this is the idea that the notion that a republic, a federalist/confederate system an a liberal form of government as a whole was simply convenient at the time of the founding of the United States. The ideas of the Enlightenment had simply culminated at the same time as the American Revolution, and so the Founding Fathers, who had read the works of many of the Enlightenment writers during their education, adopted these new ideas more out of convenience and novelty than as the founding principles behind their Revolution.
The Revolution, to George Washington [and, I believe, as seen by most of the Americans in favor of the Revolution at the time], was more about individual liberty than anything else: freedom from the economic system that Britain was imposing on them [Washington was one of the first Virginia planters to become self-reliant rather than relying on tobacco trade with England] and the freedom to emigrate West of the Alleghenies, a right most Americans believed was theirs, and which the British were witholding from them in order to [as the Americans perceived it] give the land to Imperial cronies.
I think this is an interesting idea. Oftentimes we talk about America in terms of democracy and republicanism and the federalist system, i.e. states' rights versus federal government. Yet, it seems as though perhaps these were simply window dressing, ideas thrown together as they all peaked whilst the American Revolution raged. It appears as though perhaps the true spirit of the American revolution wasn't notions of democracy or the social contract or proper checks and balances in government: it was simply the American will to do what one wanted when one wanted where one wanted, and no goddamn Redcoat was going to tell 'em otherwise.
Washington himself didn't have the liberal education most of the other Founding Fathers received. Ellis claims he thought about the Revolution in this way, rather than in the "high-fallutin'" way the other Founders thought of it, thinking in terms of Hobbes and Locke and Smith. Washington instead thought of how the British appeared to have control over him, and how they considered him an inferior by virtue of being an American, and how they denied him the right to take the opportunities he could out West. And that was enough to rile him; apparently it was enough to rile the common Revolutionary as well.
Anyway. It's an interesting idea. What are your thoughts?
Of interest in this is the idea that the notion that a republic, a federalist/confederate system an a liberal form of government as a whole was simply convenient at the time of the founding of the United States. The ideas of the Enlightenment had simply culminated at the same time as the American Revolution, and so the Founding Fathers, who had read the works of many of the Enlightenment writers during their education, adopted these new ideas more out of convenience and novelty than as the founding principles behind their Revolution.
The Revolution, to George Washington [and, I believe, as seen by most of the Americans in favor of the Revolution at the time], was more about individual liberty than anything else: freedom from the economic system that Britain was imposing on them [Washington was one of the first Virginia planters to become self-reliant rather than relying on tobacco trade with England] and the freedom to emigrate West of the Alleghenies, a right most Americans believed was theirs, and which the British were witholding from them in order to [as the Americans perceived it] give the land to Imperial cronies.
I think this is an interesting idea. Oftentimes we talk about America in terms of democracy and republicanism and the federalist system, i.e. states' rights versus federal government. Yet, it seems as though perhaps these were simply window dressing, ideas thrown together as they all peaked whilst the American Revolution raged. It appears as though perhaps the true spirit of the American revolution wasn't notions of democracy or the social contract or proper checks and balances in government: it was simply the American will to do what one wanted when one wanted where one wanted, and no goddamn Redcoat was going to tell 'em otherwise.
Washington himself didn't have the liberal education most of the other Founding Fathers received. Ellis claims he thought about the Revolution in this way, rather than in the "high-fallutin'" way the other Founders thought of it, thinking in terms of Hobbes and Locke and Smith. Washington instead thought of how the British appeared to have control over him, and how they considered him an inferior by virtue of being an American, and how they denied him the right to take the opportunities he could out West. And that was enough to rile him; apparently it was enough to rile the common Revolutionary as well.
Anyway. It's an interesting idea. What are your thoughts?