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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26211 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I guess I'll make the obligatory cynical post pointing out the fact that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document, but essentially just a very eloquently worded piece of Patriot propaganda, primarily meant to rally stateside on-the-fence loyalists and potential overseas allies over to the cause. It was not, as many now seem to want to interpret it, an actual good-faith attempt to justify their cause to the British government. (Basically an "open letter" to the crown. Most of the grievances were incredibly exaggerated, bordering on fabricated, which the actual British government would have realized; the drafters didn't care, because again, it wasn't actually intended for that audience.) I consider any deeper reading into the underlying philosophy behind the literal word of the Declaration to be peripheral to this fact; for example, I think Jefferson paints the colonies as having been "particularly patient and prudent" on the matter not because he truly believes in some kind of secessionist standard of conduct, but simply because it makes them look like the more reasonable party to outside observers.

They had their cause (independence from Britain) and their practical reasons, and worked the divine moral justifications out backwards from there, as in every cause that becomes a Just Cause (we see this all the time with their bastardized philosophical heirs today, as every issue suddenly becomes a Human Rights issue. Self-evident indeed). Just as the South did; it's not prominent nowadays for obvious reasons, buts there's plenty of equally eloquently written justification for secession by the moral and philosophical heavyweights of the Southern Cause. But they, of course, lost; the only real moral justification to the American Revolution, or secession, or whatever you want to call it, is the fact that they won the military conflict. If they lost, no one would be holding this document up as the benchmark for moral justification of secession.

All that said, I do believe that many of the founding fathers were probably in fact True Believers in some capacity; given how the USA turned out in the end, they were obviously right to believe they could do one better than the British in terms of governing the colonies.

Why can't both be true? It's both an objectively pretty reasonable set of conditions for secession and also a piece of propaganda for a particular side of a war that could plausibly be argued to be stretching the truth a bit. In fact, it's decently effective propaganda specifically because many people would consider it reasonable.

It's probably also worth considering that, at the time, basically every country in the world was a monarchy. So if you ever want any allies for a cause like theirs, it's very much in your interest to paint yourselves as having very reasonable objections to your specific king and definitely not any kind of general objection to the concept of monarchy. This is very much in contrast to the Marxist cause later on, which paints themselves as a danger to any regime that doesn't follow their ideology.

I guess I'll make the obligatory cynical post pointing out the fact that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document, but essentially just a very eloquently worded piece of Patriot propaganda, primarily meant to rally stateside on-the-fence loyalists and potential overseas allies over to the cause.

At the risk of continuing beating a dead-horse I this along with several of the replies below illustrative of how the Left's domination of academia and the wider media discourse has effectively neutered our ability to understand or own history and discuss certain topics productively.

For instance, what does it even mean to claim that it "wasn't really a legal document" in this context? It should go without saying "that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document" because the Declaration of Independence was quite explicitly an illegal document. Those who wrote and signed it were literally risking their necks, and yet it was written and signed...

You say it was primarily about making the case to their fellow colonials and winning over potential allies to which I reply "and?". What of it?

I really do think this cut to the quick of one of fundamental differences between the right and left-wing approaches. To someone who's brain is naturally left-inclined/Rousseau-pilled "legitimacy" and "credibility" are things that are imposed. The legitimate government is "legitimate" because they have guns, money, titles, and official documents stamped by official men with official stamps and sealed with official seals. In contrast, to someone who's brain is naturally right-inclined/Hobbes-pilled "legitimacy" is something that is derived from willing submission, for all the talk of authoritarianism, a core component of Hobbes' thesis is that a legitimate authority is one that the people choose to follow. The King is "the King" not because he wears a crown but because people obey him, or to put it another way "Government via consent of the governed".

In this context such critiques of the Declaration of Independance can't help but ring a bit hollow, the continental congress doesn't need to convince Parlament (though that would certainly be nice and save both side a lot of blood and treasure) they need to convince their would-be followers and allies to back their claim to the proverbial throne.

Basically an "open letter" to the crown. Most of the grievances were incredibly exaggerated, bordering on fabricated, which the actual British government would have realized; the drafters didn't care, because again, it wasn't actually intended for that audience.

I, for one, have argued that public schools should have students read Thomas Hutchinson's "Strictures upon the Declaration" at some point in American History classes, to provide some 'balance.'

I guess I'll make the obligatory cynical post pointing out the fact that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document, but essentially just a very eloquently worded piece of Patriot propaganda, primarily meant to rally stateside on-the-fence loyalists and potential overseas allies over to the cause.

Certainly, I agree.

It was not, as many now seem to want to interpret it, an actual good-faith attempt to justify their cause to the British government. (Basically an "open letter" to the crown. Most of the grievances were incredibly exaggerated, bordering on fabricated, which the actual British government would have realized; the drafters didn't care, because again, it wasn't actually intended for that audience.)

I agree that the Declaration was not an attempt to persuade the British--either the Crown, Parliament, or the British people--but it did not claim to be that. As Jefferson himself explicitly notes in the Declaration itself, those appeals had already happened, and the colonists did not find the prior responses to be tolerable. The entire point of the Declaration is a statement that the colonists were past the point of making their case by petition, and intended to resort to force of arms instead.

However, as much as Jefferson's dramatic flair is clearly in play, I think an in-depth review of the period shows that the British abuses were real, pervasive, and relatively severe compared to the expectations of the average British citizen. It's trendy to be cynical about the motivations of the Founders; this cynicism is badly misplaced.

Just as the South did; it's not prominent nowadays for obvious reasons, buts there's plenty of equally eloquently written justification for secession by the moral and philosophical heavyweights of the Southern Cause.

Some of those writers dodge the issue (others embrace it), but the central issue under dispute was slavery, full stop. Yes, there were absolutely other political disputes between the South, broadly, and the North or the West, but none of them held a candle to the central dispute over slavery. Take away slavery, and there would not have been a secessionary movement. It was both a necessary and sufficient cause of the Civil War.

Yes, the American colonists succeeded at seceeding, and the Confederacy did not; that's a fact of history. However, when we're evaluating other secessionary movements in different times and contexts, I think it's much more useful to realize that the American colonists were fighting for free expression, the right to self-defense, the sanctity of the home against intrusion, the rights of the accused and convicted, etc., while the Confederacy was fighting for the right to own slaves. If your modern movement bears more similarities to the first, then I will probably agree that it's justified; more like the second, and no.

...the only real moral justification to the American Revolution, or secession, or whatever you want to call it, is the fact that they won the military conflict.

I completely disagree. 'Justification' is an appeal to morality, and I reject the idea that successful efforts are justified, and failures are not. One who robs a bank and gets away unpunished is not morally justified in his theft.

Some of those writers dodge the issue (others embrace it), but the central issue under dispute was slavery, full stop. Yes, there were absolutely other political disputes between the South, broadly, and the North or the West, but none of them held a candle to the central dispute over slavery. Take away slavery, and there would not have been a secessionary movement. It was both a necessary and sufficient cause of the Civil War.

Yes, the American colonists succeeded at seceeding, and the Confederacy did not; that's a fact of history. However, when we're evaluating other secessionary movements in different times and contexts, I think it's much more useful to realize that the American colonists were fighting for free expression, the right to self-defense, the sanctity of the home against intrusion, the rights of the accused and convicted, etc., while the Confederacy was fighting for the right to own slaves. If your modern movement bears more similarities to the first, then I will probably agree that it's justified; more like the second, and no.

I think I would at least partly disagree with this. In my view, the best description of the role of slavery in the Confederacy's secession is that it was the lynchpin that made the secession and war possible and dictated the way it would be fought. I don't think most of the people actually fighting would describe their cause as fighting for the right to own slaves, and I don't think it's the true cause of the war. I think the real cause is the cultural split that goes back before the founding of the country, as described by Abilon's Seed and Scott's piece on it. I've been meaning to write a longer piece on this idea, but consider - why were the borders of the Confederacy what they were? Why did these people decide to embrace a plantation slavery economy while those other people rejected it in favor of industrialization?

I completely disagree. 'Justification' is an appeal to morality, and I reject the idea that successful efforts are justified, and failures are not. One who robs a bank and gets away unpunished is not morally justified in his theft.

I actually agree with you on disagreeing with myself on this, haha. I realize I phrased that very poorly such that it came off as a kind of "might makes right" appeal, which was not what I was trying to get at. I was more gesturing towards something like "history is written by the winners" and butchered it.

What do you think were the actual primary motivations of the secessionist colonists?

It's not some secret history that the cause for secession was primarily sparked by economic grievances regarding taxation and trade, and from there grew into general grievances about British government overreach in the colonies. I'm not here implying there was some hidden primary motivation other than genuine economic and philosophical aversion to British rule, coupled with belief in the greater potential of a new system; like I said, these guys were true believers.

I'm just pushing back on the framing of the Declaration of Independence in particular as some benchmark for the justification of secession because, I guess to put it succinctly, and for lack of better term, it's kind of a puff piece.

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