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Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
Couldn't say it better myself ...
Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)
A Weakness for Royalty
The vindication of John Adams.
Meir Y. Soloveichik
June 18, 2012,
Vol. 17, No. 38
Had our Founding Fathers been suddenly transported last week to
modern America and forced to watch the morning television shows, they would have
been shocked to see breathless American anchors all agog, celebrating the
enduring reign of a British monarch live from London. They would have wondered
why their countrymen were so enchanted by the glory of a direct descendant of
George III the same week that, centuries ago, Richard Henry Lee first submitted
his fateful resolution to the Continental Congress: “That these United Colonies
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are
absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
totally dissolved.” The man who seconded Lee’s resolution, however, would not
have been surprised. John Adams dedicated his life to the cause of liberty, yet
continued to insist that the allure of royalty among men could never be
abolished.
If the American Revolution came to embody not only a rebellion
against England, but against the very institution of monarchy, a great deal of
the credit goes to Thomas Paine, who devoted the central section of his
Common Sense to a theological attack on kingship of any kind.
“Government by kings,” he informed his many thousands of American readers, “was
first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of
Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever
set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.” As Harvard’s Eric Nelson notes in
his fascinating book The Hebrew Republic, Paine was drawing on
an idea of recent intellectual vintage. Modernity is often seen as an embrace of
secularism, Nelson remarks, but with the triumph of republicanism in modern
political thought the opposite actually occurred. “Renaissance humanism,
structured as it was by the pagan inheritance of Greek and Roman antiquity,
generated an approach to politics that was remarkably secular in character,”
Nelson writes of the previous political order. Meanwhile, in the fervor of the
Reformation in the 17th century, “Christians began to regard the Hebrew Bible as
a political constitution, designed by God himself for the children of
Israel.”
Some of these theologians founded their arguments for republicanism
on the Book of Samuel, wherein God responds with anger to the Israelites’
request for a king. Perhaps the most eloquent English version of this idea can
be found in both the poetry and prose of Milton, a great opponent of the
Restoration. Noting that “God in much displeasure gave a king to Israelites, and
imputed it a sin to them that they sought one,” Milton further argued that all
monarchy is idolatrous, as “a king must be adored like a Demigod, with a
dissolute and haughtie court about him, of vast expence and luxurie.” Had Milton
seen the parade of a thousand boats on the Thames last week, he might have
repeated his contention that a monarch does little except “pageant himself up
and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject
people, on either side deifying and adoring him.” Paine, while himself utterly
irreligious, knew his biblically literate American audience, and argued
similarly: “As exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on
the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of
scripture; for the will of the Almighty as declared by Gideon, and the prophet
Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings.”
Adams, in contrast, believed that while the rise of the American
republic would change the world, it could never change human nature. People, he
was certain, would always be attracted to the trappings of majesty, and it was
better to channel it than to ignore it. Upon meeting Paine, Adams reported in
his autobiography, “I told him further, that his reasoning from the Old
Testament was ridiculous, and I could hardly think him sincere. At this he
laughed, and said he had taken his ideas in that part from Milton; and then
expressed a contempt of the Old Testament, and indeed of the Bible at large,
which surprised me.” When he became vice president, Adams argued that royal
titles, such as “His Most Benign Highness,” should be given to the leaders of
the new government. If the grandeur akin to royalty were not accorded public
servants, Adams insisted, Americans would focus their enraptured attention on
others.
His proposal failed spectacularly, and fed false charges that Adams
was himself a monarchist. Mocked by his enemies as “His Rotundity, the Duke of
Braintree,” Adams suffered for eight years in a position that he called “the
most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his
imagination conceived.” For the rest of his life, Adams continued to express
envy at the credit accorded to Paine for the changes wrought by the Revolution.
“What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is Tom Paine’s
‘Common Sense,’ ” he wrote to Jefferson. “And yet history is to ascribe the
Revolution to Thomas Paine!”
Perhaps, though, Adams spoke too soon. Vindicating his prediction,
millions of Americans tuned in to the royal wedding and the Diamond Jubilee.
None of the enraptured anchors saw fit to cite Paine’s contention that “when a
man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of
kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honour, should
disapprove a form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of
Heaven.” Paine himself died alone and penniless. Meanwhile, David McCullough’s
bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of our second president has been
made into an HBO miniseries, celebrating Adams’s contributions to the American
cause. Somewhere, John Adams is—well, not smiling, certainly, but perhaps
harrumphing in quiet satisfaction.
Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Straus Center for Torah
and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and associate rabbi at
Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
A Good Quote...
Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. Edith Stiwell
Monday, June 11, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
What's the Difference between the Aristocratic and the merely Expensive?
"Who is this Proust? Huxley talking about him? Perhaps I ought to read him" Brian Howard,OE
Friday, June 8, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Just Started,looks good The Woman who heard Color by Kelly Jones
PW Reviews 2011 August #2
At the start of this intense and richly detailed novel from Jones (Lost Madonna), Lauren O'Farrell, an art detective, interviews 82-year-old Isabella Fletcher about a missing Wassily Kandinsky painting, a masterpiece last seen before WWII. Lauren's queries open a Pandora's box of agonizing dilemmas. Did Isabella's mother, Hanna, whose synesthesia allowed her to "hear" colors, but dead now 60 years, collaborate with the Nazis in looting Jewish-owned art, or was she a hero, saving "degenerate" paintings from the bonfires? Through Hanna's firm and authoritative voice, we learn of her trajectory from a naïve Bavarian farm girl to an art critic prized by the Nazis, beginning with her impulsive trip to Munich in 1900 and her employment and eventual marriage to Moses Fleischmann, an important art dealer. Hanna eventually catches the attention of Hitler himself. While at times totally implausible (would Hitler have a private lunch with the widow of a prominent Jew?), this story puts a wonderfully imaginative spin on art and history. (Oct.)
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Wha I will read soon...The White Devil by Justin Evans
Booklist Reviews 2011 April #1
*Starred Review* Readers of this thoroughly upsetting horror-mystery hybrid will find their nightmares imprinted with several unshakable images, the worst of which is that of a withered child hunched over a bed, vomiting bile into the mouth of a sleeping girl. The childâ€"known as "the Lot Ghost" by students of England's esteemed Harrow Schoolâ€"is revealed to be an early gay lover of Lord Byron, brought back to bloodthirsty life by the arrival of 17-year-old Andrew Taylor, who has fled his American school following a disastrous drug incident. Andrew is the spitting image of Byron, which gets him cast as the lusty poet in a school production written by housemaster Piers Fawkes, ex-genius and current alcoholic. Two boys who befriend Andrew are abruptly taken with a horrific respiratory illness, the details of which dovetail with the play's foremost concern: Who was Byron's greatest love? Evans' crackling literary mystery is resolutely academic; part of the climax actually involves the writing of an essay. If that sounds dry, fear not: the scourge of tuberculosis provides visceral, icky counterpoints, while Harrow itself contains Shirley Jackson levels of gloomy passages and dark secrets. Smart, scary, sexy, and gorgeously written to boot. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
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