Georgetown University ethicist John Keown has failed to succumb to the rigor of my logic that theAmerican Revolution did meet Christian Just War criteria! Oncemore, he leaves the same suspicion as when our enjoyable debatebegan. Does he believe any war is ever just? Or does he join manyothers in recent times who have largely reinvented Just Warstandards into a rhetorical tool against virtually all force? Thissubversion of traditional Just War teaching has become even morepronounced in many circles since 9-11, with religious critics ofthe Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts often solemnly citing Just War,without fully admitting that they do not find any war just.
Keown hints at the stratospheric standard he demands forJust War when he argues the American Revolution did not abolishslavery. Must a war redress all injustices to belegitimate? If so, no war is just. Traditional Just War teaching,beginning with St. Augustine, never insisted on such perfectionism,knowing it would have invalidated this teaching. Both sides in theAmerican Revolution maintained slavery. Most of the new UnitedStates abolished slavery before the British Empire did. And theRevolution's aspirations of human equality and rights for allcertainly animated abolitionism in America and Britain. Keown'scynicism is revealed in a quote he cites from one historian, whoharrumphed that the Revolution allowed wealthy "white men" toadvance while leaving virtually all others behind, amid muchpersisting "discriminatory" legislation. "Discriminatory" comparedto what? Among discriminations that the American Revolution almostimmediately removed from the old regime were religious tests forpublic office, military rank, academic tenure, andsuffrage.
No, the American Revolution, like every war, and everyhuman endeavor, did not create utopia. Christians typically do notanticipate the extinction of all injustice until God reigns onearth. But in the years immediately following the war, mostnorthern states abolished slavery, and all states vastly expandedthe franchise. The dramatic economic growth after the Revolution,fueled by low taxes and limited government, benefited virtually allclasses, with the population quickly doubling, tripling, andquadrupling, thanks to high birth rates and high immigration.Women's rights were a natural extension of the Revolution'spromises. Alexis de Tocqueville observed how the early Republichighly regarded women, who enjoyed a degree of independence unusualin Europe.Â
Keown tries to limit the American Revolution's origin to atrifling tax dispute, with all the British repressions simply thereasoned reaction to misbehaving colonists. Taxation withoutconsent of elected representatives, the abrogation of colonialcharters, the eventual dismissal of legislatures, the usurpation ofcolonial courts, the quartering of hostile troops, the seizure ofcolonial arsenals, and the suppression of trade were all assaultson liberty that the colonists, no less than for their Englishcousins in their own earlier struggles, foundintolerable.
Keown blames the victims for starting the spiral by notpassively accepting injustice from their ruling sovereign. WillKeown more daringly, and with more political incorrectness, nextcondemn Gandhi's revolt, which, though, pacifist, ultimately killedand destroyed far more than did the American Revolution?
Incongruently, Keown dismissed my referenceto Britain's own parliamentary led revolts against unbridledroyalism, saying the colonists were rebelling against bothParliament and King. But the colonists had their own legislatures,already long recognized in British law, not to mention atrans-colonial Continental Congress. The American Revolution easilyfit the Christian Reformed tradition's understanding that revoltagainst tyranny is legitimate if led by responsible lowermagistrates. This understanding informed the British parliamentaryrebellion in the 1640s, and no less the American colonists in the1770s.
Great British statesmen like Edmund Burke and the Earl ofChatham recognized this principle and openly opposed the Britishsuppression of the colonists. Keown dismisses their points, rootedin the British constitution. Instead, in his original article, herelied heavily on John Wesley, an evangelist, and Samuel Johnson, aliterary gadfly, both of whom were themselves initially sympatheticto the colonists. Why do Wesley and Johnson trump Burke andChatham? And when exactly would the colonists have been justifiedto rebel? What more should they have endured? Interestingly, Keownnever explains. He likewise ignored my suggestion that he justifythe British military suppression of the colonists, according toJust War criteria. He complains that it's not clear that I abide bythe "standard just war tradition as set out in [his] paper." But itremains unclear that his interpretation is in sync with historicJust War teaching, or instead reflects the modern subversion of it.He briefly observes that Just War's seven criteria have been met"on occasion." When exactly? His insistence on the AmericanRevolution's injustice would be more persuasive if he could pointto a similar conflict, or any conflict, that was just. Revealingly,he has not.
One of the earliest masters of the Just War tradition,Thomas Aquinas, argued that "disturbing" a "tyrannical government"is "no sedition," unless disturbing it creates greater harm thanthe original tyranny. Even earlier, Augustine reputedly wrote,"True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars thatare waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but withthe object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and ofuplifting the good." The parameters of traditional Just War areconsiderably wider, and more humanly attainable, than what Keownnow suggests. His insistence on a pure "right intention," which isimpossible among fallen humanity, effectively means that no warqualifies as just, nullifying the whole purpose of Just Warteaching.
In their "Olive BranchPetition" of July 1775, several months even after Lexington andConcord, the Continental Congress appealed as "still faithfulcolonists" to King George III for peace. The monarch peremptorilyresponded with a declaration ofwar against the "traitors." America's Founders and patriotswere not angels, as they themselves readily admitted. But theirdefensive war, waged against a foolish monarch who had rejectedcompromise and peace, was just, according to the rules of faiththen available. Those rules remain more persuasive than what Keownnow proposes.
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Letter to the Editor
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.
Yes, it's obvious that, as you put it, Keown has twisted JustWar standards into a rhetorical tool against virtually allforce.
The good news is the man's arguments are so weak and superficialthat he is without influence save others of his ilk.
I don't know way The American Spectator gives a fool like Keownany space.
Ethicists? There's a real market out there for ethicists.Professional students created the field, then hopped into it.Ethicists remind me of politicians.
I know an ethicist. After practicing law for a couple of years,he got bored (it was too much pressure) and became an ethicist. Nowhe gets to read a lot and teach college students that it is ethicalto abort babies.
My answer, from the perspective of Byzantine Orthodox moraltheology, is no war is "just", in the sense that it is not evil andsinful. The Orthodox Church never developed a formal doctrine of"just war", as did the Latin Church, in part because, with thecontinued existence of a central secular authority, much of themotivation for just war doctrine (e.g., the need to contain endemic"private wars") did not exist.
Another factor might be the different understandings of thenature and effects of "sin" in Eastern Christian (vs. Western)theology. Whereas Western theology tends to view sin from ajuridical perspective (a violation of objective law that requiresimposition of a punishment), Eastern theology views sin as aspiritual disease in need of healing. Thus, from the Westernperspective, it was possible (indeed, necessary) to devise a set of"objective" criteria whereby certain acts (e.g., killing) were notsinful. The Eastern Church, on the other hand, continued to viewall killing as sinful, insofar as man is created in God's image andlikeness, hence taking human life is an indirect attack againstGod. The Canons of St. Basil the Great (4th century) prescribe thesame penalty for soldiers who kill in war as formurderers--abstinence from communion for two years. And theByzantine Church refused, on several occasions, imperial requeststo grant absolution of sins to soldiers killed fighting theinfidel.
The Byzantines, however, were no pacifists. While they refusedto recognize any war as "just", they did recognize that some warsare necessary--to defend the Empire, to defend the Church, toprotect the weak and the innocent--and they fought very wellindeed, for close to a thousand years. Yet they never pretendedthat war was a positive good. It always remained evil--a necessaryevil on some occasions, but evil nonetheless.
Given the logical and ethical gymnastics in which one mustengage to make Western just war theory (devised in the Middle Agesto address the nature of war in that era) conform to the nature ofmodern war, it strikes me that the Byzantines were far morerealistic and honest in their assessment of the morality of war,but I doubt that Westerners, raised in the Western theologicaltradition (even if they eschew Christianity) would have the moralcourage to follow their lead.
Great points. And I might add, Byzantium, despite it gloriousculture and deep thinkers fell to the Muslims. Their greatCathedral is now a mosque -has been for 600 years.
The Just War Theory is just another hobby horse where fetishistswaste time disagreeing over abstractions no one can understand.
Frankly, who cares what Keown thinks anyway? He is just anotherivory tower leftist egghead who wants to bash America. His type ofChristian ethics is why the pews are empty in so many mainstreanchurches. Plus, isn't he a Brit? He was educated there. Maybe thisexplains his rancor over our revolt.
Many academics who argue for a position cherry-pick existingtheories and data to back it up. If that won't suffice, they simplymisrepresent the theories and data.
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