Can a Revolution Be Lawful?

If the celebrations of this year’s semiquincentennial of independence are any indication, most Americans take pride in the revolutionary birth of our Republic. July 4, 1776, marked the birth of a “novus ordo seclorum,” and this nation seemed to have the power, as Thomas Paine wrote, “to begin the world over again.” Conservatives have always been somewhat ambivalent about those revolutionary beginnings. After all, conservatism emerged as a distinct philosophic position in reaction against the French Revolution, which was at least partly inspired, we must sadly admit, by events on this side of the Atlantic. How might thoughtful conservatives resolve the tension between counter-revolution and patriotism?

Certainly not by looking to the political Left. They accuse our Founders of hypocrisy or at least allege that they did not take their revolution far enough. This is old hat—the American franchisees of Jacobinism have been hurling this sort of invective since Thomas Jefferson returned from his mission to Paris. More surprising, perhaps, is that many on the Right are adopting increasingly revolutionary attitudes of their own. Some have called for “regime change” in favor of a “postliberal future,” or else declared that “conservatism is no longer enough.” Revolution (if not outright insurrection) is in the air. On both the Left and the Right, extremism is seen increasingly as a virtue and moderation as a vice. The limits of the Constitution are disparaged; politicos and theoreticians alike imagine new and more terrifying ways to deploy power against their enemies. The rage of parties does not seem to me likely to help us learn how to love our country or to justify the American Revolution. 

John Adams—America’s foremost revolutionary statesman—warned about the perils of this sort of radical political situation. In a pamphlet he wrote in 1765 during the beginnings of the Imperial Crisis, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, he urged his New England countrymen to adopt an ardent “spirit of liberty” and actively resist schemes from Parliament to destroy self-government and impose tyranny. But he also cautioned that this spirit could become little more than a “brutal rage” if left unenlightened. Adams and most of the Founders understood that revolution always poses serious dangers, and that it should always be a last resort. 

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