John Keown: America's Unjust Revolution ... What British Tyranny?
[John Keown is Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics of Georgetown University.]
Mark Tooley has probably done as well as anyone could in his attempt to reconcile the American Revolution with the "just war" tradition. He is, however, hammering a square peg into a round hole. His third blow is no more successful than his previous two.
He wonders (again) if I am opposed to all war. I reply (again) that I am not. The just war tradition is not pacifist; neither am I. Nor have I "reinvented" its criteria as a "rhetorical tool against virtually all force." I reiterate that I adopt the standard criteria as articulated by orthodox sources such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Tooley says my case would be more persuasive if I could point to any conflict that met the criteria. I do not see why that should follow, but I am happy to oblige. It seems to me that the Allies in the Second World War were justified in resisting the aggression of the Nazis and the Japanese. (This is not, of course, to condone everything the Allies did, such as the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a flagrant breach of the just war's prohibition on targeting non-combatants.) However, the Allies' resistance in that war was to attacks; the resistance of the colonial rebels was to a tax.
Tooley claims I try to reduce the War for Independence to a "trifling tax dispute, with all the British repressions simply the reasoned reaction to misbehaving colonists." I never claimed the tax dispute was "trifling," but the rebellion was (as Alvin Rabushka writes in his monumental study of taxation in colonial America) a "tax revolt, first and foremost." My paper asks:
Did the imposition of a few, limited taxes on the wealthy colonies to help pay for their security constitute a just cause for armed insurrection?
Despite three bites of the cherry, Tooley has failed to provide a cogent answer. And his list of British "repressions," such as the dissolution of colonial legislatures, is (as I pointed out in my last rejoinder) merely a list of understandable actions taken by the British to counter open rebellion. Tooley has, again, failed to explain why those actions were unjust, let alone tyrannical. Does the government not have as much a right to suppress unjust rebellion as citizens have a duty not to foment it?
Read entire article at American Spectator
Mark Tooley has probably done as well as anyone could in his attempt to reconcile the American Revolution with the "just war" tradition. He is, however, hammering a square peg into a round hole. His third blow is no more successful than his previous two.
He wonders (again) if I am opposed to all war. I reply (again) that I am not. The just war tradition is not pacifist; neither am I. Nor have I "reinvented" its criteria as a "rhetorical tool against virtually all force." I reiterate that I adopt the standard criteria as articulated by orthodox sources such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Tooley says my case would be more persuasive if I could point to any conflict that met the criteria. I do not see why that should follow, but I am happy to oblige. It seems to me that the Allies in the Second World War were justified in resisting the aggression of the Nazis and the Japanese. (This is not, of course, to condone everything the Allies did, such as the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a flagrant breach of the just war's prohibition on targeting non-combatants.) However, the Allies' resistance in that war was to attacks; the resistance of the colonial rebels was to a tax.
Tooley claims I try to reduce the War for Independence to a "trifling tax dispute, with all the British repressions simply the reasoned reaction to misbehaving colonists." I never claimed the tax dispute was "trifling," but the rebellion was (as Alvin Rabushka writes in his monumental study of taxation in colonial America) a "tax revolt, first and foremost." My paper asks:
Did the imposition of a few, limited taxes on the wealthy colonies to help pay for their security constitute a just cause for armed insurrection?
Despite three bites of the cherry, Tooley has failed to provide a cogent answer. And his list of British "repressions," such as the dissolution of colonial legislatures, is (as I pointed out in my last rejoinder) merely a list of understandable actions taken by the British to counter open rebellion. Tooley has, again, failed to explain why those actions were unjust, let alone tyrannical. Does the government not have as much a right to suppress unjust rebellion as citizens have a duty not to foment it?