Tyranny would seem to be any government which rules for the sake of the ruler(s), rather than for the sake of the ruled. Some definitions would also include the further qualification that tyranny consists in government which rules arbitrarily, that is, in contradistinction to the “rule of law,” whereby the governing is predictable and equitable for those who are ruled. Given this, it seems that tyranny is not a wholly absolute term—that is, it is, at least in part, historically contingent. First, this is because tyranny is not identical with any particular form of regime. Rather, if Aristotle is correct, it consists of the corruption of regimes, which ostensibly are capable of being legitimate, at least in principle. This point is often lost in American political discourse, given the “Augustinianism” of the Founders, that is, the view that human nature is inherently flawed and not perfectible, and thereby needs to be checked from amassing too much power. If the rule of law is the antithesis of tyranny, and law is developed from historical particularities, than it seems that “tyranny” may obtain in a variety of historical contexts—it does not always look the same. In his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon S. Wood argues that the American Revolution was a radical phenomenon—but in a very particular way. He states that “The English thought they were a republicanized monarchy—and they were right…far from being the traditional sort of power-hungry monarchs, the English kings were ‘the Scourges of Tyrants, and the Assertors of Liberty,’” quoting New Jersey governor and signer of the Constitution William Livingston. It seems, then, that as in Aristotle, monarchy was not considered to be identical with tyranny. Rather, tyranny seems to have been considered to have developed from the British Crown only when the Crown began to deny the American colonists their rights as Englishmen—that is, when the Crown ceased to be an “Assertor of Liberty” with regard to the Colonists. Thus, it seems that the American Revolution was precipitated, in large part at least, not through appeals to the abstract reasoning of Jacobin revolutionaries, but through conservative appeals to English common law and the traditional rights of Englishmen, to Judeo-Christian morality and to the classical republicanism of Rome and Greece. Of course, there were elements of Enlightenment rationalism which crept in to the justifications of the Revolution, with Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson being examples.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 07:53:16 +0000
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