August 5, 2007
Review Corner
We don't have a lot of "Public Intellectuals" these days. Academics have poisoned their own reputations with lack of scholarship and partisan sniping, few artists have stepped up to the plate. Politicians and pundits have been too partisan.
I would suggest, however, that Michael Barone carries the torch into this century. Barone is conservative and passionate in ideas, yet few would call him partisan. Even Newsweek's Eleanor Clift is deferential to him on "The McLaughlin Group." I treated myself to a purchase of his Almanac of American Politics in 2004. It comes with a subscription to a web version. I will never be without it again.
I really enjoyed two of his other books and recommend, highly, both. "The New Americans" was written before the great immigration contretemps, yet provides sagacious counsel about immigration and assimilation. His "Hard America, Soft America" should be read by every American as a prerequisite to making any political comment. It lays out the importance of a free market, competitive Hard America and also gives thoughtful voice to the need for a Soft America. It is an evenhanded and thoughtful work.
I just finished Barone's "Our First Revolution." I can heartily recommend this one as well.
Looking back 90 years before the American Revolution, Barone sees the seeds of the American Revolution in "The Glorious Revolution" which unseated the Stuarts, set up Britain -- almost accidentally -- as an archetype of representative government, cemented her as a defender of personal liberty, and created a military and financial power.
Of course, England had the Magna Carte, and natural law. Yet Britons had no rights which could not be waived by a monarch or suspended by Parliament. "Parliament was an event, not an institution," says Barone. Kings ruled for a dozen years, only calling a Parliament when they needed money. After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament has met every year since 1689.
One also sees the beginnings of party politics as the Whigs and the Tories are born (both are pejorative). Mostly one sees the roots of the bill of rights. As Parliament crafts a weaker version, the ideas took root in the American colonists who wanted, as Barone points out, the liberty they thought they had secured themselves as British subjects.
I found the first half to be a little work. If you don't know the players and the history leading up to it, there are a lot of data to juggle. If you don't have Barone's memory, you'll need to bookmark the family tree, maps, and footnotes.
I was also hoping for a Lockean demand for rights and liberties (Locke is in it) and moderately disappointed that it was just a typical, European, dynastic conflict and religious war. You don't find the purity of the American Declaration of Independence, At the same time, you get a clear picture of why they eschewed "an established religion," why the right to bear arms was enshrined and, with my apologies to the Jacksonians and Taneyites, why Alexander Hamilton sought a national bank.
Barone's a gem. When you get acclimated to the cast, the book moves like a rocket: informative and entertaining. I give it four-and-a-half stars.