Understanding Edmund Burke: The Difference Between Change and Reformation

The eighteenth century includes both the French Revolution and the American Revolution, and an axiomatic insight into those years is the failure of the French Revolution and the success of the American Revolution. Why, and how, did the one backfire, while other other one triumphed?

Part of the answer is to be found in the writings of Edmund Burke. He saw the clear difference between the two.

Both revolutions began with a quest for liberty - yet the American Revolution succeeded in increasing individual freedom, while the French Revolution ended with a harsh dictatorship’s limitations on personal liberty. Why the difference?

As constitutional scholar Mark Levin writes:

Natural law and the civil society or social order are not at odds with the individual’s liberty but in harmony with it - each requiring the other.

The difference was that the American Revolution sought to overthrow the government, and to change the political order, while the French Revolution sought to change society and destroy the culture.

The American Revolution worked to preserve a civil order which had a historical basis of liberty: the American Revolution did not attack, but rather appealed to, the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, both documents enshrining civil rights.

The French Revolution, on the other hand, misidentified the problem. Rather than attacking the absolutist monarchy, which had abused its power and limited freedom, the French Revolution attacked French society and culture. In so doing, it assaulted the very basis on which liberty might be based.

Mark Levin gives further insight into Edmund Burke’s views of the two revolutions:

The prominent British statesman and scholar Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) emphasized another fundamental characteristic of the civil society - valuing human experience, tradition, and custom. Burke was outspoken in his sympathy for the American colonists and condemned the oppressions of the British monarchy that led to the American Revolution. However, he was also repulsed by the French Revolution. Burke saw the latter as a revolt led by elites and anarchists who had as their purpose not only redress against French rule but the utter destruction of French society, traditions, and customs.

Looking at Burke’s own words, he riffs on the words ‘change’ and ‘reform’ - as marking the distinction between the two revolutions. The word ‘reform’ refers to the act of directing, or redirecting, a system back to its original and foundational purposes and goals: so it was that the English system, based on the Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights, was oriented toward individual freedom and political liberty. The American Revolution was simply a redirecting of the system back toward those essential documents.

On the other hand, ‘change’ refers to the destruction of foundations. If the French Revolution wanted change, it wanted to destroy the civil and societal and cultural bases for freedom and liberty. If the French Revolution hoped to gain freedom and liberty via this route, it was sadly mistaken.

As Burke himself wrote:

There is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, that is, a marked distinction between change and reformation. The former alters the substance of the objects themselves; and gets rid of all their essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil, annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is, not a change in the substance, or in the primary modification, of the object, but, a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and, if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.

With accuracy, Burke predicted the course and conclusion of the French Revolution; he died before it was over. He saw how it must go; the series of events could have only one conclusion.

The French Revolution, Burke foretold, having destroyed, or at least wounded, the social and cultural order, would proceed with a succession of random samplings, unable to establish its hoped-for new order. The French Revolution could not settle on a new pattern, and so implemented a sequence of new patterns, and kept each but for a short while.

Instead of instituting a new and better system, the French Revolution weakened the nation by confusing it with a series of experiments in government, as Burke writes:

By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

The French Revolution failed for at least two reasons. One of them was that it hoped to fix a governmental and political wrong by changing, not the government and not the political system, but rather culture and society.

Political and governmental problems have political and governmental solutions. For this reason, the American Revolution, having identified such problems, did not undertake to change society and culture. Rather, it sought to change political and governmental structures.

The problems which led to the French Revolution did not have their roots in culture and society, yet the leaders of that revolution undertook to change both. They misidentified the source of the problems, and therefore prescribed the incorrect actions to repair those problems.

How the World is Structured: What is a Nation?

In the study of History, distinguish between ‘nations’ and ‘states’ — which is confusing, because in ordinary language, we use the words ‘nations’ and ‘countries’ interchangeably, and we use the word ‘states’ to refer to the fifty subdivisions within the United States.

But these words have a different meaning in historical scholarship.

A ‘state’ is a territory with its own government. As a territory, it can be identified on a map, and has distinct boundaries. It has one government for this territory. So what we call a ‘country’ in everyday language is a “state” — examples being Germany, France, Poland, Canada, etc.

A nation is a group of people with a shared sense of identity. The people of a nation have something in common: a language, a culture, a narrative history, a religion, art, music, clothing, etc.

Historians use the term ‘nation-state’ to identify a nation which has its own state. Japan is an example of a nation-state.

There are some states which are not ‘nation-states’ — these are states which include several different nations. Consider Russia: it includes not only ethnic Russians, but large numbers of people who live in regions thoroughly saturated in non-Russian languages and cultures. The area within Russia that is actually ‘Russian’ only part of the larger state.

Thus Russia would be classified as a state, but not a nation.

Conversely, there are nations which do not have states.

The Laplanders, or Lapps, are a nation with their own culture, language, etc., but do not have their own state. Rather, they live in parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia.

Historically, other nations without states would include Poland from 1795 to 1919. During those years, there was no country called Poland, but the Poles lived as residents in Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Likewise, some groups of Native Americans (‘Indians’) are classified as nations, but some of them do not have their own sovereign territory or state.

The ‘nation’ is an important factor in history, because it is more powerful in creating and maintaining identity than a state. The world is composed primarily of nation-states. The great movements of history are composed of nations, not nation-states.

The study of history serves people, according to Jill Lepore, when “it makes the case for the nation, and for the enduring importance of the United States and of American civic ideals, by arguing against” the malignant forms of nationalism.

By saying that thinking about history “makes the case for the nation,” Lepore is pointing to the concept of ‘nation’ in the abstract. She indicates that ‘nation’ is to be understood as a foundational concept: nations are the atoms which together form the world.

The modern world is a collection of nations. Has it always been this way? Are there alternative ways to structure the world? Are there better ways to structure the world?

Nations, unlike nation-states, have existed since the earliest known history. It is perhaps an innate feature of human beings to organize themselves as nations, and to their membership in a nation as one of their identities — but not their most important identity.

In terms of structuring the world, it is not necessary that the world be shaped by nation-states. Nations can, instead, be formed into the dominions of dynasties. This was often the case before the rise of nation-states. Individuals identified themselves as members of nations and as subjects of a dynasty, but not as citizens of a nation-state.

One can think of England, in which a soldier nine centuries ago perhaps thought of himself as fighting for “his majesty the king,” but not for “England.” — Likewise, an Austrian owed his allegiance to the Habsburg Dynasty, not to Austria. Thus a world organized by dynasties is an alternative to a world organized by nation-states. But in both of these scenarios, the nation remains.

Historically, then, we can see that there are at least two options for organizing the world: the nation-state or the dynasty. Are there other options? Could the world be structured around nations instead of nation-states?

If the world were organized around nations, instead of nation-states or dynasties, then it would essentially be a tribal world. This may have been the case in certain times and places, e.g., the non-Roman parts of Europe in the millennium or two prior to 800 A.D.

Thoughts about the nation-state, and alternatives to it, are relevant to concerns about nationalism. The word ‘nationalism’ is subject to various uses and misunderstandings. It is a problematic word, because it can refer either to a dangerous form, or to a peaceful form, of the nationalistic sentiment.

The dangerous form of nationalism is a value system which places the continued strength and growth of the nation-state above all else; in this sense of ‘nationalism,’ every other concern in life — e.g., family, friends, religious faith, duty, honor, art, science, music, literature, etc. — is subordinate to the nation-state. The savage implication is that any of those other things can also be sacrificed for the sake of the nation-state. This evil form of ‘nationalism’ can therefore lead to war and death.

The beneficial form of ‘nationalism’ is a healthy and balanced appreciation of one’s homeland, its achievements, and its contributions. This type of nationalism leads to better global relations between countries, because while it allows people to appreciate their own nation, it also urges them to appreciate other nations. Wholesome friendships between nations flourish when the individual nations have respect both for themselves and for other nations.

The peaceful form of nationalism is often simply called ‘patriotism,’ and patriotism is instrumental in forming productive and cordial relationships between nations. A nation filled with self-hatred will make a poor ally.

Interestingly, historian Jill Lepore speculates about whether “identity politics” could replace the nation-state as a primary organizational unit. Instead of loyalty to the nation, an individual could feel a primary loyalty to a demographic category like gender, race, etc.

Jill Lepore’s questions prompt musings: Could “identity politics” truly replace other forms of global organization? If it could, what would be the effects of this type of tribalism?

We can conclude that civilization seems to have made progress at times when the planet was organized primarily into dynasties, at times when it was organized primarily into nation-states, and at times when it was organized simply by nations as tribes. In all three situations, nations were an important identity, even when they weren’t the primary organizing principle.

We can also conclude that the distinction between peaceful beneficial nationalism and warlike malignant nationalism is significant, and that the former has edified civilization while the latter has turned civilization against itself.

The End of an Empire: Did Franz Abdicate to Spite Napoleon?

The Holy Roman Empire lasted over a thousand years. Had it been accurately named, historians would refer to it as a Central European Defensive Coalition, which is what it actually was. It was a loose confederation, so loose, in fact, that it’s not even clear when it began: historians point to various dates between 800 A.D. and 962 A.D. as the starting point for the empire.

Its ending point, however, is quite clear. The last emperor of the HRE, Franz II, dissolved the empire and abdicated in August 1806.

Franz II, however, had developed a backup plan. Two years earlier, in August 1804, he’d established Austria as its own empire, so that when he dissolved the HRE, the Austrian Empire remained as a self-sustaining unit. So the Holy Roman Emperor Franz II became the Austrian Emperor Franz I.

But why did he dissolve his own empire?

In 1806, Napoleon was in the midst of his reign over France, and in the midst of his imperial wars throughout Europe. The HRE had been weakened, and Napoleon was already in the process of subsuming it into an organization called the Confederation of the Rhein. Napoleon’s goal was to destroy the HRE, and thereby gain glory as the one who destroyed it.

Napoleon’s goal, according to historian Fabio Aromatici, was not only to eliminate the HRE, but also make its dynasty, the Habsburg family, irrelevant:

He wanted to narrow down the three hundred states part of the Empire to only one hundred and obviously reduce the influence of the Habsburg family.

Napoleon, in 1806, was on a rampage, his army occupying various territories in central Europe. He was on his way to Vienna, the capital of the HRE and seat of the Habsburgs.

He was about to enter Vienna and Emperor Francis knew he had to do something after almost four centuries of virtually unbroken Habsburg succession since Albert II in 1438. It was a matter of honor. After all, who wants to be remembered as the emperor who lost the empire, throne, and crown after a thousand years?

There is debate about what exactly Franz II was thinking, and responsible historians do not speculate about unverifiable matters. Motives, especially when not documented in writing, remain matters of conjecture.

Many researchers suggest, however, that Franz II, seeing that he could not defend or sustain the HRE, knew that he could at least deny Napoleon the joy of destroying it. By dissolving the empire, Franz II eliminated the object which Napoleon was pursuing. Napoleon couldn’t destroy an empire that didn’t exist.

The emperor had declared that the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved - unconquered - after a thousand years and that he was no longer to be considered Emperor Francis II but Emperor Francis I of Austria! The old empire was dead! Long live the new one! To be precise, nowadays there is still one princely member state of the Holy Roman Empire that has preserved its status as a monarchy until today: Liechtenstein. All the others are gone, part of history, bordering legend.
People clapped, cheered, cried, and wept, many cursed Napoleon.

Franz II made his stunning declarations from “the external balcony-altar of the Church of Am Hof.” This fascinating piece of Viennese architecture was the “stage for this historical announcement.”

The Kirche am Hof is one of many historic buildings in Vienna with its own architectural story and documented significance. The platform from which Franz II made his declarations is less of an altar, and resembles in some respects a balcony, except that it rests upon pillars or columns, and is essentially the roof of a sort of narthex or foyer or entryway into the church. It is surrounded on three sides by the external walls of the church, which rise significantly above it. On the fourth and front side, it is open, and overlooks the Platz, the large open area in front of the church. The space of the narthex beneath it is completely enclosed on all sides.

The Viennese call such a structure a Söller or Altan or Altane.

There are some historians, however, who see Franz’s abdication differently. They do not see it as a shrewd way to outwit Napoleon. They see it simply as the inevitable collapse of the HRE.

Even such historians, however, concede that Franz had deliberately undermined Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhein, and had the foresight to provide himself with an alternative imperial title two years prior to the actual abdication.

The Habsburg Dynasty: Life Without the Modern Concept of Nation-State

In the early years of the twenty-first century, some have called for an end to the nation-state, and an end to its role as the primary structuring element of the political world. Setting aside polemics - for or against this demand - the questions remain: How would the world appear without the nation-state? How would the world be organized? If the nation-state did not shape the geopolitical system, what would?

History gives us a clue. The nation-state is the union of ‘nation’ (i.e., an ethnic or cultural group) and ‘state’ (i.e., a geographically-defined territory with a government). The alternative to a nation-state, as A.J.P. Taylor writes, is a dynasty:

The Habsburg lands were not bound together either by geography or by nationality. They have sometimes been described as the lands of the valley of the Danube. How could this include the Netherlands, the Breisgau, and northern Italy? Or in the nineteenth century, Galicia, Bosnia, the Bukovina, and even Bohemia? The Habsburgs themselves were in origin a German dynasty. They added a first a Spanish and later an Italian element, without becoming anchored to a single region or people; they were the last possessors of the shadowy universal monarchy of the Middle Ages and inherited from it a cosmopolitan character. The inhabitants of Vienna, their capital city, were Germans; this was their nearest approach to a national appearance. In other countries dynasties are episodes in the history of the people; in the Habsburg Empire peoples are a complication in the history of the dynasty. The Habsburg lands acquired in time a common culture and, to some extent, a common economic character: theses were the creation, not the creators, of the dynasty. No other family has endured so long or left so deep a mark upon Europe: The Habsburgs were the greatest dynasty of modern history, and the history of central Europe revolves round them, not they round it.

The Habsburg Dynasty, although it survived well into the modern era, was in many ways the direct antithesis of the modern nation-state. The Habsburgs were supranational and supracultural. The citizens or residents of the Habsburg realm had only this one thing in common: they were the subjects of the dynasty.

Geographically, the dynasty could change its shape without changing its character, because its essence was not derived from the lands which it governed, nor from the cultures of the peoples of those lands.

The Habsburgs developed their own institutional culture, originating in and from the administrative needs of the monarchy, and imposed that pattern onto its varied holdings. To that extent, a Habsburg culture could be said to exist. But the regional influences - Bohemians and Magyars, Bavarians and Galicians and Slovakians - existed within monarchy.

Such local cultures were permitted, so long as they did not interfere with the management of the royal and imperial business. (In the matter of which languages would be used for official matters, cultural matters did threaten to interfere with dynastic administration. In those cases, heated debates and diplomatic maneuvering reached intense levels.)

For those who live in the early twenty-first century and who long for the end of the nation-state and its role in shaping the geopolitics of the planet, a look at nineteenth-century Austria-Hungary, i.e., a look at the workings of the Habsburg monarchy, offers a vision of how a world without nation-states might function.

When Liberty Nearly Triumphed: The Unimplemented Petition of Right

History offers a catalogue of freedom’s victories over the centuries and millennia: Hammurabi, Moses, Greco-Roman political thought, the Magna Carta, the Tübinger Vertrag, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the United States Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the United States Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation, to name only a few.

But freedom has also had some big defeats.

In 1628, the British Parliament was frustrated by King Charles I, who, like James I before him, claimed absolute authority for himself as monarch. Charles did violence to the concept of political liberty, which had been around since even before the Magna Carta of 1215.

Parliament wanted to defend the people’s freedom against an overly ambitious king. To do this, Sir Edward Coke, a leader in Parliament and a long-time supporter of limits on royal power, suggested that Parliament draft a document defining the rights of the people and defining curbs on the king’s power.

Coke, whose surname rhymes with ‘cook’ despite its spelling, supervised the assembly of a truly brilliant document, as historian John Barry writes:

Commons adopted Coke’s suggestion, and he was central in drafting the petition. It incorporated the earlier resolutions prohibiting forced loans, benevolences, or “any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge not set by common consent, in parliament.” It prohibited billeting soldiers in homes and the exercise of martial law in peace. It required honoring writs of habeas corpus. And it reaffirmed Magna Carta and associated statutes, reaffirmed the principle older than Magna Carta that “no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseized of his freehold or liberties … or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land … [and] that no man, of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law … no offender of what kind so ever is exempted from the proceedings to be used.”

England was on the verge of a major breakthrough: another increase in legal rights for citizens, another round of limitations on the royal government.

Both houses of Parliament approved the text. It was sent to Charles II for approval. Why would a monarch accept boundaries on his power? Charles needed Parliament to approve a budget to fund some of his military adventures on the continent. So there was a reason for him to agree, and a chance that he would.

But Charles at first refused to agree to the Petition of Right. After discussions, he begrudgingly agreed to it, but then almost immediately reneged.

The Petition of Right didn’t manage to achieve a significant increase of freedom for English citizens in 1628. It served a purpose, however, inasmuch as it cast a bright light on the king’s unwillingness to honor the people’s liberty.

The king’s refusal to embrace the Petition of Right was one of several causes which ultimately led to the English Civil War (1642 to 1651), and led to the king’s beheading.

Both the English Civil War and the abdication of James II (1688) laid the groundwork for the eventual adoption of the English Bill of Rights (1689). The ideas in the Bill of Rights were similar to the ideas in the Petition of Rights.

After these ideas were first proposed, it took an additional 61 years before the rights and liberties of the English people were finally codified.

Free Enterprise Fuels Human Dignity: ‘Natural’ Does Not Mean ‘Good’

Human nature tends toward favoritism and chauvinism. People are naturally partial toward those who are somehow similar to them: in terms of age, race, gender, income level, etc.

In short, human nature is not fair.

Our sense of justice — our idea that people should receive equal opportunities, have the right to express political opinions, and be able to bargain freely in economic situations — are in direct contradiction to human nature.

Justice is a learned behavior, as historian Jonah Goldberg writes:

The idea that we should presume strangers are not only inherently trustworthy but also have innate dignity and rights does not come naturally to us. We have to be taught that — carefully taught. The free market is even more unnatural, because it doesn’t just encourage us to see strangers to be tolerated; it encourages us to see strangers as Customers.

Human nature, left unchecked, can and often does, veer into bigotry and racism.

But the free enterprise system nudges people away from bigotry and racism. The manager of a shoe store wants to sell shoes, and doesn’t care about the race, gender, income level, or age of the customers. The manager will also want to engender goodwill, and thereby repeat customers, for the shoe store, and will therefore will want to make sure that the customers are treated politely and have an enjoyable shopping experience.

The free market is antithetical to racism.

The invention of money was one of the greatest advances in human liberation in all of recorded history because it lowers the barriers to beneficial human interaction. It reduces the natural tendency to acquire things from strangers through violence by offering the opportunity for commerce. A grocer may be bigoted toward Catholics, Jews, blacks, whites, gays, or some other group. But his self-interest encourages him to overlook such things. Likewise, the customer may not like the grocer, but the customer’s self-interest encourages her to put such feelings aside if she wants to buy dinner. In a free market, money corrodes caste and class and lubricates social interaction.

The salutary forces of natural rights and limited government are confusingly called “liberalism” — more accurately, “classical liberalism,” which differs from left liberalism, social liberalism, neoliberalism, and modern liberalism.

Confusing terminology aside, limited government gives rise to free markets, and natural rights give rise to equal opportunity.

A strong and powerful government becomes the instrument of the sinister aspects of human nature: tribalism, sectarianism, ethnocentrism. A centralized and controlling government will divide people into categories, and assign priorities to those categories.

Natural rights speak to a person’s humanity — regardless of demographic variables — inasmuch as all humans desire to be free, regardless of gender, income level, race, or age. The desire for liberty is one of the few truly universal human values.

Cicero, Obama, and Romney: Campaigning for Office with Dirty Tricks

In March 2012, voters in the United States were worried about “smears and dirt” which the Obama campaign was preparing to use against whomever might be nominated to contest Obama’s incumbency. Mitt Romney was seen as the likely challenger.

Philip Freeman, a professor of classics, wrote at the time, giving historical perspective on the election:

It was a bitter and volatile campaign, with accusations of inconsistency, incompetence and scandal filling the air. Candidates competed to portray themselves as the true conservative choice, while voters fretted about the economy and war threatened in the Middle East. The year was 64 B.C., and Marcus Tullius Cicero was running for Roman consul.

Professor Freeman outlines advice given by Quintus, the brother of the famous Cicero. Quintus wrote, giving advice to his brother about how to run a successful campaign. Quintus was not shy, in the words of Freeman, giving advice that “would make Machiavelli blush.”

The advice given to candidate Cicero are relayed by Freeman in the form of five main points, wording them in ways which would be familiar to a twenty-first century U.S. voter:

1. Promise everything to everyone. Quintus says that the best way to win voters is to tell them what they want to hear: “Remember Cotta, that master of campaigning, who said he would promise anything, unless some clear obligation prevented him, but only lived up to those promises that benefited him.” As Quintus says, people will be much angrier with a candidate who refuses to make promises than with one who, once elected, breaks them.

2. Call in all favors. If you have helped friends or associates in the past, let them know that it’s payback time: “Make it clear to each one under obligation to you exactly what you expect from him. Remind them all that you have never asked anything of them before, but now is the time to make good on what they owe you.” If someone isn’t in your debt, remind him that if elected, you can reward him later, but only if he backs you now.

3. Know your opponent’s weaknesses — and exploit them. Quintus practically invented opposition research: “Consider Antonius, who once had his property confiscated for debt … then after he was elected as praetor, he disgraced himself by going down to the market and buying a girl to be his sex slave.” A winning candidate calmly assesses his opponent and then focuses relentlessly on his weaknesses, all the while trying to distract voters from his strengths.

4. Flatter voters shamelessly. Quintus warns his brother: “You can be rather stiff at times. You desperately need to learn the art of flattery — a disgraceful thing in normal life but essential when you are running for office.” A candidate must make voters believe that he thinks they’re important. Shake their hands, look them in the eye, listen to their problems.

5. Give people hope. Even the most cynical voter wants to believe in someone: “The most important part of your campaign is to bring hope to people and a feeling of goodwill toward you.” Voters who are persuaded that you can make their world better will be your most devoted followers — at least until after the election, when you will inevitably let them down.

It is not clear to which extent Cicero followed his brother’s advice, but Cicero did win the election decisively.

Cicero became known as the man who defended the Roman Republic against those who wanted to turn it into an empire — into a dictatorship. Cicero brilliantly articulated the virtues of a government consisting of freely-elected representative.

His political enemies were also willing to use “smear” political tactics against him: they accused Cicero of giving or receiving bribes. Historical evidence is not conclusive.

Cicero was popular: he received the title “father of his country” after the election. But his popularity could not save him from the dirtiest political trick of them all: assassination.

How sincerely Cicero spoke — whether he personally embraced republican ideals, or whether he merely voiced them in response to their popularity — remains debatable. But even if he spoke cynically, his formulations of freedom as the product of government by freely-elected representatives remain powerful and influential.

Happily, the U.S. election of 2012 did not result in assassination. Sadly, neither Obama nor Romney understood, liked, or trusted the concept of government by freely-elected representatives to the extent that Cicero did.