Evolution, Devolution And Revolution

For westerners, the word ‘revolution’ inspires great pride, for it was by way of revolution that the greatest and most free of societies were born.

The American and French revolutions (the offspring of the English Revolution) were to change the world irrevocably for the better. Europe was exposed to sunlight- she would not tolerate darkness again, even if it were to be temporarily imposed.

The Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution covered their respective nations and empires with darkness. Those who endured those revolutions were cast into a pit of darkness and failure.

In England, the newly born America and France, revolution was to bring war and hardship to those nations, if only for a short time. We measure the fruits of the English, American and French revolutions by freedoms, rights and democracy that are the oxygen of free peoples. The Russian and Chinese revolutions are measured by ever increasing oppression and violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of millions.

That is not to say that the western revolutions were perfect examples without excess and error (the violence and excesses of the French revolution comes immediately to mind) but when all is said and done, the revolutions of England, America and France were very different from those in Russia, China and their far away proxies.

The leaders of the English, American and French revolutions did not fear the ‘power of the people,’ nor did they seek power for themselves. They believed that people could be trusted to make decisions that would benefit all society, not just the privileged few.

While we see the notion that ‘All men are created equal,’ that was less clear for the English, Americans and French, at the time, those kind of ideas were nothing short of remarkable.

The advent of the printing press and easy dissemination of knowledge and information was as frightening as telecommunications and internet are to repressive regimes and to those who control the flow of information today. The supporters of the English, American and French revolutions were not just supporting the single issue of a ‘Government of the people, by the people and for the people’- they were empowering and entrusting the people with information and the flow of that information.

Any nation that restricts information and the flow of that information is an oppressive nation.

That truth more than any other, distinguishes free nations. No matter how sincere, noble or well meaning Karl Marx, Mao or even Jean Jacques Rousseau might have been, the excesses of the regimes and the leaders who espoused their philosophies were to enslave and terrify their respective nations. Leaders who enslave and terrorize are never leaders who liberate and free their nations, no matter their rhetoric.

There are those who would say that religion is as cruel and enslaving as any of the most cruel of tyrants. That of course is a deliberate deception.

We have noted that when Nietzsche declared that ‘God is dead,’ he was to a large degree correct. The God that Nietzsche referred to was indeed passing. The Church, once repressive and oppressive, was undergoing a transformation. It was understood that God no longer demanded uniformity or wanted to obliterate self expression. In fact, God celebrated the very things that were foundational to the Age of Enlightenment. As it turned out, God was perfectly able to look out for his own interests, without agendized human interventions. That is a truth rarely referred to- and it is an important truth. The founders of this country were fleeing religious persecution and in fact, the principles and guarantors of freedom in this country were deemed to be religious rights and not just secular rights. God made room for all kinds of believers and non believers. Free will no longer had any fine print attached to it.

Prior to the great revolutions that were to elevate mankind, religion often mimicked the oppressive regimes in both style and substance and answered to those regimes. In fact, religions often served as the cloak of holiness that legitimized their ugly masters, contrived and in concert with those regimes (not unlike today’s incarnation of Islam).

There are regimes today who regard their citizens as no more than chattel, slaves really. Under the guise of ‘for the people,’ generations are laid to waste, their only purpose to ensure the repressive status quo. They are born into slavery and they die as slaves. Sad as it is, that is lot of most people born into oppressive regimes.

There are some who see their lot as slaves as temporary, not as a matter of identity. It is they who seek and demand freedom from oppression. They refuse to come to terms with hand they are dealt. It is they who choose the kind of revolution they can identify with. Time and time again, we see that when given a choice, people will always choose freedom.

Leviticus 25:10 is instructive:

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

That idea is coupled with the liberation of slaves.

The delivery from slavery is single most important aspect of a free and democratic society. It is no mistake that one of the predicates of the Judeo-Christian ethic so deeply embedded in all of us is the idea that the Israelites were delivered from slavery into freedom and in that freedom they were to fully appreciate their God and to exercise their free will. It is one thing when a slave prays to God- it is quite another when a free man chooses to worship. That is why freedom is a moral imperative and that is why we must be wholly committed to protecting freedom. Freedom is about the sanctity of free will and the choices each of us make.

The liberation from slavery is a process, of course. It takes time and is never easy. Nevertheless, it is the liberation from slavery that elevates mankind more than anything else. The great Utopias promised and ostensibly worked for are meaningless exercises if people are enslaved and their free will taken from them. In fact, the enslavement of man, even to the greater goals of a ‘revolution’ is antithetical to the very essence of our being.

In the past, the dissemination of information scared a lot of people because a lot of people in power had a lot to lose. The same holds true today.

The first book printed and widely distributed was the Bible. In the age of the Reformation, the emphasis was on the religious texts and not on the religious institutions as the final authority on all matters ecclesiastic (and beyond).  The challenge and eventual demise of to the supremacy of the Catholic Church as a dominant political force was inevitable.

Still, it wasn’t the printing press and the mass distribution of Bible that changed our world. Prior to the printing of the Bible, that great text had been translated, much to the objection of the Church and religious scholars. They said they were afraid of mistranslations, but in reality, they were afraid of the messages of freedom that were embodied in the foundational religious texts of the western world. That was the underlying cause of the widespread European illiteracy that was a reality till a little over 200 years ago and the fear of an educated and thinking population frightens leaders in the Arab world scares those dysfunctional regimes today.

For the first time, with the advent of the printing press and the movement to mass literacy,  the Bible was in the hands of whomever wanted to read it and the effects were profound (imagine putting the power of an uncensored internet into the hands of the disenfranchised), because of the fundamental messages of the Bible- We are all created in God’s image and we were all entitled to freedom from the tyrannies that enslave us.  We are entitled to free will and equal treatment under the law.

Exposure to the Bible was a shock to most people- they learned that prophets admonished kings, peoples revolted against tyranny. Most importantly people were empowered when they learned that enshrined in the Bible was a lesson they knew only too well- the differences between power and justice, rule and authority. They were to understand that morality and ethics would be a yardstick with which to measure politics and power.

The translations and the dissemination of the ideas that were contained in the Bible [especially the King James version-SC&A] were to have were to have a profound impact not only on our societies, cultures, philosophies and law, but on language and literature as well.

That is of huge importance because the language and literature of a nation contribute mightily to the identity of a nation. The language a nation uses can reflects ideas of a cultural and societal free will or it can reflect the oppression and suppression of freedom. For example, we know the words ‘Freedom of the press’ connotes a very different image and understanding of the words ‘workers paradise.’

The revolutions that lead to freedom as opposed to those revolutions that lead to tyranny and oppression draw much of their ideology from the Biblical account of liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. The lessons of the Exodus account and other Biblical lessons are not only religious- they are universal and in fact lay the foundation for the values that western civilizations- freedom, individuality, justice and compassion (that is why revolutions that lead to tyranny are led by those who hate and fear religion. They know that the message of freedom will be their undoing). Herman Melville wrote that

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours.

Of course, it is not just Americans that cradle freedom, free will and free expression. The English regard themselves as source of an effective and fair judiciary. They see themselves as being singularly responsible for bringing education to their colonial empire- and they are right to do just that. They were the only colonial empire that left a legacy of education and advancement behind them.

The French see their revolution as having imposed on them an almost sacred obligation. They believe they too have been entrusted to bring the ideals of Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite to other nations. They also believe they have nurtured and encouraged free expression in the world of art and culture. This is not a matter to be lightly disposed of. When Black artists and performers were shunned here, they found freedom and appreciative fans in France.

The language, literature and culture of the product of western revolutions remain very different from the language, literature and cultures of other ‘revolutions’ or calls to revolution, be those calls from the likes of Hugo Chavez, Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad or the dysfunctional Arab world.

In last few centuries the calls to revolutions and change of all kinds can be sharply divided. In seeking civil rights the black community in the United States adopted the mantra of ‘Let my people go.’ South American liberation theology based their beliefs the Exodus account (this is not the same oppressive ‘liberation theology’ claimed by Jeremiah Wright, et al) and Nelson Mandela’s The Long Walk to Freedom was the telling of his story and goals through the eyes of the slave freed by a higher power. Conversely, the revolutions claimed by Russia, China and a host of other tin pot and banana republics sought to replace tyranny and oppression with even more tyranny and oppression.

What further differentiates revolutions are the laws that accompany that revolution. A revolution that is successful underwrites laws that are fair, equal for all and applicable to all. A revolution will ultimately fail if the laws are unfair and unequal. The issue of the rule of law cannot be overstated. No matter how free a society may be, a society in which everyone is free to do as they please will only satisfy the powerful and enslave the powerless.

Recall once more Leviticus 25:10:

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

Those words are inscribed on the Liberty Bell in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Those words were to serve as the background music for the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. They knew themselves to be imperfect and thus drafted a constitution that would grow and ‘fill in the blanks.’ They took the lesson from the Bible itself, that freedom was evolutionary and that freedom needed to be embraced because we wanted it to be embraced by freedom. We had to learn that freedom earned was freedom cherished.