Liberals like to cite things like the Treaty of Tripoli out of context and say, See, I found a quote that says America is in no way a Christian nation. Problem is, cherry picking out of context is intellectually dishonest. This is long, but here is the Treaty of Tripoli in context from a paper I wrote 10yrs ago: (This post is dedicated to Matthew Redman.) The Founders would have never approved of the use of the judiciary to legislate new law. The evidence of this is in how they established the Federal government: Congress—the direct representation of the people—are provided pages and pages of description in the Constitution. The executive is provided a few pages, and the Federal judiciary is given a mere few lines, with four references of Congressional regulation. More evidence of this is when the capital was moved from New York to Washington, D.C., residence was erected for both the Congress (with the largest house) and the executive (with a smaller house), but the judiciary had no building. In fact, the judiciary held meeting in the basement of the Capital Building, where Congress held session (Barton, 2004). Yet, the foreshadowing of the judiciary’s rise to power was in the gesture of the construction of the Supreme Court building in 1935, high on a hill overshadowing the Capital Building below. The Founders believed firmly in the corruptibility of the human character (Barton, 2004; Levin, 2005). Man, due to his fallen nature discussed in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, could not possess centralized power because that would lead to tyranny (Barton, 2004; Levin, 2005). Therefore, power in the American system was distributed vertically: the people (highest), Congress, executive, judiciary (lowest); and then horizontally: checks and balances within and between each group (i.e. in order for anything to become a law, the people propose a bill, Congress (both the House of Representatives and the Senate) must vote on it, the executive must sign it or veto it, and then, if the bill is passed, the Federal judiciary (consisting of eight Justices) questions its constitutionality). The judiciary does not create new law and decide what is right and wrong for the people; the people, informed by the source of their freedom and ways to enrich and maintain their freedom via the Bible [for as Noah Webster (soldier, attorney, educator, public official, and author during the Founding Era; best known for The American Dictionary of the English Language (1789)) once said, “[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion” (Barton, 2004, p. 336)], would decide how to run their government (Barton, 2004). It is also important to note that the Founders established a republic, not a democracy. As explained by David Barton (2004): A pure democracy operates by direct majority vote of the people. When an issue is to be decided, the entire population votes on it; the majority wins and rules. A republic differs in the general population elects representatives who then pass laws to govern the nation. A democracy is rule by majority feeling (what the Founders described as a “mobocracy”); a republic is rule by law. (p. 336) This prevents murder from becoming legalized in American jurisprudence. The people, although they have the most power in the government set in the Constitution, are at the same time, through the series of checks and balances, are limited in scope in their freedoms. This is why we have an electoral college and not a popular vote: we are a republic, not a democracy. At the same time, the people and the States retain their sovereignty: As Jefferson said, “It [issues of religious freedom (for example)] must then rest with the States [emphasis added]” (Barton, 2004, p. 25). Through the demonstration of slavery, permit the revelation of the final argument. By establishing a nation such as the United States, the Founders wished to get away from their European roots. Let us look at a brief summary of history. In the beginning, the New World was inhabited by a series of different aboriginal tribes. [As a minor note: In the post-modern era of political correctness, is it not more politically incorrect (and just as insulting) to refer so-called “Indians” as “Native Americans” because the concept of America occurred after 1776? That, of course, is another story.] These civilizations established distinct cultures, religions and ethnic rituals, and languages (exactly like those that developed in the Fertile Crescent). In times of peace, as well as (and especially) in times of tribal warfare, the dynamics of culture, religion, ritual, and language changed (again, exactly like the Fertile Crescent). Then, what happened? Europeans developed the means to sail across large bodies of water. This seems harmless at first. There are arguments over who stumbled onto the New World first, but for all intensive and argumentative purposes, let us say it was Christopher Columbus. He found the “Indians!” (Okay, a big blunder considering he was thousands, if not millions, of miles off course from India.) The conquest of the New World, however, changed the language standard to refer to all aboriginal tribes in the New World as “Indians,” essentially not derogatory, but wrong nonetheless. In my Language, Cognition, and Culture class, I learned that in Europe, some countries have a governing body that determines what is and is not proper language. “So what?” Well, if this is a modern-day practice of European nations, and knowing the antiquity of Europe and its pride in its antiquity, this is most likely a mentality that has been long standing—particularly the superiority complex of being European. This argument is not hard to confirm considering the stereotype of the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) that we have been quite fond of citing in our history books. Speaking of WASPs, which essentially has been considered a derogatory term throughout history, but a correct observation of the people (unlike Columbus’s “Indians”), the Founding Fathers of the United States were, for the most part, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males. They were of a longstanding European tradition of colonists for over a century in the New World. This tradition included the superiority complex of being European, and the knowledge of a violent European tradition, especially within the European tradition of (misrepresented) Christianity. Historian Daniel Dorchester’s observed that, “[A]lthough inhumanities have occurred in the name of Christianity, very few have occurred under the banner of American Christianity” (Barton, 2004, p. 296) These “dreadful and disgusting inhumanities” were perpetrated by whom? Refined and cultivated Europeans…. Such are the facts of modern history which should moderate our denunciations and charges of severity, brutality and narrow-mindedness against the colonial forefathers, who, it clearly appears, were much in advance of their times. (Barton, 2004, p. 296–297) This is further explained in Mark Ammerman’s America (2004): Slavery itself had existed among the Indians and the Europeans (and among virtually all the nations and tribes of mankind) for centuries, even millennia. Long ago, men decided to put captured foes to work instead of killing them. But when the captive Africans began to arrive on the shores of the English colonies in America, many of the colonists expressed concern for the poor blacks. Christianity and forced slavery simply did not mix, said many. The Quakers were passionately opposed to slavery. And the Puritan preachers of New England were loudest voices in opposition to black bondage. (p. 164) The point: The United States inherited a culture of “severity, brutality and narrow-mindedness” from an over-century-long established European background, and the Founding Fathers were quite aware of this. So, what did they do? They established a nation by majority rule (with limitations as discussed above), to have more than the traditional European “Yay or Nay” voice, and the power to vote, so that over time, non-white, non-male, non-Christian minorities would attain more independence and power within the United States. The problem: The United States had to shed its traditionally severe, brutal, and narrow-minded European background. That was not going to happen overnight. But there is hope. July 2006, we celebrate two hundred-thirty years of being the United States of America. After almost two and a half centuries, we are finally shedding the European label and becoming more American. It surely did not happen overnight, but the night is coming to an end. With all of the revolutionary changes of the time, the European-American culture finally came to a head in the 1960s and early ’70s, and the Baby-Boomer generation was the last generation to harbor these inequality perceptions (the fact that the Civil Rights Movement occurred in that generation is evidence of this). This transition will be complete after the Baby-Boomer generation has passed, and hopefully, the generation born after the late 1970s, early ’80s will not inherit any more of what was wrong with the European traditions. Early American-colonial views of slavery, women, and social hierarchy, for example, were essentially European. “[A]t its conception, it was a British colony [with] British common law and theories of hierarchy as its foundation, the biological ability of women to bear children and the societal ‘need’ for their submission held sway, foreclosing the rights of women to own property, to work outside of the home in many professions, to bring suit in court without her husband’s or father’s permission and assistance, or to vote” (Rowland, 2004, p. 15). The subtitle of Debran Rowland’s The Boundaries of Her Body—The Troubling History of Women’s Rights in America—foreshadows her views of the subject. The value of a person is inherently religious, especially since the first colonists, and thus those “who planted America’s religious roots” were European Christians fleeing religious persecution in Europe, “and while the leaders among these migrants may not have adopted a literal interpretation to Catholic doctrine, many of its conservative themes regarding women—subordination, subservience, the obligation of virtue—made their way into emerging American law” (Rowland, 2004, p. 12–13). What Rowland refuses to focus on is that, in her own words, “The United States would become a ‘break-away republic’”—that “from the start, America was different” (p. 15). Slavery, the subordination of women, and rigid social hierarchies are not American, but were European residue that seeped into America’s roots. The Founding Fathers, as already discussed, purposely made it possible for change to take place in the new American states (Barton, 2004; Levin, 2005). European culture, however, cannot be condemned as a whole. For one, many of America’s religious traditions are derived from a European base, but as stated above, changed for the better. And our political structure is a concoction of many European values, but again, changed for the better. Many want to abandon our American standard and reshuffle the United States to become more like Europe (Barton, 2004; Levin, 2005), but this would be a huge step backwards for American jurisprudence. The problem of European jurisprudence was the lack of independence inherent within their governmental systems. But something was different for the Founding Fathers. The most fundamental of freedoms for the Founders was religious, demonstrated by the fact that it was the very first liberty outlined in the Amendments of the Constitution. In understanding their desire for a religious America is their view of the United States as a nation within history: God is the author of the nations. ‘From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live’ (Acts 17:26). He has made everything for its purpose (see Proverbs 16:4)—even the nations—and has ordained ‘a time…and a season for every activity under heaven’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Thus America, even before the foundation of the world, has had an allotted time, a sovereign season and a unique purpose in God’s plan for history. (Ammerman, 2004, p. 1) As Samuel Adams put it: “The Supreme Ruler of the Universe, having been pleased in the course of His providence to establish the independence of the United States of America…we ought to be led by religious feelings of gratitude and to walk before Him in all humility according to His most holy law….That with true repentance and contrition the merits of Jesus Christ and humbly supplicate our heavenly Father” (Barton, 2004, p. 185). And furthermore, in President George Washington’s Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789, which he stated, “[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect….No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency….[W]e ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained” (Barton, 2004, p. 114). This is very different from the European notion of the “Divine Right of Kings,” which the Founders utterly rejected (Levin, 2005), but explains the historical notion of Manifest Destiny. In Donohue’s Twilight of Liberty (2005), he explains, “The Founding Fathers were sensitive to the relationship between church and state, due to the politicization of the church in medieval times. But they unquestionably saw the need for religion in society and fully understood the premium that the American people put on religion. George Washington was the first president to acknowledge the role of religion in society. In his First Inaugural Address he paid respect ‘to the Great Author of every public and private good,’ and beckoned the American people to ‘acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men’” (p. 299). This is further evident by the views of Europeans on America during the Founding Era and the Treaty of Tripoli (1797). Consider the following quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville and Achille Murat: Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Republic of the States of America, and Its Political Institutions, Reviewed and Examined (now called Democracy in America) (1835): “In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freed pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.” (Barton, 2004, p. 121) Achille Murat’s A Moral and Political Sketch of the United States (1833): “It must be admitted that looking at the physiognomy [discernible character] of the United States, its religion is the only feature which disgusts a foreigner. …While a death-struggle is waging in Europe…it is curious to observe the tranquillity which prevails in the United States.” (Barton, 2004, p. 121) Thus, it was religion in America that was not only observed to be a uniting factor, not “diametrically opposed” to the notion of freedom, and although religion in America “disgusted” the Europeans, yet held them “curious” as to the “tranquillity which prevail[ed] in the United States.” How was the United States different religiously? The Treaty of Tripoli explains this. American Christianity was much different than European (misrepresented) Christianity. When the five Muslim Barbary Powers of North Africa had declared war on all Christian nations in retribution of injustices caused by Christians of previous centuries “(e.g., the Crusades and Ferdinand and Isabella’s expulsion of Muslims from Granada)” (Barton, 2004, p. 126), among the countries they attacked was the newly established United States, “regularly attack[ing] undefended American merchant ships,” pirating cargo, but “also capturing and enslaving ‘Christian’ seamen” (Barton, 2004, p. 126). President Washington sent ambassadors for negotiations, ending in treaties that were “unfavorable to America, either requiring her to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of ‘tribute’ (i.e., official extortion) to each country to receive a ‘guarantee’ of safety or to offer other ‘considerations’ (e.g., providing a warship as a ‘gift’ to Tripoli, a ‘gift’ frigate to Algiers, paying $525,000 to ransom captured American seamen from Algiers, etc.)” (Barton, 2004, p. 126). In Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797), the United States appealed to the Barbary States: As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion as it has in itself no character of enmity [hatred] against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] and as the said States [America] have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (Barton, 2004, p. 126) As observed by Barton, the Founding Fathers did not establish (“found”) America on the Christian religion, due to the nonestablishment of religion. Nonetheless, the point of Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797) was “simply [to distinguish] America from those historical strains of European Christianity which held an inherent hatred of Muslims; it simply assured the Muslims that the United States was not a Christian nation like those of previous centuries (with whose practices the Muslims were very familiar) and thus would not undertake a religious holy war against them” (Barton, 2004, p. 127). As a minor note, if only modern Muslim extremists such as Osama bin Laden understood the historical position of the United States in regards to Islam, history might have played out differently.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 18:52:46 +0000