Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

One of the facts that lies in the background of constitutional history, and usually stays there, without being highlighted, is this: most of the founders of the United States shared a disdain for the institution of a "standing army" --that is, of a permanent professional military force maintained through peacetime and composed of full-time soldiers.  Their idealization of the "militia," and the reference thereto in the second amendment, arguably the second amendment itself, constitute the flipside of their anti-standing-army persuasion.  If you ask about the background and history of this conviction, you are generally referred to the build-up to the revolution, as the mother country built up its military presence (the "regulars") in the troublesome colonies. But a newly published paper makes the point that the vocabulary in which our founders expressed their conviction on point has a specific history within that Mother Country.  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol...

A word about Robert Filmer. His name makes an occasional appearance in this blog, mostly in contexts in which I'm warning about abuse of, or excessive claims for, supreme executive power. I noticed years ago that many libertarians invoke Thomas Hobbes in contexts like that. The dangerous proposed new regulation or evidentiary privilege is "Hobbesian," gasps the writer. I generally agreed that it -- whatever had provoked this outburst on a given day -- is a bad thing, but I grew tired of the ritual invocations of Hobbes there, especially where they didn't fit all that well. After all, Hobbes was a very secular thinker. He was wary of religion because in his own lifetime he had seen religious fervor lead to an open challenge to the sovereign, and he had seen THAT challenge lead to a civil war that must have looked a bit like a war of "all against all" to him.  He was a member of the Church of England, but he clearly explained that he was so because his ...

This is from John Milton's first reply to Salmasius, something he wrote pursuant to his duties as official propagandist for the revolutionary government of Oliver Cromwell. Quin et ipsa ab ineunte adolescentia iis eram studiis incensus, quae me ad optima quaeque si minus facienda, at certe laudanda incitatum ferebant. In English: "And indeed from my youth onward I have been filled with a zeal which kept urging me, if not to do great deeds myself, at least to celebrate them." No big point here, I just like that quote. Milton was writing in Latin because that was part of his job -- as a propagandist, he sought to be read all over Europe, and large chunks of his audience could have read Latin far more readily than English. Let this post be a neat bookend to that of a week ago, which as it happened also involved Oliver Cromwell. George Fox and John Milton may be said to reflect two very different sides of Cromwell's own personality. And the collective personali...

"During the time I was at London I had many services laid upon me, for it was a time of much suffering. I was moved to write to Oliver Cromwell, and lay before him the sufferings of Friends both in this nation and in Ireland. There was also a talk about this time of making Cromwell king; whereupon I was moved to go to him and warn him against accepting it; and of diverse dangers which, if he did not avoid them, would, I told him, bring shame and ruin upon himself and his posterity. He seemed to take well what I said to him, and thanked me; yet afterwards I was moved to write to him more fully concerning that matter." Cromwell was not made King by name. He did, though, take to styling himself Lord Protector, and he passed alog the title of Lord Protector to his son, so one might think the distinction between his Lordship and an earthly kingdom unpersuasive. Surely, Fox' objection to Kingship wasn't simply that the Stuart family were the wrong folks, nor ...