Mitt
Romney’s speech in the Senate on February 5, when, against the constitutional invertebracy
of his fellow Republicans, he voted to impeach President Trump, draws
inspiration from the classic Huguenot text in revolutionary literature, known
as Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, A Defence
of Liberty against Tyrants,[1]
published in 1579 during the era of the French religious wars. More particularly
it appeared after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, along with other
less-celebrated resistance documents. Vindiciae was re-issued in mid-17th
century England at the height of its Civil Wars, and it later helped shape
Locke’s thinking in Two Treatises of
Government (1690).[2]
It is not
my purpose here to discuss the text of Vindiciae
at any length, portions of which can be found in a previous blog entry of mine
dated January 2012 (see the link below).
Rather, I wish to point out that Romney, who (as he says) is “profoundly
religious”, and who believes the American Constitution to be “inspired by
Providence” shares a central assumption with this historic text, as George H.
Sabine puts it in his A History of
Political Theory (1971): “Every Christian must agree that his duty is to
obey God rather than the king, in case the king commands anything against God’s
law.”[3] In his work Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century (1969),
Julian Franklin makes much the same point but in a somewhat more explicit
fashion echoing Romney, his love for family and country, and his deep conscience:
“The Vindiciae, finally, begins very
cautiously but clearly to anticipate resistance by private individuals who have
been specially inspired by the call of God.”[4]
Click here
for further text and discussion of Vindiciae:
Click here for
Mitt Romney’s speech:
[1]
For the sake of brevity and clarity I shall refer to the text here as Vindiciae.
[2]
Although the first edition of Locke’s Two
Treatises of Government appeared in 1690, it was written before the events of 1688 and the
Glorious Revolution of 1689. See Peter
Laslett, “‘Two Treatises of Government’ and the Revolution of 1688” in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter
Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 45-66, esp. p. 65.
[3] George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd
ed., revised. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 380.
[4] Julian H. Franklin in Constitutionalism and Resistance in the
Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza, & Mornay, ed. and
tr. Julian Franklin (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 43.
No comments:
Post a Comment