To the Editor:
Re “Two
Theories of Change” (column, May 25):
David Brooks contrasts the “theories of change” espoused by the radical
French, on the one hand (what, them again?), and the conservative Scots,
as represented by Edmund Burke, on the other, and concludes—surprise!—that the Scots were right and the French wrong: one can’t engineer a
sweeping transformation of society on the basis of abstract ideas
without the wheels coming off.
In making his argument, he casts the American Revolution as a
conservative one concerned solely with restoring ancient liberties
stripped from the colonists by George III and his Parliament. That would
certainly surprise many of the founders, who made no bones about seeing
the struggle as aimed at creating a brand-new society. The inscription
“Novus Ordo Seclorum” on the dollar bill translates as “A New Order of
the Ages,” hardly the motto of people whose only wish was to return to a
comfortable past.
In fact, as Mr. Brooks observes with apparent disapproval, America
straddled the divide between Burke and the Jacobins, and would likely
have tilted more toward the French model if it had not been necessary to
pacify reactionary Southerners. (Some things, it seems, really don’t
change much.) Yet despite the columnist’s “stubborn fact of human
nature,” this country has indeed re-engineered itself, not once but
repeatedly, and has on the whole done pretty well, if not always without
turmoil.
Eric B. Lipps
Staten Island, May 25, 2010
Note from KBJ: Comparing the American Revolution with the French Revolution is like comparing the American Revolution with the French Revolution.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 