ROBERT D. NOVAK: Cast a Long Shadow
Barone, Michael
Cast a Long Shadow b o o K s I n R e V I e W the League of Nations fight and was the undisputed stormy petrel of the America First Committee, but she unhesitatingly turned down a sure chance...
...But Barone, a preeminent chronicler of the U.S...
...for human cloning: to produce children, or to use the embryo for biomedical research...
...Beginning at the point of fertilization, through its own internal functioning, given a normal environment and absent damaging accidents, the embryo will undergo a seamless and uninterrupted development through the fetal state to birth, childhood, and adulthood...
...The scientific and moral issues are complex and difficult...
...But the debate has continued...
...7 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That inspired america’s Founding Fathers By Michael Barone (crown, 339 pages, $25.95) Reviewed by Robert d. novak So, as these words in the book’s first chapter promise, “our first revolution” is an American revolution—a promise fulfilled in the final chapter (“Revolutionary Reverberations...
...This in turn, writes Barone, was “the backdrop for the amazing growth, prosperity, and military success of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain—and for the American Revolution and the even more amazing growth, prosperity, and military success of the United States...
...Barone writes that “his consolation for many years was that he might sometime soon, when his wife inherited the throne, be able to bring England in against Louis...
...controversy...
...After Charles I was dethroned and executed and Britain’s experiment with a republic ran its dismal course, the monarchy was restored in the person of Charles II...
...Orange led across the English Channel a 15,000-man Dutch army, the largest force to On november 5, 1688, William the Prince of invade the British Isles since the Roman legions...
...Charles was indolent and pacific...
...She was a man’s woman who loved to talk shop...
...Pearl Mesta gave parties, but Alice Roosevelt Longworth had a salon...
...While Churchill and the other English were “instructed” by what Barone describes as “hatred and fear of Catholicism and Catholic tyranny” and William by fear of a hegemonic Louis XIV, the unintended consequences of their coup cast a long shadow...
...The unintended result of their agreement, as AlthouGh william surely was no democratic described by Barone: It changed England from a country in which representative government was threatened to one where it was ingrained, from a nation in which liberties were based on tradition to one in which they were based in part on positive law, from a nation where the place of religion was a matter of continued political dispute and even armed struggle to one where it was settled in a way that generally respected individual choice, from a nation that mostly kept apart from the wars of continental Europe to one that saw its duty as maintaining a balance of power there and around the world...
...What kind of world would there be,” asks Barone, “if Britain and then the United States had not gotten into the habit of opposing tyrannical hegemonic powers...
...Baron Churchill on the evening of November 22, 1688, “dined with the king until midnight” and “then rode from James’s camp with some 400 officers and then headed west to join William’s forces...
...In the intervening 230 pages, Barone uses his well-honed style of learned political analysis (familiar to political junkies, such as I, who devour his biannual Almanac of American Politics) to cover the period from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution for which Lord Macaulay needed five volumes of dense mid-19th century prose...
...This model, he asserts, “inspired” America’s Founding Fathers, who in the American Revolution were “seeking to preserve in their own states” what M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 5 b o o K s I n R e V I e W had been achieved in 1688...
...James’s two children were Protestant women, with Princess Mary, next in line of succession, married to the Presbyterian William of Orange, the Stadholder (chief executive) of the United Provinces (the future Netherlands...
...It follows from this analysis that, in the words of the authors, “scientific research conducted on embryonic humans, and destructive of their life or health, is wrong, immoral, unjust...
...The leading defector was James’s principal general, John Churchill, ancestor of Winston Churchill who later gained immortality as the Duke of Marlborough defeating the armies of Louis XIV...
...Barone’s genius is making fascinating what was massively boring in my school days and is now not even taught in America...
...But widower James roiled the English scene when he married a 15-year-old Italian Catholic daughter of the Duke of Modena, threatening to bring about a long Catholic succession...
...That deal, Barone says, “effectively reduced the powers of the king and increased the power of Parliament,” which was an “English Parliament determined to keep its Dutch king on a short leash...
...When Charles died in 1685, at age 55, the Catholic James became king after promising he would support the established Church of England...
...The President’s Council on Bioethics concluded in 2002 that cloning to produce human children would be unethical largely because of the likelihood of damage to the child...
...7 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 Embryo: a Defense of Human Life By Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (doubleday, 242 pages, $23.95) Reviewed by joseph f. johnston, jr...
...Washington has always had its share of political hostesses whose homes have served as salt licks for the best and the brightest, but Alice was cast in the mold of Madame Recamier...
...well-crafted distinction: “Alice preferred the company of men who ran the government to the company of women who wanted to reform it...
...In the case of reproductive cloning, the embryo would be transferred to a human uterus and would then develop in the ordinary course into a fetus, and eventually a baby...
...In either case, the process involves removing the nuclear DNA from a female egg cell and inserting the nucleus of a donor cell to produce a reconstructed egg, which becomes a human embryo...
...They conclude that research that destroys or damages human embryos is morally wrong and a violation of human rights, and thus aver that government funding for such research should be prohibited...
...In Embryo, George and Tollefsen present an absorbing and logically compelling account of the human reproductive process, leading ineluctably to the conclusion that a fertilized human embryo is a human being...
...The first successful attempt to clone a startling event led to rampant speculation about the possibilities of human cloning, including the use of human embryos to produce “stem cells” for medical research...
...This These possibilities have created a heated ethical guidance we need to understand and resolve the most important of these issues...
...As such, it is the subject of human rights, including the right not to be intentionally killed for purposes of research...
...In Our First Revolution, he presents a sweeping view of 17th-century English history and Euro pean power politics and masterfully traces reverb erations that persist more than 300 years later...
...Robert Taft wanted her to run for Nick’s old seat, but she demurred in words that sound almost eerily modest coming from her...
...In an era when the religion of the ruler was all-important and in a country that was over 90 percent Protestant, James’s conversion promised a world of trouble...
...reformer and soon grew weary of dealing with Parliament, he had to make a deal with Parliament to guarantee financing of war against France...
...From Britain (“one corner of Europe”), however, there emerged “constitutional monarchy with limits on government, guaranteed rights, relatively benign religious toleration, and free market global capitalism...
...Our First Revolution concludes with a message for today’s Americans, via this epitaph for the improbable revolutionary, William of Orange: “His daring and determination and perseverance should be an inspiration to any who are inclined to weariness and flagging resolve in trying times...
...Barone also depicts the Anglo-Dutch combinaThe advent of CloninG and other genetic techmammal (Dolly the sheep) took place in 1997...
...Professor George is director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and is the author of a number of books on natural law, jurisprudence, and philosophy...
...Cast a Long Shadow b o o K s I n R e V I e W the League of Nations fight and was the undisputed stormy petrel of the America First Committee, but she unhesitatingly turned down a sure chance at a constituency...
...After James directed the English military conquest of Dutch New Amsterdam (which became New York in his honor) and ably commanded the British fleet against the Dutch, James became a Catholic around 1668...
...That meant Mary and her Dutch husband never would rule England...
...area...
...After Nick died in 1931, President Herbert Hoover and Ohio Sen...
...In this splendid book, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen provide us the joseph f. johnston, jr...
...oppose) and with which I am instructed nothing can come in competition...
...He was childless, and the succession went to his brother, James, the Duke of York...
...Bill of Rights, which was not its only inheritance from 1688...
...But with a Catholic Prince of Wales, “with William’s chance to succeed to the English throne becoming ever more slender, with James constructing a Catholic army and a Parliament willing to collaborate in the Catholicizing of the government, William had to act to face a situation in which all his hopes were shattered...
...political scene, is not a historian as such and thus not restricted by that profession’s p recedents...
...Churchill explained in a letter to his longtime patron James that he defected because of “a necessary concern for religion (which no good man can Charles’s resistance to exclusion can be explained not only by brotherly loyalty but religious preference, considering his deathbed conversion to Catholicism...
...William’s invading Dutch army, though well led and experienced in battle, was badly outnumbered and might have failed were it not for massive English defections...
...Charles’s resistance to exclusion can be explained not only by brotherly loyalty but religious preference, considering his deathbed conversion to Catholicism...
...Her contribution is best described by the author’s Such a strong connection between Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 and American freedom over the centuries is not the consensus among academic historians...
...She was “too shy” to campaign, and she would not “use my husband’s coffin as a springboard to a political career...
...Massive defections by English commanders and soldiers prompted King James II to flee to France, effectively transferring power to William...
...But he broke that promise by loading the military with Catholic officers and plotting for election of a Catholic-dominated Parliament...
...The politics of England, Barone writes, now revolved around “whether James, Duke of York, should be excluded from the throne” and produced an embryonic national two-party politics that “had within it the seeds of representative government...
...What really worried William was the expansionist French king, with massive military power, threatening the independent existence of the United Provinces...
...ment against cruel and unusual punishment...
...With ancient feudal rights being overpowered by newly centralized states in 1688, “absolutism”— epitomized by the Sun King, Louis XIV of France— “seemingly modern and efficient, seemed the wave of the future,” Barone writes...
...b o o K s I n R e V I e W Charles refused Protestant pleas to get rid of his barren wife and to reproduce a new heir apparent in place of his Catholic brother...
...It was next announced that James’s young queen had produced a male heir—a Catholic heir...
...There are two possible goals Wise Counsel niques in recent years has given rise to vigorous public debate over the ethics of human cloning...
...The “right to bear arms” established by the Glorious Revolution “was very different from the obligation to bear arms… to support the king and his government” common in 17th-century Europe but instead “was a way for the freeman to protect his property and his liberty...
...This massive conspiracy and successful coup d’état, in the interpretation of Michael Barone, would inspire the American republic’s liberties, from representative democracy to individual gun rights...
...Professor Tollefsen teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina and has written on biomedical research...
...is a lawyer in the Washington, D.C...
...There were also the Third Amendment against quartering of troops, the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, and the Eighth Amendtion against Louis XIV as establishing British determination against hegemonic powers: Napoleon and (in alliance with the Americans) Imperial Germany and Hitler...
...James was active and bellicose,” Barone writes...
...A majority of the Council expressed serious concern about the morality of cloning for biomedical research and recommended a moratorium...
...Since the embryo is a human being, it is a human person worthy of full moral respect...
...Robert d. novak is a nationally syndicated columnist, a commentator for Fox News, and the author of The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum...
...It continued during the Cold War and today’s struggle against Islamic fascism...
...This English affirmation of gun rights gave birth to the Second Amendment in the U.S...
Vol. 41 • March 2008 • No. 2
