JOSEPH A. HARRISS: Present at the Creation
Winik, Jay
say that this is a cumulative case argument, and in his lifetime he saw theists take the lead in a conversation —which will continue—about the origin of life, the universe, and the laws of...
...He divides it somewhat artificially into three sections, with each section repeatedly subdivided into chapters on America, France, and Russia...
...The resulting vehicle, workable if a bit clunky, enables him to weave together his accounts of the American rebellion, M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 6 9 b o o K s I n R e V I e w revolution gone terribly wrong in France, and Russia’s bloody assault on the Ottomans and ruthless suppression of Poland’s attempt at independence...
...He describes The Faithful Departed as “a study in Catholicism in America today, and more specifically in my native Boston...
...He spent six years researching and writing this, in the process accumulating a mountain of material (most of it from secondary sources...
...senator to write Living History, I will think its analysis more objective...
...Flew didn’t even mention molecular machines found within cells and the increasing scientific consensus that the Earth is a rare, hospitable place indeed...
...Winik, a senior scholar at the University of Mary land’s School of Public Policy, has a knack for picking pivotal moments in history and narrating them in telling detail...
...I love the Matthew Kenefick is an occasional writer based in the Washington, D.C...
...Ideas and men began freely crossing borders, leading inevitably to the dilution of conviction, whether in religion or government...
...Prominent atheist philosophers like Quentin Smith have taken note, even if the mass media has not...
...Small wonder that millions of Europeans began heading en masse for the New World, inspired by a document that began, “We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal...
...here only for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats,” and to Washington, who sighed, “The event is in the hand of God...
...Others, like Catherine the Great, finally rejected it furiously after initial fascination...
...T d e c i t o n e b o t n i r o t e p o r u n a he d C E ontrast is b o etW st ee k n i ng the o U t nited State o s The great Upheaval: america and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788–1800 By Jay Winik that typically understated comment by George Washington in the earliest, uncertain days of our republic, one can only add a fervent, “thank God for the difference...
...Her many exploits included being a patron of Voltaire, inaugurating education for women, assembling a treasure house of fine art, turning St...
...b o o K s I n R e V I e w the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together...
...Constitution was hailed as a portent of things to come...
...But this is not the first book with a co-author— and at least Varghese is named...
...As Winik puts it, “In 1792, the most striking feature of the Western world, old as well as new, was the hideous death rattle of the war engulfing Europe...
...Russian It was a world in Promethean tumult as sub versive ideas about individual freedom fermented in many countries simultaneously— with drastically different outcomes...
...Flew merely seems to Flew’s critics claim he is merely afraid of hellfire in his old age...
...He stresses the audacity of a handful of men, representing vastly different vested interests, attempting to invent a diverse nation from scratch in only four months...
...It will be read with pleasure and profit by those of us who can use a refresher course on that tumultuous, decisive period of world history—and on America’s seminal role in it...
...Pastonishing tsarina, Catherine...
...If it is a harsh portrait, I believe the harshness is justified...
...In any case, Winik holds, perhaps a touch hyperbolically, “Within essentially a generation, arguably greater progress had been made politically than in all the millennia since the beginning of time…this proved to be America’s hour...
...has experienced greater net losses over the last few decades as a result of changes in religious affiliation than the Catholic Church...
...Winik, to m t i d n a d o i r e p e h t o i R t s r e c n c o o ssibly n this h W e ork us ’s s m a ost f eye-opening conten y s t mind, exaggerates the role of Catherine in encouraging the American Revolution—her League of Armed Neutrality isolated England diplomatically and curbed its powerful fleet at a crucial moment, but her aim was not really to help the American rebels, and she never recognized the new republic—but he makes 7 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 b o o K s I n R e V I e w a valid point when he asks rhetorically, “Why in the public imagination of our time has she often been overshadowed by those whom she plainly surpassed in her own...
...area...
...What was this delightful piece of French rubbish...
...I shall remain an aristocrat...
...If the Founding Fathers were well-read in the philosophes, and the Enlightenment informed thinking at the Constitutional Con vention, America also influenced the Old World...
...This erudite, eclectic, and eminently readable look a s a s e t t n d d w o cr t the e m i om o en h tou la s t ev ye en r ts (HaRpeR, 659 pages, $29.95) of the 18th century leaves one overarching impression: Lord, how those people in Europe could hate...
...Another problem for this reader is a style that works a bit too hard at dramatizing, with purple passages that often fall into tired cliché: mountains are treacherous, deserts trackless, storms howling, while the Kremlin is full of “unfathomable intrigue...
...Jefferson and Thomas Paine strongly colored French republican thought...
...If that seems unduly churlish toward our European friends, then I invite you to dip into Jay Winik’s latest book...
...on the tension and drama of the Constitutional Convention of 1887 and the nation’s first steps In his ChaPters on ameriCa, Winik concentrates toward the democratic transfer of political power...
...It’s worth recalling that this exchange of ideas worked both ways...
...The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute…which looks to me like the work of intelligence...
...Based on the data, the survey showed, “approximately one-in-ten American adults are former Catholics...
...Unlike America’s one durable constitution and uninterrupted two centuries of democracy, the end result of France’s errant quest for escape from its feudal past would be two empires, three kingdoms, and five republics...
...Still others, including the New York Times, allege that evangelicals tricked him into writing this book...
...Born a homely German princess whose name was actually Sophia Augusta Frederika, she spoke little Russian before marrying the future tsar, Grand Duke Peter, at age 16 in 1745, becoming Ekaterina Alexeevna, or Catherine...
...Although he was certainly indecisive and often weak, “Few monarchs in history are as underappreciated for what they stood for, as lampooned for what they misunderstood, as disgraced for what they lost.…Yet few monarchs would also leave this world with such dignity, nobility, and grandeur...
...b o o K s I n R e V I e w setting up government of the people, by the people, and for the people, Continental Europe was consumed by a continuing orgy of violence...
...Still, it is sad that the lack of authentic first-person narrative transforms what could have been an excellent work into a merely good primer on how science has changed philosophy of religion...
...reformers like Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov and Alexander Radishchev studied the ideas of Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington...
...Many, like Lafayette, enthusiastically welcomed the coming change...
...Reviewed by Joseph a. Harriss While America got on with the unprecedented task of peacefully transferring executive power and Joseph a. Harriss is a Paris-based American writer whose latest book is About France (iUniverse...
...The peril was clear to Benjamin Franklin, who warned, “Our detractors believe that we are The uniqueness of America’s accomplishment becomes clear when compared with what was happening in France, where the U.S...
...In all, some 40,000 French citizens would feel “the razor of the republic” on their necks...
...Winik’s tendency to go off on a tangent can be annoying, e.g., giving us a history of slavery when that comes up, a thorough description of the château at Versailles when discussing French monarchy...
...This is his insight and theme for more than 600 dense pages...
...Smith, editor of the atheist philosophy journal Philo, laments the fact that just when academia was thought reliably atheistic, theism “became, almost overnight, ‘academically respectable.’” In fact, he notes, a perusal of the Oxford University Press catalogue for 2000-2001 shows that of the 96 books on philosophy of religion, 94 advanced theism while 2 presented both sides...
...Doubts about long-held beliefs such as divine right and hereditary privilege were raised by the French trio of philosophes: Voltaire and his fight for intellectual freedom, Montesquieu on the necessary separation of powers and limited monarchy, and Rousseau with his insistence that republican liberty would return man to his basic goodness...
...The high point, or should one say the low point, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture By Philip F. Lawler (enCounteR Books, 272 pages, $25.95) of this ongoing decline in faith and practice was the so-called sex abuse scandal that erupted in 2002...
...When the New York Times Magazine prints an exposé determining that Hillary Clinton did not take months off her first term as U.S...
...And Gouverneur Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, advised Louis XVI, unfortunately too late, on how to modernize French society...
...Given the large number of at least nominal Catholics in this country, understanding the origins of this ongoing crisis is important for all Americans...
...Philip Lawler is a journalist, author, editor of Catholic World News (an on-line service), a Harvard grad, and a fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute of Washington, D.C...
...Still, this is popular history at its most evocative and colorful...
...Maximilien Robespierre, he of the later Terror, called Franklin “the most brilliant scholar in the universe...
...That is my calling...
...One is reminded of the reaction of John Adams, the quintessential down-to-earth American pragmatist, on reading a treatise by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy, founder of the school of idéologie...
...6 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 “ Present at the Creation Tby even the most superficial observer...
...say that this is a cumulative case argument, and in his lifetime he saw theists take the lead in a conversation —which will continue—about the origin of life, the universe, and the laws of nature...
...The greatest untold story of our age is the return of metaphysics to respectability among academic philosophers...
...And “understanding the origins” also lies behind Boston native Philip Lawler’s new book, The Faithful Reviewed by Matthew Kenefick Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture...
...He did, and he was...
...The result is like being present at the crea tion when the modern world was being painfully born...
...And it is these relationships and interrelationships, as much as any one country alone, that laid the foundations for the world we know today...
...Petersburg into a city of legendary splendor, expanding Russia’s borders, and beating back the Ottoman Empire...
...Unfortunately, at times these chapters read like a laundry list of quotations by famous scientists and philosophers...
...Winik’s flair for storytelling serves him well in his detailed narration of the period’s events in France, from the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the infighting among Robespierre, Danton, and Marat...
...Does it mean idiotism...
...His 2001 best-seller, April 1865: The Month That Saved America, dramatically described the closing days of the Civil War when the very Union hung in the balance...
...Along the way, he pauses for thumbnail biographies of all the major players, from the Founding Fathers and Lafayette to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Robespierre and Napoleon, Catherine and her lover Prince Grigory Potemkin, and Poland’s Thaddeus Kosciuszko, among many others...
...M a y 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 1...
...By my estimation that would make non-practicing Catholics the second largest “denomination”— after Catholics in good standing— in the nation...
...This is regrettable, as the cobbled-together nature of this volume does make it appear that Varghese collected and synthesized Flew’s views...
...But it all turned tragic when the French Revolution ran madly out of control, producing what Margaret Thatcher once called, with tart reduction, “a pile of corpses and a tyrant...
...Due largely to the excesses of the French Terror, democracy lost its chance in Russia...
...Constitution was hailed as a portent of things to come...
...Endowed with brains and determination, she was a romantic at heart but toughened herself at court, where Peter openly preferred his mistress...
...On the ledger’s negative side is her tragic crushing of Poland’s America-inspired attempt at a constitutional monarchy by massacring its people mercilessly...
...How did this happen...
...Well, one factor was the 40 years of at least perceived liturgical and doctrinal chaos following the disastrous misinterpretation and implementation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council...
...It was a world in Promethean tumult as subversive ideas about individual freedom fermented in many countries simultaneously—with drastically different outcomes...
...On the subject of Louis XVI himself, Winik is of two minds...
...Washington’s later stepping down as president of his own volition in March 1797 rather than clinging to power like a European monarch was another unprecedented event that Winik highlights...
...How can shoemakers meddle in affairs of state...
...The uniqueness of America’s accomplishment becomes clear when compared with what was happening simultaneously in France, where the U.S...
...Lurching from one vicious bloodletting to another, they shot, slashed, and eviscerated each other with glorious abandon as centuries of feudal brutality and institutionalized murder came to a frenzied head...
...He offers three answers: she was a woman, she ruled in the East rather than in our West, and her reign marked the end of enlightened despotism rather than the beginning of the democratic era...
...To be sure, they were spread far and wide by the age’s unprecedented cross-fertilization of cultures— from far-off France, Montesquieu and Voltaire intrigued Russia’s Catherine the Great...
...If you are seeking to understand how many 20th-century intellectuals—from scientists like Paul Davies to philosophers like Alvin Plantinga—can embrace a mind-before-matter universe in a scientific age, you’ve come to the right place...
...He agrees with the historian Gordon Wood that the document they produced was “one of the most creative moments in the history of political thought...
...Although initially well-disposed toward repub lic anism, the beheading of Louis XVI, news of which made her physically sick, turned her resolutely against it...
...Another major factor was the lack of effective catechesis on traditional sexual morality...
...The Church is still feeling the after-tremors, which are likely to persist for years to come...
...In such cases closer editing would have helped...
...Unbanned in Boston A reported that “no other major faith in th f i c i l b u P d n o i g i l e n m u r o F e P t r h e e C ent w survey o of R religious a n affiliation L by e e U.S...
...As King George III had commented cynically, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world...
...Approximately one-third of respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic...
...This situation was created in good part by the same factor that produces much of our cultural, political, and economic climate today: the age’s new mobility...
...Winik credits these as the intellectual underpinning and motive force for what he clearly considers one of the greatest events in history, the creation of the American nation...
...But if you are looking for an explanation of Flew’s nuanced views or his original contribution, you will find this book wanting...
...Washington called her “the great Potentate of the North...
...Too bad for them that Flew doesn’t think there is a Hell of which to be afraid...
...Despite the aforementioned untoward charges, There Is a God is a most valuable and readable overview of the many evidential changes of landscape that 20th century science is furnishing to the oldest question in Western civilization: Is there a God...
...As a result, by the end of the 18th century it was clear to opinion leaders on both continents that the past was only prologue to what was coming...
...He views the Americans, the French, the Russians, and others as “all part of one grand, interwoven tapestry...
...Now he gives us a fresh take on the years from 1788 to 1800, creatively dove tailing political developments in America and Europe...
...Also important to Flew’s transformation were arguments against the unaided emergence of the first self-replicating life forms (including their encoded information and nano-scale information processing systems) and the design displayed in the laws of nature that allow for complex life...
...The Terror has seldom seemed so viscerally vivid as in his recounting, with details such as the executioners’ assembly-line approach to beheading—surely that should be deheading—to satisfy the vindictive bloodlust of the Revolutionary Tribunal: honing their skills with the newly invented guillotine, they went from 22 heads in 36 minutes to 32 in 25 minutes, finally reaching 12 heads in five minutes, or 144 per hour...
...What did ‘ideology’ stand for...
...Convinced he was going to depose her and marry the mistress, she led a stunning coup d’état against him and became the ironwilled ruler of all Russia...
...As Winik phrases it, “The 18th century was stitched together in ways we can scarcely grasp, even by today’s standards...
...As Winik writes, “She tamed the Muslim world and charmed—or awed—the Christian one...
...Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the innate difficulty of the French to turn cerebral theory into everyday practice...
...But only New World vessels were ready to receive the new wine of freedom...
...Adams asked...
...And there are certainly others, including the burgeoning affluence of the Catholic faithful and the aggressive secularism in American society...
...On July 14, 1790, the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, Thomas Paine and John Paul Jones were invited to carry the American flag at the huge “freedom festival” staged on Paris’s Champ de Mars, symbolizing the passage of the spirit of American freedom to France...
...Also telling is that Flew’s replacement at the University of Keele was none other than Richard Swinburne, an ardent theist, now at Oxford...
...she exclaimed...
Vol. 41 • May 2008 • No. 4
