David has the very good idea of reflecting on the origins of U.S.
Independence on this July 4th.


Here is w little of chapter 20 of "Faith & Freedom" by Benjamin Hart.

This passage concerns the French Revolution which took place right
after the American.

Btw, the whole book is published online for all to read at:

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/index.html#




"""Another major enterprise of liberal historians has been to recast
the American Revolution in the image of the French Revolution. The
tendency of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin toward deism is
often cited as evidence of America's trend toward "enlightened rational
humanism" during the period of America's founding. Whatever still
remained of the Christian faith in America was merely a fading remnant
- or so we are told.

It is very instructive, therefore, to turn for a moment to the
revolution in France, whose announced aim was to duplicate the American
Revolution, which had been such an obvious success. In fact, Thomas
Jefferson traveled to Paris in order to assist Lafayette and his
associates to draft their own Declaration of Rights. "Everyone here is
trying their hands at forming a declaration of rights," Jefferson wrote
in a letter to Madison, and included in his correspondence several
drafts. "As you will see," Jefferson observed, "it contains the
essential principles of ours accommodated as much as could be to the
actual state of things here." Article Four of the French Declaration of
the
Rights of Man, drafted in August of 1789, for example, states that
"liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another."
France's Declaration abolished slavery, titles of nobility, and the
remnants of feudalism and serfdom. In many respects, the French
Declaration appeared superior to Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence. But whereas the American Revolution ended in the
establishment of a constitutional democracy, a government under law,
the French Revolution ended in tyranny and government by the
guillotine, followed by the rise of Napoleon. The ob vious question is:
What went wrong in France?

The French Declaration did not acknowledge that the source of man's
rights is man's "Creator," as Jefferson had affirmed in America's
Declaration of Independence. The French Declaration did not even state
that rights are inherent, in-alienable, or derived from any
transcendent authority. Rights for the Frenchman were granted by an
"enlightened" government. Tocqueville noted the striking contrast when
he explained to his countiymen a half century later that America's
experiment in liberty was firmly rooted in the fact that "in the United
States the sovereign authority is religious." The French Revolution was
explicitly anti-religious, and could not replicate the American example
on a secular humanist foundation. Moreover, the prevailing sentiment in
the American colonies was to preserve liberties they already enjoyed,
to prevent the British monarchy from taking over their churches and
subverting their colonial ways of life. But the driving force behind
the French Revolution was a fanatical determination to tear down
established ways and institutions, which the disciples of Rousseau saw
as responsible for corrupting human nature.

Rousseau did not believe in original sin or private property. He hated
European civilization precisely because he saw it as a product of
Christianity. Rousseau stated flatly that "our souls are corrupted in
proportion to the advance of arts and sciences. His society rejected
all forms of Christianity, and put in its place the gospel of the
"General Will." Against it no individual rights would stand, because,
in Rousseau's view, the protection of individual rights stood in
opposition to the sovereignty of the people. Following Rousseau's
doctrines, the French executed their king, even after he had accepted
their constitution.1 From here, conditions rapidly degenerated into
anarchy, with the outbreak of internal ideological war and, in the
words of historian Henry May, the subsequent "executions of deviants,
the lukewarm and the suspect," culminating in the Reign of Terror
presided over by Robespierre. In just two years 20,000
people-considered allies of the Old Regime-were executed. France's
complete break with the past and with Christianity was symbolized by
the introduction of a new calendar that took 1792 as the year One, the
first year of the Republic.

The revolution finally turned against itself and began to devour its
own. Robespierre denounced the Encyclopedists, even though they were a
symbol of Enlightenment thinking, for their compromises with the
monarchy. Robespierre was himself guillotined in the summer of 1794.
The French Revolution was a grim example of how people behave when they
are unchecked by a sense of religious obligation.

Paine failed to make a distinction between the revolution in America
and the one in France. He was a political agitator and ideologue, pure
and simple, and was not disposed to looking closely at the facts. Paine
traveled to France to help topple the monarchy there, and published The
Rights of Man. Paine's behavior in France was rebuked by John Quincy
Adams, who challenged Paine's latest political tract designed to throw
fuel on the flames of the French Revolution. Adams objected principally
to Paine's main premise that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do, it
has the right to do," echoing Rousseau. Adams replied: "Nations, no
less than individuals, are subject to the eternal and immutable laws
ofjustice and morality." Paine's "doctrine," said Adams, "annihilated
the security of every man for his inalienable rights, and would lead in
practice to a hideous despotism, concealed under the party-colored
garments of democracy."

[Thomas] Paine, Adams pointed out, had missed the entire point of the
American Revolution, which was the assertion of rights that cannot be
deprived from an individual even by a majority. Adams rejected Paine's
contention that the people of Great Britain should follow the example
of France and "topple down headlong" their present government on the
grounds that the Anglican Church did not allow religious freedom:
"Happy, thrice happy the people of America!" said Adams, "whose
principles of religious liberty did not result from an indiscriminate
contempt of all religion whatever, and whose equal representation in
their legislative councils was founded upon equality really existing
among them, and not among the metaphysical speculations of fanciful
politicians, vainly contending against the unalterable course of
events, and the established order of nature [emphasis added]."

Thomas Paine eventually learned through personal experience that the
revolution in France was radically different from the one in America.
He was jailed by Robespierre for protesting the execution of the King
and having qualms about the direction of events. It took the
intervention of Thomas Jefferson to rescue Paine from the guillotine.
Prior to this, Paine had spent much of his political life crusading
against Christianity, again failing to make distinctions between the
true Christianity of Scripture and the often corrupt version taught by
religious establishments.

It is easy to see how a demagogue such as Paine could be attracted to
the cause of an extremist like Robespierre. But his experience in
France seems to have altered his thinking. He began to see how the
philosophy of atheism plays itself out in actual politics. His final
work, The Age of Reason (1794-96), although very critical of Christian
institutions, indicates something of a change of heart. He had become a
defender of reHgious faith against atheism: "Lest in the general wreck
of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we
lost sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true."
On his deathbed he went still another step, embraced faith, and
retracted any and all attacks against Christianity in The Age of
Reason: "I would give worlds, if I had them, if The Age of Reason had
never been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! Stay with me!
It is hell to be left alone." Paine, as vocal a debunker of
Christianity as there was in the colonies, died believing passionately
in God and hoping for a future life. He had learned the hard way the
lessons of the French Revolution."""