Customer Reviews

America Declares Independence

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3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I second the motion in the review of Aug. 19, 2003, "A good idea -- but hardley original", that Alan Dershowitz could have put his incredible talents to even further use by laying out the philosophy of history behind America's founding, and examining and explaining how America did not just happen, but is the result of a long evolution of blood, sweat, tears, and suffering for freedom. But, that is not to take away from the fact that "America Declares Independence" is very well written, very interesting, and very much a 5 star book. It comes to you highly recommended by this reader. And, if you value my recommendation, I would also recommend that, after you read Mr. Dershowitz's book, read Norman Thomas Remick's book, "West Point: Character Leadership Education, A Book Developed From The Readings And Writings Of Thomas Jefferson", a book that does explain how America did not just happen, but was the result of a long evolution of blood, sweat, tears, and suffering for freedom.

One the most difficult things to figure out when examining the life of Thomas Jefferson is why he could write such powerful documents, full of respect for human life and human dignity, and still own, at one period of his life, 267 slaves. The author of this book attempts to explain and conjecture his reasons for this, and other things of more relevance to the present time. The author's main emphasis is to negate an idea held in his view by the "Religious Right", namely that the United States is a "Christian country" and was intended to be so by the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He does so successfully, and gives ample historical references for his arguments. However, individuals like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cannot be said to represent the entire "Religious Right", even if they claim to, and even if this claim is imputed to them by the author. And further, even though the author has refuted their arguments about the Christian nature of the founding documents, this still does not refute the claim that the United States "should" be a Christian nation. The "Religious Right"could perhaps acknowledge the arguments of the author as true and then consequently advocate the founding documents be rejected and a Christian nation be formed. This has not been suggested yet by the "Religious Right" (that I have heard), but could be in the near future. Religion and toleration are usually immiscible, and if backed into a corner, religion has throughout history proven itself extremely dangerous and has exhibited brutality going beyond all rational bounds.

In his monograph America Declares Independence, Alan Dershowitz wrests our country's founding document from the clutches of right-wing fundagelicals who want to turn the Declaration of Independence into a call for a born-again America. Thomas Jefferson, a deist, was the primary author of the Declaration, and his God was the God of Newton and the Enlightenment. The most conservative members of the Continental Congress, such as the Calvinists, wouldn't have recognized the God of the modern fundamentalists. And, Heaven forbid, there were Unitarians and Quakers who voted on the Declaration, too! Dershowitz also holds forth on the meaning [if any] of natural law and tries to untangle the confusing persona of a man who could write the Declaration AND own slaves. If you are interested in finding out how the secular nation founded by the Founding Fathers could become the most religiously diverse nation on the planet [and include fundamentalists who have the right to believe in and speak of a so-called Christian nation of the Founding Fathers], America Declares Independence would be a good place to start.

This could have been a great book, as one certainly expects from Alan Dershowitz; unfortunately, it reflects the American belief that democracy was invented here rather than realizing this country is part of a long evolution of freedom.

Dershowitz, a renowned Harvard law school professor and frequent commentator on individual rights, wastes most of his effort refuting, rejecting and attacking the Religious Right rather than understanding such people are the bell weather of American freedom. He doesn't seem to understand the impact of the Religious Right (or the Radical Left) is in inverse proportion to the level of freedom in this or any other country -- as the absolute rule of the Taliban religious extremists certainly proved in Afghanistan.

However, zealots exist in very society. Perhaps they counterbalance each other; if they become part of the Establishment, they crimp the freedom of everyone. Dershowitz uses the massive artillery of his intellect to attack the limited acumen of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Alan Keyes -- as if Justice Louis Brandeis would have been profitably employed attacking Father Coughlin.

Dershowitz doesn't seem to understand that freedom and individual rights have constantly evolved in Anglo society for more than a thousand years. Democracy wasn't invented when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, cribbing many ideas from the English Bill of Rights written in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Freedom and democracy is a constant and uneven struggle, not an accident or gift .

The Declaration of Independence was a quantum leap forward in defining some basic ideas of freedom, but it was not the end of the process. Before 1776, American colonists had legitimate complaints; the Thirteen Colonies were run by the English Colonial office, part of the executive branch of government. Colonists were ruled by King George III and his bureaucrats, instead of their own elected officials.

In response, the colonists said, in effect, "We're Englishmen. We have an absolute right to be represented in Parliament." If their rights were denied, according to the Bill of Rights of 1688, they had a right to overthrow the government. As Englishmen brought up with the Bill of Rights, the Declaration asserted their most basic rights.

Out of that came The United States of America, with a Constitution written to clearly avoid problems which led to the Declaration of Independence. Dershowitz recognizes the idea that freedom evolves in a society; his weakness is thinking there was an immaculate birth of freedom in America in 1776. He doesn't understand the Declaration of Independence was a bold and perfectly legitimate assertion of the basic rights of every free Englishman -- and from this a new form of "Democracy in America" (to use Alexis de Tocqueville's phrase) evolved.

There are two elements in society: a view that people are basically evil and must be restrained for their own good, as represented by the likes of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton and the current Bush administration. The countering view says people are basically good and must be free of as many social restraints as feasible, as represented by Rousseau, Voltaire and Thomas Paine and the usual Democratic politicians.

Either view, if carried to the extremes of a Father Coughlin or Alan Keyes, or the excesses of the French or Russian revolutions, destroys our freedoms.

Yet, history shows an uneven but very real expansion of human freedom. When freedom is limited, the response in 1775 was the shot heard round the world; today, the response is often footsteps that cross half the world to find freedom.

This screed by Dershowitz is a rant against the Religious Right. His recognized talents would have been much better used to examine and explain the English origins of the Declaration, rather than bashing baleful bigots who are mostly irrelevant in a free society.

All in all, perhaps a useful book to demolish straw devils; but, it could have been immeasurably better with a different approach.

Dershowitz has some interesting ideas, but does not flesh them out as fully as he could (especially in the first third of the book, focusing on the religious origins of the Declaration). All too often, instead of taking a full quote from Jefferson or Adams and interpreting it, he borrows a few words from some other historian's characterization of what Jefferson thought. As a result, this book is likely to persuade only those who already agree with him; I sense that the publishers made him finish this book a bit too quickly.

But Dershowitz's dissection of natural law in the second half of the book is a little more persuasive, because he relies on logic rather than on inadequate research.

Many may not agree with what this author has to say, but as an historian, I think he has done a superb job delineating the true origins and motivations that went into the writing of America's founding documents. this is an excelent resource to have around if you are confronting right wing fundamentalists who think God founded America.

Bringing together a good idea and a good writer doesn't necessarily make a good book - unfortunately.

Wiley is publishing a series of books on turning points in (mostly American) history: William Least Heat Moon has written about Columbus and Scott Simon has written about Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball. I have just read Alan Dershowitz on America: the Declaration of Independence. You would expect it to deal with the historic significance of American independence. You would be wrong.

Dershowitz sees it as an opportunity to attack the fundamentalists who like to claim that our founding fathers were creating a Christian nation and to beat Antonin Scalia around the ears for holding the Constitution to be a "dead document." That's an attack I'm happy to endorse, but I wanted to gain a wider perspective on the Declaration and felt cheated when Dershowitz spent most of the book pounding the fundamentalists into the ground.

Dershowitz likes Jefferson on the whole and wants it known that Jefferson was a Deist, not a Christian. I agree. Jefferson was really down on organized religion. So am I a good deal of the time. But let's not get carried away. Jefferson used the phrase "monkish ignorance" once and Dershowitz uses it perhaps a dozen times in the first hundred pages. I'm sure some monks were ignorant, but far from all. It was the monks in their monasteries who preserved civilization in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, for goodness sake.

Dershowitz, unfortunately, is also ignorant about some things. He speaks of "`Natural law' based on divine revelation." But divine revelation and natural law are two quite different things. He says the Presbyterian Church was disestablished in Connecticut in 1818, but the Presbyterian Church never was established in Connecticut. The Congregational Church was established in Connecticut until 1818, but that's not the same thing.

More important is the attempt Dershowitz makes to do away with Jefferson's reliance on "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Dershowitz recognizes no natural law or natural rights. Human beings construct their own rights in Dershowitz' view. But why and how do we construct these "rights?" We do it in response to "wrongs." But how do we recognize these wrongs? Dershowitz never tells us. I guess we just know - as we would if there were such a thing as natural law.

And then there's the editing. Do publishers use proof readers any more? There are misspellings like "devine" and "posies comitatus,"(I think spell check may have sabotaged him there, but I like the result!) misquotations of the Bible: "when ye pray use not then [vain] repetitions," a garbled quotation from the first draft of the Declaration that drops one phrase and repeats another, and redundancies like "those who seek today to Christianize America now."

The book jacket tells us that the book "becomes an argument with Thomas Jefferson." It's also an argument with fundamentalists, Antonin Scalia, and God. That's too much even for Alan Dershowitz.

This is a fascinating look at the Declaration of Independence. Dershowitz offers an almost controversial interpretation of the actual document which shaped our country. It is the most thought-provoking look at the Declaration of Independence that I have ever read.

This book will really make you think about the "real" meaning of words in important documents used by Jefferson and others (you would expect that from lawyer at Harvard). Maybe Professor Dershowitz really ends up making a case that we are united under many different "Gods"? But I am not really sure about that. And reading this book a second time will not help. I subtract two stars because the author did not convince about anything.

As honestly and objective as I can be...in reading this, the best analogy that I can make is that Dershowitz had too much wine one evening arguing with a friend about some perverse "theory" about the founding father's intentions...and hurriedly scribbled some notes about it and published it in this book. It reads like more of an Olver Stone screen play than a historical treatise (although Oliver Stone's work is much more enjoyable). What I find most suprising is that a publisher like Wiley would actually publish this stuff...I guess they'll publish anything from anybody with a name...right or wrong...as long as there is a profit to be made. Unbelieveable.