Mark Tooley has probably done as well as anyone could in his
attempt to reconcile the American Revolution with the “just war”
tradition. He is, however, hammering a square peg into a round
hole.
His third blow is no more successful than his previous two.
He wonders (again) if I am opposed to all war. I reply
(again) that I am not. The just war tradition is not pacifist;
neither am I. Nor have I “reinvented” its criteria as a “rhetorical
tool against virtually all force.” I reiterate that I adopt the
standard criteria as articulated by orthodox sources such as the
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Tooley says my case would be more persuasive if I could
point to any conflict that met the criteria. I do not see why that
should follow, but I am happy to oblige. It seems to me that the
Allies in the Second World War were justified in resisting the
aggression of the Nazis and the Japanese. (This is not, of course,
to condone everything the Allies did, such as the nuclear
incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a flagrant breach of the
just war’s prohibition on targeting non-combatants.) However, the
Allies’ resistance in that war was to attacks; the
resistance of the colonial rebels was to a tax.
Tooley claims I try to reduce the War for Independence to
a “trifling tax dispute, with all the British repressions simply
the reasoned reaction to misbehaving colonists.” I never claimed
the tax dispute was “trifling,” but the rebellion was (as Alvin
Rabushka writes in his monumental study of taxation in colonial
America) a “tax revolt, first and foremost.” My paper
asks:
Did the imposition of a few, limited taxes on the wealthy
colonies to help pay for their security constitute a just cause for
armed insurrection?
Despite three bites of the cherry, Tooley has failed to provide
a cogent answer. And his list of British “repressions,” such as the
dissolution of colonial legislatures, is (as I pointed out in my
last rejoinder) merely a list of understandable actions taken by
the British to counter open rebellion. Tooley has, again, failed to
explain why those actions were unjust, let alone tyrannical. Does
the government not have as much a right to suppress unjust
rebellion as citizens have a duty not to foment it?
He writes that I blame the rebels for “not passively
accepting injustice.” Not so. I question whether they suffered any
injustice at all, let alone tyranny. He also implies that I
criticize the Revolution for not redressing all injustice and for
not creating utopia. Again, not so. I criticize the Revolution
because it was itself an injustice and would have remained so even
had it created utopia. Whatever good it brought about was brought
about by violent treason against legitimate, lawful
government.
Tooley, rightly, recognizes important authorities in the
just war tradition like St. Thomas Aquinas and notes that Aquinas
allows for resistance to a tyrannical government unless greater
harm is created thereby. But Tooley has failed to show
either that the British were tyrannical or that
overthrowing British rule (by initiating what turned into a world
war) did not create greater harm. He simply assumes what he needs
to prove. Where does Aquinas teach that colonists (or, indeed,
non-colonists) may justly rebel if they are taxed without
representation? (Where, indeed, does he teach that there is even a
right to representation?) I may add that a number of the eminent
scholars who have kindly read and endorsed my paper include leading
authorities on St. Thomas. My paper follows the just war tradition
according to Thomas, not Tooley.
Tooley repeats that Burke opposed the “suppression” of the
colonists. I repeat that Burke, whatever he thought of the wisdom
of taxing the colonists, voted to affirm Britain’s right to tax
them. Tooley cites the British constitution, but according to that
constitution the King in Parliament, the supreme law-making body,
had the sovereign right to legislate for the colonies in all
matters, including taxation.
Tooley criticizes the British for rejecting Congress’s
“Olive Branch Petition” of July 1775 and for replying with a
declaration of war. But war had already been waged by the rebels,
at Lexington, Fort Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill. Indeed, only weeks
before Congress sent the Petition, it not only raised a Continental
Army but authorized it to invade Canada. (So much, we may note, for
the rebel war being “defensive.”) It is hardly surprising that its
Petition met with a frosty British reception. Whether or not the
British could have handled the crisis better (and we should
remember that they too, before and after the war started in
earnest, made peace overtures which were rebuffed) has little
bearing on the crucial moral question: whether the rebels were
justified in precipitating that crisis.
A hypothetical may help to illustrate the patent injustice
of the Revolution.
Imagine that thousands of American citizens, wanting to
leave the mainland in search of a better life and to populate a
large, uninhabited island a thousand miles off the west coast of
the U.S., petition the U.S. Government to live on the island under
U.S. jurisdiction, ruled by a Federal Governor. The Government
agrees.
No sooner have the emigrants planted the Stars and Stripes
on the island than they strike gold, build up a healthy trade with
the mainland, and become hugely wealthy. However, the Japanese,
wanting to expand their sphere of influence and enrich their
coffers, invade the island. The U.S. successfully defends the
island in a major, protracted war which costs many American lives
and drains the U.S. Treasury.
To offset the massive cost of the war and of guaranteeing
the island’s security (a cost which has produced large tax hikes
for Americans on the mainland), the U.S. Government imposes a
modest tax on coffee imported by the islanders. Some islanders
refuse to pay, claiming that as they have no right to vote for
members of the U.S. Congress, the Federal tax demand is
unwarranted. They seize a U.S.-registered ship in the island’s port
and jettison its cargo of coffee into the sea. They also assault
IRS officials, riot, and torch the Governor’s mansion.
When a detachment of U.S. Marines is sent to the island to
restore order, some islanders confront them with loaded rifles and
with cannon stolen from the local Federal Armory. Shots are
exchanged. The Marines, outnumbered, retreat under withering fire.
Many Marines are killed. The survivors reach the relative safety of
the island’s capital, which is promptly besieged by the rebel
islanders.
The U.S. Government demands that the rebels lay down their
arms and respect U.S. law. The rebels (representing perhaps only a
third of the island population) refuse and declare independence,
backing up their declaration with further attacks on U.S. forces on
the island. A full-scale war between the rebel islanders and the
U.S. ensues.
Have the rebel islanders waged a “just war”?
In conclusion, I am pleased to inform readers that,
courtesy of the editor of the Journal of Catholic Social
Thought, my original paper, which Mark Tooley has so gamely
sought to criticize, will soon be posted on the website
of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.
