Freedom in the Nuclear Age
Arendt points out that the concept of using weapons for the purpose of preserving freedom is a 20th century invention that had never existed throughout the long history of conventional warfare. It only under the threat of instant annihilation that the idea ever even occurred:
“freedom has appeared in this debate like a deus ex machina to justify what on rational grounds has become unjustifiable.”
“The Revolutionary Spirit”
Also relatively new relative to the history of civilization is the very idea of revolutions. Arendt provides an easily understood definition of what is meant by fighting wars with the spirit of revolution rather than for person glorification or conquest. The revolutionary spirit is:
“the eagerness to liberate and to build a new house where freedom can dwell”
The Good Man among Bad Apples
The French Revolution sought to introduce Rousseau’s concept of man in his natural state being “good” into the political system. Just as that very idea runs counter to conventional thinking, so does their fundamental belief in Rousseau’s theory. Since neither Rousseau nor Robespierre had ever actually seen evidence that man in his natural state is good, they relied upon a metaphorical hypothesis: the existence of a crate of rotten apples by definition proves that apples come into the world in a natural state of perfection.
Compassion and the American Revolution
The author presents strong evidence to support her contention that while the American revolutionary may have been about a great many things, the one thing it was most assuredly not about was compassion. In fact, she asserts that of all the great revolutions, the American revolution is the only one in which compassion cannot be found:
“It is as though the American Revolution was achieved in a kind of ivory tower into which the fearful spectacle of human misery, the haunting voices of abject poverty, never penetrated.”
Constitutional Purism
By definition a constitutional government is not a revolutionary government. Constitutional purists treat that American document as not just the foundation of law, but carved in stone like the Ten Commandments. Others—including those who were alive at the time of its creation—are not so sure:
Thomas Jefferson turned to metaphor to rail against those who “look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.”
While Thomas Paine broadens and expands upon metaphor to transform the question of constitutional purism into something which actually twists the entire point of the American revolution by allowing a generation to rule from the grave, creating “the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”
