Posted by
gilroy man on Monday, December 17, 2007 12:00:38 AM
The lessons of the English Civil War
When Parliament went to war with King Charles II of England, it was the culmination of decades of resentment against the Stuart monarchy. The resentment came primarily from 2 forces. One was the well known protestant pressure of the Puritans against the Anglican church. The less well known cause was the gentry, newly wealthy from overseas ventures, pushing for a seat at the table of power.
The rhetoric from Parliament and the gentry was poisonous and vile, using a broad brush to paint Charles II with anything that would incite the populace against the monarchy. And incite the public it did – bringing in religious zealots like Oliver Cromwell into the fray. And once Cromwell’s army was ready, it defeated every royalist army it faced, as well as other armies in Scotland and Ireland.
When all the King’s armies had been defeated and his plots had failed, Parliament had to decide what to do with him. Given their list of complaints and crimes they had compiled against the King, you’d think they would have been ready to execute him. But they were not – they were for compromise and a negotiated settlement. This infuriated both Cromwell and the army, who responded by purging Parliament, putting the King on trial, and executing him.
Parliament was finally exposed for what it was. Not a force for freedom – they had no interest in the peasants or modern democracy in any sense of the word. Not a force for the law or justice – they could care less about everyone who died in the Civil War. No, they were simply craven opportunists who manufactured outrage against the King to leverage themselves into power. And they didn’t care who or what they used to get power, the peasants, religion, the army, all were just tools to be manipulated. Once in power, they were quite happy to stay with the status quo and work with the King again, regardless of what he had done. Since the army was no longer needed, Parliament contemptuously withheld their pay and tried to disband them.
Seen in this light, the outrage of Cromwell and the army is justified. Thousands dead, property destroyed, and for what? Just to rearrange the relations between Parliament and the King? Small wonder that Cromwell threw the whole lot out and seized power.
Like spoiled children who ate too much candy, Parliament pointed the finger at Cromwell as the source of all that went wrong in the Civil War. But the responsibility was theirs for inciting revolution, and they bear the responsibility for what the revolution turned into. If all they wanted was a negotiated settlement with the King, they shouldn’t have waged years of war to achieve that.
What lessons can we draw to today? For one thing, the Democrats hysterical rhetoric against Bush and the Iraq war is eerily familiar. The Democrats played the “get out of Iraq” card right up until they seized control of Congress, after which they backed off and started to negotiate with the President. As it turns out, they could care less about the cost of the war, or the injured and dead soldiers. They just leveraged those things to get a piece of the action, and they are satisfied with that. The talk of impeachment and abuse of power has died down too, in inverse relation to the Democrats increasing share of pork barrel legislation.
We are not, as the English were, on the verge of civil war. But we are in an era of hysterical charges, smear campaigns, and the utilization of public outrage to gain power. The modern media is ready to incite the public for any false drama it can generate, be it bird flu to SARS to contaminated food. And who can forget the stories of looting and rape and pillaging from Katrina, later proved to be false? Those who stir the forces of revolution should take care, lest they find themselves pushed aside by the zealots they produced, and consumed by the hysteria they generated.