by Ted Stewart
Many scholars confidently assert that it was the Greeks who gave birth to these beliefs, which were then nourished by Christianity in such a way as to make possible modern-day concepts of freedom and democracy. Rodney Stark, one of the most notable authorities of the impact of Christianity upon Western thinking, has written extensively on the subject. In one of his several books on the subject, he explains:
While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. . . . But from the early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God. . . . Faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice. The rise of capitalism was also a victory for church-inspired reason.16
Throughout his works, Stark argues persuasively that the rise of Western thought in Europe, based upon reason, faith in progress, personal freedom, and capitalism, was the direct result of Christian theology.17
Without doubt, the greatest achievement of Western thought was the birth of the United States of America. The United States is the cradle of self-government, freedom, and liberty. From its inception, it has provided the best evidence that democracy and freedom can not only work but prosper.
The values of equality and justice clearly flourished in this land. Belief in the rule of law was first proven to succeed in America and, for more than two hundred years, this nation has been the primary example of—and inspiration for—these values throughout the world.
How Did It Happen?
It seems that misery wasn’t the outcome that God intended for this world, for over millennia of time a miracle took place. It happened so slowly and so sporadically that in most cases the progress went completely unnoticed, so much so that even with the benefit of hindsight some of these steps of progress are difficult to identify and understand. But they did take place. Over centuries of human development, things changed.
A deeper look at the human record reveals a series of critical events, obvious forks in the road leading to very different outcomes, that resulted in this extraordinary period in which we live. These tipping points—foundational events that allowed for the marriage of Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology—laid the bedrock for democracy and freedom in our modern age.
Seven of the most important of these historical tipping points would be:
1. The defeat of the Assyrians in their quest to destroy the kingdom of Judah
As recorded in the Old Testament (as well as in nonbiblical sources), after the Assyrian army had defeated the kingdom of Israel and dispersed the Ten Tribes “to the north,” the Assyrian king sought to do the same thing to the kingdom of Judah. Suddenly, and uncharacteristically, the king changed his mind, deciding not to annihilate the kingdom of Judah—including the capital city of Jerusalem—but instead turning his armies and leaving the city in peace. The result was critical to the development of the modern world, for had Assyria succeeded in destroying Judah and Jerusalem, its population would have been “lost,” as were the Ten Tribes before. Had this happened, there would have been no Jewish state in which to plant Christianity.
2. The victory of the Greeks over the Persians at Thermopylae and Salamis
Had the Persians succeeded in defeating the Greek city-states, Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on individual rights and its experimentation with democracy, as well as Greek advances in science and culture, would not have survived. If that had happened, there would have been no Alexander the Great to spread the Greek culture throughout the Middle and Near East (generally those nations between the Mediterranean Sea and present-day Iran). Without the Greek influence bestowed by Alexander, Rome would have been a very different type of empire. Without the overwhelming influence of Rome, Europe would have evolved into a different place, far more the product of Eastern culture than those Western principles steeped in Greek philosophy and beliefs.
3. Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity
For both good and bad, the early history of Christianity was intimately tied to the Roman Empire. For several hundred years after the death of Christ, Christianity was deemed to be subversive, the Christians persecuted to the point of death. However, the conversion of Constantine to Christianity (in about AD 312) and his subsequent adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire allowed that religion not just to survive but to flourish and spread until it became the dominant religion of Europe. Had Christianity not survived, Europe, and then America, would have developed with very different attitudes about self-government, free will, and human rights.
4. The defeat of the armies of Islam at Poitiers
In AD 732, Charles Martel defeated a powerful and seemingly unstoppable Islamic army in what was to become known as the Battle of Poitiers. This battle, which the Arab people refer to as ma‘arakat Balâ ash-Shuhadâ or the Battle of the Court of the Martyrs, took place in central France and is considered by many historians as the turning point in the defense of Christianity in Europe. Though the fight to keep Islamic armies from conquering Europe continued intermittently for another nine hundred years, the Battle of Poitiers was unquestionably the high point in the Muslim conquest of Western Europe. Had the Franks not succeeded there, the armies of Islam would have continued their impassioned effort to conquer the world in the name of Muhammad. Had that been the case, respect for religious freedom, minority rights, women’s rights, and governments based on reason and democracy would surely not exist.
5. The failure of the Mongols in their effort to conquer Europe in AD 1241
After sweeping through Asia, the savage and uncivilized Mongols were poised to overcome the weakened, corrupt, and disorganized European states. Then, just as the Mongols arrived at the gates of Vienna, they suffered the death of their great leader. As a result, the Mongols withdrew their attack, never to return—allowing Europe to continue its development unhindered by the brutal and destructive Mongol hordes.
6. The discovery of the New World
With its wealth in gold, silver, and other natural resources, along with new food sources and its ability to fire the imagination and thirst to explore, the discovery of the New World ushered in a new and golden era throughout Europe. The great wealth that was created with the discovery of the Americas gave rise to European nations with sufficient power to defeat the repressive and brutal Islamic army that was again knocking on the doors of European capitals. The discovery of the New World also spawned critical developments in science, navigation, architecture, military tactics, weapons, and human resources, all of which secured the future of Europe as the rising empire in the world. Most important, it allowed Europe to evolve into the home of Western political philosophy and thought.
7. The Battle of Britain in World War II
In May 1940, the pagan and tyrannical government of Nazi Germany threatened to bring all of Europe under its dark rule. Britain was the last free European government that stood in its way. Though they faced what seemed to be certain annihilation, the British mustered the courage to make a final stand against the overwhelming power of the Third Reich. Winston Churchill and the people of Great Britain refused to surrender—thereby preserving democracy and freedom for generations yet to come.
All of these critical events in history will be explored in the following chapters.
It is important to understand that, in and of themselves, none of these events created the gift of freedom that we enjoy today. However, each of them proved to be a critical tipping point in which the future of the world was altered, creating the cradle in which the gift of democracy could be born and flourish in our day. (And yes, there are many other events that would make this story more complete, but time and space must limit our effort to just these seven.)
S
imply put, the case that we intend to make is this:
• Freedom and democracy are extraordinarily rare events in human history. Indeed, only a tiny fraction of humans have been given the opportunity of living in a free land.
• Throughout history, critical tipping points have occurred upon which the foundational elements of democracy and free governments have been laid. Many of these critical forks in the road occurred thousands of years before the event would bear the fruit of freedom. Some have happened in modern day. All of them were necessary for the world to enjoy the sudden expansion of free governments that we see today.
• It wasn’t inevitable that the Free Age would evolve as it did. The outcomes that generated this wave of freedom were never assured, and world history would have been dramatically altered if any one of these events had turned out differently, making the golden age of freedom impossible in our day.
The first steps taken toward creating an environment where freedom and democracy could sprout took place more than 2,700 years ago. Two hundred years later, another step was taken. Eight hundred years after that, another step. The journey has been long and tiresome, the quiet march to freedom taking millennia to complete. Yet each of these steps has proven critical to the incalculable blessing of freedom that so many citizens of the world enjoy today.
A Final Word of Warning
It is important to note that democracy and freedom are very fleeting—they can be possessed and then lost. A nation might be democratic for a period of time and then, through spasms of internal strife or war, revert to despotism. Over the past 225 years this has been shown again and again to be true, the tides of democracy causing many nations to sample and then lose the great gifts of freedom and democracy. The experience of Germany prior to World War I, immediately thereafter, and then during the reign of Hitler is a graphic example of this truth.
In a recently published book entitled Democratization, the authors point out that from 1783 until 1828 the United States stood entirely alone—the only free republic in the world. Then, from 1828 to 1926, there was a move of freedom when a small number of nations in Western Europe joined the United States as democratic governments. But, like a wave receding upon the shore, many of these fledgling free nations stepped back into fascist and repressive regimes when a storm of antidemocratic forces permeated much of the world during the period from 1922 to 1942. Italy. Germany. Spain. Many nations turned away from freedom. The end of World War II brought on another wave of free republics that lasted until 1962, when a second wave of regression occurred, swallowing infant democracies once again. Beginning in 1974, a third surge of democracy and freedom took place.18
Is it possible that another reverse wave of tyranny and oppression may follow? Will some—or many—of the fledgling democracies that briefly tilted against the winds of the natural state of men fall back into repressive governments?
One would have to ignore the trends of history to assume it couldn’t be so.
In fact, it is arguable that we are already witnessing another wave of repression.
Many of the nations that took significant steps toward democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall have reverted back to despotism. In a 2010 study, Freedom House determined that fourteen of the twenty-nine countries from the former Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact saw their freedoms eroding.19 And they are not alone; upheavals throughout the Mediterranean, Iberian Peninsula, and Central America show that the fragility of democracy extends far beyond the former Soviet or Warsaw Pact nations.
Speaking on this loss of democracy, Freedom House reported what they called a “global political recession,” explaining that more nations are currently experiencing declines in freedom than there are nations that are experiencing gains.20 Even some stable and formerly friendly democracies have adopted a seemingly bitter view of the West, festering with anti-Americanism that cracks at the partnerships that have defended democracies for the last sixty years. All this while powerful nations such as China, Russia, and Venezuela, along with aggressively repressive regimes like North Korea and Iran, seek to expand their influence.
Considering these troubling facts, is there any doubt that history is capable of repeating itself?
The rarity of freedom is matched only by its fragility, its ebbs and flows unpredictable and unsure. And though it is impossible to know the future, this one thing is certain: If we do not appreciate the delicate nature of those singular events that resulted in this enlightened and blessed sliver of world history, it is much more likely that the norm of tyranny will be reestablished.
It’s entirely possible that our children or grandchildren might once again live under the abusive hands of powerful and vicious tyrants.
If that were to happen, that precious thing we call liberty would become nothing but a memory.
Notes
^1. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp. July 1, 2010.
^2. Bastiat, Law, 25; emphasis added.
^3. Walter E. Williams, in Bastiat, Law, vi; emphasis in original.
^4. Freedom in the World Country Ratings, January 8, 2010, http://www .freedomhouse.org.
^5. In 1981, 51 nations were deemed to be “free.” In 2009, the number had increased to 89 nations (out of a total of 193).
^6. Extrapolation of U.S. Census figures (assumes a 130 percent growth rate and a new generation definition of every 20 years), http://www.census.gov/population /censusdata/table-4.pdf.
^7. See Dahl, How Democratic, 43.
^8. We understand that the United States of America is not a democracy, but a republic. However, we use the term democracy and its application to the United States, as well as other nations with a republican form of government, because of its broader and more generally understood meaning.
^9. The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a Democracy is: Rule by Omnipotent Majority. In a Democracy, The Individual, and any group of Individuals composing any Minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. It is a case of Majority-over-Man. . . . A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general” (Long, American Ideal of 1776; emphasis in original. See also http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened /AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.hmtl).
^10. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence.
^11. For example, John P. Holdren, President Obama’s Director for Science and Technology Policy, has pioneered the formula I=PAT (negative environmental impacts = the population multiplied by the affluence of the population multiplied by the technology of the population). Simply stated, this formula purports that the richer and more populous we are, the more environmental havoc we cause. Using this formula, government leaders would seek to reduce national wealth, technology, and population (see Tierney, “Use Energy, Get Rich, and Save the Planet”).
^12. See Yandle, Bhattarai, and Vijayaraghavan, Environmental Kuznets Curves, 1.
^13. The World’s Worst Polluted Places, The Blacksmith Institute, New York City, 2006. http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/top10/10worst2.pdf.
^14. See Cropper, Jiang, Alberini, Baur, Getting Cars Off the Road.
^15. Economic Opportunity and Prosperity, The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, New York City, 2010.
^16. Stark, Victory of Reason, x–xi.
^17. See ibid., x–xiii.
^18. See Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Inglehart, and Wetzel, Democratization, 41–54. These authors identify those periods or “waves” where democracy was on the ascent and spreading, and those “reverse waves” where the number of countries enjoyi
ng democracy contracted.
^19. Nations in Transit 2010, Freedom House, 2010. http://freedomhouse.org.
^20. Tom Melia, quoted in Hiatt, “Around the World, Freedom Is in Peril.”
Chapter 1
Two Gods at War
As for Hezekiah the Judahite, who did not submit to my yoke: forty-six of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small towns in their area, which were without number, by leveling with battering-rams and by bringing up siege-engines, and by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels, and breeches, I besieged and took them. 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil.
Prism of Sennacherib
Eastern Judah Plain 25 Miles Southwest of Jerusalem About 701 BC
The great city was going to die. There was no longer any doubt.
No, that wasn’t quite right. There had never been any doubt, and the Assyrian general quickly corrected himself. The destruction of the city had always been as certain as the rising of the sun or the coming of the moon. Anu, the king of gods, had demanded it of them. There was no longer any choice. Victory being their sacred obligation, they could no more deny their religious duty to expand the kingdom than they could command the wind to stand still. And with their gods before them—Qingu, the battle leader; Ashur, the personal god of Assyria; Adad, the storm god; Mammetum, mother of destiny and fate; and other gods unspoken—there was never any doubt that the general and his soldiers would claim the city as their own.
Indeed, the Assyrian army could hardly be defeated, for they were the mightiest and most brutal army in the world. That being true, there was no conceivable alternative other than to destroy the city once the order had been given, its obliteration having been determined by the Great King Sennacherib himself.
General Rabshakeh,1 the supreme commander of the Assyrian army, stood on the fertile Judah plains and looked out on Lachish, the great city on the hill. Second only to the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, Lachish was one of the most thoughtfully fortified cities in the entire Jewish kingdom. The hill that the city had been built upon rose several hundred feet into the air. A buttress of natural rock jutted on the south side, the outer wall rising above it. To the right was the main access to the city, a set of stairs and natural rock platforms that would leave his men completely unprotected from the assaults of arrows and stones that would come raining from above. Knowing there was no way to assault the city from the heavily defended trail, his army had spent weeks building an enormous dirt ramp, tons of earth moved by hand and dumped beside one corner of the hill, a ramp they would use to assault the outer walls once the battle had begun. Inside the outer ring, General Rabshakeh knew there was another rock wall, then a maze of residences, shops, wells, barns, and city buildings, then finally the great palace, a massive structure in the center of the walled city.
