正义战争论（2）——美国革命及美国的政治制度

正义战争论（2）——美国革命及美国的政治制度 2—— ——你所不知道的美国革命和南北战争史 作者：穆瑞?罗斯巴德 （续前...） 二，美国革命及美国的政治制度 现在让我回到美国的两场正义战争中来。根据我的定义，美国革命无疑是 一场正义的战争，一场由人民建立一个独立的国家并摆脱由另一个民族强加于他 们身上的统治枷锁的战争。很明显，美国人，虽然欢迎法国和其他国家的支持， 却早已准备承担这个让人望而生畏的任务，去推翻这个当时世界上最强大帝国的 统治，而且若有必要甚至会单独行动。 我在这里关注的并不是那些让美国人产生反叛想法的不公，从而让美国人 觉得“对一个民族来说有必要切断把他们联系在一起的政治纽带。”我想在这里 着重强调的是美国人做出这个庄重和决定命运的分离之举其背后的依据。美国人 深受约翰?洛克和学院派自然法哲学的影响，以及古希腊和古罗马的古典共和主 义影响。在那段时期，不列颠和欧洲流行着两大主要政治理论。一种是古老的， 不过在那时已经被废弃的，专制主义观点：君王为他统治之国的父亲，对君王的 绝对服从是臣民的义务；任何对君王的反叛都等同于撒旦反叛上帝。 另一个政治理论，则是相反的自然法观点，认为主权不在君王而在民，只 是人民把他们的权力和权利交由君王代理。虎哥格老秀斯和保守主义自然法学家们认为主权代理，一旦权力的移交完成之后就不可撤销，所以主权就必须永远为 君王所有。而更激进的自由意志主义理论家们，比如牧师马里亚纳，以及约翰?洛 克和他的追随者们，相当理智地认为，既然最初的代理是自愿和契约式的，那人 美国革命者们，为让自己脱离大不列颠并建立他们自己新的国家，采纳了 民就有权夺回主权，如果君王严重辜负了人民对他的信任。 洛克的学说。实际上，如果他们没有接受洛克，他们就不可能组建他们的新国家。 众所周知，在经过了一整年的血腥战争之后，美国人所面临的最大的道德和心理 问题，也是他们唯一要让自己所克服的，就是违背了他们效忠英王的誓言。而与 他们事实上的统治者英国议会之间的决裂，则一点问题都没有；他们在乎的不是 议会，而国王则是他们世世代代的至高上帝，他们都宣誓效忠的那个人。他们所 效忠的是国王；所以，独立宣言中所列出的苦衷和不满只针对国王一人，即使议 会是事实上的罪魁祸首。 因此，对美国革命者来说，托马斯?潘恩的《常识》所提供的至关重要的心 理安慰，就在于他不仅接受了洛克的观点，正义化了美国人的主权声明，还尤其 把矛头对准了国王。用新左派的话来说，潘恩让国王在美国人眼中非法化了和去 神圣化了。大不列颠的国王，潘恩写道，不过是“某个不安分帮派的高级流氓” 的后代而已；“他的蛮横或城府让他得到了流氓头子的头衔”。如今所有的国王 们，包括这个“大不列颠的王室畜生”，都不过是“加冕的暴徒”。 于是，为了成就他们的革命，美国人把他们的命运永远地和一个契约理论或政府存在的正当理由绑定在了一起。政府不是什么自上而下，由某种赐予主权的 神圣行为强加到人民身上；而是契约式的，自下而上的，通过“被统治者的认可” 而建立的。那意味着美国政治制度不可避免的会成为共和政体，而不是君主政体。 实际上所发生的，是美国革命开创了人类历史的先河。所有十三个殖民地的人民 都各自成立了新的、各自为政的、契约式的共和政府。以自由意志主义学说为基 础，以共和政体为模型，所有十三个殖民地的人民都建立了各自独立的主权州： 每个州政府的权力都被严格限制；绝大部分的权利和权力都被保留给了人民；而 且约束、平衡，以及成文宪法都严厉限制了州政府的权力。 这十三个各自为政的共和政府，为了进行他们反抗大英帝国的共同战争，每个政府都派出代到大陆议会，后来就随之形成了一个联邦以便于对抗英国，他 们也再次严格限制了这个中央政府的权力。后来充满争议地废止联邦宪法并起草 一份新宪法的决定不容置疑地表明中央政府并没有被认为是永恒的，不是某种永久的单向陷阱，不是像格老秀斯所声称的把人民主权永远赋予君王那样。实际上， 这会是一件非常怪异的事情，因为美国革命者们既然已经认为对国王的宣誓效忠 是契约式和可废除的，也打破了对国王的誓约，却在短短几年之后又回到了老路， 签下了一份被是通向一个永恒中央政府的不可撤销的单程票协议。连对国王 且最后，有谁真的相信这十三个州里有哪个州会批准一份他们认为是一个永的誓约都可以废除和契约化，而一纸协议竟然不可撤销！ 久单向的维纳斯捕蝇草的宪法——一张交出主权的单程票？宪法根本不可能这 样被通过！ 所以，如果联邦宪法可以被等同为一堆废纸，如果在1780年代把主权代理 给联邦政府的举动是可以撤回的，那么就在不到十年之后，中央政府又如何能够 以宪法之名，宣称它的权力是永恒而不可废除？纯粹的逻辑是这样的：如果在之 前一个州能够加入联邦也能够在以后退出联邦；那十年后一个接受了新的1787 年宪法的州也同样如此。 也当然，可怕的不合逻辑的就是这个在南北战争期间，由北方由联邦所宣称 的学说。 Just War I want to now return to America’s two justwars. It is plainly evident that the American Revolution, using my definition,was a just war, a war of peoples forming an independent nation and casting offthe bonds of another people insisting on perpetuating their rule over them.Obviously, the Americans, while welcoming French or other support, wereprepared to take on the daunting task of overthrowing the rule of the mostpowerful empire on earth, and to do it alone if necessary. What I want to focus on here is not thegrievances that led the American rebels to the view that it had become"necessary for One People to dissolve the political bonds which haveconnected them with another." What I want to stress here is the ground onwhich the Americans stood for this solemn and fateful act of separation. TheAmericans were steeped in the natural-law philosophy of John Locke and theScholastics, and in the classical republicanism of Greece and Rome. There weretwo major political theories in Britain and in Europe during this time. One wasthe older, but by this time obsolete, absolutist view: the king was the fatherof his nation, and absolute obedience was owed to the king by the lesserorders; any rebellion against the king was equivalent to Satan’s rebellionagainst God. The other, natural law, view countered thatsovereignty originated not in the king but in the people, but that the peoplehad delegated their powers and rights to the king. Hugo Grotius andconservative natural lawyers believed that the delegation of sovereignty, oncetransferred, was irrevocable, so that sovereignty must reside permanently inthe king. The more radical libertarian theorists, such as Father Mariana, andJohn Locke and his followers, believed, quite sensibly, that since the originaldelegation was voluntary and contractual, the people had the right to take backthat sovereignty should the king grossly violate his trust. The American revolutionaries, in separatingthemselves from Great Britain and forming their new nation, adopted the Lockeandoctrine. In fact, if they hadn’t done so, they would not have been able toform their new nation. It is well known that the biggest moral andpsychological problem the Americans had, and could only bring themselves toovercome after a full year of bloody war, was to violate their oaths ofallegiance to the British king. Breaking with the British Parliament, their defacto ruler, posed no problem; Parliament they didn’t care about. But the kingwas their inherited sovereign lord, the person to whom they had all swornfealty. It was the king to whom they owed allegiance; thus, the list ofgrievances in the Declaration of Independence mentioned only the king, eventhough Parliament was in reality the major culprit. Hence, the crucial psychological importance,to the American revolutionaries, of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which not onlyadopted the Lockean view of a justified reclaiming of sovereignty by theAmerican people, but also particularly zeroed in on the office of the king. Inthe words of the New Left, Paine delegitimized and desanctified the king inAmerican eyes. The king of Great Britain, Paine wrote, is only the descendentof "nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang; whosesavage manner or preeminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief amongplunderers." And now the kings, including the "Royal Brute of GreatBritain," are but "crowned ruffians." In making their revolution, then, theAmericans cast their lot, permanently, with a contractual theory orjustification for government. Government is not something imposed from above,by some divine act of conferring sovereignty; but contractual, from below, by"consent of the governed." That means that American politiesinevitably become republics, not monarchies. What happened, in fact, is thatthe American Revolution resulted in something new on earth. The people of eachof the 13 colonies formed new, separate, contractual, republican governments.Based on libertarian doctrines and on republican models, the people of the 13colonies each set up independent sovereign states: with powers of eachgovernment strictly limited, with most rights and powers reserved to thepeople, and with checks, balances, and written constitutions severely limitingstate power. These 13 separate republics, in order towage their common war against the British Empire, each sent representatives tothe Continental Congress, and then later formed a Confederation, again withseverely limited central powers, to help fight the British. The hotly contesteddecision to scrap the Articles of Confederation and to craft a new Constitutiondemonstrates conclusively that the central government was not supposed to beperpetual, not to be the sort of permanent one-way trap that Grotius hadclaimed turned popular sovereignty over to the king forevermore. In fact, itwould be very peculiar to hold that the American Revolutionaries had repudiatedthe idea that a pledge of allegiance to the king was contractual and revocable,and break their vows to the king, only to turn around a few short years laterto enter a compact that turned out to be an irrevocable one-way ticket for apermanent central government power. Revocable and contractual to a king, butirrevocable to some piece of paper! And finally, does anyone seriously believefor one minute that any of the 13 states would have ratified the Constitutionhad they believed that it was a perpetual one-way Venus fly trap – a one-wayticket to sovereign suicide? The Constitution was barely ratified as it is! So, if the Articles of Confederation couldbe treated as a scrap of paper, if delegation to the confederate government inthe 1780s was revocable, how could the central government set up under theConstitution, less than a decade later, claim that its powers were permanentand irrevocable? Sheer logic insists that: if a state could enter aconfederation it could later withdraw from it; the same must be true for astate adopting the Constitution. And yet of course, that monstrous illogicis precisely the doctrine proclaimed by the North, by the Union, during the WarBetween the States.