M&D Deep Duck: "when the world was yet feudal"

[Mark Kohut]

Tangentially interesting....Becker "knew" this for his Declaration of
Independence book, although surely not in the depth we know it today.

So, his Overarching Ideas-Only book, Heavenly City does not know it,
so to speak.

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is EXACTLY the kind of thought without much substance--and ne'er
> so well-expressed---I had when I read the word 'feudal"
>
> That word makes it almost seem as if Cherrycoke expresses an abrupt
> leap from the Middle ages to his present. Again, that undisciplined
> scholar manqué in me would suggest in a footnote---were I annotating
> the Arden edition of Pynchon, so to speak, that P shows Becker's
> HEAVENLY CITY influence because he, dealing with Zeitgeist history,
> does do that. I.e. contrast the 1700s with the Middle Ages
> in...'climate of opinion"----from Whitehead and not precise enough for
> me these days...(that is over 80 years from Becker's book now).
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So on p. 5 Cherrycoke characterizes 1632 (when Charles I issued the charter
>> for Maryland to Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore) and 1681 (when Charles
>> II issued that for Pennsylvania to William Penn, Esq.)
>>
>> It's interesting that from a century later and a newly-forged American PoV,
>> the whole span -- encompassing the English Civil War(s), Commonwealth,
>> Protectorate, and Restoration -- is "feudal." Historically, the political
>> thought and rhetoric of US independence was by no means all from the
>> 18th-century Enlightenment: a lot of it had been in play since those
>> 17th-century Parliamentary challenges to the monarchy, and the constraints
>> on royal power (explicit and tacit) that the restored Charles II and his
>> successors had been forced to accept.
>>
>> Naturally, the rebellious colonists cast George III as an absolutist tyrant,
>> and their own divided government, checks & balances, etc. as a wholly new
>> thing in the world. That's what national creation myths do. But in fact, the
>> rebels borrowed ideas and arguments wholesale from 150 years of decidedly
>> post-feudal British political evolution.
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