American Eras: Westward Expansion: 1800-1860 (American Eras Series), Vol. 6 Book

The Shifting Lights

This book should be read along with Levin's Great Debate. That will allow a right wing perspective to balance out a left wing perspective. It is very interesting to note how two authors with different viewpoints approach the same two protagonists and mould them to their requirements. With Paine and Burke this is easier because they lived through such momentous events that their ideas and actions can be seen differently depending on where the author chooses to stand.

Levin chooses to stand and judge both from a post-revolutionary viewpoint and exult in the fact that Burke knew the French Revolution would be disastrous while naive Paine precipitated the disaster by not realizing that human institutes and traditions can't be just pulled down so easily without consequences.

In fact, Levin chooses to examine Burke's attitudes towards the American Revolution to show his progressive nature and then his attitude to French Revolution to show his wisdom; and Paine's attitude during the pre-Revolutionary zeal to show how he was just a revolt-monger who has grand plans and no sense of the reality.

Hitchens on the other hand chooses to view the debate from a pre-revolutionary position. This allows him to praise Paine for his contribution the American Independence and Constitution, showing his skills as a spokesman and influencer par compare. When Hitchens comes to Burke, he focuses on his opposition to the French Revolution and ridicules his passionate defense of monarchy. This allows Hitchens to show Paine as a progressive future-oriented leader who changed the course of history and Burke as a reactionary who just wants to hang on to the outdated age of chivalry.

Of course, neither Paine nor Burke were consistently right throughout their political engagement. Both were probably right in supporting the American Revolution and both were perhaps wrong in their over-the-top attitudes to the French Revolution. But Hitchens and Levin combine to show us how just by shifting the viewpoints we can see them in such different lights ' the naive and the wise keep shifting before our eyes like in a hall of mirrors. It is a spectacle.