tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post132424214513275175..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: Was the American Revolution a Mistake?Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-20874095892565403842017-07-06T09:35:05.441-04:002017-07-06T09:35:05.441-04:00Truly, the essays John is talking about sound otio...Truly, the essays John is talking about sound otiose and half-baked. Their authors seem to ignore the key fact that these issues that they care about--Indian removal, curbing slavery, etc.--were, in both Britain and America, in every case, subjects of political combat. Sometimes the forces they (and I) identify with won, and sometimes they lost. Both abolition in Britain and Indian Removal in the US were close-run fights. All those compromises the early republic made with slavery were hard-fought. Not good enough, the authors might say--and the abolitionists agreed, which is why they kept at it.<br /><br />To put it another way, the essayists seem to be imagining that they could escape certain (insert: Trumpish) forces if only we hadn't left the Empire. But racism, xenophobia, and consciously lower-class loutism thrive in British culture just as they do in American--and just as the impulses opposed to these things also thrive. Being British is no escape.<br /><br />On the other hand, it simply isn't true that criteria like human rights and elected representatives "did not exist until the Revolution established them." Everything the American Revolution stood for had strong European precedents, some of them centuries old--including Leveller anti-snobbism and the idea of not having kings. As Garry Wills has shown, Jefferson got the famous ideas in the Declaration's preamble from his close reading of Scottish Enlightenment works. John himself admits the precedents--so why claim the criteria "didn't exist" before the Revolution? In any case, the point is not of course to criticize the Revolution for lack of originality--the familiarity of its ideas helped make it successful, including with significant portions of the British public and the House of Commons--but to caution against moderns trying to praise it by claiming an undue originality for it.<br /><br />As for Lincoln, well, some of us would say that one of the greatest things about the American Revolution was that it made Abraham Lincoln possible.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-20650631240806374442017-07-04T22:06:14.629-04:002017-07-04T22:06:14.629-04:00"Many were increasingly of the opinion that t...<i>"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."</i><br /><br />- Douglas Adams, <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy</i>G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com