You are right! I could go back to my socialist home country Germany to avoid the mess here but my German friends tell me the Brown Shirts are taking over, just as they will be here. That leaves whiskey and cigarettes and unprotected sex with dangerous strangers to limit my exposure to what is to come here. (I am 78, with a little luck I could reach the promised land before too long)
Er … Happy Valentine’s Day?
The discussion was about the utility of revolutions – are they worth it or not? You now are saying that even American revolution was not a success. So do you have a counter-argument to my statement (based on historical evidence) that arguably revolutions lead to more suffering than they prevent? Otherwise, you are arguing for the sake of argument.
Not asserting that here, no.
Just wondered how you treat it in your calculus.
I do not believe that today’s Republican party has the right to survive. But this has nothing to do with Sanders’ call for political revolution.
For one thing, Sanders called for political revolution before the Republicans started their coup (and it is a coup, not a revolution). But even if someone were to argue that Sanders “political revolution” is a response to trumpian one – my opposition to revolutions also applies to counter-revolutions.
We do not need a revolution, we do not need to throw away the institutions this country built for over 200 years. We need to defend these institutions, improve them and use them for further progress. In other words, we need an evolution.
And if you look into the matter, you may be surprised how quickly things tend to evolve under the right conditions.
Well, if you are asking for my opinion about American Revolution, I already stated it – American Revolutionary War is also known as Independence War. It was much more the struggle of a society with external rulers than it was a strife within the society. And that makes it irrelevant to the current discussion about desirability of Sanders’ political revolution.
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One third of the colonists supported the Revolution.
One third opposed it.
One third was indifferent.
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That’s about right as far as any independence war goes. So what’s the point?
American revolution was not caused by the irreconcilable differences between the colonists who wanted independence and those who were against it. It was not caused by constant the belief that one group of colonists was abusing and discriminating against the other. It was cause by the differences between the large fraction of the colonists and an outside ruler (the ruler who came to be perceived by many as a foreign power).
The point is here:
Which you now see is incorrect, which renders untethered your very next line:
Before?
That is highly debatable since whatever you call it has been in the works for 40 years.
I’m not going to quibble over the terminology of coup or revolution.
Although I do think it’s a distinction without a difference in reference to this stuff.
In reply to “It was much more the struggle of a society with external rulers than it was a strife within the society” you say:
I am absolutely correct.
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With a slight oversimplification the three groups of settlers you refer to can be called “independence fighters”, “leave me alone group”, and “collaborators”. Such groups exist in any society ruled by a foreign power. The tension between these groups is always a consequence and never the root cause of independence wars.
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That the American Revolution was not caused by irreconcilable strife between groups of settlers is obvious when one looks as the outcomes of the independence war: it did not lead to a change in social, economic, and, to some degree, even political structure of the society. Even today we look at English common law to interpret our constitution!
Revolutions are very different – they represent struggle of the oppressed with the oppressors within the society and, if successful, they necessarily lead to an abrupt change in economic, social, and political structure. Sanders’ “political revolution” is of the same kind – it is the revolution of the “working class” against the “billionaires”. Clearly he talks about a non-violent revolution. But the violence is not the only danger of a revolution. Revolutions (including Sanders’ desired revolution) tend to destroy institutions of the society and build new, better ones from scratch. Except that building from scratch is extremely difficult in the context of the society and rarely the new structure is better, let alone sufficiently better to justify the revolution post-hoc. Admittedly, there are cases where a revolution is the only path but based on human experience, revolutions should be avoided if at all possible, This country is (was, until 2016) one of the most tolerant and democratic societies in the modern world – we should not try to build something better from scratch, we should defend and improve what we have.
lol,we Democrats call Sanders 'leap year Bernie…he becomes a Democrat every 4 years.
And always, too.
Sleep well.
I am not always correct but I often am. Critical thinking and ability to both make and correct mistakes (my own and others’) is an essential part of my job.
History and political science are not my areas of expertise, so I am especially open to being proven wrong in these areas. If you had valid arguments – you could convince me but obviously you don’t.
(I do suspect that you understand differences between American Revolution and, say, the French one, so you must be arguing just for the sake of argument.)
That’s true for my job also but I’m not at all sure that I carry that skill over to my postings here.
I’m not saying anything about whether you do, I’m cracking a joke at my own expense.
No.
As I said: You had made some generalizations about revolutions, so I asked to see how the American Revolution in particular fit within your scheme.
And what I concluded from your sequences of responses is that you haven’t thought about it enough.
You might have noticed that the sentence you quoted was followed by “history and political science are not my areas of expertise”.
While we all have various blinders, and those blinders tend to be more effective precisely when we do not have requisite knowledge, it also means that I have no stake in winning an argument about nature of American Revolution (the subject of the discussion that lead to the sentence you quoted).
I don’t need to justify why I will never vote for Bernie. Only that will never happen.
Just like Bloomberg, if I get another spam text on my phone from his LLC real estate minions posing as everyday people, who are trying to give the impression he has grass roots support. He too will go on the never list.
FFS, I’ve received over 75 spam texts in the past 24 hours all with fictional names attached. Best part is I tracked all of them to a 1/2 million dollar private home run by a scam real estate LLC in Tampa FL. Some mighty fine grass roots he’s got there.
“No” as in you do not understand the differences between American and French revolutions? That explains why you would put American Revolution in the same category as French, Russian, recent peaceful East European revolutions, and a “political revolution” desired by Sanders.
And I explained to you that the American Revolution is clearly not in the same category as all of the other revolutions we are talking about. There is a reason it is also called an Independence War. Neither Russian, nor French revolutions are called independence wars. Not even velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe are called independence wars even though arguably they were in part a struggle for independence from the Soviet Union. You do not seem to understand the crucial differences between those events.
I agree with you that all on the same day does a disservice. However this piecemeal primary process over such a long period is also a disservice to the voter. My personal take is for a regional primary system, say 6, over a 3 month time period followed within a couple of weeks by the convention. Ideally the whole process, primaries, conventions and general election could be compressed into no more than 6 months. It is emasculation for the candidates as well as voters to have this thing stretch out for well over a year and does absolutely zilch in the way of finding the person who will win.
Another suggestion is to have meaningful debates held by other than self serving “news” organizations. Debates that ask substantive questions and a moderator that would not allow any one individual to avoid a direct answer to the question, answers with some meat on them.