The Americanness of the American Revolution - Why the Founders succeeded

City Journal ^ | Autumn 2012 | MYRON MAGNET

[neverdem]

EILEEN TWEEDY/THE ART ARCHIVE AT ART RESOURCE, NY

The early American settlers, including these Pilgrims taking ship in Delfshaven, Holland, in 1620, cherished liberty because they had experienced religious oppression in the Old World, and they made their own personal social revolutions by escaping to the New.

[neverdem]

Ping

[LS]

It is important to note that while John Locke thought labor “the greater part” of value, he fully understood that there was far more to value than just labor, hence the need for property protections and the centrality of intellect and risk. He did not put labor as the sole arbiter of value as Marx (and Hitler) did.

[DBeers]

The American Revolution, then, was doubly limited in its aims: limited to making only a political change without altering social or economic arrangements, and determined to set strict limits to its new government, fearful that any governmental power beyond the barest minimum necessary to protect liberty too easily could become a threat to liberty itself.

It is NOT just the economy, stupid! Fiscal only conservatives are clueless pseudo conservatives.

The battle for freedom against big government imposed tyranny MUST be fought on both fronts at the same time -social and economic!!!

[WMarshal]

The American Revolution succeeded be because of the character of Americans, not just that of the Founding Fathers. Why does Mexico suck? Because it is full of Mexicans. Why did the French Revolution sink to tyranny? Because of the French inclination for passion, lack of pragmatism, and hierarchy. The Russian Revolution failed because Russians are Russians and they like to stagger form high art, to comedy, to tragedy, and finally murder.

[unixfox]

What will sink this country is the ensuing war of the takers VS the makers. That and political correctness.

[Jacquerie]

Another informative 19th Century history, Richard Frothingham’s 1881 600+-page “Rise of the Republic of the United States,” provides insight into the development of the ideas of liberty and is now available on line.
Sadly, those who, today, see it as a “flawed” document, will not be persuaded, for their agenda is to “change” America from the “beacon of liberty” and prosperity it became under the Founders’ Constitution to an oppressive European model the Founders discarded.

92 posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 1:18:40 PM by loveliberty2
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[PieterCasparzen]

An “equal TOLERATION of Conscience,” Livingston wrote, “is justly deem’d the Basis of public Liberty in this Country.” To Madison, for whom America “offer[ed] an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion,” an established, official, obligatory religion, with dogmas you must profess, though it is seemingly “distant from the Inquisition, . . . differs from it only in degree.

There's the one loophole that heathens exploit, however, which can only be eliminated by either a) assuming that it is implicitly prohibited or b) amending the Constitution to add in an explicit prohibition. A religion or ideology that seeks to subvert the existing religions and eliminate them can not be logically tolerated without America being reduced to what is no better and most likely worse than what the original settlers fled from to come here.

[Jacquerie]

No Freeper will be disappointed reading Richard Frothingham's 1872 work, The Rise of the Republic of the United States.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[dcwusmc]

Try reading the whole article. Leave economics to the private sector and social stuff to society. Government has but ONE legitimate function: the protection of the equal rights of ALL Americans. That was all the authority granted by the Founders to government. Not telling folks how they had to live under penalty of law or imposing socialist (voodoo) economics on folks.

What you seem to be advocating is just more big government. Thanks but no thanks.

[Jacquerie]

You are welcome, but loveliberty2 introduced it to FR.

For LS, check out the first chapters of The Rise of the Republic link in #9. We indeed grew in Lockean fashion during the 17th Century.

[Sans-Culotte]

Bump

[DBeers]

What you seem to be advocating is just more big government. Thanks but no thanks.

I guess it went over your head. Affirmative action and a homosexual military are examples of government imposed social engineering... I am calling for getting government out of the business of social engineering. One does not do this by ignoring the tyranny but rather by opposing it and eliminating it.

[silentknight]

Yawn

I am pretty sure that Americans are too lazy for revolution these days. What between their favorite tv shows and their trips to McDonalds. There isn’t really time for a revolution.

[brityank]

Bump - and thanks!

[robowombat]

This is interesting but as with much of the writing on both the Revolution and the War Between the States it sanitizes and intellectualizes what was a messy and violent operation. At bottom the American rebels were always far more dynamic and ruthless than their British and Loyalist opponents. In spite of the massive military effort (by 18th century standards) the British engaged in in trying to put down the American rebellion one is left with a general impression of dull orthodox professionals going through the prescripted actions that their template taught them to perform. On the ground in disputed areas such as new York and South Carolina the rebels were well organized and totally ruthless in their treatment of those determined to be Toy or Tory sympathizers. The organization of various grass roots groups of the ‘Sons of Liberty’ type meant that a through domestic spying organization was in place and individuals behaviors and sympathies were subject to constant spying on and monitoring. At the start of the revolution mobs were employed with good effect to terrorize or overawe individual loyalists. The most spectacular but very typical example of the effectiveness of mobbing designated individuals was of Sir Francis Bernard the Royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. If a mob could destroy the home and property of the governor with impunity who could not be given the same treatment? This sort of powerful coercive tactics largely effectively terrorized much of the loyalist community.

Considering the size and enthusiasm of the revolutionary movement the only way it could have been beaten would have been a combination of vigorous and aggressive conventional military operations connected to heavy handed and deliberate terrorization tactics involving extensive deliberate destruction of private and public property. This is basically what the US government used as a strategy to defeat the southern rebellion and this effective terrorism engaged in by Sherman and Sheridan and a host of lesser lights is routinely hailed both here and in the usual conventional nationalist texts as a mark of the wisdom and sagacity of the Union high command.

British efforts along these lines were scattered and unfocused but even those put a real fright into the American rebels. The Wyoming and Cherry valley raids and Arnold's operations along the Connecticut coasts and later in Virginia are mentioned with a shudder in many conventional American accounts of the Revolution. Walter Butler was probably correct in reportedly trying to convince the British in Montreal to greatly expand his raiding force at Niagara and incorporate regulars in it so that raids such as the Wyoming Valley operation could be mounted into the heartland of the revolutionaries and capturing and sacking Albany would have a powerful effect on depressing revolutionary zeal in New York.

The leadership of the American Revolution was certainly more dynamic and just plain smarter than those of George III and Great Britain but their lieutenants on the ground were also just plain more focused and ruthless in terrorizing, defeating, and beating both the redcoats and the large loyalist community. These are lessons that would be well for the modern GOP and those who call themselves conservatives to ponder. The enemies of liberty this time are better organized and far more focused and smart and ruthless than their opponents and they will win unless confronted with people who are just as ruthless and determined and if necessary unprincipled as they are. The rats know what the American rebels knew “Winning is not just the most important thing , it is the only thing’.

[zeestephen]

Few Americans realize that “Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” created an economic miracle.

By 1750 the Colonies had the highest standard of living in the world and the highest per capita income in the world.

This would be the case for more than 200 years, when some of the wealthiest European countries finally caught up to us.

[EternalVigilance]

The founders told us why they succeeded.

"I accept, with much pleasure your kind Congratulations on the happy Event of Peace, with the Establishment of our Liberties and Independence. Glorious indeed has been our Contest: glorious in its Issue; but in the midst of our Joys, I hope we shall not forget that, to divine providence is to be ascribed the glory and the Praise."

-- George Washington, Letter to Rev. John Rodgers, June 11, 1783

[T-Bird45]

Excellent, well-founded comments with multiple modern connections and parallels. Your final paragraph frames the current political context very well. Your view as regards “unprincipled” is certain to be controversial but that makes it no less vital a subject for discussion.