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To: hellbender
Just read the Declaration of Independence. It accuses the King of many radical moves against existing rights and liberties.

Indeed it does, and I believe that accounts for the "libertarian" component of "libertarian revolutionaries". Overthrowing an existing establishment of government and replacing it with a totally different form of government, independent and sovereign from the original is a revolution.

143 posted on 11/10/2006 8:02:40 PM PST by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: tacticalogic

They merely separated themselves from the British imperial regime. They remained governed by their own colonial legislatures, as before. So there was no "totally different form of government!" They simply replaced the British parliament, in which they had no representatives, with the Continental Congress. Replacing an absolute monarchy with a republic, as in France, or with a Soviet dictatorship, that's what a change to a "totally different form of government" looks like. At first they had only the weakest of central governments, because they lacked any real executive branch. The government set up by the Constitution rectified that. There was no attack on any of the social fabric, such as happens in most revolutions, where the Church and upper classes are targeted.
The Founders merely preserved English-style representative government on American soil. Unlike libertarians, they didn't start with an ideal utopian vision of government. They kept an established system, which was anything but libertarian. There was slavery, established churches in several colonies, tariffs (the main source of revenue to the new government), etc. There were no fanatic dopers in the Revolutionary government, either ;-)


152 posted on 11/11/2006 6:51:02 PM PST by hellbender
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