DK HISTORY AND POLITICS PBROWER2A1 COMMENTS

Pbrower2a1 I

On the American Revolution as a mistake -- without it, America would be more like Canada, with a parliamentary system which would have been more attractive perhaps in the 1870s after the British undid their 'rotten boroughs' that planted huge numbers of flunkies of George III in Parliament at the time of the American Revolution. America's Founding Fathers excoriated the British Parliament, an eminently reasonable attitude of the time. But after the American Revolution, the British removed some of the objectionable features of its representative institutions by implementing a Census that apportioned Parliamentary seats more connected to population.

Women's right to vote -- American and British women got the right to vote at roughly the same time. That is a wash.

Slavery? I am tempted to believe that Lincoln was going to do in America what the British had done a generation earlier -- compelling slave-owners to sell their slaves to the federal government which would then release them, and let the freedmen settle in the West. In view of the cost of the American Civil War, that would have been a win-win situation. But hindsight is 20/20 in history... In any event, there was no reactionary response analogous to Jim Crow in the British Caribbean colonies.

Perhaps had America been a Commonwealth country (or mostly Commonwealth countries), the outcome of World War I would have been different; a world without Hitler and Stalin would seem a nicer place in which to live.

This said, the American Revolution was practically inevitable once George III tried to micro-manage colonies which had largely been left to their own devices and already had well-working legislative bodies. George III was simply too rigid to do the right thing. Personalities matter in Crisis Eras.

We can all play games of "what if" in history. A not-too-bad President and Congressional leadership doesn't cause us to ask basic questions about the nature of our government. Donald Trump in collusion with a Congress best described as lobbyist-dominated causes liberals at the least (and maybe some conservatives like George Will and Steve Schmidt) to ask such questions. But people who think that Obama was born in Kenya who proudly wear "Make America Great Again" caps do not now ask those questions. I will say no more of that because I don't want to make it an issue of cognitive talent or proclivity.

DK REPLY TO I:

PBrower,

I think your argument is completely ahistorical. It was the victory of the colonists on a democratic platform that gave democracy a long-term push in Europe. Without that victory Britain certainly wouldn't have reformed Parliament any earlier than they did. Nor is it clear that Canada would have benefited from the Durham report or the British North America Act. in any case--great historians don't argue with hsitory.

PBrower2a1 II

..but arguing that the American Revolution was a mistake is itself 'ahistorical'. It's basically alternative history, a pointless exercise unless strictly for literary reasons. It is ahistorical in the sense that one might speculate on how different European history would have been had Napoleon not invaded Russia or how different the history of Latin America would have been had the revolt of Tupac Amaru II succeeded. 

Separation of the American colonies from Britain was a near certainty, as the Colonies already were already capable of self-government and often had to act before the Crown did. By 1770 the questions were when and by what means. George III bungled the situation badly; before him the British Crown largely allowed the Colonies much discretion on day-to-day matters, much in contrast to how Spain did things. Note also that the Colonies were at time becoming different from Britain itself even in ethnic composition. New York was still a 'former Dutch colony', Pennsylvania had a large number of Germans, and of course there were far more African slaves. Add to this, colonial America got large settlements of people from northern England and southern Scotland unsympathetic to harsh treatment by the British Crown, who carried their attitudes with them and maintained them. 

...The first attempt to bring Democracy to Europe, the French Revolution, successfully overthrew the Bourbon dynasty, only to end up as the Bonaparte empire... and after 1815, the real rulers of continental Europe turned completely reactionary. Not until 1848 would there be democratic revolutions in Europe, and most of those would fail. The only country to imitate the political structure of the USA was Switzerland, in 1815 the only significant republic in Europe. 

The big influence of the American Revolution was on Latin America, and not on Europe. The French Revolution results from an economic implosion, arguably the result of a volcanic eruption in Iceland that messed up food production in western Europe. The Crowned Heads of Europe still wielded nearly-absolute power after their restoration, and to them the word republic was an anathema. 

PBrower2a1III

The Constitution is more than a #@%* piece of paper, or government can do anything that even a bare and temporary minority can foist upon us. The Founding Fathers chose to impose some permanence on certain norms of politics. Thus it would not be lawful to suppress the opposition or to void the elections of the side that ended up in the minority. The Constitution is a statement of the moral values of the government.

The alternative is that politics is nothing more than power plays, and that at some time the side that wins can entrench itself until the system is extirpated in war or revolution. Thus the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Apartheid-era South Africa, or Ba'athist regimes in Iraq and Syria. With power to entrench the effective majority the regime can alter education and economics at will, and Orwell becomes reality even if his books be banned.

I have no idea of how many Americans would support an authoritarian Leftist regime, which might be a good thing. We are finding out him many Americans support an authoritarian Rightist regime -- just look at the approval ratings for Donald Trump, the most dictatorial or despotic (take your pick) President in American history. With him we have effective government by lobbyists who pull the wires on enough elected legislatures in the federal Congress and most state legislatures. 

Demagoguery is the bane of any democracy -- and we Americans have largely been immune to it, either because the government was too weak to have much of a role in the economy or because enough people were wise enough to resist its seduction. But Donald Trump has proved as adept a demagogue as any, even if he has since proved an awful political leader. Much of our defense has been a large Center Left and a large Center Right, both large enough to be present in both main parties, as well as a large middle of the road. But those are largely gone. 

Any people that sells out its liberty in the name of economic enhancement will surely lose its freedom -- and will probably find greater poverty than it has ever known before.If we fall for Trump we deserve a Great Depression every bit as severe as that that started the last Crisis. At least the Great Depression forced people to start caring about the plight of others. Our current leadership is clever enough to keep loading the consequences of vile policies upon those that will never vote for that leadership.

I see this threat in an anti-democratic America: we have a heritage of militarism, and that bad systems of all kinds have tended to have a missionary zeal to spread what those systems consider wonderful upon peoples who find such objectionable. Even the Nazis believed that they were doing great good for Humanity as a whole. I can see Donald Trump and those who follow him believing that there can be nothing better than a Gilded Age with authoritarian government or a feudalism with high technology as enforcement of its cruelty.

Evil empires have a way of provoking wars against too many enemies at once or imploding from their own social rot. Let us remember that the Roman Empire, a vile social order from its inception, lasted nearly five centuries despite having fewer resources of treasure and technology than we have.