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I'll take this as a personal achievement
Topic Started: Apr 26 2009, 08:35 PM (613 Views)
Ulgania
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A better Zarathustra has never rode a horse
The revolution was still a fiscal matter to most of the parties up in arms. The 'happiness' from our ever so popular phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" basically meant making money, or having private property. Since the colonials who were in charge were facing mercantile policies on everything they produced, and had no say in the matter than they were angry. It wasn't about enlightenment, but it wasn't an original fight for libertarianism. The people who set the stage for the American Revolution were those who propagated the English Revolution in the 1600s, and created the platforms of freethinking and libertarian philosophies, which led to fighting mercantilism and state-sponsored religion. The English dissenters were the ones who originally set the stage for the American Revolution.

Also, I'm curious about how people feel about the fact that in that era, the 'new world' was still popularly considered the way More, Hobbes, and Rousseau's states of nature. Had the English set up a system of government with self-rule in India that was based on Englishmen ruling instead of the pre-existing castes, would the same style of revolution occurred?
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Toussaint
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You know, the French Revolution was mainly about money as well, if you want to get particular. That doesn't mean it wasn't a revolution.
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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
Ulgania, I don't think there has ever been a revolution that wasn't about fiscal matters.

Again, small-e enlightenment is not the same as big-E Enlightenment. The latter is a historical noun that specifically refers to several related but not necessarily mutually compatible streams of thought that originated in the 18th century, including the "Whig" theory of private property and free trade. In Europe the Whig school of Enlightenment thought would be referred to as "liberalism", in America, "libertarianism".

(The French Revolutionaries would represent another, separate, school of Enlightenment thought, namely socialism or radical egalitarianism - referred to as "socialism" in Europe and "liberalism" in America - the terminology is very confusing and gives rise to misunderstandings about the American and European political spectrums)

The American Revolution should therefore be considered the first liberal (or libertarian in America) revolution, and the French Revolution should be considered the first socialist (or liberal in America) revolution. In embracing masonic, deistic, and/or atheistic beliefs, both the American and French revolutions claimed to be a part of the "freethinking" tradition.

Your belief that the dissenter revolution was a "freethinking" or "anti-mercantilist" revolution is obviously incorrect, since that revolution claimed to be divinely inspired and resulted in state-sponsored Calvinism. Furthermore recall Oliver Cromwell was the one who originally enacted the Navigation Acts, the mercantilist Ur-legislation. The English Revolution was akin to the Munster Rebellion but on a bigger stage, while the American Revolution ushered in a "brave new world".

Regarding your question about India that arrangement sounds like what we saw in the old Republic of South Africa, so I'd expect something similar to the dismantling of the South Africa apartheid system.
Edited by Tristan da Cunha, May 3 2009, 12:36 PM.
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Sedulius
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Field Marshal
Touche, TC. Touche.
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Porcu
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"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

Sedulius
May 3 2009, 01:04 PM
Touche, TC. Touche.
He's good, isn't he? :lol:
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Ulgania
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A better Zarathustra has never rode a horse
This is what happens when semantics are argued XD
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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
I'll make a thread about political labels.
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