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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: America, circa 1776 vs. Nicaragua, circa 1985
Message-ID: <578@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Apr-85 08:21:56 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxl.578
Posted: Mon Apr  8 08:21:56 1985
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> > For those interested in trying a short thought-exercise, try replacing
> > "Cuban" with "French", "American" with "British", "Contra" with "Indian
> > and Hessian", "Ortega" with "Washington", and "Nicaragua" with "America";
> > now step back a couple of hundred years and north a couple of thousand
> > miles and ask yourself if it all sounds reasonable. Interesting...
> > 
> >                                         Bill Laubenheimer
> 
> 	Interesting, perhaps, but none too meaningful.  America has
> never had a revolution -- never.  The government of post-Independence
> America was different from the one preceding it only so far as it was
> independent.  The element of civil war and class war was totally absent.
> Furthermore, the equation of 18th century Enlightenment ideas with those
> of Marxism and Leninism is an offense to the intellect.
> 
> Jim Matthews

Funny, as I recall my history the idea of having a Constitutional Democracy
*without* a monarch was quite a radical idea at the time.  Some have argued
that the American Revolution was an inspiration to the French Revolution.
Moreover the element of "civil and class war" was not totally absent.
Historians I have read argue that 33% of Americans supported the Revolution,
33% supported the British, and 33% were neutral.  Moreover after the Revolution
was over many Tories who supported the British during the Revolution had
their land confiscated.  Yet it seems despite this "undemocratic" and
"totalitarian" measure that the United States developed a healthy democracy.
One can imagine the British arguing that such "totalitarian" moves besides
the institution of the "radical" and "extreme" ideology of democracy without
a monarch could endanger monarchies all over Europe. "Why this idea might
spread throughout the world! What a horror!"  
How could one invest power in a bunch of representatives of the ragtag masses?
Indeed.
           tim sevener   whuxl!orb