Revolutions And The People

[midcan5]

It is rare today that I read something that sparks a large question mark in my mind, but consider this, no revolution has ever helped the people in need of change. Our own founding included slavery, and while in principle it was egalitarian, our history has shown another side. Did women even exist then. The French revolution soon deteriorated into a mass killing of the very people it was supposed to help. Jesus died before he could create a heaven on earth, while he talked a good game, his heaven had to wait, his followers were quickly busy killing each other. The Russian revolution soon deteriorated into Stalinist paranoid communism. Mao's people's revolution killed millions and hardly changed the lives of the common people. Even material or technological revolutions only create problems of alienation, slave labor conditions, and societal disruptions. The Industrial revolution destroyed farming, created cities full of lives of misery, polluted the environment, and may today finally destroy the earth. Out of our contemporary world of such vast promise, autism figures grow, one in eight women encounter breast cancer, and poverty figures increase. Free market Capitalism creates large trails of misery and regularly collapses as the Great Depression and the recent recession testify. Think also of the Katrina failure. Communism failed, Socialism is an interesting concept but like Christianity never tried. And so it goes....

Why is this, are not revolutions the means to create a society that supports the people. Wasn't the enlightenment about Reason and wasn't Reason the answer to injustice and violence? Wars of the 19th and 20th century show how far reason has gotten humanity. Look only at the wars of the moment. It is always the other side that is unreasonable. Look today at the fact most people on earth live on less than two dollars a day. A child dies every few seconds in the world from preventable causes. Revolutions in Africa become killing fields. One hundred and fifty million children in the world work in sweatshops. Even in America the poor grow poorer, this in a wealthy nation that cannot even provide healthcare for all its citizens. British youth rebel. Egyptians have had enough. Maybe revolutions of all sizes have goals of not a better world, maybe they are for some other purpose. Anyone know?

Will humanity ever advance to a state of nature, a state of peace, that only small tribal groups have ever approached or possessed.

 

[Old Rocks]

Read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The small tribal groups never attained a state of peace. Most, like the Native Americans, were in a constant state of warfare, they were just not very efficient at it.

The Enlightenment was about reason, and was and is still, firmly rejected by most of the people on Earth. Mankind's history is a bloody testiment to his insanity, only occasionly punctated by very short, odd periods of sanity and reason.

 

[zzzz]

Will humanity ever advance to a state of nature, a state of peace, that only small tribal groups have ever approached or possessed.

Where does this come from? Nature is dog eat dog, the mightiest survives. Nature is not peaceful but a violent enviroment. It entails individual survival each and every day, wary of the predator that awaits you, that is going to eat you. Peace is an illusion that one who views from afar perceives, but go into the jungle and observe and you will see the true side of nature.

 

[Old Rocks]

So we should copy nature, having mastered nuclear weopons?

Seems to me that we should be working on making those brief periods of sanity and reason into the norm, rather than the exception.

Man best analog in nature is a herd animal. They don't kill each other, even in competition for mates. The loser just leaves and tries again somewhere else.

Social Darwinism is a doctrine that can only lead to our species extinction by our own hand.

 

[CoolBreeze]

[quoteJJesus died before he could create a heaven on earth, while he talked a good game, his heaven had to wait][/quote]

The mission of Jesus was not to create Heaven on Earth. Read the Bible, Jesus was sent to the world as a scraficial lamb, to die for the forgiveness of the sins of the people and thoses who accepted him as their savior would obtain everlasting life in heaven.

 

[midcan5]

Good to see a few replies. I agree that even primitive or small tribal groups have similar issues but not all are equally violent. Many examples exist in anthropological literature. See Peggy Reeves Sanday for instance. Peggy Reeves Sanday's Homepage

When no one replied to my original post, I went out in search of supporting information and copied a few quotes from an interesting assortment of authors. PS I am not a pessimist by nature after all I am a liberal.


"We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy." Henry Miller

"Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering." Tom Stoppard

"Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion." Albert Camus

"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." George Orwell

"I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all." Alexis de Tocqueville

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." Franz Kafka

"The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims." Joseph Conrad

"The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards." Irving Babbitt

"Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream" Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment." Ambrose Bierce

"Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed." Barbara Tuchman

"The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated." Mercy Otis Warren

"The Roosevelt enactment of Social Security was a moral revolution in our country: We were assured that we would never reach the very depths of poverty. And to be told, that we are now going to gamble it, on Wall Street, is nonsense!" Arthur Hertzberg

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It is rare today that I read something that sparks a large question mark in my mind

That is because your mond long ago lost the ability to question anything.

but consider this, no revolution has ever helped the people in need of change. Our own founding included slavery, and while in principle it was egalitarian, our history has shown another side. Did women even exist then. The French revolution soon deteriorated into a mass killing of the very people it was supposed to help. Jesus died before he could create a heaven on earth, while he talked a good game, his heaven had to wait, his followers were quickly busy killing each other. The Russian revolution soon deteriorated into Stalinist paranoid communism. Mao's people's revolution killed millions and hardly changed the lives of the common people. Even material or technological revolutions only create problems of alienation, slave labor conditions, and societal disruptions. The Industrial revolution destroyed farming, created cities full of lives of misery, polluted the environment, and may today finally destroy the earth. Out of our contemporary world of such vast promise, autism figures grow, one in eight women encounter breast cancer, and poverty figures increase. Free market Capitalism creates large trails of misery and regularly collapses as the Great Depression and the recent recession testify. Think also of the Katrina failure. Communism failed, Socialism is an interesting concept but like Christianity never tried. And so it goes....

Why is this, are not revolutions the means to create a society that supports the people. Wasn't the enlightenment about Reason and wasn't Reason the answer to injustice and violence? Wars of the 19th and 20th century show how far reason has gotten humanity. Look only at the wars of the moment. It is always the other side that is unreasonable. Look today at the fact most people on earth live on less than two dollars a day. A child dies every few seconds in the world from preventable causes. Revolutions in Africa become killing fields. One hundred and fifty million children in the world work in sweatshops. Even in America the poor grow poorer, this in a wealthy nation that cannot even provide healthcare for all its citizens. British youth rebel. Egyptians have had enough. Maybe revolutions of all sizes have goals of not a better world, maybe they are for some other purpose. Anyone know?

I don't even know where to begin.

The American Revolution led to a country where everyone has the same opportunity, and served as the blueprint for other countries to build their governments upon. The problem here is that change in society does not happen as a result of revolution, it happens because people want it. Revolution is only a starting point, not the end point.

By the way, the reason the Communist and Socialist revolutions failed is that they were premised on something that does not work. The only way for society to advance is through individual work and freedom, people are not ants, and are not part of a collective.

Will humanity ever advance to a state of nature, a state of peace, that only small tribal groups have ever approached or possessed.

What makes you think peace is the normal state of nature? Peace is entropy, and entropy is the antithesis of life.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So we should copy nature, having mastered nuclear weopons?

Seems to me that we should be working on making those brief periods of sanity and reason into the norm, rather than the exception.

Man best analog in nature is a herd animal. They don't kill each other, even in competition for mates. The loser just leaves and tries again somewhere else.

Social Darwinism is a doctrine that can only lead to our species extinction by our own hand.

Which brief periods are you referring to? Unless I know what you are talking about I have no idea if you are making sense. Some of the most peaceful eras of our history coincide with some of the most oppressive.

 

[midcan5]

That is because your mond long ago lost the ability to question anything.

You're right about that, my mond has been flaky for some time.

The American Revolution led to a country where everyone has the same opportunity, and served as the blueprint for other countries to build their governments upon. The problem here is that change in society does not happen as a result of revolution, it happens because people want it. Revolution is only a starting point, not the end point.

Slaves, Indians, women, did you forget them? Did you forget history too? Were you alive in the sixties - both centuries? If one can point to any change, it comes from liberal constitutional democracy, and the work and suffering of lots of hard working people. Lincoln, FDR, MLK, LBJ, the many Suffragettes, unions, and hard fought legislation such as Social Security and medicare. Nothing comes from doing nothing. Do nothing republicans today prove that daily.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That is because your mond long ago lost the ability to question anything.

You're right about that, my mond has been flaky for some time.

The American Revolution led to a country where everyone has the same opportunity, and served as the blueprint for other countries to build their governments upon. The problem here is that change in society does not happen as a result of revolution, it happens because people want it. Revolution is only a starting point, not the end point.

Slaves, Indians, women, did you forget them? Did you forget history too? Were you alive in the sixties - both centuries? If one can point to any change, it comes from liberal constitutional democracy, and the work and suffering of lots of hard working people. Lincoln, FDR, MLK, LBJ, the many Suffragettes, unions, and hard fought legislation such as Social Security and medicare. Nothing comes from doing nothing. Do nothing republicans today prove that daily.

Did I forget history?

Not at all. I know that New Zealand gave women the right to vote before any other country. I also know that women in Wyoming even earlier than that. \\Do those count as examples, or do you still want to insist that you know more than I do?

 

[whitehall]

It never fails, when the left is in danger of losing an election and it's socialist agenda we start seeing essays supporting revolution.

 

[uscitizen]

Every person on this planet goes thru a revoloution every single day.

 

[Disenchanted61]

Effective " revolution's " are a slow process that all participant's eventually benefit from.

 

[daveman]

That is because your mond long ago lost the ability to question anything.

You're right about that, my mond has been flaky for some time.

The American Revolution led to a country where everyone has the same opportunity, and served as the blueprint for other countries to build their governments upon. The problem here is that change in society does not happen as a result of revolution, it happens because people want it. Revolution is only a starting point, not the end point.

Slaves, Indians, women, did you forget them? Did you forget history too? Were you alive in the sixties - both centuries? If one can point to any change, it comes from liberal constitutional democracy, and the work and suffering of lots of hard working people. Lincoln, FDR, MLK, LBJ, the many Suffragettes, unions, and hard fought legislation such as Social Security and medicare. Nothing comes from doing nothing. Do nothing republicans today prove that daily.

I guess you forgot that our liberal (meaning "of liberty", not as used by the current crop of anti-freedom statists) constitutional democracy stemmed from our revolution.

Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.

 

[midcan5]

I guess you forgot that our liberal (meaning "of liberty", not as used by the current crop of anti-freedom statists) constitutional democracy stemmed from our revolution.

Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.

How could any American forget that? You guys repeat it almost daily as you even try to usurp liberalism as your own. When your ideology is simply reactionary ( The Rhetoric of Reaction - Albert O. Hirschman - Harvard University Press ) there is nothing you can point to as an achievement or good for all people. In case your history is missing pieces conservatives even opposed our revolution. Would that not make ideological sense given conservative opposition to change?

Freedom is just a myth, an empty word, you reactionaries use as freedom requires context and you have no clue what that even means. Interesting that I answered some of your usual whining here. http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-conservatives-and-empathy-7.html#post4052410

More conservative opposition to history:

"Conservatives upported George III in the American Revolution. Fully a third of the population of the colonies didn’t even want independence.

Supported protection for the institution of slavery in the Constitutional convention. This included the bizarre insistence that slaves be counted in determining slave state representation in Congress. Slaves were people according to conservative planters, but only for purposes of counting them. Those same interests also prevented regulation of the importation of slaves prior to 1808.

Opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Reactionary southern planters failed to grasp the need to develop our own industrial base. They preferred to operate a slave labor driven cash crop economy for the simple reason that they – the wealthy planters that is – profited from economic underdevelopment.

Supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like. This “theory”, such as it was, was in direct contradiction to the provision of the US Constitution that made federal law “the supreme law of the land”.

Supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in places like Nebraska and the deserts of New Mexico.

Opposed the transcontinental railroad, because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves to settle in western territories. Contemporary conservative pundit, Joseph Sobran has dressed up opposition to this as a “principled” stand against “big government” proponents like Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln." A Short History of Conservative Obstruction to Progress | Conceptual Guerilla



PS The greatest progressive / liberal achievement was social security, followed by medicare and voting rights for all. I have asked for years for a conservative accomplishment equivalent to any of these and never ever get an answer. I wonder why. asked here: http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-conservatives-and-empathy-4.html#post4049757

 

[daveman]

I guess you forgot that our liberal (meaning "of liberty", not as used by the current crop of anti-freedom statists) constitutional democracy stemmed from our revolution.

Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.

How could any American forget that? You guys repeat it almost daily as you even try to usurp liberalism as your own. When your ideology is simply reactionary ( The Rhetoric of Reaction - Albert O. Hirschman - Harvard University Press ) there is nothing you can point to as an achievement or good for all people. In case your history is missing pieces conservatives even opposed our revolution. Would that not make ideological sense given conservative opposition to change?

Your "history" is more hysterical than historical. You big-government statists who laughably call yourselves liberals have nothing in common with our Founding Fathers. As a matter of fact, many of you would have informed on the revolutionaries because you would have been loyal to the Crown.

Freedom is just a myth, an empty word, you reactionaries use as freedom requires context and you have no clue what that even means. Interesting that I answered some of your usual whining here. http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-conservatives-and-empathy-7.html#post4052410

And now you're redefining the word "freedom". Let me guess: It means surrendering to an all-powerful government, right?

More conservative opposition to history:

"Conservatives upported George III in the American Revolution. Fully a third of the population of the colonies didn’t even want independence.

Supported protection for the institution of slavery in the Constitutional convention. This included the bizarre insistence that slaves be counted in determining slave state representation in Congress. Slaves were people according to conservative planters, but only for purposes of counting them. Those same interests also prevented regulation of the importation of slaves prior to 1808.

Opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Reactionary southern planters failed to grasp the need to develop our own industrial base. They preferred to operate a slave labor driven cash crop economy for the simple reason that they – the wealthy planters that is – profited from economic underdevelopment.

Supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like. This “theory”, such as it was, was in direct contradiction to the provision of the US Constitution that made federal law “the supreme law of the land”.

Supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in places like Nebraska and the deserts of New Mexico.

Opposed the transcontinental railroad, because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves to settle in western territories. Contemporary conservative pundit, Joseph Sobran has dressed up opposition to this as a “principled” stand against “big government” proponents like Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln." A Short History of Conservative Obstruction to Progress | Conceptual Guerilla

Like I said: More hysterical than historical.

PS The greatest progressive / liberal achievement was social security, followed by medicare and voting rights for all. I have asked for years for a conservative accomplishment equivalent to any of these and never ever get an answer. I wonder why. asked here: http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-conservatives-and-empathy-4.html#post4049757

I said:

Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.​

Thanks for proving me right.

 

[midcan5]

.... Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.

Thanks for proving me right.

Come on Dave give me something to debate. Saying, 'no, you are' doesn't work, it doesn't explain anything. If it isn't accurate prove it. Show me a nation founded on Conservatism and tell me where it is, and how it works. Show me its basic tenets. I can show a liberal nation, you live in it. Now it's your turn, proof not fluff. A five year year can say no, you are.

 

[daveman]

.... Oh, and the mindset that says "everything good comes from liberals, everything bad comes from conservatives" is extremely simplistic and not at all accurate. But I expect that's all your capable of.

Thanks for proving me right.

Come on Dave give me something to debate. Saying, 'no, you are' doesn't work, it doesn't explain anything. If it isn't accurate prove it. Show me a nation founded on Conservatism and tell me where it is, and how it works. Show me its basic tenets. I can show a liberal nation, you live in it. Now it's your turn, proof not fluff. A five year year can say no, you are.

You're really claiming the Founding Fathers, who instigated a revolution to get away from an oppressive, big government, are exactly the same as today's big-government-supporting statists?

That's simply too ludicrous for words.

 

[midcan5]

Oh, I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw. You are doing what most parochial historians do, you are applying concepts of today - made up rhetorical concepts at that - and using them as your filter for a time long past. You are well taught or well programmed as you change history so it suits your current worldview. I have to give the conservative think tanks credit for so thorough a brain washing.

Comparing our democratic constitutional republic of today to the times of the British empire is laughable at best. So you guys want to build a new nation separate from all the work that came before today? Sounds fine if you think a civilized stable government is easy but you only demonstrate your naivety. You forget the primary reason we have a federal government is because the states couldn't get along. You missed that piece of our history? To assume that if it wasn't for the big bad wolf and those people who care about all the people and the nation, happiness would descend on America is why in power conservatives fail so badly. Need I remind you of that? If you are interested in learning a bit check out book below and if you'd like more help understanding American history, just ask.

"At a fundamental level, Wood argues, the American Revolution was truly a radical episode in world history. He comments that "The republican revolution was the greatest utopian movement in American history. The revolutionaries aimed at nothing less than a reconstitution of American society. They hoped to destroy the bonds holding together the older monarchical society--kinship, patriarchy, and patronage--and to put in their place new social bonds of love, respect, and consent. They sought to construct a society and governments based on virtue and disinterested public leadership and to set in motion a moral government that would eventually be felt around the globe" (p. 229). They advocated ensuring equality as the first task of society; Wood calls this "the single most powerful and radical ideological force in all of American history" (p. 234). And all Americans, he argues, embraced the idea of equality as manifested in labor and accomplishment. He notes, "Perhaps nothing separated early-nineteenth-century Americans more from Europeans than their attitude toward labor and their egalitarian sense that everyone must participate in it" (p. 286).

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Radicalism-American-Revolution-Gordon-Wood/dp/0679736883/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: The Radicalism of the American Revolution (9780679736882): Gordon S. Wood: Books[/ame]


"What is intriguing about Wood's analysis, is the reluctance many Americans had about making a complete breach from England. Americans realized that their institutions were an outgrowth of English Republican ideas. It was a slow, evolving revolution, carrying these principles to their fullest realization. Never short of praise for themselves, the Americans thought they had succeeded where the British had failed in creating a truly representative government." both these quotes are from reviews of book on Amazon.

 

[daveman]

Oh, I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw. You are doing what most parochial historians do, you are applying concepts of today - made up rhetorical concepts at that - and using them as your filter for a time long past.

If you object to that so strongly, why are you doing it?

Moron.