Happy Bastille Day!
Today is Tuesday, 14 July 2009.
Happy Bastille Day!
What’s important about the French Revolution is that it was the first attempt at a genuine social revolution, one meant to fundamentally alter the nature and distribution of power within a society, as opposed to events labeled revolutions, which were in actuality mere squabbles within ruling elites.
The American (so-called) Revolution fits squarely into the latter category. The framers of the “Revolution” and Constitution meant power to be confined, as traditionally, to a narrow circle: no females, no First Americans, even no white males without sufficient net worth.
Happy Bastille Day!
What’s important about the French Revolution is that it was the first attempt at a genuine social revolution, one meant to fundamentally alter the nature and distribution of power within a society, as opposed to events labeled revolutions, which were in actuality mere squabbles within ruling elites.
The American (so-called) Revolution fits squarely into the latter category. The framers of the “Revolution” and Constitution meant power to be confined, as traditionally, to a narrow circle: no females, no First Americans, even no white males without sufficient net worth.
posted by HH at 9:06 AM
2 Comments:
And the 9th anniversary of a significant event in my life.
I mark the day with you.
Hmmm...
Fundamentally altering the nature and distribution of power within a society.
Your dialectic with regard to what constitutes a 'true' revolution feels tinged with a type of leftist fundamentalism (i.e. anybody holding views to the right of my own is a rightist).
I would suggest that codifying supreme executive authority as deriving from a pluralistic agreement of empowered citizenry rather than from divinely ordained genealogy is a fundamental alteration of the nature and distribution of power.
I believe that we agree that the self-interests of the New World bourgeois colonial elites were purposefully protected through their less than genuine embrace of egalitarian democratic ideals.
However, to assert that our colonial rejection of British rule does not rise to the level of being defined in revolutionary terms paints with an overly broad brush IMO.
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