You Say You Want A Revolution?

One of the problems with the American mythos is that it encourages people to think that violent revolution brings positive change. This is almost never the case.

The French revolution brought in a national civil war and blood bath which ended only when France turned into a dictatorship which directed its violence outward in a series of wars under Napoleon which helped to tear down the old balances of power in Europe and light the slow fuse that burned through to the Franco-Austrian, Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars that gave Europe a German empire and fundamentally weakened the Austro-Hungarians, and then finally WW1 and WW2 and the colonial wars of liberation that followed.

The Russian Revolution and Chinese Revolution were both utter disasters for their countries and for the world.

And while non-global powers may not upend the world with their cycles of revolution, we see the endless seesawing as each new force of liberation becomes its own dictatorship of violence which is in turn thrown off by another revolution.

The amazing thing about the American revolution is that it DIDN'T create a violent failed state. And it came closer than we are often led to believe. The first US government failed and had to be replaced at the Constitutional Convention. As president Washington had to suppress armed rebellion. Washington's own Cicinnatus-like virtue in stepping down after two terms did tremendous things for our country, and even so Adams and Jefferson and their parties used levels of state suppression against each other we would still find horrifying. And that's all before we went through a Civil War which was planted in our country early by its acceptance of the massive injustice of slavery.

But because of the myth of the American founding and justice coming out of rebellion against tyrannical authority (I'm glad we're not part of the commonwealth, because we happened to develop written constitution during the flowering of the British Enlightenment and thus enshrine liberal values in our state much for firmly than Britain -- but honestly the idea that Britain was particularly tyrannical is silly) we are far, far too tempted to fall for the idea that there's quick salvation to be found in a violent revolutionary cleansing injustice from society.