>We, a collection of rich people appointed by committees that represent at most a 3rd of the population of these colonies, declare ourselves the speakers for all Americans and decided plunge us all into civil war, because we like smuggling and hate paying taxes.
>also, God also gave us the right to confiscate the lands of people who disagreed with us, we proto-castro"
>Yada-yada self evident
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The powerful and educated are always at the forefront of any revolution; the majority also typically don't care and prefer the status quo because they're lazy. That doesn't diminish their philosophy or the new, humanistic system they created.
>Slave owners
>Humanistic
user pls
They weren't all slave owners, nor were all the slave owners cruel. Even intelligent, otherwise morally decent people can experience cognitive dissonance; just because they were imperfect doesn't diminish the good they did.
>Killing people because they didn't want to pay taxes anymore.
>The good they did
>Good
Amerifats actually believe this.
>reducing an entire revolution with a radically different philosophy based upon enlightenment ideals to a bunch of greedy men not wanting to pay taxes
If they just didn't want to pay taxes they would've created a new monarchy with them as the nobles, but instead they created a system that prevented them from doing so.
Not that I agree with that guy, but they did create a system where they found themselves at the top of the power structure.
>babby just discovered Howard Zinn
They were at the top because they were rich and educated, not because they designed it for that reason. If they didn't care about anything except money and power, they just would've created an American Kingdom.
To play devil's advocate, that would have been disastrous and a much harder sell from a PR point of view, and it was also completely unnecessary, since they wound up with money and power anyway.
>quakers
>not abolitionists
back to lefty pol
this
the proles must be forced to be free
jefferson died in debt
Jefferson would have been broke regardless of system because he was terrible with his finances.
The majority of the population didn't care either way, and the majority who supported the revolution are the ones who created the political philosophy. The Founding Fathers were radical in their thinking; they weren't populists who were imposing already popular thinking.
aren't the ones who created the political philosophy*
It still would have been a harder sell because swapping on monarchy for another would have raised the question as to why one should bother.
Not that hard of a sell. Just make it about being independent and not being ruled by gay anglos an ocean away.
Fair, but it doesn't address the unnecessary part. They still wound up on top, and any fool could see that their system would leave them at the top.
I wouldn't claim that what they did was entirely cynical in its motivation, but it's hard to deny that they gained quite a bit from the whole affair.
I'm not sure if it was cynical at all. Other than the "only landowners being allowed to vote" setup, which wasn't that difficult to become one back then, I can't see any intentional designs to put them on top. In general they would've be at the top in any system because of their wealth, and while the revolution definitely helped them, they could've helped themselves a lot more if they wanted to.
>slaves
>human
You don't realize that the monarchy was still popular in the American colonies. It was parliament people were beefing with.
The American hoi poloi at the time was a lot less ideological than people today like to think. They just wanted Indian lands the parliament made deals with, and not to pay for the war (French-Indian) that the colonial leaders (many of whom became the founding fathers later on) instigated in order to grab Catholic and Indian lands.
If you read the things people at the time wrote, you see opinions that 'liberty kids' would never tell the public. Such as one guy who moved to Canada who remarked 'better one tyrant across the ocean than a thousand tyrants living next door', and the people who thought it was disgusting that people would resort to violence over this. Or that Benjamin Franklin's son was a loyalist. Or the stories of the black soldiers who fought for the crown while southern states really only joined the rebellion for slavery reasons.
>niggers
>human
Interesting; I've heard about certain shady sides of the revolution but not very in-depth. Please continue.
Eh, I seem to remember something about Benjamin Franklin being a yellow journalist who faked finding incriminating info on some political opponent in order to slander him in his newspaper.
>Howard Zinn
Why do we allow him to get away with all his LIES
>Or the stories of the black soldiers who fought for the crown
>Lord Dunmore, the former royal governor of Virginia, on November 7, 1775, proclaimed freedom for all slaves (or indentured servants) belonging to Patriots, if they were able and willing to bear arms, and joined the British forces. One historian has said, "The proclamation had a profound effect on the war, transforming countless slaveholders into Rebels and drawing thousands of slaves to the Loyalist side."[55] Within a month of the proclamation, more than five hundred slaves left their masters and became Loyalists. The Ethiopian Regiment was raised, and put on uniforms with "Liberty to Slaves" across the chest.
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