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> Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War ended with the execution of the Monarch, a brief mili
by stordoff 8y ago
> Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War ended with the execution of the Monarch, a brief military dictatorship, and established the principle that the Monarch cannot rule without the consent of Parliament.
Not exactly the French revolution, but hardly a smooth transition either.
- wutbrodo 8y agoThe parent comment is an exceedingly narrow description: totalitarians always tighten their hold until they collapse. I wasn't making a correspondingly strong counterclaim that the transition was smooth and bloodless for every/most polities. We can quibble about whether Post-Civil War Britain qualifies as having sufficiently transitioned to democracy (and if not, then Post-CW Britain is the polity in question that transitioned without collapse). But it's easy to refute the ludicrous original claim that polities under totalitarians only ever follow a single path.