5 ms·

Most of them owned rather than rented their labor, but yes they did start the US with the idea of suppressing mass universal democracy, calling it mob rule.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
What kind of ahistorical criticism is this? The US was the first modern democracy. Were they supposed to go from dictatorial monarchy to universal suffrage in one day or be condemned forever? If you want to criticize something, criticize the fact that we still don't have universal suffrage. In many states, felons can't vote. Which is cynically claimed as denying them something as punishment for their crimes, but in reality is done to prevent the victims of mass incarceration from becoming a large voting bloc to end it.
- mbg721 5y ago
  It is true that the French Revolution and subsequent counter-revolution were not as successful as the American Revolution was, and that the non-democratic features of the American system are a major reason for that.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > that the non-democratic features of the American system are a major reason for that It's unfortunately unpopular to point out that we have ample evidence, from history and contemporaneously, that democracy per se doesn't work. It devolves into a populist, majoritarian and often authoritarian mess as reliably as (non-monarchical) dictators fall into chaos. The men who founded our Republic understood this, which is why they explicitly created a system that balances the strengths and weaknesses of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. (Hint: they're our three branches of government.) At some point, we wrote that balance out of our cultural history, and we're partly paying the price now.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      There are many liberal republics and socialist republics doing fine all over the world. This is just trendy neo-feudalist rhetoric. The US is dissolving due to inadequate democracy where people feel they have no control over their government or life's destiny.
      - qwytw 5y ago
        Are there any democratic 'socialist republics' not social democratic (or social market economy) ones but actually socialist? Scandinavian countries are definitely not socialist they have strong social safety nets and high taxes which results in a relatively high government spending to GDP ratio (44% in the US vs 58%, 54%, 53% in Norway, Denmark and Sweden) but that's about it. And if we're talking about "neo-feudalism" Sweden for instance has one the highest wealth inequality coefficients in Europe, it's even slightly higher than in the US, so from a purely cynical perspective they are just giving their 'peasants' enough to keep them quiet while a huge proportion of all private wealth in the country is held by a few families.
        jokethrowaway 5y ago
        The US and European social democracies are not that different. Sure, the US government and the insurance/university lobbies screwed up education and healthcare prices - but all western countries steal an inordinate amount of money to profit creating citizens and waste them around giving little back to the country. They're parasitic institutions
        fragmede 5y ago
        According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_..., the US is higher than Sweden now, before taxes and transfers, and that gap only widens if taxes and transfers, the primary mechanism governments have to reduce inequality, are taken into account.
        qwytw 5y ago
- Feint1 5y ago
  This isn’t really true. Before the declaration of independence the people of the American colonies couldn’t vote in British general elections, yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (as it was known then) had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. This is due to the way the British constitution works, where Parliament has supreme power over everything, including the the Monarch, the Monarch’s government and any territories outside of the United Kingdom. This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands where there is no representation in Parliament. The individual American colonies had legislatures for their own territory, with limited powers as defined in their charters. One example is the legislature of Virginia which has had elected members since its inception 150 years before American Independence and still continues to hold elections to this day.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    This is kind of my point. Should we condemn the Magna Carta as well? We should spend less time whinging about the people who did better than their fathers and more time doing better than ours. The people allowing themselves to be consumed by "hate your neighbor" propaganda and mistaking that for a protest movement are getting played. Fight who's above you, not who's beside you.
    - Feint1 5y ago
      I take issue only with the characterisation of colonial America as authoritarian. It was democratic and the King and his Governors had limited power. The issues leading to revolution arose mostly from the lack of representation in Parliament and a series of unforunate blunders in handling greivences on the part of HM Government.
  - dfawcus 5y ago
    Even now, things do eventually change: "the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain [...] had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. [...] This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands [...]" You may wish to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories#Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories#G... specifically "Following the Lords' decision in Ex parte Quark, 2005, [...] To comply with the court's decision, the territorial governors now act on the advice of each territory's executive and the UK government can no longer disallow legislation passed by territorial legislatures." and the sections sketching the legislatures in Bermuda and Gibraltar. e.g. "Individual overseas territories have legislative independence over immigration"
- tehjoker 5y ago
  The US was the first of the series of republican revolutions of that era and the most conservative of all of them (compare with the radicalism of 1789 France for example). There are things to admire about it, but I think it is better to call it a war of independence than a proper social revolution. The reason to be critical today is we are _still_ living in that framework! We have to do better.
  - prewett 5y ago
    > We have to do better What would a better structure look like? And I don't think things like national healthcare, less racism, etc. are included, because those could be implemented in the current structure. I think history shows that we have a demonstratively good system. We have high social mobility, high political stability (peaceful transfers of power, Trump notwithstanding), consistently strong economics, world-class institutions, etc. Our system has scaled fairly smoothly from 2.5 million to 325 million and has lasted almost 250 years. Which system has done better? It's not clear if our system can survive the current polarization, which could be seen as city values vs rural values, and the system is specifically designed to balance those. So if the cities and the rurals both take up opposing, fundamentalist positions and refuse to cooperate, the system is not designed to handle that. But we've had a history of craziness, and so far, comes the times, comes the man. I'll bet on our system over a lot of other extant systems! And change is not always better. (And if the electorate has a lot ideological-driven motivations, as present, the odds of change being worse is pretty high. Ideological-driven change has historically been pretty bad.)
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      I'm a communist so take that for what you will. I do think that if you stay within the system of liberal democracy, at minimum we need to implement a more modern constitutional order. We've learned a lot about liberal constitutions in 200 years. However, practically speaking, the political machinery is so ossified that I think only marginal structural changes within the framework are possible (like court packing, electoral vote compacts etc). Political radicals have to do a lot of organizing to build a mass constituency that can make really dramatic alterations without empowering the right wing.
dnautics 5y ago
this is patently not true. It would do to remember that we are currently in version 2.x of the US, the US was started, mostly by the same framers, not with that idea of suppressing universal democracy (articles of confederation), and then they rolled back a tad bit on democracy (constituion).
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Articles of confederation vs. constitution related to compact between the states vs the strength of the federal government. Most of the people who signed the decl. of independence owned slaves or were lawyers for people who do. I'll grant maybe a few more people in the constitutional convention might not have been slave holders. However, it would be good to recall that during the era of good feelings, a huge number of presidents were slave holders from Virginia. That's who held the balance of power in the country. The constitution itself was a compromise over slavery, modeled after English government (house/senate -> commons/lords, pres/vice pres -> king/heir apparent). Voters were landed white male adults, senators were elected indirectly by the states, as was the president (and still is though we have papered over it!). Supreme court judges were given life terms to enable disruption from below to be smoothed out by prior appointments. The whole idea of the country was to guarantee rights to the upper class and place the country under new management and diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion. The "genius" of the constitution became apparent when the entire thing broke down only ~70 years later in a bloodbath over the issue, slavery, they papered over at the convention which was a direct affront to the rhetoric of the revolution.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    > diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion Which would make them property owners, and therefore eventually able to vote via the statehood process. Your premise is self-contradictory.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      The Jeffersonian idea was to create a nation of self-sufficient yeoman farmers (they thought slavery would go away over time due to its heavy tobacco emphasis that was depleting the soil). The industrial revolution, the cotton gin, and other world historical factors made this vision (which was a vision of a faction, not the entire elite) implausible. They wanted to do this to relieve popular pressure from below by creating "responsible" landowners that had a stake in the system. The landowners would continue to be white and male, but with an expansion of who gets to participate. The American system repeatedly does this under stress. A system that was actually liberatoratory would work in the interest of the people, not simply respond to threats.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

What kind of ahistorical criticism is this? The US was the first modern democracy. Were they supposed to go from dictatorial monarchy to universal suffrage in one day or be condemned forever? If you want to criticize something, criticize the fact that we still don't have universal suffrage. In many states, felons can't vote. Which is cynically claimed as denying them something as punishment for their crimes, but in reality is done to prevent the victims of mass incarceration from becoming a large voting bloc to end it.

mbg721 5y ago
It is true that the French Revolution and subsequent counter-revolution were not as successful as the American Revolution was, and that the non-democratic features of the American system are a major reason for that.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > that the non-democratic features of the American system are a major reason for that It's unfortunately unpopular to point out that we have ample evidence, from history and contemporaneously, that democracy per se doesn't work. It devolves into a populist, majoritarian and often authoritarian mess as reliably as (non-monarchical) dictators fall into chaos. The men who founded our Republic understood this, which is why they explicitly created a system that balances the strengths and weaknesses of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. (Hint: they're our three branches of government.) At some point, we wrote that balance out of our cultural history, and we're partly paying the price now.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    There are many liberal republics and socialist republics doing fine all over the world. This is just trendy neo-feudalist rhetoric. The US is dissolving due to inadequate democracy where people feel they have no control over their government or life's destiny.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      Are there any democratic 'socialist republics' not social democratic (or social market economy) ones but actually socialist? Scandinavian countries are definitely not socialist they have strong social safety nets and high taxes which results in a relatively high government spending to GDP ratio (44% in the US vs 58%, 54%, 53% in Norway, Denmark and Sweden) but that's about it. And if we're talking about "neo-feudalism" Sweden for instance has one the highest wealth inequality coefficients in Europe, it's even slightly higher than in the US, so from a purely cynical perspective they are just giving their 'peasants' enough to keep them quiet while a huge proportion of all private wealth in the country is held by a few families.
      - jokethrowaway 5y ago
        The US and European social democracies are not that different. Sure, the US government and the insurance/university lobbies screwed up education and healthcare prices - but all western countries steal an inordinate amount of money to profit creating citizens and waste them around giving little back to the country. They're parasitic institutions
      - fragmede 5y ago
        According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_..., the US is higher than Sweden now, before taxes and transfers, and that gap only widens if taxes and transfers, the primary mechanism governments have to reduce inequality, are taken into account.
        qwytw 5y ago
Feint1 5y ago
This isn’t really true. Before the declaration of independence the people of the American colonies couldn’t vote in British general elections, yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (as it was known then) had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. This is due to the way the British constitution works, where Parliament has supreme power over everything, including the the Monarch, the Monarch’s government and any territories outside of the United Kingdom. This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands where there is no representation in Parliament. The individual American colonies had legislatures for their own territory, with limited powers as defined in their charters. One example is the legislature of Virginia which has had elected members since its inception 150 years before American Independence and still continues to hold elections to this day.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  This is kind of my point. Should we condemn the Magna Carta as well? We should spend less time whinging about the people who did better than their fathers and more time doing better than ours. The people allowing themselves to be consumed by "hate your neighbor" propaganda and mistaking that for a protest movement are getting played. Fight who's above you, not who's beside you.
  - Feint1 5y ago
    I take issue only with the characterisation of colonial America as authoritarian. It was democratic and the King and his Governors had limited power. The issues leading to revolution arose mostly from the lack of representation in Parliament and a series of unforunate blunders in handling greivences on the part of HM Government.
- dfawcus 5y ago
  Even now, things do eventually change: "the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain [...] had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. [...] This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands [...]" You may wish to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories#Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories#G... specifically "Following the Lords' decision in Ex parte Quark, 2005, [...] To comply with the court's decision, the territorial governors now act on the advice of each territory's executive and the UK government can no longer disallow legislation passed by territorial legislatures." and the sections sketching the legislatures in Bermuda and Gibraltar. e.g. "Individual overseas territories have legislative independence over immigration"
tehjoker 5y ago
The US was the first of the series of republican revolutions of that era and the most conservative of all of them (compare with the radicalism of 1789 France for example). There are things to admire about it, but I think it is better to call it a war of independence than a proper social revolution. The reason to be critical today is we are _still_ living in that framework! We have to do better.
- prewett 5y ago
  > We have to do better What would a better structure look like? And I don't think things like national healthcare, less racism, etc. are included, because those could be implemented in the current structure. I think history shows that we have a demonstratively good system. We have high social mobility, high political stability (peaceful transfers of power, Trump notwithstanding), consistently strong economics, world-class institutions, etc. Our system has scaled fairly smoothly from 2.5 million to 325 million and has lasted almost 250 years. Which system has done better? It's not clear if our system can survive the current polarization, which could be seen as city values vs rural values, and the system is specifically designed to balance those. So if the cities and the rurals both take up opposing, fundamentalist positions and refuse to cooperate, the system is not designed to handle that. But we've had a history of craziness, and so far, comes the times, comes the man. I'll bet on our system over a lot of other extant systems! And change is not always better. (And if the electorate has a lot ideological-driven motivations, as present, the odds of change being worse is pretty high. Ideological-driven change has historically been pretty bad.)
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    I'm a communist so take that for what you will. I do think that if you stay within the system of liberal democracy, at minimum we need to implement a more modern constitutional order. We've learned a lot about liberal constitutions in 200 years. However, practically speaking, the political machinery is so ossified that I think only marginal structural changes within the framework are possible (like court packing, electoral vote compacts etc). Political radicals have to do a lot of organizing to build a mass constituency that can make really dramatic alterations without empowering the right wing.

dnautics 5y ago

this is patently not true. It would do to remember that we are currently in version 2.x of the US, the US was started, mostly by the same framers, not with that idea of suppressing universal democracy (articles of confederation), and then they rolled back a tad bit on democracy (constituion).

tehjoker 5y ago
Articles of confederation vs. constitution related to compact between the states vs the strength of the federal government. Most of the people who signed the decl. of independence owned slaves or were lawyers for people who do. I'll grant maybe a few more people in the constitutional convention might not have been slave holders. However, it would be good to recall that during the era of good feelings, a huge number of presidents were slave holders from Virginia. That's who held the balance of power in the country. The constitution itself was a compromise over slavery, modeled after English government (house/senate -> commons/lords, pres/vice pres -> king/heir apparent). Voters were landed white male adults, senators were elected indirectly by the states, as was the president (and still is though we have papered over it!). Supreme court judges were given life terms to enable disruption from below to be smoothed out by prior appointments. The whole idea of the country was to guarantee rights to the upper class and place the country under new management and diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion. The "genius" of the constitution became apparent when the entire thing broke down only ~70 years later in a bloodbath over the issue, slavery, they papered over at the convention which was a direct affront to the rhetoric of the revolution.
- dnautics 5y ago
  > diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion Which would make them property owners, and therefore eventually able to vote via the statehood process. Your premise is self-contradictory.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    The Jeffersonian idea was to create a nation of self-sufficient yeoman farmers (they thought slavery would go away over time due to its heavy tobacco emphasis that was depleting the soil). The industrial revolution, the cotton gin, and other world historical factors made this vision (which was a vision of a faction, not the entire elite) implausible. They wanted to do this to relieve popular pressure from below by creating "responsible" landowners that had a stake in the system. The landowners would continue to be white and male, but with an expansion of who gets to participate. The American system repeatedly does this under stress. A system that was actually liberatoratory would work in the interest of the people, not simply respond to threats.