us revolution 2012.

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androbot2084
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26 Jun 2012, 1:40 pm

After the revolution the free land will come from foreclosed properties.

simon_says
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26 Jun 2012, 2:36 pm

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The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted

This is a fuller quote. He's talking about Shay's rebellion and making a wider point.

WHat's funny is that it's so cynical. The rebels are the ignorant and they will always be with us. The government is in periodic need of threat. The mess they make and the lives lost are not terribly important. It's manure to fertilize the nation. He's being demeaning to rebels but suggesting that they have some use.

He's counting on them to lose and be corrected.

visagrunt
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26 Jun 2012, 4:10 pm

mentallyskilled wrote:

everyone knows the government is broken. im not talking about democrats suck or republicans suck just the government as a whole. i dont understand how politicians can keep their job when they dont do a damn thing. not to mention all the corruption and puppets we have running everything. we can protest about it but they'll just arrest us and nothing will change. i feel like the only way this country will get better is to get a lot worse. whats history tells me is that thats how things get done, unfortunately. i wouldnt mind seeing the us at war with itself. i doubt itll happen though cause people are too lazy to get off facebook and just dont care.
im not tryin to be all "terroristy" or anything i just wanna talk about it.

what do u guys think?

if you never see me on this site again im prob at guantanamo lol

"Everyone knows?" I question the truth of your first statement.

You live in a country with a great many claims to superlatives. You are by far the richest country in the world; your economic productivity is among the highest on earth. You live in one of the most developed countries on earth; your Human Development Index is among the highest on earth. Your literacy rate is 99%, your high school completion rate is rising. Your nation is one of the healthiest in the world, your life expectancy is high, your maternal health indicators are good, your infant mortality is low.

You are healthy, wealthy and wise. There is much to envy in the United States.

Your government is relatively free from corruption (not the qualification, though). You have a well educated, professional public service. You have free and fair elections, combined with a free press, and judicial protection of minority rights.

Not all is perfect, to be sure. Perhaps your greatest problem is that you have wide disparities between the "haves" and the "have nots." A secondary problem is the degree to which your corruption perception is affected by the ability of moneyed interests to exercise political influence.

But you already have the government tools at your disposal to change these things. You don't need a revolution, you just need a paradigm shift. You need to create an engaged vocal electorate who demand better from their legislatures. So long as people behave like sheep in the polling booth, the political parties will have nothing to gain by promoting change.

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androbot2084
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26 Jun 2012, 4:13 pm

A paradigm shift is a revolution.

SpiritBlooms
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26 Jun 2012, 4:21 pm

I would say not even the government as a whole, which is mostly made up of honest civil servants doing their jobs, but many of our POLITICIANS and their manipulation and pandering to a wealthy power elite. That's the problem, and it crosses party lines.

androbot2084
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26 Jun 2012, 4:35 pm

It's called the Reagan revolution.

visagrunt
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26 Jun 2012, 5:14 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

A paradigm shift is a revolution.

Of course it's not. That's just rhetoric intended to persuade people either that their shift in values has either: 1) completely upset the apple-cart and destroyed civilization as we know it; or 2) has completely upset the apple-cart and thrown out the old established interests.

Your country has gone through at least three paradigm shifts in the last half century: the civil rights and progressive agenda of the 60's, the neo-conservative agenda of the 80's and the national security agenda of the last decade. None of these was a revolution. You had the same institutions of government exercising the same functions, and limiting each other in the same fashion throughout.

Look at the transitions that France went through from the Third through the Fifth Republics. Even that kind of transformational change is not a revolution--so a paradigm shift certainly isn't.

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26 Jun 2012, 5:19 pm

Revolutions are attempted all the time. But it's only once in a generation that a revolution succeeds both in overthrowing the old order & then in replacing it with something else. The repressive power of states, even relatively small & weak ones, is immense - just look at Syria & Bahrain. It's always been the fate of revolutions to be co-opted or hijacked. And there's never a guarantee that the new government would be better than the old.

I used to think revolution would be a good thing for the U.S. But now I've come to understand how revolution, here, would only bring to power the most reactionary elements of our society - militia crazies & religious fanatics & unreconstructed racists among them. The politicians & bureaucrats I can live with; it's the would-be revolutionaries who truly scare me.

edgewaters
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26 Jun 2012, 5:23 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:

Who can say who is right and who is wrong? In general, those against the system are as wrong as those who support it.

True, but Jefferson said that the misinformed will imagine grievances due to misunderstanding - and they should rise up in revolt because of it, even though their grievances are purely imaginary. That makes no sense to me. He was just a romanticist when it came to revolution, as most revolutionaries are. I think he didn't understand the difference between process and purpose, there.

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26 Jun 2012, 6:27 pm

mentallyskilled wrote:

What you are saying amounts to treason by definition.

Anyone who resists will be punished and/or killed.

I urge you to renounce what you have said.

I don't want your life to be negative.

androbot2084
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26 Jun 2012, 6:30 pm

what about the sexual revolution?

SpiritBlooms
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26 Jun 2012, 6:51 pm

The US was originally established with the idea that revolutions should occasionally occur, that we as a people need to be ever vigilant that our liberty remains in place. In that vein, there have been so many developments, socially, intellectually, scientifically, and technologically, that it makes sense we need to adjust our course now and then. The idea of checks and balances has changed, with campaigns financed by big banks, and now that people live longer, the length that a Supreme Court justice would remain in office has even changed in how it pans out. There was a time when doctors were scarce and you got a medical problem treated by whomever you could. Now there are laws against practicing without a license, a good thing for the most part IMO, except that means there is an immense demand for what is now astronomically expensive care. So much has changed.... We probably could use a lot of little revolutions in a lot of areas of modern life in the US in order to bring us back around to "government by and for The People." We live in a new world that our government structure and leadership hasn't caught up with and hasn't maintained the same level of liberty.

Quote:

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison (30 January 1787); referring to Shays' Rebellion Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:65.

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