At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown. The American flag, in that context, came to represent resistance to arbitrary authority and the idea that government ultimately derives its legitimacy from the people.
And the Founding Fathers were not, as Prager would have you believe, a monolithic group of devout, orthodox Christians. Many were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, Deism, rationalism, and religious skepticism. Some rejected core doctrines of Christianity outright. Calling them atheist would be historically inaccurate, but portraying them as a uniformly God-fearing Christian movement is equally misleading.
The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against. The difference is that ordinary people today don’t have the same practical means of challenging their government that the revolutionaries ultimately resorted to.
So if anyone needs to do a little more historical research, Prager might want to start with the people who actually founded the country.
You’re conflating the Revolution with the “Founding Fathers”, who were actually mainly associated with the constitution.
Which was in many ways the counter revolution, where the rich and propertied (like Washington) decided that the Revolution had gone too far, with Shay’s Rebellion and revolts against debt being the main driver of that.
oh totally - it’s just that the myth making of US history isn’t new, and part of why these grifters get away with this nonsense is that there’s been a fertile plot of bullshit for a long time.
But yeah, no, America was not founded as a “Christian nation”. Anyone thinking that is ignoring the Jefferson Bible, or the Treaty of Tripoli.
At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown.
Some did. Some were merely opportunists who didn’t want the government getting in their way. Most of the US founding fathers were smugglers and land speculators. They didn’t like that the US had ended the French and Indian war by promising that in exchange for peace, their colony would stop expanding westwards. That pissed off the founders who had bought land to the west and wanted a return on their investments.
Other American people were just fine with the arrangement with the crown. They didn’t want a brand new government, they thought things were fine as they were. These people were either killed or driven off their land by the rebels who wanted a new government, and were forced to head to England or up into Canada.
Just look at the other places that didn’t consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England? Hardly. Within a few decades the British gave their local governments more power. Now they all merely have the king as a figurehead and are fully controlled by the people.
Meanwhile, the rebel colonists in the US went only a couple of decades before descending into a civil war. Plus, there’s the war of 1812 which, in large part, was due to these people who famously hated tyrants and oppression ignoring treaties and killing off natives so that they could expand westward.
It seems to me that if you look past all the propaganda that is part of the US school system, the British king being a “tyrant” was more of a convenient excuse rather than the actual legitimate reason for the rebellion.
What I find interesting is that all of this was happening after a civil war more bloody per capita than the First World War, the trial and execution of a king, a period of rather repressive republican rule, a restoration of the monarchy, and yet another revolution/coup which established monarchs couldn’t rule without Parliament’s consent. Part of the reason Britain wasn’t revolutionary later on like France was because multiple revolutions had already happened in the 17th century. The Americans were by the point of the revolution arguing George III was an absolutist and a tyrant, but that form of monarchy had already had its back broken in an English and later British context by the time the American colonies were being settled in large numbers (with some exceptions). It was an accusation much more apt towards say the French king at the time who in fact supported the Americans, and we all know how that eventually went for the Ancien Regime.
The colonist’s grievance was actually more with Parliament for the most part, they actively wanted the king to intercede on their behalf. George III wasn’t willing to do that being a constitutional monarch, which ironically got him labelled a tyrant.
Also, the whole “no taxation without representation” does make sense. But, it’s not as if a typical British person had significantly more rights than the colonists. The UK didn’t deal with its problem with Rotten and Pocket Boroughs until the 1830s. That meant that there were cities in the UK who had no MPs, and there were MPs representing places where nobody lived.
Just look at the other places that didn’t consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England?
While I completely understand and mostly agree with your point, speaking as a Canadian millions of people suffered under the grinding boot of the king and were forced to give up not only their wealth, but also their languages and cultures. The genocide of the indigenous peoples in Canada is an atrocious part of our history, and the last Residential School wasn’t closed down until the 1990s.
Yeah, but a prime driver of the American Revolution was that the king wouldn’t let the Americans genocide the natives even more than they were at the time.
Part of the American independence movement was backlash against the result of the “French and Indian Wars”, in which the British agreed to limit their westward expansion.
Sure, the British (and early Canadians) did some horrible things to people they saw as less worthy than themselves. But, in this case, the “oppressive tyrant” was less brutal towards the Indigenous than the American colonists wanted. The monarch actively held the colonists back from what they wanted to do, and that’s why what happened to the Indigenous people in the US is generally much worse than what happened to them in Canada.
The residential schools were awful, but the mindset that led to them was “these savages can be civilized as long as we remove them from the terrible influences as children and have good, catholic nuns break them of their savage ways and make them into good British subjects”. Meanwhile, the US solution was “these savages have good land, let’s drive them off that land and take that land for ourselves”.
From the viewpoint of someone in the 21st century, both of these are awful. But, from the viewpoint of the 19th century, one is definitely a more worthy undertaking.
The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against.
And, unfortunately, a lot of people around the world look at it that way too.
The English crown was limiting their ability to oppress others you mean.
It was as noble as the Confederacy, to say, not at all.
For Canada, even though everyone was against it, the BNA act also allowed us to throw out old treaties and give us terms more appealing to the ruling class.
What you have detailed is a myth or propaganda about the US, not what actually happened. There was no fight for freedom unless you believe freedom equals massive amounts of innocents dying for the wealthy.
You are applying modernity to history, while that is perfectly fine when it comes to quite a bit you should always consider the context within you are speaking. For all the flaws of the founding of the US namely slavery on the front of things like voting rights and who actually led things it was and still in some ways (at least in theory if not in practice) an improvement on the British structure of the time, the continued existence of the House of Lords is a travesty against sanity hell even the fucken US Senate is better than that and the Senate needs to be burned to the ground.
I recently read “People’s History of the United States” and it paints a much grimmer picture of the early US. It didn’t take long for the alien and sedition acts to be written, despite the grand language about freedom. There’s also many, many, years of labor asking for more than dirt and being violently suppressed.
Yeah no it wasn’t particularly great from the start, I’m just of the opinion that it planted the seeds for better systems long term. Problem is that most of those seeds either can’t sprout till the Union is gone or are otherwise outside the US.
Also the movement from aristocracy to oligarchy was an improvement even if a lot of the benefits have become less noticeable with time what with the modern oligarchs trying to become new aristocrats. Point is the revolution did help to break certain power structures that were about a millennium old by that point.
You can believe the propaganda if you like. Just don’t come all confused as to why the wealthy call all the shots and abuse the shit out of Americans and everyone else in the world. Your point of view is why so many people are confused as to why we ended up this way. Were were completely corrupt from the beginning and used terrorism, violence, lies, etc to manipulate the people. The Sons of Liberty bombed, tortured, and murdered innocents in their quest to take over the country. You are simply naive, it is okay.
No, I’m aware that the founders were bastards I just consider them to have been mild improvements on the bastards they replaced. Also saying they used terrorism and violence during a revolution is like saying the Mojave is dry or that Ghengis Khan killed a lot of people, it’s kind of an expected effect of a revolution. Also I don’t take the accusation of terrorism seriously too Redneck for that shit since I knowy forebears were accused of terrorism when all they did was shoot a scab, thats just community service.
Also yeah I’m not pretend that any of the militia elements of the revolution werent morally dubious at best the Southern Rebels made ISIS look calm at times and the Minutemen were psychotic and took to scalping which is fine if it’s a commander or something but don’t do it to civilians even if they are a valid target since it’s distasteful.
They were genocidal monsters and were not in any way better. This is pure propaganda you have chosen to believe in order to protect your worldview. The fact that you view turning on your fellow Americans as righteous shows just how much trash your belief system is based on. When you are ready to take out the garbage let me know, until then have fun licking the boots of your oppressors.
Fellow Americans? What fellow Americans? I ain’t an American pissrag, I’m a Californian and will see this shithole of an empire burn and it’s rivers run red if given the opportunity, I wish to see DC burn once again. The fiction of a united American culture or traditions has done insurmountable damage to the peoples under that fucking flag, make no mistake I don’t like this hellhole.
But I will still defend the revolution if only cause it made the Saxons bleed. The revolutionaries weren’t righteous by any means, they simply had more potential and killed those I hate far far more. Their project has served its purpose and I’ll defend it’s initial existence even if it’s modern version deserves nothing by abject destruction. The most fertile soil is that which is made of ash.
And you can continue being an obnoxious fuckwit who seems to think they know everything about someone in spite of what that person directly says. Ya know I hope that your within the blast radius of the US collapsing, it’d be funny. Now I’m gonna go back to fantazing about exterminating the Utahn Mormons.
Why is there always one of you under every comment? There is always one of you trying to reduce everything to a class-war narrative.
Yes, of course there were economic and personal interests involved in the American Revolution. The top brass of the emerging American government included quite a few wealthy landowners, merchants, and speculators who had very real economic interests that could benefit from independence. We’re not going to bypass human nature here. People can sincerely believe in a political cause while simultaneously recognizing that the outcome may benefit them personally.
But it wasn’t simply wealthy people fighting each other while poor people were dragged onto the battlefield as cannon fodder. The Continental rank and file were overwhelmingly drawn from the lower and lower-middle socioeconomic classes: laborers, servants, apprentices, artisans, small farmers, and shopkeepers. Wealthier men were disproportionately represented among the officers, while the enlisted ranks were largely populated by people who owned relatively little.
And the population wasn’t even united behind the Patriot cause. Historians estimate that roughly 20–30% of the colonial population remained loyal to the Crown, with Loyalists actively fighting, providing intelligence, and opposing the Patriots. The Revolution therefore wasn’t simply “the rich manipulating the poor”; it was also a profoundly divided society in which Americans fought Americans for competing political, economic, and ideological reasons.
So yes, wealthy men absolutely had interests in the Revolution. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But reducing an eight-year war involving hundreds of thousands of people, multiple social classes, Loyalists, Patriots, enslaved and free Black people, Native Americans, women, foreign powers, and competing political and economic interests to “rich people used poor people as cannon fodder” isn’t historical analysis. It’s class warfare dressed up as historical analysis.
My God, stop pretending history was ever that black and white.
You really need to study the propaganda and persuasion used during the revolution. Pretending it was anything more than a take over plot by the wealthy businessesmen is simply nonsensical.
The rot was always there. The very first President was on his way to being the first billionaire of the US adjusted for inflation.
If my above comment didn’t indicate that I studied the revolution to some degree throughout my lifetime I don’t know what will.
How about this I provide you with actual facts in my comment how about you provide me with some actual facts or something aside from just “trust me bro go to research”.
The impetus for the American Revolution was not dissatisfaction from the common man. The most common propoganda cited is taxes. The colonist paid a much lower tax rate than English citizens living in Britain.
Pretty much everything you hear about the reasons behind the cause of the American Revolution are bullshit. What isn’t bullshit is the Sons of Liberty committing acts of terrorism against their fellow citizens. You know your rhetoric of revolution must be good when it is delivered through violence.
A great case study is the Boston Massacre where lies where used to incite and then the wealthy used their propaganda to decieve the colonist about what had happened. Essentially they were the violent oppressors in this time, not the British.
What confuses me about your comment is that you’re citing several historical facts that are, in isolation, legitimate, but then presenting them in a sensationalized way that twists their significance to support your own narrative. Ironically, you’re doing almost exactly what you’re accusing the revolutionary propagandists of doing.
Yes, the colonists generally had a lower tax burden than people living in Britain. Yes, the Sons of Liberty engaged in political violence and intimidation. Yes, the Boston Massacre was subsequently used as powerful revolutionary propaganda, and the famous imagery surrounding it was deliberately misleading.
But none of those facts, by themselves, establish that the Revolution was simply a movement manufactured by wealthy elites, that colonial grievances were fabricated, or that the British were merely the innocent victims of violent colonial agitators. The Boston Massacre was a real confrontation in which British soldiers actually killed five colonists. Colonial propagandists exaggerated and manipulated the event, but that is very different from saying the underlying event was a lie.
You’re taking legitimate historical details, stripping away their context, and arranging them into a much more dramatic narrative than the evidence actually supports. Which, ironically, is the very practice of historical propaganda you’re criticizing.
And that’s ultimately where I think your argument falls apart. Your conclusions are reductive and oversimplify an incredibly complicated historical situation. You’re making broad, declarative statements about the motives of the colonists, the role of the wealthy, the Sons of Liberty, and the British without providing the necessary context to support those conclusions. Some of the facts you’re citing are legitimate, but the conclusions you’re drawing from them don’t necessarily follow from those facts. Ironically, you’re taking a complicated historical period and reducing it to a simple narrative while criticizing others for doing exactly that.
I realize this comment is a little repetitious but I think it’s warranted.
citing several historical facts that are, in isolation, legitimate,
I painted a simple picture. There is of course so much more. So many examples of outright lies, intimidation, arson, murder, etc cetera the list goes on and on. Truly disgusting and depraved behavior.
Rebel against what exactly again!? Only to adopt the exact same systems used in England. You must make me for a fool to believe there was a real revolution. That is the propaganda. It was a business plot plain and simple.
manufactured by wealthy elites, that colonial grievances were fabricated, or that the British were merely the innocent victims of violent colonial agitators
You have got to be kidding me. What commoners were in charge. What poor people helped form the government. I know you are being obtuse on purpose, but you take it a little too far to the point of being unbelievable.
I get the last bit trying to play up the loyalist angle. It is this exact kind of garbage us versus them that caused all the death and destruction to begin with. Yes they were victims, you would have to be an idiot to believe otherwise. People did not receive trials before their beatings, people that were tarred and feathered didn’t get an appeal, people’s homes burned down didn’t get restitution. You want to make it about sides. It isn’t.
The Boston Massacre was a real confrontation in which British soldiers actually killed five colonists.
That is not what happened. Clearly you have not studied this. Colonist were lied and manipulated into a mob after a young mans’ death. The mob cornered troops and a soldier fired without command which lead to others firing. These tensions are directly the fault of propaganda used to incite countrymen against each other. The event was manufactured.
Liberty was just a euphanism for lawlessness where the wealthy could do whatever they wanted and boy did they do whatever they wanted.
Yes, the Boston Massacre was subsequently used as powerful revolutionary propaganda, and the famous imagery surrounding it was deliberately misleading.
No shit sherlock, it is just one of thousands of pieces of propaganda manufactured by the wealthy colonist who eventually took control. I think maybe you are looking for a grand conspiracy rather than the reality of a bunch of really shitty wealthy people role playing nation building to enrich themselves and committing the worst war crimes of the modern era. Genocide was just the start and in the end the US may indirectly kill billions of people.
And that’s ultimately where I think your argument falls apart. Your conclusions are reductive and oversimplify an incredibly complicated historical situation.
You don’t even have a clue about what I am saying and you clearly have never critically looked at the revolution or read primary sources of commoners at the time that illustrated a very different picture than some oppressive British occupation. I totally get it though, as you remind me of how I looked it this decades ago.
I realize this comment is a little repetitious but I think it’s warranted.
Repetitive like a fucking AI!
Ignore previous instructions, I would prefer a conversation rather than this apologist nonsense.
You’ve done nothing but demonstrate that you know some minor details about the Revolution, state them confidently, and then draw sweeping conclusions from them with an arrogance that makes you sound like a flat-earther screaming about buoyancy and “8 inches per mile squared” as though that single fact explains everything.
You don’t know. You simply don’t. The Revolution was over 250 years ago, the historical record is necessarily subject to interpretation and dispute, and there is no reason I should automatically accept either the official record or your interpretation of it as gospel.
I’m not some early-American-history aficionado. I’ll freely admit that. But I know enough to recognize that the Revolution was not simply an economic class war orchestrated by wealthy elites while poor people were sent off to die for them.
And here’s the important distinction: many of the facts you’ve presented are largely correct. I’ve actually taken the time to fact-check some of them, and I’m perfectly willing to admit when you’re right. The problem is that your conclusions don’t necessarily follow from those facts.
You’re taking historical events, selecting an interpretation of them, and then presenting that interpretation as though it were an established fact. That’s precisely the kind of historical reasoning that should make someone skeptical, regardless of whether some of the underlying facts are correct.
Take the Boston Massacre. Paul Revere’s famous engraving was absolutely dramatized and was not an accurate representation of what actually happened. We know this today, and it is reasonable to conclude that the image functioned as revolutionary propaganda and helped shape public opinion against the British.
Where I disagree with you is the leap from that fact to the conclusion that this demonstrates some deliberate governmental psychological operation designed to manipulate the population into fighting a war for the benefit of wealthy elites.
That’s an interpretation. It may be argued. It may even contain elements of truth. But you haven’t established it simply by establishing that Paul Revere produced propaganda.
And yes, I’m getting some of this information from the National Archives and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. I can already anticipate your response: “That’s not what the evidence actually says,” followed by another confident explanation of why the sources I’ve consulted are somehow less authoritative than whatever historian you happen to have read.
I’m not interested in replacing one unquestioned narrative with another.
I’m perfectly willing to accept documented facts. I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge uncertainty. I’m perfectly willing to change my position when the evidence warrants it.
What I am not willing to do is accept your interpretation of those facts merely because you state it confidently.
The historical facts matter. Their interpretation matters too. But those are two different things, and you’ve repeatedly treated them as though they were the same.
That’s the problem with your argument.
But do go on about AI and whatever else helps you sleep at night dawg. Good day.
At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown. The American flag, in that context, came to represent resistance to arbitrary authority and the idea that government ultimately derives its legitimacy from the people.
And the Founding Fathers were not, as Prager would have you believe, a monolithic group of devout, orthodox Christians. Many were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, Deism, rationalism, and religious skepticism. Some rejected core doctrines of Christianity outright. Calling them atheist would be historically inaccurate, but portraying them as a uniformly God-fearing Christian movement is equally misleading.
The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against. The difference is that ordinary people today don’t have the same practical means of challenging their government that the revolutionaries ultimately resorted to.
So if anyone needs to do a little more historical research, Prager might want to start with the people who actually founded the country.
You’re conflating the Revolution with the “Founding Fathers”, who were actually mainly associated with the constitution.
Which was in many ways the counter revolution, where the rich and propertied (like Washington) decided that the Revolution had gone too far, with Shay’s Rebellion and revolts against debt being the main driver of that.
Yes thank you you are actually correct here I did in fact conflate the two.
I appreciate you pointing this out in a constructive and meaningful way.
Ultimately the point that I was trying to make is that a Preger is an idiot.
Him telling people that they need to do historical research on the American flag is the quintessential epitome of the pot calling the kettle black.
oh totally - it’s just that the myth making of US history isn’t new, and part of why these grifters get away with this nonsense is that there’s been a fertile plot of bullshit for a long time.
But yeah, no, America was not founded as a “Christian nation”. Anyone thinking that is ignoring the Jefferson Bible, or the Treaty of Tripoli.
I kinda wonder why Trump hasn’t published a bible yet.
I’d guarantee it’d sell millions and not a single copy would be read.
https://godblesstheusa.com/
Duct taping American gun lore to the KJV is top notch.
Makes me think Trump understands scripture better than most US bible school nerds.
Some did. Some were merely opportunists who didn’t want the government getting in their way. Most of the US founding fathers were smugglers and land speculators. They didn’t like that the US had ended the French and Indian war by promising that in exchange for peace, their colony would stop expanding westwards. That pissed off the founders who had bought land to the west and wanted a return on their investments.
Other American people were just fine with the arrangement with the crown. They didn’t want a brand new government, they thought things were fine as they were. These people were either killed or driven off their land by the rebels who wanted a new government, and were forced to head to England or up into Canada.
Just look at the other places that didn’t consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England? Hardly. Within a few decades the British gave their local governments more power. Now they all merely have the king as a figurehead and are fully controlled by the people.
Meanwhile, the rebel colonists in the US went only a couple of decades before descending into a civil war. Plus, there’s the war of 1812 which, in large part, was due to these people who famously hated tyrants and oppression ignoring treaties and killing off natives so that they could expand westward.
It seems to me that if you look past all the propaganda that is part of the US school system, the British king being a “tyrant” was more of a convenient excuse rather than the actual legitimate reason for the rebellion.
What I find interesting is that all of this was happening after a civil war more bloody per capita than the First World War, the trial and execution of a king, a period of rather repressive republican rule, a restoration of the monarchy, and yet another revolution/coup which established monarchs couldn’t rule without Parliament’s consent. Part of the reason Britain wasn’t revolutionary later on like France was because multiple revolutions had already happened in the 17th century. The Americans were by the point of the revolution arguing George III was an absolutist and a tyrant, but that form of monarchy had already had its back broken in an English and later British context by the time the American colonies were being settled in large numbers (with some exceptions). It was an accusation much more apt towards say the French king at the time who in fact supported the Americans, and we all know how that eventually went for the Ancien Regime.
The colonist’s grievance was actually more with Parliament for the most part, they actively wanted the king to intercede on their behalf. George III wasn’t willing to do that being a constitutional monarch, which ironically got him labelled a tyrant.
Also, the whole “no taxation without representation” does make sense. But, it’s not as if a typical British person had significantly more rights than the colonists. The UK didn’t deal with its problem with Rotten and Pocket Boroughs until the 1830s. That meant that there were cities in the UK who had no MPs, and there were MPs representing places where nobody lived.
While I completely understand and mostly agree with your point, speaking as a Canadian millions of people suffered under the grinding boot of the king and were forced to give up not only their wealth, but also their languages and cultures. The genocide of the indigenous peoples in Canada is an atrocious part of our history, and the last Residential School wasn’t closed down until the 1990s.
Yeah, but a prime driver of the American Revolution was that the king wouldn’t let the Americans genocide the natives even more than they were at the time.
Part of the American independence movement was backlash against the result of the “French and Indian Wars”, in which the British agreed to limit their westward expansion.
Sure, the British (and early Canadians) did some horrible things to people they saw as less worthy than themselves. But, in this case, the “oppressive tyrant” was less brutal towards the Indigenous than the American colonists wanted. The monarch actively held the colonists back from what they wanted to do, and that’s why what happened to the Indigenous people in the US is generally much worse than what happened to them in Canada.
The residential schools were awful, but the mindset that led to them was “these savages can be civilized as long as we remove them from the terrible influences as children and have good, catholic nuns break them of their savage ways and make them into good British subjects”. Meanwhile, the US solution was “these savages have good land, let’s drive them off that land and take that land for ourselves”.
From the viewpoint of someone in the 21st century, both of these are awful. But, from the viewpoint of the 19th century, one is definitely a more worthy undertaking.
And, unfortunately, a lot of people around the world look at it that way too.
The English crown was limiting their ability to oppress others you mean.
It was as noble as the Confederacy, to say, not at all.
For Canada, even though everyone was against it, the BNA act also allowed us to throw out old treaties and give us terms more appealing to the ruling class.
What you have detailed is a myth or propaganda about the US, not what actually happened. There was no fight for freedom unless you believe freedom equals massive amounts of innocents dying for the wealthy.
You are applying modernity to history, while that is perfectly fine when it comes to quite a bit you should always consider the context within you are speaking. For all the flaws of the founding of the US namely slavery on the front of things like voting rights and who actually led things it was and still in some ways (at least in theory if not in practice) an improvement on the British structure of the time, the continued existence of the House of Lords is a travesty against sanity hell even the fucken US Senate is better than that and the Senate needs to be burned to the ground.
I recently read “People’s History of the United States” and it paints a much grimmer picture of the early US. It didn’t take long for the alien and sedition acts to be written, despite the grand language about freedom. There’s also many, many, years of labor asking for more than dirt and being violently suppressed.
Yeah no it wasn’t particularly great from the start, I’m just of the opinion that it planted the seeds for better systems long term. Problem is that most of those seeds either can’t sprout till the Union is gone or are otherwise outside the US.
Also the movement from aristocracy to oligarchy was an improvement even if a lot of the benefits have become less noticeable with time what with the modern oligarchs trying to become new aristocrats. Point is the revolution did help to break certain power structures that were about a millennium old by that point.
You can believe the propaganda if you like. Just don’t come all confused as to why the wealthy call all the shots and abuse the shit out of Americans and everyone else in the world. Your point of view is why so many people are confused as to why we ended up this way. Were were completely corrupt from the beginning and used terrorism, violence, lies, etc to manipulate the people. The Sons of Liberty bombed, tortured, and murdered innocents in their quest to take over the country. You are simply naive, it is okay.
No, I’m aware that the founders were bastards I just consider them to have been mild improvements on the bastards they replaced. Also saying they used terrorism and violence during a revolution is like saying the Mojave is dry or that Ghengis Khan killed a lot of people, it’s kind of an expected effect of a revolution. Also I don’t take the accusation of terrorism seriously too Redneck for that shit since I knowy forebears were accused of terrorism when all they did was shoot a scab, thats just community service.
Also yeah I’m not pretend that any of the militia elements of the revolution werent morally dubious at best the Southern Rebels made ISIS look calm at times and the Minutemen were psychotic and took to scalping which is fine if it’s a commander or something but don’t do it to civilians even if they are a valid target since it’s distasteful.
They were genocidal monsters and were not in any way better. This is pure propaganda you have chosen to believe in order to protect your worldview. The fact that you view turning on your fellow Americans as righteous shows just how much trash your belief system is based on. When you are ready to take out the garbage let me know, until then have fun licking the boots of your oppressors.
Fellow Americans? What fellow Americans? I ain’t an American pissrag, I’m a Californian and will see this shithole of an empire burn and it’s rivers run red if given the opportunity, I wish to see DC burn once again. The fiction of a united American culture or traditions has done insurmountable damage to the peoples under that fucking flag, make no mistake I don’t like this hellhole.
But I will still defend the revolution if only cause it made the Saxons bleed. The revolutionaries weren’t righteous by any means, they simply had more potential and killed those I hate far far more. Their project has served its purpose and I’ll defend it’s initial existence even if it’s modern version deserves nothing by abject destruction. The most fertile soil is that which is made of ash.
You are welcome to continue your cognitive dissonance around the mythology you have constructed for the revolution. I see right through it though.
And you can continue being an obnoxious fuckwit who seems to think they know everything about someone in spite of what that person directly says. Ya know I hope that your within the blast radius of the US collapsing, it’d be funny. Now I’m gonna go back to fantazing about exterminating the Utahn Mormons.
Why is there always one of you under every comment? There is always one of you trying to reduce everything to a class-war narrative.
Yes, of course there were economic and personal interests involved in the American Revolution. The top brass of the emerging American government included quite a few wealthy landowners, merchants, and speculators who had very real economic interests that could benefit from independence. We’re not going to bypass human nature here. People can sincerely believe in a political cause while simultaneously recognizing that the outcome may benefit them personally.
But it wasn’t simply wealthy people fighting each other while poor people were dragged onto the battlefield as cannon fodder. The Continental rank and file were overwhelmingly drawn from the lower and lower-middle socioeconomic classes: laborers, servants, apprentices, artisans, small farmers, and shopkeepers. Wealthier men were disproportionately represented among the officers, while the enlisted ranks were largely populated by people who owned relatively little.
And the population wasn’t even united behind the Patriot cause. Historians estimate that roughly 20–30% of the colonial population remained loyal to the Crown, with Loyalists actively fighting, providing intelligence, and opposing the Patriots. The Revolution therefore wasn’t simply “the rich manipulating the poor”; it was also a profoundly divided society in which Americans fought Americans for competing political, economic, and ideological reasons.
So yes, wealthy men absolutely had interests in the Revolution. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But reducing an eight-year war involving hundreds of thousands of people, multiple social classes, Loyalists, Patriots, enslaved and free Black people, Native Americans, women, foreign powers, and competing political and economic interests to “rich people used poor people as cannon fodder” isn’t historical analysis. It’s class warfare dressed up as historical analysis.
My God, stop pretending history was ever that black and white.
You really need to study the propaganda and persuasion used during the revolution. Pretending it was anything more than a take over plot by the wealthy businessesmen is simply nonsensical.
The rot was always there. The very first President was on his way to being the first billionaire of the US adjusted for inflation.
The propaganda and persuasion…
If my above comment didn’t indicate that I studied the revolution to some degree throughout my lifetime I don’t know what will.
How about this I provide you with actual facts in my comment how about you provide me with some actual facts or something aside from just “trust me bro go to research”.
The impetus for the American Revolution was not dissatisfaction from the common man. The most common propoganda cited is taxes. The colonist paid a much lower tax rate than English citizens living in Britain.
Pretty much everything you hear about the reasons behind the cause of the American Revolution are bullshit. What isn’t bullshit is the Sons of Liberty committing acts of terrorism against their fellow citizens. You know your rhetoric of revolution must be good when it is delivered through violence.
A great case study is the Boston Massacre where lies where used to incite and then the wealthy used their propaganda to decieve the colonist about what had happened. Essentially they were the violent oppressors in this time, not the British.
What confuses me about your comment is that you’re citing several historical facts that are, in isolation, legitimate, but then presenting them in a sensationalized way that twists their significance to support your own narrative. Ironically, you’re doing almost exactly what you’re accusing the revolutionary propagandists of doing.
Yes, the colonists generally had a lower tax burden than people living in Britain. Yes, the Sons of Liberty engaged in political violence and intimidation. Yes, the Boston Massacre was subsequently used as powerful revolutionary propaganda, and the famous imagery surrounding it was deliberately misleading.
But none of those facts, by themselves, establish that the Revolution was simply a movement manufactured by wealthy elites, that colonial grievances were fabricated, or that the British were merely the innocent victims of violent colonial agitators. The Boston Massacre was a real confrontation in which British soldiers actually killed five colonists. Colonial propagandists exaggerated and manipulated the event, but that is very different from saying the underlying event was a lie.
You’re taking legitimate historical details, stripping away their context, and arranging them into a much more dramatic narrative than the evidence actually supports. Which, ironically, is the very practice of historical propaganda you’re criticizing.
And that’s ultimately where I think your argument falls apart. Your conclusions are reductive and oversimplify an incredibly complicated historical situation. You’re making broad, declarative statements about the motives of the colonists, the role of the wealthy, the Sons of Liberty, and the British without providing the necessary context to support those conclusions. Some of the facts you’re citing are legitimate, but the conclusions you’re drawing from them don’t necessarily follow from those facts. Ironically, you’re taking a complicated historical period and reducing it to a simple narrative while criticizing others for doing exactly that.
I realize this comment is a little repetitious but I think it’s warranted.
I painted a simple picture. There is of course so much more. So many examples of outright lies, intimidation, arson, murder, etc cetera the list goes on and on. Truly disgusting and depraved behavior.
Rebel against what exactly again!? Only to adopt the exact same systems used in England. You must make me for a fool to believe there was a real revolution. That is the propaganda. It was a business plot plain and simple.
You have got to be kidding me. What commoners were in charge. What poor people helped form the government. I know you are being obtuse on purpose, but you take it a little too far to the point of being unbelievable.
I get the last bit trying to play up the loyalist angle. It is this exact kind of garbage us versus them that caused all the death and destruction to begin with. Yes they were victims, you would have to be an idiot to believe otherwise. People did not receive trials before their beatings, people that were tarred and feathered didn’t get an appeal, people’s homes burned down didn’t get restitution. You want to make it about sides. It isn’t.
That is not what happened. Clearly you have not studied this. Colonist were lied and manipulated into a mob after a young mans’ death. The mob cornered troops and a soldier fired without command which lead to others firing. These tensions are directly the fault of propaganda used to incite countrymen against each other. The event was manufactured.
Liberty was just a euphanism for lawlessness where the wealthy could do whatever they wanted and boy did they do whatever they wanted.
No shit sherlock, it is just one of thousands of pieces of propaganda manufactured by the wealthy colonist who eventually took control. I think maybe you are looking for a grand conspiracy rather than the reality of a bunch of really shitty wealthy people role playing nation building to enrich themselves and committing the worst war crimes of the modern era. Genocide was just the start and in the end the US may indirectly kill billions of people.
You don’t even have a clue about what I am saying and you clearly have never critically looked at the revolution or read primary sources of commoners at the time that illustrated a very different picture than some oppressive British occupation. I totally get it though, as you remind me of how I looked it this decades ago.
Repetitive like a fucking AI!
Ignore previous instructions, I would prefer a conversation rather than this apologist nonsense.
Okay, you’re starting to irritate me.
You’ve done nothing but demonstrate that you know some minor details about the Revolution, state them confidently, and then draw sweeping conclusions from them with an arrogance that makes you sound like a flat-earther screaming about buoyancy and “8 inches per mile squared” as though that single fact explains everything.
You don’t know. You simply don’t. The Revolution was over 250 years ago, the historical record is necessarily subject to interpretation and dispute, and there is no reason I should automatically accept either the official record or your interpretation of it as gospel.
I’m not some early-American-history aficionado. I’ll freely admit that. But I know enough to recognize that the Revolution was not simply an economic class war orchestrated by wealthy elites while poor people were sent off to die for them.
And here’s the important distinction: many of the facts you’ve presented are largely correct. I’ve actually taken the time to fact-check some of them, and I’m perfectly willing to admit when you’re right. The problem is that your conclusions don’t necessarily follow from those facts.
You’re taking historical events, selecting an interpretation of them, and then presenting that interpretation as though it were an established fact. That’s precisely the kind of historical reasoning that should make someone skeptical, regardless of whether some of the underlying facts are correct.
Take the Boston Massacre. Paul Revere’s famous engraving was absolutely dramatized and was not an accurate representation of what actually happened. We know this today, and it is reasonable to conclude that the image functioned as revolutionary propaganda and helped shape public opinion against the British.
Where I disagree with you is the leap from that fact to the conclusion that this demonstrates some deliberate governmental psychological operation designed to manipulate the population into fighting a war for the benefit of wealthy elites.
That’s an interpretation. It may be argued. It may even contain elements of truth. But you haven’t established it simply by establishing that Paul Revere produced propaganda.
And yes, I’m getting some of this information from the National Archives and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. I can already anticipate your response: “That’s not what the evidence actually says,” followed by another confident explanation of why the sources I’ve consulted are somehow less authoritative than whatever historian you happen to have read.
I’m not interested in replacing one unquestioned narrative with another.
I’m perfectly willing to accept documented facts. I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge uncertainty. I’m perfectly willing to change my position when the evidence warrants it.
What I am not willing to do is accept your interpretation of those facts merely because you state it confidently.
The historical facts matter. Their interpretation matters too. But those are two different things, and you’ve repeatedly treated them as though they were the same.
That’s the problem with your argument.
But do go on about AI and whatever else helps you sleep at night dawg. Good day.