You Say You Want a Revolution

One of the talking points that many of our friends on the right are making these days speaks of revolution in the face of a perceived tyranny. The reasons for this vary, but always fall back to the Lockean idea enshrined in the Thomas Jefferson 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

The concept of throwing off a tyrannical regime is writ large in the American psyche. Perpetually, we compare our current situation with that of our founding fathers, seeking a yoke to cast off of our shoulders. We wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that there is a justified cause for seeking revolution, regardless of the situations unfolding in Idaho and other parts of the nation. What we see more and more is the rise of fascism in localities — something which would have turned the stomachs of the founding fathers, who had some very at least legitimate-seeming reasons for their revolution. None of which apply today.

What Was the American Revolution About?

To discuss individual rights and how important it was that (slaveholders, remember) clamored together to shrug off England’s hold, we must first remember that there was no source of title other than the King of England for the members of the colonies. The individual rights being denied to the founders weren’t the free rights that we’ve come to recognize in the constitution. Their initial grievance was in not being treated the same as other English citizens. They weren’t even trying to overthrow a tyrant until it came time for press and global support.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith was published in 1776, and covers the grievances of the colonies in some detail, as do Jefferson’s own writings. Adam Smith points out one of the same irritations Jefferson alluded to in both of his documents on emancipation — the one that circulated internally and the Declaration of Independence. This is the fact that the colonialists were prohibited from selling their goods to anyone besides England, and weren’t allowed to make finished products. Any items of luxury had to be acquired from England after the raw goods that America sent were then refined in England. It was a one-sided relationship, and it was a change in status. For a time, colonialists had been allowed to trade with other nations, and all it would really have taken is for the king to allow such trade to continue for the colonialists to be content. More or less.

Of course, it didn’t play out that way. Instead, the crown sent its representatives to set up aristocratic domains in the colonies and began treating the colonists the same way they had treated other colonies in other countries. That is, the colonists had no rights and frequently compared their position to slavery (although few could argue that living in Monticello voluntarily is the same as being kidnapped from one’s homeland and forced into servitude). The irony was completely lost on them, of course.

But I digress.

So the rights that the colonists wanted were those same rights as the other English had, and these rights were denied to them. It was a convenience that the ideas of Locke and the Roman form of government had been circulating widely, and so the founders could draw upon Locke’s ideas in defense of their revolution. But to say that the revolution was founded on other than economic concerns is a bit of a stretch, and to say that they were purely to support Lockean philosophical ideas misses the mark entirely. Locke was brought into it to justify the decision, not the other way around. In a sentence: it was never really about freedom.

What about the tea party and no taxation without representation? That was due to the taxes on imports and exports to and from England. England was fighting multiple wars at the time and was going broke (also in Adam Smith’s book). To finance the wars, they taxed the Americans more than the rest of England (treating it like a colony instead of like the people there were settled Englishmen). It was the inequity in their station compared to the other English that drove the discontent. Coupled with slavery, but that would take an entire blog itself to write about.

So when we look at the history of the United States, and consider whether there is any group that has a right to stage a revolution, who immediately comes to mind? Is there any group that has been marginalized more than the others over the entire history of our nation? Hint: it is not the people who are the loudest in protesting masks and vaccines, or the people actually calling for revolution today.

What else caused the revolution? Well, to an extent, gun control. But gun control in the context of an already strained relationship. Here’s what happened.

In the 1770s, the obstinate King of England decided that the colonialists were his domain. They were getting, well, uppity for lack of a better word, so he sent troops, but didn’t have places to put them. So, they stayed in people’s homes, whether or not they liked it (some did, some didn’t). Then, when England realized how tenuous their hold on the colonialists had become, they confiscated weapons and gunpowder. Confiscated as in mass-collected guns from the colonialists and arrested people. And then there was the Boston Massacre, and the tea party (which was about much more than just tea and tea tax).

Everything that happened leading up to the revolution was in the context of overwhelming fascist-like activities, like all that’s been mentioned above.

Is that same thing happening now?

Not by a long shot. Nobody’s coming for people’s weapons. The most severe gun legislation being considered is asking for the safe storage of firearms and to make sure that guns can be tracked in order to properly enforce gun control regulations. No soldiers are being boarded in people’s homes, and the taxes that people experience is universal in nature. There’s no separate group receiving preferential treatment.

Rather, among common Americans, there is a common, unambiguous tax code that has been tweaked over the years by an elected government. Both representation and fair taxation are in place. Except for the problem of capital gains tax which isn’t on the list of revolutionary causes but is in actuality the most revolutionary-cause-like problem we have. Even a single stolen election (which never happened, but some seem convinced of) would pale in comparison to the installation of truly unelected aristocrats to control and oversee tax collection and weapons confiscation.

The current American predicament has only the slightest overtures to revolutionary causes, and only then if we willfully ignore the glaring fact that it is a minority of the country who insist on trying to overthrow the rest and, from what we can tell, install a government that looks enforces a state religion (something of which the founders would have decried). As well, the examples (such as redoubt above) of what such a revolutionary society would look like are mini-fascist states, which is not something with which Locke or the founders would have agreed.

Those who fall into a revolutionary line of thinking today do so only at their own insistence, and not in response to any actual oppressions. They are willing to make excuses to jettison freedom through violence for the comfort of a homogenous society in their own imagined imposition of what society should be.

Nothing is more communist than that.