This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I would argue that the thing which we call the “American Revolution” was not in fact a revolution. In something like the French Revolution (ann actual revolution) the King of France was deposed and later killed. There was no more French monarchy; it no longer existed as an institution. Ditto for the Iranian Revolution, which completely removed the Iranian monarchy.
Contrast this with the state of the world after the American War of Independence. The British Monarchy was very much still intact and continue to be a powerful and geopolitically relevant institution for another century and a half. The American colonists were no longer under its power, and therefore they had to create new governing institutions for themselves from scratch; in that sense, the aftermath resembles the aftermath of a revolution. But the institution being rebelled against was never destroyed, nor even especially weakened.
The Revolutionary War was a separatist rebellion. It could also have been a revolution within the American colonies, but by and large wasn't - the major social/political developments in the colonies had already occurred and to a significant degree the cause of the rebellion was attempts by the British government to roll them back/redefine the relationship. The post-war social order wasn't identical to pre-independence, but it was pretty similar.
Contra your follow up remark, I would say that the Haitian Revolution was a real revolution, in that it totally upended the Haitian social order, in addition to being a separatist revolt against France.
Very much agreed. The American War of Independence made only minor incremental changes in the domestic institutions of the individual Colonies/States, and apart from a few Loyalists being exiled there was no change in the local elites running those institutions. The Haitian Revolution involved the (sometimes literal) dismemberment of the French local elites running Haiti and their replacement by a new Creole elite, as well as complete reboot of the institutions.
If there is a true American Revolution (and the Founding Fathers thought there was - hence Novo Ordo Saeculorum etc.), it is an ongoing process (similar to the analogous but slower development of Parliamentary Democracy in the UK) of forming new, unprecedentedly democratic and republican institutions which continues through and beyond the signing of the Constitution.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like this is a highly unusual definition of revolution, and not the primary criteria that most people use to judge that term.
There are dozens of examples, but what about the Haitian revolution? The Irish revolution/Independence movement? The Dutch Revolt, where the Netherlands seeded from Spanish control? Most post-colonial histories?
It's like defining surgery as the procedure by which someone cuts off a limb or an organ. If an organized group rebels against a dominant force, and either replaces them wholesale or at least forces them to concede defeat, that's the working definition. I see no reason to postulate anything else, at best it's a sub-category.
None of the things you named are revolutions, in my opinion. They are revolts, certainly, but not revolutions. An independence movement simply secedes from an existing institution, while a revolution dissolves that institution. After the Russian Revolution there were no more tsars, and almost certainly never will be. Mao’s revolution in China totally dissolved the traditional governing institutions of China. I think you absolutely need to have some way to distinguish that sort of process from the far more common secession of smaller units from a larger political whole.
You're making a perfectly reasonable distinction, but my objection is that this is a non-standard use of existing terminology and you'd be better served coming up with a new word. Maybe call them "replacement revolutions" versus "secessionist revolutions", or something catcher.
There are plenty of examples, what's the difference between a rebellion and a revolution? Largely whether the rebels were victorious (even temporarily) and thus had the opportunity to rebrand.
According to Wikipedia, some gentleman named Charles Tully already subdivided revolutions into:
He drew a line between a "revolt" and a "great revolution", a concept that matches your "revolution" but even then, he said that they were subtypes of revolution as a whole.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The new governing institutions were mostly not created from scratch, though- they were assemblies and expansions of preexisting governing institutions. The American revolution largely left quite literally the same people in charge of the day to day running of America before and afterwards- assemblies elected by landowner suffrage were very much not new and most of the founding fathers had had positions in colonial government beforehand.
Yeah people forget that the original theoretical question of the American Revolution was if the British Parliament in England or the British Parliaments in America could govern the Englishmen in America.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link