Forum dems/libs: Would you have supported the American Revolution?

[TNF]

I'm not a liberal nor a big d democrat, but as a revolutionary socialist and radical democrat, the answer is obviously yes, I would have supported the First American Revolution (1775-1783), the Second American Revolution (1861-1865), and will, should I live long enough to see it, take up arms in defense of a third American revolution to rid this nation of rule by parasite. It is utterly confounding that anyone, especially those who claim to be liberals, would argue against our very split from Britain, given that without it, liberalism would probably not have really been a thing. The fact that so many 'liberals' would rather endorse the despotism of the crown and the subjugation of the public to landlordism and imperialist dictatorship is a pretty stunning illustration of how utterly impotent liberalism has been since its triumphant and total victory over the slavocracy in the 1860s.

You can't have something for nothing. You can't have freedom without rebellion, you can't have liberty without the destruction of that which strangles it. This is why liberalism is a dead creed, and rightfully so. You belong in the ashbin of history with the parasitic classes that your fore bearers overthrew, largely because you have no vision and no perspective, and no plan for finishing that which you have started.

tl;dr - f##k yes and anyone who says no is a traitor

[TNF]

The reasons for the revolution were entirely legitimate. The British crown was forcing taxation upon the colonists without consultation of their legislatures.

[TNF]

If we had representation and were outvoted, it wouldn't have been an issue because what was disputed was not the tax itself, but the principle that taxes could only be levied by representatives of the persons being taxed in question. The fact that the Americans were not represented in Parliament made the taxation levied by Parliament upon them illegitimate.

I don't think any serious Marxist historian disputes that the Founding Fathers (in the sense that we understand that term) were self-interested. Of course they were. They led a revolution in part to protect their own position and to secure the position of their class as the dominant one in the new American republic. Of course, that was also a very diverse group of people, with reactionaries and radicals alike included, none of which really agreed on what should come in the wake of the revolution itself, which is why you had groups like the Federalists and Anti-Federalists emerge in the late 1780s and early 1790s, forming the crux of the political system at the time.

[TNF]

I would not have supported the 1776 slaveholder's rebellion, no.

The majority of revolutionary activity immediately preceding the conflict was centered in Boston. The Sons of Liberty rallied against unjust taxation, not against threats being made to slave ownership by the British (of which there were none that I am aware of during that period.) Castigating the whole of the revolution with the desire to preserve slavery is shoddy historical analysis with little basis in fact.

[TNF]

An interesting - and sometimes forgotten - fact is that in Britain there were many supporters of the Americans.

If memory serves, wasn't one of the leading generals of the British war effort a Whig inclined toward support of the Americans? Howe, maybe? Its been awhile since I didn't a lot of reading on the topic.