“We do not care for the revolutionary spirit to survive the revolution. The revolution, however, goes nowhere without it.”
Tag Archives: American Revolution
Stacy Schiff: “The Boston Tea Party Was More Than That. It Was a Riot.”
Posted in founding, justice, Nota Bene, revolution, rights, tyranny, violence
Tagged American Revolution
Andrew R. Detch: “Will the Real George Washington Please Stand Up?”
“the ongoing efforts of the political right to claim the legacy of the American Revolution both oversimplifies the complex legacy of the American Revolution and threatens the very fabric of American identity.”
Posted in founding, freedom, Nota Bene, revolution, rights
Tagged American Revolution
Robin Wright: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me COVID-19: A History”
“Yet the rhetoric and rage displayed in recent protests is not new. Protestors are drawing on a broader conservative discourse centered on the Constitution and American Revolution. Across a diverse cohort of right-wing, libertarian, militia, pro-gun, and white nationalist movements, the Constitution functions as a key symbol in the struggle to advance white exclusionary claims to the U.S. nation. These groups position contemporary grievances as a continuation of the founding fathers’ struggle against tyranny. Speakers at rallies and online commenters herald the coming of the Second American Revolution, inciting patriots to remain armed and ready for combat.”
Posted in freedom, Nota Bene, power, revolution, tyranny, violence
Tagged American Revolution
“‘Black Patriots’ Were Heroes Of The Revolution — But Not The History Books”
“A new documentary, Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution, introduces us to heroes of the American Revolution who aren’t typically found in history books. They are a writer, a double agent, a martyr and a soldier — and they are all black.”
Posted in Blog, film, freedom, revolution, rights
Tagged American Revolution, race
Chris Horner: “Hannah Arendt And The Lost Treasure Of The American Revolution”
“The public space of freedom was not preserved by either of the two revolutions mainly discussed in On Revolution, and we should include their failure alongside that of the Bolsheviks when we read Arendt’s appreciation of the fact that Rosa Luxemburg ‘was far more afraid of a deformed revolution than an unsuccessful one’”.
Posted in agonism, Arendt, democracy, founding, freedom, governance, Nota Bene, revolution, tragic politics
Tagged American Revolution, French Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg
Alex von Tunzelmann: “The Evil Repercussions of the American Revolution”
A review of TO BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (2019) by Matthew Lockwood. “He finds it at the root of a long list of ills, including increasing authoritarianism within Britain itself and the wider British Empire, the failure of Irish, Indian and Peruvian movements against imperialism, the Russian conquest of Crimea, the establishment of penal colonies in Australia and the growth of the global opium trade.”
Posted in Blog, defeat, hubris, melancholy, terror, tragic politics, tyranny
Tagged American Revolution
T. H. Breen: “The Slow Build Up to the American Revolution”
“What we call the American Revolution cannot be linked to a single moment such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Rather, it was a gradual shift in popular thinking about the relation between ordinary people and government power. The revolution was a process, contingent and open—ended, a complex move from revolution to Revolution.”
Posted in autonomy, disobedience, freedom, governance, Nota Bene, revolution, rights
Tagged American Revolution
Jeffrey Ostler: “The Great Fear of 1776”
“It may be unsettling to consider the creation of the United States as a genocidal project, but the experiences of many of eastern North America’s Indigenous people led them to think of it in precisely this way. Examining their reasons does not necessarily mandate agreement with their conclusion, but it does ask us to take their fears more seriously than we have.”
Posted in founding, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, tyranny, violence
Tagged American Revolution, Indigenous people
John Ferling: “Forget a new civil war. We need a new American revolution.”
“More than 200 years later, the United States may well be losing the American Revolution.”
Posted in democracy, founding, freedom, governance, Nota Bene, power, revolution, tyranny
Tagged American Revolution
Rachel Engl reviews Van Buskirk’s “Standing in Their Own Light”
“In Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution, Judith L. Van Buskirk skillfully recovers the story of thousands of black men who took up arms against the British and fought for the cause of American independence within the Continental Army. … Exposing the paradox of slavery in a moment driven by the ideological pursuits of freedom, Van Buskirk shatters the myth of the Revolution as a watershed event for liberty and equality for all, and instead explores the complicated existence of African American patriots during the revolutionary tumult.”
Posted in freedom, Nota Bene, revolution
Tagged American Revolution, race
