Revisionist History of the US....:( (fwd)

Jim choate <ravage@bga.com> writes:
> I am not going to name names but I would like to address the comment that
> several folks have made (or agreed with) that the US has gone 200 years 
> w/o a major upheaval.
> 
> Maybe I am taking a alternate History than you folks but I believe the 
> Civil War can be considered a major internal upheaval and it occured 
> 4 score and 7 years (87 years) after the birth of our country. Since then
> we have also had the civil rights upheaval (if you don't want to consider
> deaths of folks like MLK major that is your business) in the late 50's and 
> early 60's as well. Especially when you consider the political and social
> turmoil that occured because of the Vietnam War.

We might also add Shay's Rebellion, Bacon's Rebellion, the Hudson
River Renters' Uprising, the Pullman Strike, the Homestead Strike, the
Ludlow Massacre, the Lawrence Textile Strikes, etc., etc.  Many of
these were full-scale insurrections.  This country's "progress" is
really just a series of grudging concessions made by authoritarian
power structures to various nearly catastrophic crises.

> What I find most interesting about this chronology is that the
> upheavals occur approximately every hundred years since our
> founding. The fact that the present problems we are having w/ the
> administration recognizing and the general populace demaning their
> civil liberties/rights is apparently early by approximately 70
> years. Perhaps the present administration is really as progressive
> as they claim...:) Take care.

Good observation about periodicity, Jim, but I'd say that the typical
span is much shorter than 100 years.

   - Mark -


--
Mark Chen 
chen@netcom.com
415/329-6913
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> 
> We might also add Shay's Rebellion, Bacon's Rebellion, the Hudson
> River Renters' Uprising, the Pullman Strike, the Homestead Strike, the
> Ludlow Massacre, the Lawrence Textile Strikes, etc., etc.  Many of
> these were full-scale insurrections.  This country's "progress" is
> really just a series of grudging concessions made by authoritarian
> power structures to various nearly catastrophic crises.
>
I have a hard time comparing any of these histricaly important but 
comparatively minor events to the half a million dead of the Civil 
War or the 50,000+ dead of Vietnam. Perhaps you have extended the
analogy a little too far?...

> > What I find most interesting about this chronology is that the
> > upheavals occur approximately every hundred years since our
> > founding. The fact that the present problems we are having w/ the
> > administration recognizing and the general populace demaning their
> > civil liberties/rights is apparently early by approximately 70
> > years. Perhaps the present administration is really as progressive
> > as they claim...:) Take care.
> 
> Good observation about periodicity, Jim, but I'd say that the typical
> span is much shorter than 100 years.
> 

Considering that (taking my example) there have been only 2 'major' upheavals
since the founding fight we probably have way too few data points to draw
any real comparison about periodicity. I was making the comment more to
goad others to respond than to make any absolute statement about the 
periodicity. Also, one must be careful about how you defind 'major' upheaval.
This country has had lots of turmoil in its history and as long as that will
continue to be allowed I suspect we have a good chance of staying around as
a union. The reality is that while many of the turmoils have had national
import they were not at the time of the event of national range.