Defending the American Revolution | Eastern NC Now

Rich Lowry of National Review Online ponders “the greatest revolution the world has ever known.”

ENCNow
Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Mitch Kokai.

    Rich Lowry of National Review Online ponders "the greatest revolution the world has ever known."

  • It's been a hard time for the American Revolution.
  • It's been smeared by the New York Times's 1619 project as a fight to preserve slavery. Juneteenth, a worthy event in its own right, is considered by some as a candidate to replace July 4, marking a supposedly more palatable and less flawed Independence Day. Statues of leaders of the Revolution have been vandalized and torn down.
  • This is wrongheaded, ungrateful, and destructive. Ours is the greatest revolution the world has ever known. It succeeded where so many others have failed, delivered a severe blow to monarchy and aristocracy, inspired republican movements around the world, and won the independence of a country whose power and ideals have influenced the course of history for the better.
  • We shouldn't underestimate the violence and, at times, the brutality of a multidimensional, yearslong struggle that killed more Americans per capita than any conflict besides the Civil War.
  • But there was nothing like the Vendée, the bloodbath when royalist resistance to the French Revolution in a western region of the country was put down in a spasm of all-consuming savagery in 1793, let alone the terrors that characterized 20th-century communist revolutions.
  • The Revolution's military leader, George Washington, had no ambitions to rule on his own and tamped down a potential military coup by restive soldiers at Newburgh in 1783.
  • The Revolution didn't devour its own. Its leaders died in their beds. At the end of long lives, sworn political enemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson struck up a respectful correspondence, and both died on July 4, 1826, still honored 50 years after the Revolution.
  • When the country's politics factionalized after the war, no one was guillotined or exiled for his beliefs. Instead, the profound disagreements between the two sides played out in battles in the newspapers and at the ballot box.
  • The Revolution didn't seek to wipe all that had come before.

Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published )
Enter Your Comment ( text only please )




Medicaid Transformation Finally Complete With Transition To Managed Care John Locke Foundation Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics Biden’s Penchant for Caving to Pressure


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics


HbAD1

"Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud. Tend to your faith, not just when you’re broken, but when you’re whole."
illegal alien "asylum seeker" migrants are a crime wave on both sides of the Atlantic
A new poll data points to continuing trend among the next generation of the left.
Libertarian rabble rouser Massie defeated in Kentucky

HbAD2

Trump administration policies are bringing the country back from the brink of an uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants.
Sen. Tillis Urges Senate to Cancel ICE, Border Patrol Vote to Boost Cornyn’s Reelection Bid

HbAD3

 
 
Back to Top