Comments on: Taxes, The Tea Party, and Those Revolting Rebels: A History in Comics of the American Revolution

By: Lissa Kl

Lissa Kl — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:41:00 +0000

I suspect most Americans have not read any history since they left school and still believe what they were taught. This view should make us a little more sympathetic with the messy ways other countries move toward democracy with two steps forward and one step back and a lot of self-interest on everyone’s part. Seeing that how could we believe our revolution was somehow fairy tale perfect.

By: Lucy Gothro

Lucy Gothro — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:49:00 +0000

http://www.larrygonick.com/html/pub/books/his4.html

By: Lucy Gothro

Lucy Gothro — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:48:00 +0000

Have you all forgotten (if you knew in the first place) about Larry Gonick’s “Cartoon History of the United States”?

By: Mantissa128

Mantissa128 — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:41:00 +0000

And the Borg.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:54:00 +0000

We should probably use the official term, the one that the founding fathers used.

“Liberal Democracy.”

The whole republic democracy is a canard pushed by Pat Buchanan. A democratic republic is intended to be a representative democracy.

Direct democracy is practical for no one but the Na’vi.

By: JProffitt71

JProffitt71 — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:31:00 +0000

Holy crap, I actually didn’t know that. That changes a lot. Thank you.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:53:00 +0000

You and your facts.

By: Dave Lloyd

Dave Lloyd — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Exactly! What you call democracy ain’t so at all. But a bit of rebadging and you can fool the mob for a century or two.

By: MarkV

MarkV — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:56:00 +0000

“his willingness to surface the framers’ deep suspicion of “the mob” and skepticism for democracy.”

I hope he made the distinction that what they called “democracy” back then is called “direct democracy” today and what we call “democracy” they called “republic.”

Response to Jim Saul:

“Liberal democracy” was not a common term in the 18th century. You can see it’s barely above the baseline vs. all appearances of “democracy.” http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=liberal+democracy%2Cdemocracy&year_start=1700&year_end=1801&corpus=0&smoothing=2

By: squidfood

squidfood — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:24:00 +0000

When my wife (British) first came here (me = American), I gave her this book; it was the Absolute Absolute Best Introduction for an outsider to the founding fathers’ iconography and reality. Despite being very “expose the myth”, it’s also very upbeat.

By: idiotjed

idiotjed — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Sounds like a good book. But has any book about the Revolution in the past half a century really taken that simplistic “traditional” approach? (Apart from those aimed at elementary schools or Glenn Beck U., I mean.)

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:29:00 +0000

I’d be overjoyed if just one little detail managed to pierce the public consciousness… that the tea party wasn’t a protest against taxes, it was a protest against the tax BREAK given unevenly to british importers.

That’s why the tea destroyed was only what was stamped as official imports. Those East India Co. products were newly relieved of the tariff, and so could once again compete with the untaxed, unstamped Dutch imports smuggled in by the Adams cousins, etc.

By: IronEdithKidd

IronEdithKidd — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:25:00 +0000

This is a great book suggestion, Cory. Wishlisted.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:13:00 +0000

the framers’ deep suspicion of “the mob” and skepticism for democracy

My suspicion of the ignorant mob is tempered only by my membership in it.