[drieddust]

In few years time, we will read about Cheran mafia's ascend to power. These utopian dreams almost always result in oppressed becoming oppressors. This quote sums it up quite nicely.

“But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[redial]

Western democracy is the result of the French and American Revolutions.

[eru]

The US is not that important.

Arguably the British tradition had a bigger impact---without people's revolutions. (There was the Glorious Revolution..)

[redial]

I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what?

And all I'm saying is that at some point we get bored of calling successful revolutions, well, revolutions, and just accept them as the new normal. But we remember the short lived ones as revolutions because we never got around to give them another name, and thus we associate revolution with failure, when it is not the case at all (one way or the other).

[quirkafleeg]

> I'm sorry I don't understand your comment. Not that important for what? The British tradition (which tradition?) had a bigger impact on what?

The American revolution, Constitution and Bill of Rights are all inspired and influenced by, among other things, the Magna Carta, the English revolution and English Bill of Rights.

Let's ignore the unexplained impact you claim the American Revolution has had on "Western Democracy" and examine the impact it had on democracy merely within the United States:

    In 1776 the only people who were entitled
    to vote were white men who owned property.

    100 years and a civil war later, the 15th 
    Amendment was passed in an attempt to give
    black men the vote.

    Another half century after that women were
    given the vote.

    Almost another half century after that -
    200 years after the American Revolution -
    the Voting Rights Act had to be passed, to
    finally, properly give black people the vote.

To put it another way, New Zealand had universal suffrage when Queen Victoria was on the throne; the USA didn't even fully have it for black people when Barack Obama was born.

[redial]

If we follow your example then no one really has a true democracy yet, after all in most countries people under 18 (or 21 or whatever age they use) are not allowed to vote. This might be considered barbaric in the future.

You are confusing your ideal of democracy with what was actually a change in the way to look at government: it was a complete rejection of the monarchy and its god mandated right to rule unlike anything that came before.

And sure, everything is influenced by what came earlier, after all Thomas Paine, considered by many the intelectual father of both the French and American Revolutions was actually British. What started in 1776 was the beginning of modern democracy, and it inspired many western colonies to break from their colonizers with their own democratic revolutions (not all successful), but it was not perfect, it has evolved a lot since then, and it will continue to do so.

I will also argue your point about New Zealand. If your democratic process can be subverted by the whims of a single person using the power of his/her inherited authority on the assumption of being divine, then you don't really have a democracy, no matter how many people are allowed to vote.

But again, that is not the point I was making in my response to op. I was just merely pointing out that not all revolutions end in failure.

[quirkafleeg]

> If we follow your example then no one really has a true democracy yet, after all in most countries people under 18 (or 21 or whatever age they use) are not allowed to vote.

They're allowed to vote when they reach the age of 18 or 21. How do people excluded from voting due to their race or gender become eligible to vote?

> You are confusing your ideal of democracy with what was actually a change in the way to look at government: it was a complete rejection of the monarchy and its god mandated right to rule unlike anything that came before.

I've already given examples where monarchical rule was rejected and curtailed - events which inspired and influenced the American revolution - so why are you still pretending the first people to come up with such concepts were American revolutionaries?

> I will also argue your point about New Zealand. If your democratic process can be subverted by the whims of a single person using the power of his/her inherited authority on the assumption of being divine, then you don't really have a democracy, no matter how many people are allowed to vote.

Key word: "If".

[dredmorbius]

Take a look at English history, say, Roman times (43 AD) to present. It's fascinating on multiple counts. I'm sketchy on this myself, but a rough outline:

The Romans were, of course, a foreign occupying force, but they served to keep other foreign occupying forces out. Once the Romans left (~450 AD), that stopped being the case, and England was successively invaded by Norsemen ("Northmen", a/k/a Vikings, Normandy is also settled by the Norse), and Saxons (from present day Holland / Netherlands), mostly.

William the Conqueror (Norman) was the last foreign invador to both substantially engage the dominant British inhabitants on their own soil, the last to defeat England (absent invited parties, e.g., Mortimor and the Prince of Orange). 1066 was the last time until the first World War that England was subject to any significant foreign attack, and the last time until the second World War that London itself was engaged by an enemy. I find that pretty significant.

There were numerous almost (though not quite) always peaceful devolutions of power from the Crown to an ever expanding scope of at first nobles, and finally commoners. The Magna Carta (1215), War of Roses (1485), the English Civil Wars (1642 & 1648), Commonwealth of England (1649), the Protectorate (1653-1659), the Bill of Rights (1689), Chartism (1838-1858) (the UK's answer to the Revolutions of 1848 and their populist reforms), Local Governance Acts (1888, 1894), and increasing welfare-state reforms of the 1930s - 1950s.

Throughout almost all of this has been a devolution of power from the centre to the periphery.

It's also occurred largely by the fact that those claiming additional power -- barons, lords, a growing merchantile and political class, and finally the proletariat -- could effectively make such demands, threatening disruption otherwise.

The concept of a revolution in the modern sense seems, well, quite modern: France (1794), Europe generally (1848), Russia (1917) and the subsequent Communist Revolutions of China and Cuba. (I'm excluding the Communisation of Eastern Europe which was in fact an act of imperial oppression by Soviet Russia). The Fascist revolutions of Italy and German (a strongly cautionary tale). The fall of the USSR and Communist Eastern Europe, though should fit. I'd include the Iranian Revolution (1979), though that was not in the Liberal tradition.

More generally, power transitions are from one oligarchical group to another, though frequently playing on public sentiments.

[eru]

The Brits had a gradual accumulation of rights. First more for the upper nobility, later for the common man, too. They also had pretty stable governance for quite a while now.

The Civil War interrupted that stability a bit (as AlgorithmicTime in a dead comment points out), but that wasn't as much upheaval as eg the French revolution.

> Not that important for what?

Western Democracy. Sorry for the confusion, I was relying too much on context here.

[redial]

I now get what you are saying, thanks for the clarification.

I agree with you, democracy can be traced to the British, and further back to the Romans, and even the Greeks, but it wasn't until the French Revolution that the core concept of it was implemented; namely that there are no divine rights of kings (Britain also contemplated that idea, it is a shame they didn't follow thru).

Democracy is not only about voting or rights or property, it is also the idea that the people can decide for themselves they way they want to live. Voting is just the best way we've come up to decide that until now.

[eru]

The North American natives had strong traditions of freedom and something like democracy. Alas, they didn't have the military power to resist the USA.

For a very interesting take on this, see "The White Indians of Colonial America". (http://www.amstudy.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/engl56_kj_axtel...)

[drieddust]

Democracy in modern world is a result of Industrialization and it was a ugly,long and slow process.

French revolution resulted in revolutionary becoming the aggressors and they were took over by Napoleon so power returned to back to Regency.

Revolutions in China, South America, USSR etc also resulted in same. I can't comment on American revolution though, it may have been an exception.

[1] http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution

[redial]

The Industrial Revolution was a factor in the uptake of democracy, sure. Just as WWI, WWII and the Cold War were. But it all started in 1776 in the US with the Declaration of Independence and in the 1790s with the French Revolution, which was the inspiration for South America to declare independence from Spain and establish their own democracies with different levels of success. The French Revolution didn't last in France, not at first, but the core concepts are the basis of our current democracy largely in part because the American Revolution kept them alive and spread them.

[drieddust]

I think quirkafleeg above answered on American revolution.

[redial]

Attempted to.

[restalis]

The "American Revolution" was just a struggle for independence. The "revolution" in the true sense assumes a change in values on multiple levels.

[redial]

The intelectual pilar of the American Revolution was a manuscript called Common Sense by Thomas Paine where the changes in values where outlined.

Calling it just a struggle for independence says nothing about why they were struggling to be independent.