[yucky]

>That's like saying the American Revolution was a coup because it violated King George's imperial laws.

I wouldn't have a huge problem with that characterization, I'm not saying all coups are bad just call it what it is though. The main difference in 1776 though is there was no new leader put in place into an existing government system. The entire government was rebuilt from the ground up. In Ukraine, they just installed their guys.

[mbg721]

While the structure of the human-filled government positions was indeed rebuilt, there was a continued reliance on English common law, to the point that I believe early after the revolution courts still used English cases as precedent. What I was taught in high-school was that the French Revolution was more tumultuous because it relied much more on tearing down the establishment than the American Revolution did.