It has been my sad experience that all Libertarians are at best “racially insensitive.”

People who think that the income tax is a greater horror than slavery, are just not nice folks.

What I meant was that you could make a claim that what the revolutionaries were demanding was the same liberties that English citizens had traditionally enjoyed in England in the Time of Good Queen Bess and then join a parallel to the pilgrims reaction against the Stuart persecution of non-conformists and absolutist attitudes.

Claiming that a reaction against serfdom played any part in the foundation of the US is just plain stupid.

Also, I think the silent plurality you suggest they tap into isn’t as large as you think. Are you aware that many Americans self-identify as moderate or conservative, but when polled on issues, support liberal positions? A generation of character assassinating the word “liberal” without engaging liberalism on issues will do that, apparently.

I’m not sure that it’s a common thread: from the perspective of the colonial separatists in the 1770s, divine right monarchy was something that remained in the Catholic states on the continent, but had been out of the equation in the Anglosphere since 1690. In that context, it’s ideologically a reassertion of Whiggish Lockean principles from the American side, and I think it’s a stretch to see Lord North’s paternalistic heavyhandedness towards the distant colonials as ‘absolutism’ in the Stuart sense.

I’m more comfortable seeing the religious migrations of the early 1600s in the context of Calvinist ambiguity towards living under a rule perceived tyrannical, and while it’s true that its rhetorical legacy was eagerly picked up by the colonial separatists of the 1770s, the force behind that rhetoric is very different.

The religious tolerance issue was very much overplayed. The Pilgrims did not emigrate in search of tolerance so much as for the right to visit intolerance on others. My church, the Quakers were subject to religious persecution in many states pretty much up to the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

Strictly speaking they were separatists. Church and state were deeply interconnected at the time. The reformation was closer to them than WWI is to us today. The reign of Bloody Mary was closer than WWII. Probably the strongest motivation for the emigration was the expectation that northern Europe was on the precipice of a major religious war. Which of course it was, the 30 years war began two years before the Pilgrims sailed.

Going into the detailed causes would of course require asking the type of question that are not acceptable in US schools.

Going back to the original wingnut piece, the real common thread between the emigration of the pilgrims and the revolution was the rejection of the notion of the divine right of Kings. England’s monarchy had been constrained by parliament since long before the Tudor dynasty. The Stuart kings brought with them a very different approach to government, one that led to the civil war and ultimately the line being deposed in favor of constitutional monarchy under the Hanovarians. The Separatists were really being persecuted for opposing the unchallenged rule of the sovereign. The revolutionaries were reacting against the absolutist prejudices of the Tory government of Lord North.

The unpopularity of the puritans in England came rather later than 1620 and extended largely from their Talebanesque rule during the civil war, massacring Catholics, closing theaters and the like. Calls for toleration of Catholicism were complicated by the activities of the Catholic church, in particular the gleeful support of persecution of the Hugenots in France and the ongoing hypocrisy of the Inquisition.

The chief restrictions on non-conformists were that they could not be awarded degrees at Oxford or Cambridge Universities, which were primarily devoted to training of Anglican clergy. Nor could they gain a military commission or work in government. In other words the restrictions were essentially the same as the ones that the US recently endorsed when they were imposed by the Iraqi government against ‘Baathists’ (i.e. Sunni candidates).

OTOH, the conservaDems are in such a nice position; they can profit from and f*ck over Democrats, and cooperate with/defect to to the GOP whenever that’s a better deal.

“It is hard to see that the North would have refused secession if there had been no slaves.”

I generally agree with what you said, but I don’t know about this statement. After all, there is no slavery now, and I don’t see the country letting the South secede (though I would. Shame to lose New Orleans, though.). The North did seem to try to bend over backwards to accommodate the “peculiar institution”, so I tend to think the reasons for war were to keep the country unified for the usual strength and glory reasons, and the economic interests you mentioned. That doesn’t change the fact that slavery is the reason the South seceded of course.

Didn’t mean to imply that the GOP brand would go away, just that it’ll be hollowed out and refilled, much in the way it was after Civil Rights swelled their ranks with Dixiecrats, driving away the moderates. The conservative Dems move over to the GOP after the great Tea Party Massacre of ‘12, leaving room for progressives to fill out the ranks of the Dems.

The real cause of the revolution was the idiotic reaction of the right wing Tory government of Lord North. Franklin, as an early opponent of slavery had no sympathy for the tea party rioters and stated that the full price of the tea should be repaid. It was the punitive measures of Lord North’s government that turned Franklin towards the side of the revolutionaries.

At the time of the revolution, slavery was generally considered obsolete and in decline. The industrial revolution was already starting to displace slavery in the north and this was generally expected to extend to the south. It was the invention of the cotton gin that enabled the creation of King Cotton and perpetuated the system for another two generations. That is one of the reasons why the anti-slavery faction were willing to accept the pro-slavery clauses in the constitution.

On the Libertarian issue, I do not agree with their politics. But political parties can and do die from time to time. And the George W. Bush administration combined with the restructuring of the media is very much the sort of thing that can finish one off.

Forget the Libertarians of the Ron Paul era, though his supporters deny it, Paul got his start in politics playing the race card. The Libertarians are not going to get anywhere if they go to market talking about fiat money or the return to the gold standard. The opportunity for the Libertarians is to tap into the 40% or so of the country that are essentially right leaning but do not agree with the hate-based, government-based social agenda that the GOP adopted in order to attract the Moral Majority vote.

I am not suggesting that the Libertarians can do this by themselves. They would have to accept a certain pragmatism in their political approach and they would need to attract dissident Republicans and Democrats.

Sometime in the 2020s the official GDP of China will outstrip that of the US. It is a simple matter of having five times the population and a huge resource base. At that point it becomes a visibly bad strategy for the US to compete with China as global hegemon by engaging in an arms race it is doomed to fail. I suspect that the Bush doctrine and the neo-imperialism of the Cheney crowd becomes a cause for alarm rather than patriotic pride. A party prepaed to dismantle the pentagon would find a market.

If might be that after Sarah, the GOP is able to declare chapter 11 and re-organize. But never discount the possibility that it is easier to simply take an existing corporation, use it as a shell and perform a reverse merger into it.

The Blumrosens? Though they move on fairly quickly from the Mansfield decision to talk about other things.

Mr. Wiecek’s book is good. But I’m looking for something a bit more convincing.

But then to convince most Americans, you would need a video tape of George Washington rising from the dead to proclaim, “We did it to protect slavery, if not for that damn Mansfield, we would have never revolted.”

I’ve looked at the newspapers of that period, but can’t find any “this is really terrible” stories about the Mansfield decision.

Didn’t any pro-slavery hothead make some comments in his diary or letters about it?

I just haven’t seen that sort of document yet.

I don’t think that this would happen; the most extreme case would still retain the shell of the GOP (name, brand, legal organizations, etc.), because it’d be so useful.

The GOP is far too useful to the economic elites to allow it to sink any further; they’ll lean on people as needed. And IMHO the ranks of the right-wing religious authoritarians contain plenty of power-hungry and smart people who’ll trim their sails as needed, to retain as much power as they can. The elite MSM will serve their economic masters, and cover the two parties as needed, if you get my meaning.

We’ve seen that economic elitism + cultural populism is an incredibly strong combination.