All in all, this FP just reeks of a leftist hit-piece, Sparta is so associated with right-wing toxic masculinity and so must be pilloried. After all, they’ve already torn down beautiful statues venerating heroes, now own to the intangible idols.
And he turned it down? Who does that? Who else in history did that?
When he became President, he turned down titles like "your Excellency" and other trappings of power. He voluntarily left after two terms, establishing a precedent that lasted until FDR.
How do you get more heroic than that?
As for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, terrible fates awaited nearly all of them.
https://michaelwsmith.com/the-sacrifices-made-by-the-declara...
Do the same things without owning people.
The French Revolutionaries, Washington's contemporaries, didn't own anybody. How'd that work out? I'll help. Millions dead, and they arrived right back where they started with Napoleon declaring himself hereditary monarch of France.
How about all the other revolutions in the Americas?
Maybe choosing not to be a dictator was simply the safest course of action. Least path of resistance.
It's not consistent with him being afraid of assassination.
> in exchange for
Washington didn't do it in exchange for anything.
> any formal rule
Washington wasn't offered a "role". He was offered absolute power.
How do you know that? Wielding absolute power makes enemies and Washington could have eventually lost everything, just like any number of historical tyrants that his circle, so keen about Greek and Roman history, were aware of. Turning down absolute power while keeping one’s immense wealth and influence can be an attractive choice, and this is the same calculus that has guided other warlords involved in revolutions up to the present day.
He was quite ill during his final term, which put him at a severe disadvantage in negotiating with Stalin. This was hidden from the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Democratic_National_Conve...
Given that Americans tend to reelect presidents during wartime, that makes the claim that FDR was somehow unpopularly "just ok" to be even more dubious.
How many people have led armies fighting British, let alone beat them?
I'm not impressed. He took a dictatorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France-Albert_Ren%C3%A9
> Jerry Rawlings
Not impressed with him,either. He took it back: "After handing power over to a civilian government, he took back control of the country on 31 December 1981 as the chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC)."
They claimed to do so. Most revolutions have some kind of noble ideology that is proclaimed over what is actually a complex mixture of self-interest and enmities.
> Without their heroic example the French Revolution would never have happened and the world would still be ruled by hereditary monarchies
The French Revolution is widely regarded as a disaster of sorts: any noble aims were downed in the blood of innocent people during the Terror that immediately ensued. Moreover, even the French reversed its achievements multiple times over the 19th century.
That the world would still be ruled by hereditary monarchies is a stretch considering that even the state that the American Colonies rebelled against had reduced the power of the monarch in favour of Parliament many decades before.
Please explain to me how the states which dissolved their bonds with the United States and declared their independence from it (many of which had done so during the Revolution and had ratified both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution while slavery was legal, and several of which did not secede until after the U.S. fired on Ft. Sumpter) were different in exercising the right to dissolve political bonds?
Bonus points if you can do it without saying but but muh racist. If you don't accept the first sentence of the Declaration the rest of it is null and void.
(While you're at the explain how the three-fifths compromise actually strengthened slave states (who wanted to count each slave as 1 person) because it actually weakened them and also, most importantly, enshrined slaves as persons and not property in the Constitution with the consentand ratification of those states where slavery was still legal.)
Non American here. Honestly, I'm perplexed by the question? Are you being genuine?
The difference is that they're the traitors from your perspective. You're American. They seceded from America. Thus they're traitors.
The same way that Americans are traitors from the perspective of an Englishman.
How is this even a question? There is no absolute right or wrong. There's not even an absolute right. Nothing says you can or cannot secede. It all depends on your perspective. If you're American than the South were the traitors.
GP's entire point was that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence establishes the basic right to secede. Here it is:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."
His point is that Americans are broadly wrong when we condemn secessionists as traitors. According to our own founding document.
The south secedes. Then a few states don't dig the confederacy and secede from that, to form "The States of Northern Florida". Then some counties secede, then some cities secede, then a few individuals secede.
This actually happened, (not the Florida part). Once seceding was an option on the table, individual states started considering it and individual counties. And the whole thing was going to break apart.
Once you start down the path of anybody can 'dissolve the political bands' then the whole enterprise dissolves into anarchy.
You can interpret the Declaration of Independence literally all you want. But I'm pretty sure it was just a big middle finger to England. Once the US consolidated, those in power did what all people in power did, and it was more 'Can't have anymore of that'.
And he'd be wrong. They betrayed their nation, the United States of America. What's more, the Declaration of Independence didn't found anything.
It was a declaration of rebellion with broad, well understood at the time, political arguments designed to rile folks up against George III.
The U.S.'s first "founding document" was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union[0], approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified by all 13 colonies (cum states) by 1781, followed by its replacement in 1789 by the US Constitution.
While the Declaration does lay out political arguments for secession, it has no legal force. Rather, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land[1]. What clause in that document grants the several states the right to secede? I'll save you the effort. It ain't there.
You can absolutely make the philosophical argument that a society can, and in some cases, should, create a separate political entity. As was elucidated in Robert Heinlein's lunar retelling of the American Revolution in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress[2].
But that's a philosophical argument, not a legal one. That said, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from advocating/organizing secession from the Unites States (or the relevant political entity wherever you might be), but governments tend to frown on that sort of thing.
As such, no matter the malicious motives and/or provocations of said government, if you attempt to overthrow its authority, you are a traitor (or a 'freedom fighter', I'm not picky about labels). But you are perfectly able to do so. But things might not end so well. Governments tend to be less pleasant to those who take up arms against them than they might be.
As the Confederacy[3] found out, during the American Civil War.
Relatedly, Kermit Roosevelt[4] persuasively argues[5] that the members of the Confederacy were the true inheritors of the political arguments embodied by the Declaration of Independence, not the Union. His point being that our nation as it exists is the product of the evolution of our constitutional order, and not simply the natural rights arguments laid out in the Declaration.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
[1] https://constitutionus.com/constitution/the-supreme-law-of-t...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt_III
[5] https://www.c-span.org/video/?469938-1/rethinking-americas-f...
Not that it matters much. Even if it is democratic, there's no moral right to self-determination if that self-determination is explicitly for the purposes of brutal oppression of some minority.
Someone said a few years ago:
"On the one hand, we had people who fought with gun and sword to murder, rape, and otherwise exploit my people. On the other hand we had people who fought with pen and parchment to murder, rape, and otherwise exploit my people."
They've also always been a very useful shibboleth for people trying to make the "Effete Athenians vs Manly Spartans" comparison.
Can you point out any factual errors in it?
>After all, they’ve already torn down beautiful statues venerating heroes, now own to the intangible idols.
Which statues specifically are you talking about?
Not that this bad. Most of our romanticized notions are incorrect. I also loved the movie 300 and if that is the romantic ideal for manly fighting, then so be it. That is fine. Call this some kind of 'Spartan Fighting Spirit'. Just don't take it as fact. Kind of like the Arthurian Ideal of Knighthood and Chivalry. It is a very powerful symbol, even if not very 'accurate'.