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Comment by kunai | Hacker News Reader

Do you really think that Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig and the masses of people protesting Capitol Hill last year when SOPA came around didn't make a difference?

They were activists.

Do you really think we'd have so much free/open source software today without the contribution of Eric S. Raymond, Stallman, et al.?

They're activists.

Do you really think that we'd be here today if Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington never existed?

They were -- yep, you guessed it -- activists.

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For what it's worth though, Ben Franklin was much more diplomatic and compromising than RMS. RMS would be more like a modern day Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine or Samuel Adams. Though all mentioned parties during the revolution played a key role in the independence of the United States. So I guess one could say it "takes people of all sorts."

The flow of human events isn't bound to individuals. Names merely get played up in the remembering, and the events downplayed. E.g., America was going to revolt regardless of whether T.J., et al had ever been born. Really amazing that a war is misremembered as activism....pass the K-Y.

Not actually true. The colonies could have received the things they wanted had they actually attempted to fight for them (and by 'things they wanted', I mean the things we wrote about England (and specifically a king with little political power at that time (it was all parliament's by that point)) not giving us).

The American Revolutionary War was started because of political activism. They saw a chance to start a new country in whatever manner they pleased, and leapt at the opportunity. Even just a little effort put to really trying to get a voice in parliament would have worked fine, but instead we went and write the bloody Declaration in an attempt to rally support of other nations not really pleased with England (I'm looking at you France), and filled it with rhetoric, half-truths, and blatant lies. Okay, maybe not blatant, but they're there.

Really amazing that a war is mistaught to most American students. Okay, it isn't that amazing, I mean, you're going to teach your country's history in the most favorable light possible, but, still...

I think you're misunderstanding me. It's my claim that any sufficiently profitable colony sufficiently far away from its mother country will inevitably cease to be a part of said mother country. The how is irrelevant.

The how isn't irrelevant, especially when the colony in question ceased being a party of the mother country because of opportunists who thought that it would be fun to start a new country built in whatever manner they pleased. Without our specific set of malcontents the Revolutionary War wouldn't have occurred and the US would have been given a voice in parliament.

Your claim is wrong.

>because of

That's how the history is written, yes. And how the history is written...is irrelevant. Where are all these profitable, distant colonies with voices in parliament today? Australia? Canada? Technically not sovereign, but they operate as separate nations. No country in the world fits the description of the U.S. you claim would have otherwise been inevitable, and you don't give this a second thought. The oldest truism is the ephemeral nature of Empire. You let your piecemeal study of history delude you.

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