1776: Not A Revolution

America's independence was won by war, not by revolution.

Two and a half centuries ago, a group of Englishmen in North American colonies met to declare their independence from Great Britain. You know the plot, so I won’t go through it. Today, their project is remembered as the American Revolution. Yet it was anything but a revolution.

Revolutions are radical political movements. Radical and extreme are too often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Radicalism invokes the objectives of a project, while extremism points to its means. A nation that votes to overthrow its regime employs moderate means for a radical project, while a nation that goes to war to protects itself employs extreme means for a conservative objective. So radical and conservative are the opposite of each other. 1