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Originally Posted by chuck34
When have I ever said that the French people needed to know all the details of the American Revolution? Never.
I never said you were suggesting the French illiterate peasantry "needed to know all the details", I took issues with your wild, unfounded fantasy that OUR Revolution was a motivational factor of any weight .
That sort of disingenuous shifting of what was said is one reason some people find discussions with people like you pointless and sterile.
The following is 100% idle blather based on "that isn't that hard to believe".
God save us.
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They only needed to know the main point. That there is this country, called the US or "America", that was once ruled by a King. The people rose up and cast him off. That really isn't that hard to believe.
But that was no "News", people rose up constantly all over the place. If fact the whole rise of "Absolutism" by the Royalty was a response to a few centuries of FREQUENT revolts and uprisings and PEOPLE asserting their rights.
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The fact that you think people in the 18th century were so dumb as not not know the main jist of the American Revolution, is beyond absurd.
See? Once again you put words in my mouth which I NEVER said NOR IMPLIED. And you use immflamatory words, agian which I never used.
That is why I think you are a basically dishonest person, very dishonest and as such I have zero respect for you, and nothing but contempt for your dishonest way of arguing.
I suggested that the French peasntry had plenty to be piised off about from their own day to day--GENERATION to GENERATION experience and like many people before and since, were perfectly aware of their circumstances.
I did NOT in any way suggest they were dumb---those are your words.
I suggested that many were quite possibly INGORANT of the details, and course and grieveances of the British Colonists, which does not imply smart/dumb---except to thickheaded ignorantes monolinguistico Norte Americanos-=----it means and is accepted to mean "un-informed".
I suggest your read a bit on the "Cahiers de Doléances"--there is enough in English to be enlightening.
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And to think that the leaders of the French Revolution didn't know about the US and what happened here, is even more absurd than that!
Again you put words into my mouth---it seems to be instinctive or reflexive for you to do that---and it sucks.
YOU just introduced the idea of the "Leaders" or the Revolution and that, seeing how the 3 "Estates", the Clergy, the Seigneurial class, and the "Third Esate"---peasants and urban workers, all listed their grievances, all were ready for radical change as it was obvious that the entire social system was rotten to the core, which "leaders" are you referring to?
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People now, in this day and age, not knowing the details of the Revolution is not the point here what-so-ever. But I do think that most Americans today know at least as much about the Revolution as "illiterate French Peasents" did in the 1780s-90s. And that is a lot more than you are willing to give them credit for.
That is an unfounded and impossible to rationally discuss [b]assertion[/u]
It is this imagined centrality of OUR experiences effect on the WHOLE WORLD that makes much of the world roll their eyes back in their heads and write off Americans as immature, ignorant yahoos.
Why would our Revolution be more meaningful that Pugachev's Revolt at about the same time just a thousand miles away? Or The Scots final uprising just a few years before?
Get real, man. Their grievances were enough to rise up and risk their lives.
Give other people credit for being able to have the awareness of their own situation without making up elaborate presumptions of their own motivations.
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And don't call me Shirley. :-)
It's Franken-STEEN.
