The American Rebellion

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Rather than discuss the American Revolution, in which good triumphed over evil, Mencius Moldbug prefers to discuss the American Rebellion, in which evil triumphed over good:

Let’s call our first witness. His name is Thomas Hutchinson, and he is the outstanding Loyalist figure of the prerevolutionary era. His Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia is here. It is not long. Please do him the courtesy of reading it in full, then continue below.

Now: what do you notice about Hutchinson’s Strictures? Well, the first thing you notice is: before today, you had never read it. Or even heard of it. Or probably even its author. What is the ratio of the number of people who have read theDeclaration to the number who have read the Strictures? 105? 106? Something like that. Isn’t that just slightly creepy?

The second thing we notice about the Strictures is its tone — very different from the Declaration. The Declaration shouts at us. The Strictures talk to us. Hutchinson speaks quietly, with just the occasional touch of snark. He adopts the general manner of a sober adult trapped in an elevator with a drunk, knife-wielding teenager.
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What we learn from the Strictures is that, as in the rest of American history, there is absolutely no guarantee that a detailed and rational argument about a substantive factual question will prevail, whether through means military, political, or educational, over a meretricious tissue of lies [like the Declaration].

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