One of my friends believes that a second American revolution is imminent and will be sparked by the economic instability now rocking the continent. Frankly, I doubt it. Insurrections may occur, but I expect the US government to lumber along, dragging the world deeper into poverty and conflict for many years to come.
Upon hearing my friend out, however, my first thought was, "if a revolution erupts, it will resemble the French one of 1789 more closely than the American one of 1776." Then I sat back and tried to figure out why I had arrived at that sudden conclusion, and whether or not it had merit.
One of the reasons for thinking that America might be "going French" is that current American society resembles descriptions I've read of pre-Revolution France more closely than America now resembles its young self.
At least in the beginning, it was a grassroots revolution around which the disenfranchised rallied for justice. But it soon devolved into a scream for vengeance through which a totalitarian government exacted swift and bloody "justice" under a chilling banner that read "Committee of Public Safety."
A comparatively free and equal America called a constitutional convention after its revolution; France, in a backlash against elitism, erected a guillotine.
In short, the first American Revolution sprang from a relatively just and equal society; it was not rooted in a long-standing class structure that had embedded people into widely disparate and warring sectors. What would a second American revolution look like? No one can say for sure, but I fear it.
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