On this day in history: London merchants petition for reconciliation with America

This is a part of the history of the revolutionary war I am not familiar with - though thats a long list to be honest. Discontent with British policies towards the colonies were not confined to the

- Click here for the article.

On this day in 1775, London merchants petition Parliament for relief from the financial hardship put upon them by the curtailment of trade with the North American colonies.

In the petition, the merchants provided their own history of the dispute between the colonies and Parliament, beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765. Most critical to the merchants’ concerns were the £2 million sterling in outstanding debts owed to them by their North American counterparts.

The merchants claimed that, a total stop is now put to the export trade with the greatest and most important part of North America, the public revenue is threatened with a large and fatal diminution, the petitioners with grievous distress, and thousands of industrious artificers and manufacturers with utter ruin. The petitioners begged Parliament to consider re-implementing the system of mercantile trade between Britain and the American colonies, which had served the interests of all parties in the empire prior to 1764.

Following the Coercive Acts of 1774, the colonies had quickly agreed to reinstate the non-importation agreements first devised in response to the Stamp Act in the autumn of 1765. They threatened to enter non-exportation agreements if Britain failed to meet their demands by August 1775. Because debts the colonies owed British merchants were generally paid in exports, not currency, such an action would indeed have caused tremendous financial loss to the British economy. Non-importation had a comparatively minor impact, because British merchants could and did find other markets. However, no one else would pay the vast debts owed to the merchants by tobacco planters like Thomas Jefferson or New England shipping magnates like John Hancock.

Is America Immune from Revolution?

The Daily Beast wonders.

The purpose behind regular elections and a house closely connected to the general population is to ensure that unrest in the general population is contained quickly and effectively. That doesn't mean it always will of course.

Egyptian voters say ‘yes’ to speedy elections

From the Washington Post:

On Sunday, judicial officials reported that 77 percent of those who cast ballots in a historic referendum Saturday voted “yes” on constitutional amendments designed to speed Egypt’s transition from temporary military rule to credible parliamentary and presidential elections.

About 18 million out of more than 45 million eligible voters went to the polls — or 41 percent, below the optimistically high estimates officials had issued Saturday but still a remarkable display of democratic vigor as Egyptians embraced their first chance since the colonial era to participate in a political process whose outcome wasn’t essentially rigged.

The constitutional changes, drafted by a military-appointed panel of legal experts, will encourage the formation of political parties, restrict future presidents to two four-year terms, rein in executive powers, and limit emergency rule to six months, subject to parliamentary approval, rather than the 30 years that marked the tenure of former president Hosni Mubarak.
A useful topic for this week's discussion in 2301 about elections and past discussions about constitutions.

"A tyrannical government is not a legitimate government"

This is an important and provocative post from David Kopel. I need to add this to my 2301 lecture on natural rights. The author quotes a variety of classical authors who make arguments against the legitimacy of tyrannical governments, likening them to robbers. A tyrannical government is not a legitimate government. That statement should make sense if you properly understand the argument made in the Declaration of Independence.

Consider this required reading.

Obviously the post relates to current issues regarding Libya, but it gives no hint about what pragmatic steps can be taken to deal with tyrannical governments. Is there an obligation to remove them from power?

How Cities Stir Revolution

Richard Florida argues that cities are, and have always been, incubators for revolution. What has recently been brewed in Cairo was once brewed in London and Boston:

Cities push us ever closer, enabling the rapid spread of new ideas. This accelerates the flow of new technology, increases the rate of new business formation, and makes for vibrant artistic and cultural scenes. And those very same mechanisms that unleash our innovative and artistic energies also make cities veritable cauldrons, in which political energy and activism are pressurized and brought to a boil.

Consider the Boston Massacre of 1770, the Paris Commune of 1871, the October Revolution of 1917 in St. Petersburg, the Chicago Convention in 1968, the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, Cairo's Tahrir Square last month, and many more--all of them were events of global consequence, but they were each the product of individual cities. "These uprisings aren't just accidentally urban," noted economist Edward Glaeser. "They would be unthinkable at low densities. Cities connect agitators, like Sam Adams and John Hancock. Riots require a certain kind of urban congestion; police power must be overwhelmed by a sea of humanity."

Stopping the Tsunami

Middle Eastern leaders are doing what they can to prevent the unrest which deposed leaders in Tunisia and Egypt from affecting them. It involves limiting expression and assembly of course.

To quell the noisy street displays of democratic fervor, many governments have relied on their rusty toolbox of repression. Yemeni security forces unleashed busloads of recruited counter-demonstrators armed with clubs and rocks to confront around 1,000 people marching to celebrate Hosni Mubarak's downfall, and then sent in riot police with their water cannons and tear gas. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority could not stomach demonstrations whose focus was not the Israeli occupation, but a demand for unity and fair elections in their own quasi-administration. There too we saw the stale repertoire of violent attacks, arrests, beatings, and torture of peaceful protesters demanding serious political change.

Syria and Libya acted preemptively, arresting activists likely to organize any street protests, saturating public places with security forces. In these countries, even a rally of a dozen people is treated like a threat to the status quo. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran combined rank hypocrisy with his trademark brutality, congratulating "the justice-seeking movement in Egypt" while silencing Iranian protest leaders and dismissing their planned solidarity march as "divisive."

Supreme Council of the Armed Forces

This is the organization now in charge of Egypt until elections are held later this year. It is supposed to maintain stability in the country and provide for the development of a new system of government. These things tend not to follow revolution. People rarely voluntarily give up power. This will be worth following.

Mubarak Steps Down

And the military takes over.

I guess this is good news.

If Tunisia Becomes a Democracy, Will Other Arab Countries Follow?

Here's an argument that they will not, and it touches on what factors cause countries to become democratic:

How to explain the Tunisian revolution? By consulting Samuel Huntington—not the Huntington of Clash of Civilizations fame, but the author of The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, published in 1991. His model is too complex to be laid out here in all of its subtleties. But the basic message, to borrow from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, is: “It’s the economy, stupid!” We should also add education, urbanization, and globalization—all those items that go into the tale “The Making of a Middle Class.” Tunisia has it all, and that is why it now sticks out like a bloody thumb from the rest of the Arab world, that vast arc from Rabat to Damascus where politics remains frozen, where the birth rate keeps dwarfing economic growth, and where King or Colonel is despotism’s name.

The Tunisian revolt fits Huntington’s model to a T. Looking at the third wave of democratization between 1974 and 1989, he found that rising wealth spells falling tyrants. How much money did it take? A per-capita income between $1,000 and $3,000, which would now be adjusted for inflation. Of the non-democracies which moved into that range in the 1970s and 1980s, three-quarters got rid of their overlords.

. . . why are the other Arab and Maghreb African countries—police states all—proving so immune to regime change (unless there is a little help from the U.S. military, as in Iraq)? Because they don’t make Huntington’s cut.

Not counting the petro-potentates (more about them later) and strife-torn Lebanon, Tunisia is the richest of them all. Its per-capita income is almost twice as high as neighboring Morocco, and it is ahead of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria by similar margins. The country is more urbanized (67 percent of the populace) than either Morocco (56 percent) or Egypt, (43 percent). Tunisia is also more educated: Its literacy is a bit higher than Egypt’s and a lot higher than Morocco’s, and it spends much more on education—7.2 percent of GDP, while Egypt devotes about half as much, and Morocco comes in at just 5.7 percent.

. . . If you are poor, you have neither the time nor the energy to engage in politics. If you are not educated, you lack the cultural skills to articulate your demands—to agitate and organize. And, if you are poor, uneducated, and thus isolated, as much of the Arab world is, then you have no benchmark against which to measure your misery. Sociologists call this the “demonstration effect.”

So don’t count on a Tunisian “demonstration effect” to set the rest of the Arab world aflame.

The "Wikipedia Revolution" in Tunisia

Democracy may or may not be breaking out in Tunisia, a north African Arab nation judged across the board to be among the world's most repressive, but riots have forced the existing president to resign and flee the country. The president had been in power for over twenty years and was re-elected regularly by very high nargins -- never a sign of a truly competitive system (in 1994 and 1999 he received 99% of the vote). One source has dubbed this the "wikileaks revolution" because:

US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks described Tunisia as a "police state" riddled with corruption, and claimed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had lost touch with his people.

It described the president and his siblings as "The Family" - comparing them to a Mafia crime organisation.
Wikileaks also revealed that Ben Ali's wife, Leila, had made huge profits out of building an exclusive school.

One cable was banned in Tunisia, although its contents became widely known.

In it, US ambassador Robert Godec wrote: "Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her."

Social network websites such as Facebook helped spread the comments, to the delight of Tunisians.

For general information about measurements of freedom in countries across the world check these out:

- Freedom House: Freedom in the World 2011.
- Democracy Index.
- Press Freedom Index.

Whether the revolution leads to the establishment of a legitimate democracy or simply another authoritarian regime, or whether it causes other leaders in the region to topple is an open question at this point.

Robert Morris: America's Founding Capitalist

A great story in NPR about a neglected founder. And a newly released book about the man:

Revolution?

Nice.