Reddit reviews The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Well, I would highly recommend renting some textbooks on American politics, American political history, and American political theory. Perhaps start here and work your way up: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-American-Politics-Samuel-Kernell/dp/1568028911

If you find textbooks too dull, then here is a good list of books to get you started:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453181599&sr=1-1&keywords=federalist+and+anti-federalist+papers

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-Penguin-Classics-Tocqueville/dp/0140447601

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ideological-Origins-American-Revolution/dp/0674443020

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nine-Inside-Secret-Supreme/dp/1400096790

http://www.amazon.com/Congress-Electoral-Connection-Second-Edition/dp/0300105878

http://www.amazon.com/What-Should-Know-About-Politics/dp/1611452996

http://www.amazon.com/The-Race-between-Education-Technology/dp/0674035305

http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656

*If you actually take the time to read these, you will be better informed than 99 percent of the voting public. <-- And after you read these, that sentence will terrify you because you will realize each of these books is just an introduction, and the world is being run by technocrats. JK, but not really.

Edit: But really.

> You do realize that the second amendment never mentions being able to overthrow our government and that is not at all what its intended purpose was right?

It doesn't have to mention it, just like the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights don't have to enumerate their every use case in detail. You can read the writings of the founders at the time to fill in the context, which are overflowing with references to John Locke, to the point where the founders would casually invoke him to support an argument much like we'd do with the founders today (see: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution pg 28).

Locke wrote extensively on the right to revolution and was an obvious inspiration when the founders wrote in the Declaration of independence that people have a natural right to "alter or abolish" "any Form of Government [that] becomes destructive."

> It does specifically state the Militia can be called upon by the President to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
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> ...
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> The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment was to allow local branches of government to form militias ...

The prefatory clause of the Second Amendment doesn't limit the operative clause, i.e. it's not restricted to militia use. That was obvious from writings of the time but thanks to Heller that's now been legally clarified too.

> Even with all the automatic weapons being fully legal they would have no impact on tanks and little to no impact on aircraft. Drones would be able to wipe out any real revolution pretty quickly. You would need to legalize missiles on private aircraft to even stand a slight chance. You would need rocket propelled grenades and surface to air missiles to even start to combat to power of our current military. The idea we could take out our government by forceful insurrection is laughable today and only held to by those without a clue on how the real world works.

Weird how we got thrashed in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan then

See also https://i.imgtc.com/D7G0hkG.png

Honors History degree. I would recommend Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Talks about the change of mindset from the beginning of the revolutionary crisis to after the war.

https://www.amazon.com/Ideological-Origins-American-Revolution/dp/0674443020

There is a bunch of competing theories on this, but I recommend checking out Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.

A very good read, primarily based off of an analysis of colonial pamphlets and writings. He argues that while the colonists' intellectual history could be traced back to English Common Law and classical antiquity,the main thrust of the colonists' brand of Republicanism came from early eighteenth century English Whig opposition thought, which was also very critical of Parliamentary encroachment and called for the type of Republicanism that was found in the pamphlets circulating around the colonies in the years leading up to the revolution. He also spends some time on colonial conspiracies, when the colonists saw every action by the Crown as a deliberate attempt to take away their liberty, whether that was actually the case or not.

Also, the fact that the Crown essentially left the colonies alone for decades gave the colonies a sense of political and economic freedom that, when threatened after the Seven Years' War, propelled them to push back.

Once the war was won, colonial leaders applied the theories of the past and reformulated them to fit the unique situation in the colonies, and in doing so – creating their own theories concerning sovereignty, representation, and constitutional rights – they created their own revolutionary ideology.