....free from British taxation and oversight. They then created a government to tax the new American citizens and provide the oversight they had recently revolted against. The new American citizens traded the old distant boss for a new boss who lived among them. Ironic, don't you think?

And then, they created the election process, a means for the legitimate overthrow of officials they no longer liked, even though the business owners who held the REAL power have never been touched by the US political process in ANY way.

The descendants of those original colonial business owners are now the Top 1% we all know and love. They are still untouched by the political process....lots of money buys a lot of status quo.

If people vote in a dictator is he legitimate or illegitmate? Are there illegitimate leftist authoritarian regimes? If there are illegitimate leftist authoritarian regimes, might revolution be accomplished by allowing more private enterprise i.e. moving in a right ward direction?

Bryant

There is no other available non-dogmatic source that meets the test of equity. I generally make the distinction between legitimate rulers and tyrants on that basis, do they in fact have the consent of the governed for their policies? Or not? Everybody must make their own evaluations of that question.

....he did not win the popular vote and did not legitimately win Florida. He was voted into office by the SCOTUS, which was also a skirting of the US Constitution in terms of how presidents are elected.

It has all gone downhill from there. Two illegitimate wars and a financial collapse have led us to where we are today.

I ordered a third beer in a restaurant in Nicaragua after a difficult day in the war for me, and the waiter told me that i should rethink drinking so much because we were in revolutionary times and such behavior was no longer appropriate. Obviously, social change was happening!!

Once around the sun.

Here in the US, we have an opportunity to replace our government, within a four year period, with the possibility of replacing the entire House of Representatives every two years. No battles are required. The will of the population is sufficient.

It's hard to conceive of an elected government which also has the ability to impeach its own leaders as being illegitimate.

Now, you may believe it is illegitimate, but you are an individual citizen. You may even gather thousands who believe as you do, but this is a nation of 350,000 people. No matter how many you gather, you will not gather a majority, I guarantee.

In the United States, it is essentially impossible for a real "illegitimate" government to exist for more than a short period. We have methods outlined in the Constitution to prevent that.

Just kidding. That's not a revolution, it's a joke.

And implement policies that would help increase my lifespan.

And whatever means that leader used to obtain power and make my life better would be fine with me.

their revolution will be 'successful' in the sense that they will achieve a liberal, progressive democracy. Few 'revolutions in history were immediately 'successful' in that sense. And yet revolutions keep happening because people fundamentally do not want to live under illegitimate, repressive regimes.

Even the countries that do have liberal, progressive democracies today have not always had them but have had to fight kings, dictators and other forms of illegitimate regimes to achieve what they have now. And their transition from illegitimate regime to social democracy was never immediate or easy.

The French Revolution would not be a 'revolution' at all because it was not successful. Though many wanted France to move in a progressive left direction, it did not happen and the Great Terror came a few years later. Still the French Revolution, though not successful in the short run, could be argued to have set the stage for the social democracy that France has today.

Replacing a "old Stalninst" regime with a "a mundane, bourgeois democracy isn't a meaningful gain"? (Sometime it seems that the only people who appreciate a "mundane, bourgeois democracy" are those who live under illegitimate regimes.) Most of the social democracies in Europe represent a huge improvement over rule by a "Stalinist" dictator. Heck, they represent a huge improvement over our style of government. In most cases they have a little less in terms of per capita income but have a much more equal distribution of income which leave them with a much stronger middle class and more progressive society.

The Czech Republic has a per capita income of $27,200 with an income distribution (Gini-31) that is better than Canada (32) and light-years better than the US (45) - which is the worst in the developed world. Slovakia has a per capita income of $24,300 with an income distribution (Gini-26) that rivals Sweden and Norway for the best income distribution in the world. I doubt that ex-Czechoslovakians (now Czechs and Slovakians) don't see this as "a meaningful gain", aside from the whole issue of getting rid of a "Stalinist" regime and the repression that came with it.

Just that it wasn't a revolution.

How can it be a revolution when the rich end up taking over? That's usually when change STOPS(as it did in the Czech Republic, a place where progressive legislation isn't ever passed and they're still on a privatization spree.)

The countries that threw out the Stalinists weren't allowed to have social democracy, btw...they were all forced to accept extreme "shock therapy" austerity plans, plans that caused mass unemployment in each of those countries, which was unjust, because people are never supposed to suffer for getting rid of a bad government.

taking over, they have some of the nicest rich people in the world.

I consider overthrowing a Stalinist regime and achieving a society with an income distribution not skewed towards the rich to be a successful revolution.

"people are never supposed to suffer for getting rid of a bad government." That's a sentiment I can agree with although it is a rare occurrence.

The tune is more or less called by Vaclav Klaus(in the Czech lands), for example. And Havel, a person I once admired for his personal stand against Stalinism, gave up pretty much all of the humanitarian aspects of his philosophy when he became Czech president and just did what Bush, the German Christian Democrats and the British Tories told him to do.