Speaking of resemblances, what about our current state and the English Civil War?

[HereSince1628]

A basically Marxist interpretation on the English Civil War in a breath and one-half sees a lot of similarities:

Both seem intent on inscribing the sacred right of wealth/property, political empowerment of those who hold wealth/property, and removal of all encumbrances to the rights of men who invoke the protestant work ethic to mask darker ideologies that promoted the rights and power of wealth.

[Squinch]

1. You're right. And that wasn't a really good time, was it?

(I am an Irish person. Maybe it was fun for some others, but not so much for us.)

[HereSince1628]

6. Somehow it feels like it's lasted longer here.

[jwirr]

2. I have thought for a long time that the rethugs were our roundheads. This may be the end of their

era because the people have polled liberal when it comes to values. Too bad we cannot confiscate their estates like they did back then. It would pay off that deficit they are so worried about.

[HereSince1628]

4. An old dairy farmer down the road calls his herd 'roundheads'

I learned that while helping him get them all back in his pasture after a dead tree fell and took down his fence.

Lots of people call boars, bulls and/or roosters Romeo, I've even heard Favio referenced, but the roundhead thing made me wonder about the heritage of his lexicon.

[JVS]

3. I think that analysis is poor. I favor this one.

The Civil War was a class war, in which the despotism of Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established Church and conservative landlords, Parliament beat the King because it could appeal to the enthusiastic support of the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, to the yeomen and progressive gentry, and to wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about.
—Christopher Hill

[HereSince1628]

5. Your're entitled to your opinion, I'm just saying from a Marxist theory perspective

the similarity between our current state and that of the English Civil war have resemblances.

I'm not about to stake my life in a fight on that hill.

[JVS]

7. I think Christopher Hill has better Marxist credibility than you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hill_(historian)


And I really don't see how modern liberals find themselves on the side of a monarch who dictates religion to his people via a state church and is afraid to call a session of parliament. The frequent upheavals as each successive monarch vacillated between various forms of Christianity was an infringement on the rights of the people and the Parliamentarians effectively broke the pattern that had been present and dealt a massive blow to aristocratic rule.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Hill's explanation makes sense; yours doesn't, so far, whether Marxist or not

The latter part ("men who invoke the protestant work ethic to mask darker ideologies that promoted the rights and power of wealth&quot seems to be aimed at the Roundheads, but the first ("the sacred right of wealth/property, political empowerment of those who hold wealth/property&quot at the Cavaliers. And being so mixed a criticism of the sides involved, I can't see how to apply it to the current American situation.

[Adsos Letter]

10. "The World Turned Upside Down"

...and Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England. Two of my favorite works by a very prolific historian.