OTHER REVOLUTIONS | 2005-06-04
In 1776 America was a separate country from Britain. Almost every American had been born here, his father had been born here, his grandfather had been born here. The tea tax had nothing to do with it. A nation had grown up here that had no stake in the British Empire and it was time to separate. That was the tide of history.
If they had not been here at the crest of that tide, the Founding Fathers would have remained a group of talented gentlemen, nothing more.
If Robespiere and Napoleon had lived at any other time, history would have passed them over.
You can analyze Lenin all you want to, but he did not create World War I and a weak and stupid Czar and a Russian history of totalitarian rule.
A surfer who thinks he created the wave is insane.
But a revolutionary must, like a surfer, concentrate on being ready for the wave.
A person who is preparing for the Big Wave is entirely different from a swimmer who waits for nothing, but makes do with the water as it is and makes all his motions in a calm sea...
By exactly the same token, a revolutionary is entirely different from a politician, who makes his own motions.