"...Jefferson's claim, in the Declaration of Independence, that there was a 'design to reduce [the colonies] under absolute despotism...it is true...'abundant evidence now available...enables historians to dismiss this fear as a chimera...'"
But:
"The opponents of the Revolution--the administration itself--were as convinced as were the leaders of the Revolutionary movement that they were themselves the victims of conspiratorial designs...to...force a rupture between England and her colonies."
Therefore, there was,
"...an escalating mutuality of conspiratorial fears...the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other."
Oh, I see what you did there. Both sides were conspiratorialists so let's be friends. No, no sir, Professor Bailyn, that will not do. That is false equivalence. Paranoid, even sincere, belief in a non-existent conspiracy is not the equivalent of rational belief in real conspiracy. The difference is in what the real is. Reality matters.
Quotes from The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Baiyn pp 152-3,148-9, 150-1, 153, 158.
But:
"The opponents of the Revolution--the administration itself--were as convinced as were the leaders of the Revolutionary movement that they were themselves the victims of conspiratorial designs...to...force a rupture between England and her colonies."
Therefore, there was,
"...an escalating mutuality of conspiratorial fears...the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other."
Oh, I see what you did there. Both sides were conspiratorialists so let's be friends. No, no sir, Professor Bailyn, that will not do. That is false equivalence. Paranoid, even sincere, belief in a non-existent conspiracy is not the equivalent of rational belief in real conspiracy. The difference is in what the real is. Reality matters.
Quotes from The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Baiyn pp 152-3,148-9, 150-1, 153, 158.
