It seems to me that the American Revolution was not so much about new ideology in action as much as it was a shift in ideological justification: to break with Britain the American economic elite chose to build a new consensus around Rationalism, for they could no longer call to "King and God." In the end it seems to have mattered little; on both sides the elite was able to buy it's way out of the fighting and the poor bore the brunt of the war. k

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