kronicfeld: SurfaceTension: Technically it was because we were having taxes imposed while not having representation in parliament.

Not to go all Howard Zinn (I just assume he's written something that bears a resemblance to the following), but technically that's a very simplistic analysis. Very few people could even vote at the time, even for local colonial offices that were independent of the crown; if you weren't a white, male landowner over 21 years of age, even the local authority would not enfranchise you. Those at the head of the revolutionary movement, including John Adams, fervently opposed widening the right to vote. "Taxation without representation" was a convenient slogan, but it couldn't mean much to the "middle" and lower classes that didn't meet the parameters necessary to have the vote. And it certainly wasn't a policy that the colonies bothered to remedy after winning their independence from the crown.

Remember that people and politicians aren't really any different now from how they were 350 years ago. Sloganeering and the political spectacle are as old as time. The people at the front of an ideological movement will find ways to convince people who stand to gain very little if anything from that movement that they need to join in. Look at today's Tea Party and other fringe groups.

kronicfeld: Cythraul: After reading A People's History, I got the impression that it was just a bunch of rich people over here who didn't like other rich people across the ocean telling them what to do and preventing them from getting even richer.

I only read bits and pieces of A People's History over a decade ago, so I really don't know if I'm echoing Zinn or not. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I don't think it's all that hard to look behind the simplistic veneer that we were taught in grade school. People seem to think that historical politicians were somehow radically different from the politicians of today, to the point that they were paladins of virtue and altruism, and that's just silly.