Quote Originally Posted by ganulv View Post
As a U.S. citizen who lived in Central America in the mid-90s I am not apt to defend the foreign policy of my nation, but on the topic of philosophical advances in particular, my country did have something to do with the birth of representative government in France. It is an understatement to say that the French Revolution was a mixed bag, but it (and the philosophical advances leading to and emanating from it) did have some power.
ganulv, what we know as "French Revolution" was about the gazillionth French popular revolt - the one that eventually succeeded. There was no need for the improvement of the odds of a revolt as evidenced by the earlier ones, it was the food price crisis that determined Paris would be involved and not mere peasants far away as usual, the U.S. had no influence on the success chance of the revolt, Voltaire etc provided the enlightenment philosophical underpinnings which made some of the wealthy people join the revolt and there was really little political happening in France until long after 1815 that one could be proud of.
The single best thing of the revolt was probably the code civil - do you want to claim this was due to U.S. influence?
According to Wikipedia, it was the work of four French scholars and Napoleon.

The chronological proximity and order of the American and French revolutions has been used to build up one more U.S. myth, but I don't subscribe to it.