Radicalism?

I thoroughly enjoyed Wood's book, however, the one thing I couldn't get out of my head the entire time was a quote he said on page 8... "In short, the Revolution was the most radical and far-reaching event in American history." I really had a hard time with that, and I think it skewed my perception of my preconceived notions about the Revolution as well, by the end of the book I was left with this "is that it?" feeling. When I think of the Revolution, I think a very Mel Gibson-Patriot-esque scenario with guns and blood and struggling for Independence. However, the more I read, the more I felt it was just a "hissy fit" (for lack of a better term) that "Americans" at the time threw because they wanted "Independence"...which Wood says is relative (p. 14). The more I read, the more I kept asking myself "what exactly was radical about the whole thing?" He mentions several times that the dramatic changes in social norms were radical, but I believe those events would've happened either way. Later on he does attribute that it was more of an idealistic goal to eradicate personal/familiar influence in order to transform society (p. 177) but I still don't see how societal changes were the most radical in the history of America. Wood also presents many pieces of evidence clearly stating that Americans were neither impoverished or lacking in the economic sector, so again, I don't really get the radicalism of it all. I did look into some of David Ramsay's works to see if I could get a better feel for the radicalism of independence, and it did shed some light on the issue, but, presently, I'm very indifferent to the whole concept. Hopefully we can shed some more light on the topic tomorrow in class!