Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Nick Shaw – According to the revisionists at Vox, a USA in which the Continental Army was crushed and George Washington defeated would have been more like Canada, would have passed stronger climate laws.
3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake
Happy Fourth!
By Dylan Matthews@dylanmattdylan@vox.com Updated Jul 3, 2018, 11:57am EDTThis July 4, let’s not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it.
Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can’t be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada.
…
America would have a better system of government if we’d stuck with Britain
Honestly, I think earlier abolition alone is enough to make the case against the revolution, and it combined with less-horrible treatment of American Indians is more than enough. But it’s worth taking a second to praise a less important but still significant consequence of the US sticking with Britain: we would’ve, in all likelihood, become a parliamentary democracy rather than a presidential one.
And parliamentary democracies are a lot, lot better than presidential ones. They’re significantly less likely to collapse into dictatorship because they don’t lead to irresolvable conflicts between, say, the president and the legislature. They lead to much less gridlock.
In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours. In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that’s literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems.
…
Read more: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/2/8884885/american-revolution-mistake
Every time I think I’ve seen the worst, most vile freedom hating sentiments which will ever be expressed by greens, they manage to shock me with some new low. Wishing that Americans had remained enslaved without political representation a little longer, just long enough to have your desire for liberty knocked out of you so you would more readily accept green tyranny, its going to be tough to beat that one.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Speaking as a Brit I wonder why you would want to have a second house of 800 unelected people. Your system may not be ideal but at the moment it is looking much better than ours.
I wouldn’t say there was much in it.
It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in…
If the American Revolution had not occurred the course of history could have been different. However, it is not possible to say what “would” be. Any outcome similar to or differing from what has been is possible.
Yes.
Because of the Independence, American political influence on Britain dropped to nil. Without it, the American ideas could have resulted in Britain adopting the USA political system, instead.
What “American political influence on Britain” ?? “Taxation without representation”….ring a bell ?
gee, whatever happened to that?
there is literally NOWHERE left in this country the government doesn’t tax. NOWHERE.
and where does it go? it gets dispersed in such ways like San Fran who gave out 6 million clean needles to “alleviate” the suffering of the drug problem. Turns out, over 50% of discarded needles ALL over the city, left in parks, streets, alleys, subways, bus stations, PUBLIC AREAS, turned out to be the ones they handed out.
Now they are spending more money creating “safe spaces” for addicts to do their heroin. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
That is where taxation always goes: Wars which make super rich even richer, enabling bad behavior for any group that gets handouts, and extreme waste. It will always go the route of tyranny when the government has a blank check on the backs of its populace.
You want a healthy society? Everything. EVERYTHING is funded voluntarily. If the greens want a better environment, they can donate to causes who clean up, or imagine this, they can go do it themselves! If the general populace want a strong defense, then they can fund it VOLUNTARILY and form militias, etc, etc, etc.
And I’d rather have toll roads everywhere than be stuck getting extorted every year on registration, RTD tax to pay for people who can’t, green subsidies, etc etc etc.
But it is Taxation WITH representation.
Unfortunately a vast sum of that Taxation has also gone into funding the green scheme machine
Lots of people would disagree they really have representation, with solid argument (their vote just doesn’t matter, their burden of tax is unfair, etc.)
Or that by the very act of voting, I’m consenting to violence as a foundation for society, since the only method for recovery is force.
Economical maybe at first (fines, fees) then enough non-compliance eventually brings men with guns to attempt to cage me. This is undeniable, and only really debated among the intellectually dishonest. Those are the facts, Jack.
I don’t want my money to be taken from me and spread around, based on the edicts of some stranger who doesn’t care about me or share my values. I don’t want to support violence nor should I be forced through coercion to do so. In fact, the private sector is available to respond to any concern I may have.
Additionally, the notion that any group of humans have authority over me and a monopoly on the initiation of force (simply because other humans checked a magic box every so often and consented to their own slavery), is absurd. There is no legitimacy to external authority because it necessitates slavery to at least some degree. Beholden to another master, and man cannot serve two masters. It is either thyself, or another, but man cannot serve both with any conviction simultaneously.
So no, I don’t have a fair say because I say NO. I will keep the product of my labor and spend it where I deem necessary, not you or anyone else. Any government funded by anything other than voluntary contribution will always devolve into tyranny against the individual. Period. Full stop. For all time.
“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.
In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
_ Robert Higgs
A powerful argument, HL, but there is another side:
Anarchists did not discover and develop penicillin and save innumerable lives . Anarchists did not develop the polio vaccine which saved millions of children from spending the rest of their lives in an “iron lung” , nor did they come up with the contraceptive pill that rescued women from a life of child bearing drudgery or the horrors of back street abortion . Anarchists did not invent personal transportation or the telephone , or the airliners that enable me to see visit a grandson half a world away .
I could go on with a list as long or longer than yours , but you get the point no doubt .
We humans are capable of great good and great evil and everything in between. It should be the ambition of parents , teachers and politicians to encourage the best in us . (I have not mentioned the religious professionals , they are now too far away with the Green fairies to make a positive contribution to human development).
“Anarchists did not discover and develop penicillin and save innumerable lives”
Neither did government.
“Anarchists did not develop the polio vaccine ”
Neither did government
“nor did they come up with the contraceptive pill”
Neither did the government (BTW, it wasn’t the pill that rescued women from a life of drudgery)
“Anarchists did not invent personal transportation or the telephone , or the airliners”
Neither did government
Beyond that, you seem to suffer from the delusion that if government had any part in the development of something, that it would not have been developed absent the governmental role.
also, Polio facts:
less than .5% of 1% ever got even temporary paralysis, or something equally outrageously miniscule.
Dr. John Bergman has quite a bit of information related to all of this:
https://www.drjohnbergman.com/vaccines-factination-vs-fictination/
there are countless other people who have put together the real numbers on this and smallpox. The reality is that access to sanitation, clean living, healthy food, and exercise are the constituents that build healthy immunity, not some pharmaceutical goo that can’t be litigated.
1986 :
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34) was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan as part of a larger health bill on Nov 14, 1986, in the United States, to reduce the potential financial liability of vaccine makers due to vaccine injury claims.
look at the schedule before then and now. Why are certain diseases on the rise? Mothers are getting vaccinated and never building permanent immunity, that could otherwise be passed on through breast milk to their young. and then you are going to take a small being with no immune system and inject it with material KNOWN to cause global inflammatory reaction?! Seriously?
For as great as many of you are with research on THIS topic, and again, can see through the BS and recognize conspiratorial roots, why is it so difficult to apply those same fundamentals in logic and patter recognition to other industries? It is painful to encounter because you are expressing the same exact tendencies that we ALL despise of the left. It is unacceptable, and I would have thought you held yourselves to higher standards.
However, all this being said, I still greatly appreciate the vast majority of the input and perspective many of you offer here. I don’t have a desire to eat ourselves from within if we disagree on things, but rather, highlight internal conflict within ourselves so we can each independently eliminate it.
IN-DIVIDual = without division. A true individual thinks, feels, and actions in unison.
MarkW- once again, spot on with your comment.
and John Rappaport has been rocking this field for ages now, how fitting, a new post about this very corruption:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/07/05/cdc-vaccine-science-hides-giant-conflict-of-interest/
go search all of his articles on the subject and see the depth to which he has covered this.
mike- to piggyback off Mark, or maybe basically repeat:
Why would an organization founded on violence (and known as a prohibitor of progress) be solely responsible for growth of the human endeavor? History is continuing to display how government actually makes fake problems (the ones it creates) worse.
the history is there, it is here, and it will likely always be in the future to come. Put your ego aside and investigate the history of prosecution of progress at the hands of government
An argument that requires utter ignorance.
Polio, along with other highly contagious diseases terrified people and populations!
Not-Honest Liberty states gross statistics, that fail to represent reality in communities where and when polio regularly struck down people, especially the young.
Simple suggestions or hints that an illness might be a contagious disease forced communities, towns, cities toward reactionary isolationist behaviors.
When the Polio vaccine became available, people flocked wholesale to the dispensing centers where one could get their vaccines.
The same goes for diphtheria, smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus and pertussis infectious diseases. Vaccines for these illnesses significantly changed health, welfare and social aspects of societies.
It requires ignorance to believe that legally minimizing risks borne by researchers and medical companies regarding developing or producing vaccines from the ambulance chasing, statistics abusing legal system parasites trying to blame every disliked congenital defect on vaccines, is essential.
American tort law has been severely twisted through a large portion of the 20th century and that carries to this day. Vaccine ambulance chasing lawyers get rich feeding off specious vaccine fears.
Whining about vaccines and the dangers of vaccines can only happen when people who did not experience the dangers and social impacts of contagious diseases develop and propagate false claims about vaccines.
If you fear and hate vaccines so much, move to where the populations avoid vaccines.
They might even have a form of government you prefer.
“Polio, along with other highly contagious diseases terrified people and populations!”
Yes, if you ever saw a picture of a child laying in an “Iron Lung” to be able to breath, you would be afraid. Especially if you didn’t know how lkely that would be you in the near future.
“The same goes for diphtheria, smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus and pertussis infectious diseases”
Then, why do they need to force us to get vaccinated and force doctors to approve the worst fraud in the history of medicine, the vaccine “science”?
That vaccines work isn’t a fraud. It’s a fact.
“polio vaccine which saved millions of children”
Another consensus result with no evidence.
There is literally nothing in history justifying the arrogance of vaxists.
There is no doubt whatsoever that vaccines have saved countless lives.
Here is how effective vaccination has been:
Diphtheria. 100% reduction in cases and death.
Measles. 99.9% reduction in cases and 100% reduction in deaths.
Mumps. 97% reduction in cases, and 100% reduction in deaths.
Polio. 100% reduction.
Rubella. 99.9% reduction in cases and 100% reduction in deaths.
Smallpox. 100% reduction. Complete eradication.
In all vaccine-preventable diseases, except for whooping cough (pertussis) and tetanus, vaccines dropped the death rate to zero. And in the two exceptions, the death rate has been reduced by over 99%.
The epidemics of diphtheria so devastating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are no more. But if kids should no longer be vaccinated, the scourges would return.
Parents who don’t vaccinate their kids are free-loading on the herd immunity conferred by responsible parents. Irresponsible parents are playing Russian roulette, putting their kids’ lives at risk, should they ever, God forbid, be exposed to the pathogens, which are still out there.
So tell me why do we see that increase of polio in India? Of course it isn’t called polio, because the victims are vaccinated. Then it’s something else.
You have swallowed the lies of professional liars.
India has eradicated the polio virus in the wild, thanks to vaccination.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734678/
India has an epidemic of diseases that look a lot like “polio” and would be called polio if they happened before a vaccine was available!
Wake up!
“why do we see that increase of polio in India?” ………we don’t see an increase
“Parents who don’t vaccinate their kids are free-loading on the herd immunity conferred by responsible parents”
That’s not even the claim for “high profile” vaccines like polio.
And in all cases, it’s a claim based on zero evidence.
It’s based upon all the evidence in the world, with no evidence against it.
Just like globul warmin.
Clearly, you’ve never studied the history of science, nor of history, period, or science.
Then there’s Israel, which is a case of representation WITHOUT taxation.
Wrong.
Government should never be allowed to borrow money. Like every cancer they never have enough. All Federal reserve systems know this debility politicians have to spend so are willingly providing these addicted lawmakers with their drug. Now who is in control ? Not We The People!
That’s why the founding fathers only wanted congress to have the ability to create money ? (gold and silver)
You can take away the power of the state and regain your personal freedom by eliminating direct-taxation which make you a slave of the system and gives those in power the right to know EVERYTHING about you.
Sorry but Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States”.
Robert is talking theoretical.
Yes the US government is permitted to borrow.
The bigger question is should it be?
Hard to fight a pay-as-you-go war. Such a ban on borrowing would be suicidal. Now a ban on money borrowed for any other reason might be reasonable. What’s really insane is to borrow money from China while at the same time sponsoring research in China. For that matter, there should be a ban on all foreign aid unless the country is debt free.
The U.S. needs a balanced budget amendment. The U.S. government should not spend more than it takes in in taxes.
The colonies defeated the British Army in 1783. And then the US military defeated them again in 1814.
Had that not happened, then Canada’s history would have been different too. And France’s Napoleon would not have gotten money for selling The Louisiana Purchase to fund his disastrous Russia campaign. Would he have focused on Britain? Would Lord Nelson at Trafalgae have happened?
So Yes, its stupid to try and say what would have happened. No one can know.
Sorry but by no measure did the US military win the war of 1812 (settled by the treaty of Ghent 1814). At best it was a draw. But most look at it as a win for the British and more importantly the birth of Canadian nationalism.
I’d call that a win for the US.
Britain started with the War of 1812 by blockading US ports. It wanted to bring the US into submission. It failed. A peace treaty was signed. Word did not get to the South and in January 1815, the British Army got its butt kicked in the Battle of New Orleans led by US General Andrew Jackson adding further insult to the British, and forever ending their attempts to bring the colonies back to heel.
None of Britain’s original reasons for the war were achieved. The US, in purely defensive measures, (except a defeat trying to take Montreal) prevailed.
A little US centric there Joel. The so called blockade by the British was more about getting back at the French for their blockade on Britain than to punish the US. The US declared war on Britain not the other way around. That puts the US as the aggressors in the conflict. The US had two goals. First to stop the British from harassing their trade with Europe. Second to take the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada. None of those goals were archived.
Just to add that the British had actually rescinded their order hence ending the maritime dispute a few days before the US declared war. To be far the word had not gotten to North America yet.
Sending a navy to sustain a blockade of the ports of another country tends to be an act of war.
Had the US not won the War in 1783, there would have been no Louisiana Purchase from France and Napoleon would not have gotten his 50 million francs of gold to help his war with Britain and eventually his disastrous Russia campaign. Thus it would have meant no Trafalgar sea victory for Lord Nelson. History would have played out very differently in the ~30 years between 1783 and 1812.
And this idiot Vox writer thinks the next 200 years would have been just a Canada-like USA.
He should ask Harvard for a tuition refund. Clearly they didn’t teach or require him to think.
Nappy used the dough to finance his planned invasion of Britain, which was forestalled by Trafalgar, October 1805.
So instead, he turned his magnificent Grande Armee east from the Channel ports, and marched rapidly into the heart of Europe, where he defeated the Third Coalition (Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Britain and smaller states) at Austerlitz in December.
He went to Hah-vahd and was taught by the likes of Naomi Oreskes and Elizabeth Warren (AKA Fauxcahontas). Howard Zinn lives. And how the mighty are falling.
Also, had the US lost New Orleans, Britain was ready to violate the peace treaty, having finally dispatched Nappy at Waterloo in June 1815.
Its battle-tested army and world’s most powerful navy would have presented the young American republic with problems galore.
…stupid to say what would have happened? … No one can know?
Just run a simulation on one of those giant AGW computers! It would be worse than what we now think!
I don’t remember the name of the battle, but a tornado which went through D.C. did more to damage and demoralize the occupying British than the Army was able to do.
If I remember correctly, that was the War of 1812 when the White House was burned.
It was the War of 1812, the British were looting and burning DC and a HURRICANE blew through and put a stop to that. Truth is stranger than fiction…
Yes, Joel :
History is a coupled system of nonlinear functions with chaotic behavior.
Not even bifurcations of nonlinear mathematics, but tri-furcations, poly-furcations when outcomes of human historical events are in play.
“The colonies defeated the British Army in 1783.”
Yes, with the crucial aid of French troops and a French naval blockade, plus the failure of the British general in charge in NY City to send ships down in relief.
The battle of Yorktown occurred in 1781; it wasn’t until 1783 that the treaty was signed, during which time (or a bit earlier) the Brits under Benedict Arnold ran wild in South Carolina, IIRC. (One historian called BA the best general on either side.)
Arnold didn’t serve in SC under British orders. VA, yes.
The only general on either side to have an original tactical insight was Nathanael Greene. His wife is credited with inventing the cotton gin, or at least helping Eli Whitney do so.
Greene’s brilliant use of militia and Continentals, perfectly executed by BG Daniel Morgan at Cowpens, won the South for the Patriots, hence the war.
“Arnold didn’t serve in SC under British orders. VA, yes.”
Correct, I now realize.
“The only general on either side to have an original tactical insight was Nathanael Greene.”
I agree. He “lost” every battle (in the sense of retiring from the field afterwards) but won the war.
Also with aid of Spanish troops and arms, and Dutch money.
As David Hackett Fischer wrote in “Historians’ Fallacies”, what would have happened had Booth NOT assassinated Lincoln is pure fantasy. All the information we HAVE comes from a world in which Booth DID assassinate Lincoln.
Yes, and next week Vox will tell us how that’s a good thing.
It’s one of those watershed moments in human history, which sets the general course of events for centuries to come, affecting places even far removed from the action.
Other watershed moments include the Battle of Tours (halted the original Muslim advance into Europe) and Battle of Hastings (started the transition of Britain from isolated backwater to major European political player).
dred,
I thought Vienna was the watershed moment for the west? Or, at least, as significant as Tours. Right up there with Lepanto. Is that wrong?
Curiously,
rip
The Siege of Vienna, yes, that’s another. Halted the Ottoman advance into Europe after the fall of Constantinople.
There were two Sieges of Vienna.
Anglo-Saxon England wasn’t a backwater. It was perhaps more oriented toward Scandinavia than France before the Conquest, but it was already integrated into continental European systems.
English royalty and nobility married continental princesses and princes from an early date in the Christianization of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
England had the best heavy infantry in Europe in 1066, having just defeated the best that Scandinavia had to offer. Hastings was a close-run thing. Williams’ modern, combined arms force finally won, perhaps more because of his archers than his heavy cavalry. But it could have gone the other way.
Norman rule was a disaster for the British isles.
See Edward Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles in World History, from Marathon to Waterloo, free in a Kindle version at
https://www.amazon.com/Fifteen-Decisive-Battles-World-Marathon-ebook/dp/B004TS5P9U/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530852783&sr=1-1&keywords=15+decisive+battles+of+the+world
A pox on Vox.
Happy Glorious 4th of July my friends.
WELL SAID !
ALLAN MACRAE
“A pox on Vox.
Happy Glorious 4th of July my friends.”
.
VOX : a hideous , sick , treacherous , evil bunch of vipers !
You REALLY need an exterminator to clean them out !
They do NOTHING BUT SPEW HATRED and FRUSTRATION that they
can’t IMPOSE THEIR WILL on the rest of the country !
NO DECENT AMERICAN should support them EVER AGAIN !
AMERICA stands as the BEST PLACE ON EARTH to realise your DREAM !
A FANTASTIC CONCEPT built upon AN IDEALISED ENGLAND but without
a MONARCHY and WITH A BILL OF RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES
and a CONSTITUTION drawing on the best and bravest of ideas of the era !!
Something really well worth celebrating !!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
But AMERICA…..you need to wake up !!
YOUR DREAM risks becoming a nightmare !
The FREEDOM you enjoy is being USED AGAINST YOU by people within
your own country who HATE YOU ! They hate your system of government ,
your ideals and your achievements ! They belittle your entire existence as they
seek to destroy you…..and in your generosity YOU GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT
OF THE DOUBT ! They want their COMMUNIST UTOPIA and , BY NOT
STRONGLY and CONSISTENTLY and RELENTLESSLY OPPOSING THEM
they WILL and ARE , insidiously , achieving their malevolent ends !
Anything they can do to disrupt or destroy your economic system , your
education system or your political system and even your legal system , they
WILL DO and are incrementally doing now !
SPEWING HATRED ABOUT YOUR PRESIDENT , regardless of who that person is
or was in the past , IS DISRESPECTING THE OFFICE (and ALL the people that
DEMOCRATICALLY elected him to it ) so it HAS PURPOSE beyond simple
objection. To bring into question the highest office in the land is to also to
question EVERY LEVEL of GOVERNMENT , which is also to cast aspersions on
DEMOCRACY , INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ( such as voting ) and FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
Wake up America ! The REST OF THE WORLD NEEDS YOUR EXAMPLE !
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
USA , you must STOP FUNDING the LEFTIST ORGANISATIONS , the UN ,
the so called Human-Rights and Civil-Rights Organisations which have
OUTLIVED THEIR UTILITY ,the Feminist Movements , the “Equity” and
“Equality of Outcome” Groups which STAND IN OPPOSITION TO THE
“EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY” which BUILT AMERICA so fairly and strongly !
There is NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH that offers YOU BETTER THAN YOU
HAVE NOW ! Americans need to support their LEADERS ( both Left and Right )
in a co-operative way AND MAKE SURE THAT THEY ARE DOING WHAT YOU NEED…
AND NOT NECESSARILY WHAT YOU WANT and ESPECIALLY NOTHING THAT THEY
WANT and THAT YOU DON’T WANT !!!!!
Let them KNOW that you DO NOT WANT “CLIMATE CONTROL LEGISLATION “.
You DO WANT to keep and strengthen FREE ENTERPRISE , the RIGHT
TO OWN PRIVATE PROPERTY and payment for YOUR LABOUR and
the FREEDOM OF SPEECH to be able to articulate your NEEDS
and MAINTAIN YOUR RIGHTS while also diligently carrying-out
your responsibilities !
Unfortunately , MANY like these abominable VOX people are
AT WORK IN YOUR UNIVERSITIES “green-washing” and “radicalising”
MANY OF YOUR FINEST YOUNG MINDS with the intention of
USING THEM AS WEAPONS AGAINST YOU ….Just as Bin Laden ( Al Quaeda )
used YOUR OWN airliners AS WEAPONS AGAINST YOU !
You MUST stop FUNDING anti-American Education Programs and
REPLACE THEM WITH PRO-AMERICAN , PRO-FREE ENTERPRISE ,
PRO-EXCELLENCE and DECENCY !!
Stop all the anti-male “Feminist Propaganda”……it is doing NO GOOD
for your women and CONSIDERABLE HARM to your young men !
Stop the delusional “group politics”and reinstate MERITOCRACY and
DO NOT HAVE A GENDER EQUALITY QUOTA SYSTEM !
No-one wins UNLESS the BEST PERSON is doing the job !
WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!
KEEP THE AMERICAN DREAM A REALITY …..WITH YOUR EYES WIDE OPEN !
Sorry………BUT !!! You know how it is !!!!!
WHAT I meant to say was : I AGREE !
“ALLAN MACRAE: A pox on Vox.
Happy Glorious 4th of July my friends.”
Ug, long rambling messages with lots of words and even whole sentences in upper-case are very hard on the eyes. No matter how sincerely your feelings are about the subjects for which you write, this style will always be offensive, and thus ignored by most.
WWG1WGA
Trevor, I agree with most of your points, but your post is awfully hard to read with so much capitalization.
Seriously? Let’s see now. Italy seems a good place to start. Parliamentary form of government, led to Mussolini. Famously stable governments, some lasting for several months /sarc
Germany of the Weimar period, parliamentary government again, led to Hitler.
Spain’s parliamentary government collapsed into civil war and beget Franco.
Actually do we have an example of presidential governments leading to dictators?
Well there’s Venezuela and that’s in current events, not past the memory limits for the kids at vox. Of course they probably think that Maduro is the duly-elected president, not a dictator.
Japan was a military dictatorship under PM Tojo. The short-lived Russian Duma led to Lenin and Stalin. The shah’s parliamentary government was overthrown to give us Khomeini and Khamanei. Does vox even have a fact checker?
Wait I figured it out. Trump is a dictator and we need prime minister Bernie to save the world.
Rich Davis
You can have PM Theresa May if you want, she’s eff all use to us.
Yes. Its the first time I have seen a leader elected by a party in order to be completely incompetent at implementing a policy with more democratic mandate than any in my lifetime, on account of the civil service and the party paymasters wanting to overturn it.
.
What you have is someone that is not interested in “draining the swamp”, as the saying goes over here for Washington, D.C.
Agreed….sigh….
Trump effort to lift U.S. offshore wind sector sparks interest – from Europe
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1JV1VV?__twitter_impression=true
What about this situation? Is POTUS now in with the wind turbine food-chain crowd?
Also the Lake Erie LEEDco, Cleveland, OH, offshore wind project has moved another step forward.
I don’t live in the UK anymore so unaffected, but I was thinking the exact same after reading HotScot’s post.
Ugh, no thanks! You can keep Theresa May. She is a viper, as bad (if not worse) than Angela Merkel.
But, my condolences to you. I really do not wish Theresa May on anyone.
Historical fact checker? Nope. Dumber than a box of Vox.
The US Constitution has lasted longer than any in world history, therefore the US government has been the most stable.
Jimmy Carter thought chavez won a fair election
Carter has a tendency to define fair as “my guy won”.
I can’t remember … did the UN “certify” our last Presidential election? Was Jimmy one of their election “watchers”? Were any Trump voters … disenfranchised … ? Jimmy? Jimmy?
I don’t know if Chavez cheated in 1998, but it seems likely that he cheated in the recall and subsequent re-elections. Dictator Maduro certainly never won a fair election.
Carter never met a tinhorn dictator or mass murderous, child-raping, kidnapping, blackmailing, stealing, lying tyrant with whom the loser didn’t fall in love.
Oh, I’m sure they’ll find a way to top it soon enough.
~¿~
Nailed it!
Personally, I have a hard time believing Canada would be as free as it is WITHOUT an independent US. The lose of the States help convince England that it had to take a more even hand with the rest of its colonies, less it [lose] them as well.
[Edited to avoid offending the delicate grammatical sensibilities of certain, unnamed commenters… 🙂 -mod]
FFS learn to spell lose, loose and loss correctly in the context…at least if the USA HAD remained a colony they might be literate..
‘Burglarized’, indeed!
I apologize Leo, that my dyslexia offends you so greatly. I have endeavored to ensure that this following message is as free as I can make it from misspellings and wrong words. To wit…
Bite me, you prick.
😛
Leo’s smug knows no bounds… just tell him you are a deist of any sort and wait for the cloud of smug to suffocate you
Schitzree, to keep the grammar nazis off your back, you may wish to do what I do. I write what I think I’m saying, then I put it aside for a couple minutes, then re-read read it, and re-read it again. I am always surprised at how what I didn’t intend gets in there. I also use Grammarly ( a free browser plug-in) that helps out a lot.
Considering the spelling abilities of many Brits that I’ve known, are you sure Britain is literate?
They speak a different language, don’t you know?😊
Two people separated by a common language.
Leo – Spelling is not a measure of ones ability to contribute. In the 80’s before the advent of spell check, we had tech editors to review draft manuscripts prior to publication. I recall one editor w/ a Ph D in English who couldn’t spell.
Samuel Longhorn Clemens said “I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.”
I would have been in Mark Twain’s highest regard.
As one that has a life long difficulty remembering names and spelling words (dislexia?) I still try to correct the things I write. A quote by someone whose name I cannot recall is: “it is indeed a small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word”. Given that (and a good word processor and spell checker) I still have difficulty with the misuse of the English language by contemporary products of the education system and electronic “assistants” however I can generally understand the well intentioned phraseology, at least lexically speaking.
Unfortunately the first “lose” should probably be “loss.”
lest
“Personally, I have a hard time believing Canada would be as free as it is WITHOUT an independent US. The [loss] of the States help convince England that it had to take a more even hand with the rest of its colonies, less it [lose] them as well.”
I think that is correct. The U.S. showed effective resistance to the British Empire was possible.
If America had stayed British, all of Europe would be speaking German or Russian today !! God Bless America !! MAGA
No, I think all Europe would be speaking English (we are, actually, nearly doing it already) And Trump would be the prime minister of Euramerica.
That assumes that British colonies restricted to the Atlantic seaboard could have materially helped the Allies more than, say, Canada or Australia did.
I sense a disturbance in The Force. Something tells me the author of the Vox article is probably not a Trump supporter.
It begs disbelief that people will vote themselves into slavery.
What they do is vote other people into slavery. Then they are surprised when the slavery is expanded to include them.
“Greg Cavanagh
It begs disbelief that people will vote themselves into slavery.”
____________________________________________________
Ever heard of germany ruled by Cult Chancellor Angie Merkel.
true…they were all for it when they were in power
Now they hate our government.
Liberals have no concept that they are not in power all the time….then their “rules” bite them in the butt
How prescient. I think you are onto something!
IF George Washington had lost:
1. There would have been no Civil War – the greatest human and economic disaster in USA history.
2. There would have been no War of 1812, so we would not have burned the White House and you Americans would not have burned Toronto. Everyone here hates Toronto – so we got the better of that deal.
Britain at that time was governed by scoundrels and imbeciles – King George 1 did not even speak English – you were probably better off on your own – except for the Civil War – that was truly disastrous for both North and South – a huge national tragedy.
Allan
Proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Once free of the UK, America transformed itself, and the rest of the world.
They have not only defended (and still do) their democratic principles, they have fought by the side of other like minded countries.
Meanwhile, they have done what no other country could have, without subjugating it’s population. All whilst fiercely protecting it’s independence, unlike the UK which can’t afford to build it’s own combat aircraft to populate just two new aircraft carriers. We must buy them from the US.
We are forced to partner with the rest of Europe to build the Eurofighter, and the only part of a commercial airline business we operate is to make the damn wings.
The message to me is clear. Irrespective of the eventual Brexit deal, the UK needs to embark on a campaign to ensure we never again risk our relationship with America. We can retain our independence, just as Canada does, and have a beneficial political and trading relationship.
Perhaps California could carry through it’s independence threat and the UK could become a replacement state. 🙂
The prospect is looking more attractive by the day.
Even in the unlikely case that the UK would join the US (we’d have to drop the A, wouldn’t we?), it would be four states, not one: North Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England.
Could we force London to be its own independent city-state, much like Singapore? Londoners seem to prefer the slavery of socialism, from what I have read.
Well that would be cool. Another island state, and closer than Hawaii to those of us on the East coast.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/03/brexit-horror-liberated-british-might-de-prioritise-climate-change/#comment-2226620
[excerpt]
On Europe:
Britain and the Magna Carta countries (the British Empire/ Commonwealth and the USA sacrificed the best of our youth to save Europe during two World Wars. I have a great-uncle buried in France, killed in the last days of WW1, and an uncle who was the only surviving officer of his unit at the Dieppe raid during WW2, where he rescued the only ten surviving enlisted men – of the 110 who landed on the beach.
We owe Europe nothing, and I would never support another rescue mission, which appears increasingly likely. Europe is failing due to imbecilic leftist politics, and does not deserve to be rescued again.
I just returned from Thailand, where I met a French citizen. We spoke all evening at a party where everyone else spoke Thai and/or English. He said he was completely finished with Europe, and will move overseas as soon as he can. He spoke of the creeping takeover of France by radical Muslims and their violence against civilians and the authorities. I ventured that Europe was failing, and in mere decades would become little more than a museum due to its foolish leftist politics – he enthusiastically agreed.
On Brexit:
Britain will be vastly better-off out of the EU. The economic future of Britain should reside in a new Free Trade Agreement with the USA and the Commonwealth – as we leave Europe to fail under its imbecilic leftist/green energy policies.
Best, Allan
“ALLAN MACRAE
I just returned from Thailand, where I met a French citizen. We spoke all evening at a party where everyone else spoke Thai and/or English. He said he was completely finished with Europe, and will move overseas as soon as he can. He spoke of the creeping takeover of France by radical Muslims and their violence against civilians and the authorities.
Best, Allan”
When I lived in Belgium in the early 1980’s this was already happening in every major European city and all over England too. I recall no-go zones filled with migrants who simply didn’t want to integrate. I recall several major riots in these areas. It’s only getting worse. And the ending won’t be pretty.
Isabella and Ferdinand have already showed the ending that worked. For 500 years.
“He spoke of the creeping takeover of France by radical Muslims and their violence against civilians and the authorities.”
A creeping takeover is exactly what is happening. All with the assistance of completely clueless socialist politicians in Europe. Europe’s Elites are unfit to lead. They will be the death of Europe.
“The message to me is clear. Irrespective of the eventual Brexit deal, the UK needs to embark on a campaign to ensure we never again risk our relationship with America. ”
Nice sentiment but you are doing the opposite. The mayor of London is allowing a blimp to be flown over parliament when our president visits there that mocks and insults him… this unprecedented rudeness is going to piss off half of America and will indeed risk your relationship with us, unfortunately.
TDBraun
I don’t know where you heard that, but I would put it down to meaningless nonsense.
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-angry-baby-blimp-gets-green-light-to-fly-over-london-during-presidents-visit-11426665
MarkW
Not going to happen mate, no matter what these nutters say.
Like I said. Meaningless nonsense.
The Marxists and their fellow-travelers all over the world continue to reject American democracy and the election of Donald Trump.
First, the left were in disbelief and deep mourning when Trump was elected – “a tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth”, an epic Internationale tantrum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grD_IINiH9c
Now the Marxists are fighting back with every BIG LIE they can imagine – the standard string of falsehoods that the extreme left just loves – because any lie is OK if it serves THE CAUSE.
My least favorite lefty falsehood is the now-popular mantra “Trump is the new Hitler” How utterly imbecilic and offensive! But that never stopped the extreme left.
It is incontrovertible that the extreme left are the worst killers and polluters on the planet. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, hundreds of millions killed, and the list goes on…
I had a large energy project in the Former Soviet Union, and have also travelled into Honecker’s East Germany and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. I have never seen such horrific pollution and gross waste of resources as I saw in the SU and the FSU. This is what happens when you allow sociopathic thugs to run a country.
Count your blessings America, you dodged a bullet.
BTW, Gaia also dislikes Marxists, and is starting to voice her disapproval. Maybe she’ll drop a big one near London if they don’t smarten up. 🙂
https://news.sky.com/story/earthquake-shakes-surrey-for-third-time-in-fortnight-11426970
Here is some of the more “moderate” reactions of the left when Trump was elected (Warming: Language… and Insanity):
That was truly insane. There were, and still are, similar rants here in Australia about Trump winning. Clearly a lot of people here too hate the fact Trump won! My reaction to them is “Do you have a problem with democracy?” America ELECTED Trump! Deal with it!
The problem with Trump, as far as the leftists of the world are concerned, is that Trump is undoing the socialist agenda and in the process is demonstrating that there is a much better system for getting things done: Conservatism.
Trump is destroying the Leftist’s world and making their worldview look very bad and untenable, and they are not happy about it.
Trump is their worst nightmare.
Trump is forcing sanity on the world.
The world’s longest continuing tantrum of people so self-entitled, they can’t accept the fact that they lost. Deniers, all of them.
Trump election night reprise – as the leftist media saw it:
“DONALD TRUMP WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT !!!”
The expected landslide for Hillary never happened – just like catastrophic man-made global warming.
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1016079192604139520
“The mayor of London is allowing a blimp to be flown over parliament when our president visits there that mocks and insults him… this unprecedented rudeness is going to piss off half of America and will indeed risk your relationship with us, unfortunately.”
I don’t know. Personally, I understand what the Mayor of London is doing and I attribute his anti-Trump behavior to his radical politics and worldview, not to the British people.
We have Leftwing nuts over here in the U.S., too. Don’t take ours too seriously and we won’t take yours too seriously. 🙂
And no Battle of Fort McHenry either, which led to us being saddled with a national anthem consisting of a prose poem set to the music of a drinking song, that’s now butchered regularly in baseball games across the country. 🙂
(And is difficult to do right even when sung properly.)
I’d venture that the US national Anthem is actually one of the best by far. As are those of France, Russia, Germany and the UK.
Most of the rest are abominable. Torture.
In the first half of this year I spent a total of 18 weeks in Japan, all on U. S. military bases, where each morning, after the U. S. National Anthem, (as a “courtesy” to the host country) the loudspeakers would then play the Japanese national anthem. It sounds like a warm-up chorale. Don’t tell me the words to it, cuz I don’t wanna know.
Tribute – Whitney Houston – Star Spangled Banner
Super Bowl XXV in 1991
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbkWuVUkPmY
A belated gift for the Glorious 4th of July.
George III however did speak English, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an imbecile. Then he went crazy.
Not the best ad for monarchy.
I cannot let that one go . George III was the victim of an illness . previously he had championed advances in agriculture , which proved essential with the growth of the mill towns in the Industrial revolution, to the extent that he was known as “farmer George”.
He was also responsible for developing the collection of scientific and astronomical instruments that still form part of the Royal collection because of his great interest in scientific matters . He was, after all, part German a nation with a significant standing in post renaissance science and general scholarship.
He also encouraged the Royal Navy to send out the explorers whose names dot bays , harbours , mountains and islands across the globe.
He was all German, except for one French distant female ancestress, and even more distant ancestress who was granddaughter of James I/VI.
Sorry, but any fool who loses the 13 colonies, most of North America south of the Great Lakes and a war with France, Spain and the Netherlands is an imbecile.
Yes, he went nuts because of an illness, which made his idiotic son regent.
The agricultural revolution owes nothing to Farmer George, who was at best a spectator of it.
Correction:
George III’s French and Stuart ancestresses were both great-great grandmothers. But his Stuart-descended GGGM, the remarkable Sophia, Electress of Hanover, was herself German, born in a German state to a German father. Her mom was Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, hence half Danish-German herself on her mom’s side, and 1/4 French on her dad’s side, her grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, being half French.
After centuries of political intermarriage within a limited pool of aristocratic families, more than a few involving barely removed cousins and bordering on incestuous, by the 18th century just about every royal dynasty in Europe was related. Recessive genetic disorders associated with inbreeding emerged regularly in each new generation of princes/princesses. One big royally screwed up family. 😮
The War of the Spanish Succession was caused by the inbred, genetic defectiveness of the last Hapsburg king of Spain. This poor guy, Carlos II:
The Romanovs, Bourbons and Hanoverians were less inbred. Although the latter were practically all German, they had many little principalities and duchies from which to chose spouses.
Carlos had two beautiful, royal princess wives, but no kids.
After his death, he was found to have but one shriveled testicle.
The terrible War of the Spanish Succession, which made the Churchill family, was more rightly the War of the Shriveled Testicle.
If you want serious genetics problems, you should look into the Waldviertel area, the Arkansas of Austria. After Anschluss, Hitler had the entire area around Strones and Döllersheim emptied out and turned into a military reservation. Artillery then destroyed almost everything.
Socialists voicing their socialistic dreams, which always turn towards their idea of Utopia. And had they been in charge they would know what to do so as to not produce another Stalin or Mao. When in doubt vote Progressive!
I’m not so sure abolition of slavery would have happened when it did if we had still owned the American South!
You’re right, it might have happened earlier. link
If Britain had had a strong, vested financial interest in maintaining slavery, such as a colony whose economy was based on slave labor, there would have been much fiercer opposition to abolition in their empire. Britain continued actions that were effectively slavery for much later, most notably their treatment of India.
If the revolution had failed, then things would have been different. That is the only thing we can say for certain, but whether abolition would have occurred sooner in America or later for the entire British empire is not something that is readily apparent.
By the time of the U. S. Civil War, Britain was so reliant on the U. S. South’s cotton, if they were still in charge I’m not sure abolition would have happened EVER!
Nope. Can’t touch this! That’s a quote from PBS, clearly NOT a product of the Right, and even they can’t find support for it.
Furthermore, things would not have remained static. I suspect the only way the Colonies would NOT have rebelled and declared independence would be if they had been given representation, i.e., seats in Parliament relative to their population, at the very least (and that still might have been too little too late). So try abolishing Colonial slavery through THAT Parliament!
Dylan Matthews is a putz and clearly even basic research is beyond him!
Not likely. It took Wilberforce years just to get Parliament to abolish the slave trade. The cynicism of economic advantage was strong, and the presence of a block of pro-slavery colonies in the American South could well have tilted the balance the other way for years.
No opinion re sooner vs later.
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
In May 1772, Lord Mansfield’s judgment in the Somersett’s Case emancipated a slave in England, which helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.[1] The case ruled that slavery was unsupported by law in England and no authority could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil.
…
By 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the Empire had begun among the British public. In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe signed the Act Against Slavery. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.
In 1807, Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed the slave trade, but not slavery itself. Abolitionist Henry Brougham realized that trading would continue and as a new MP successfully introduced the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 which at last made slave trading criminal throughout the empire. The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. It did suppress the slave trade, but did not stop it entirely. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.[5] They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas.[6][7] Britain also used its influence to coerce other countries to agree treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships.
In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London. Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, and Anne Knight.[10] William Wilberforce had prior written in his diary in 1787 that his great purpose in life was to suppress the slave trade before waging a 20-year fight on the industry.[11]
A LIFE WELL-LIVED – WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1759 – 1833)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml
William Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759 in Hull, the son of a wealthy merchant. He studied at Cambridge University where he began a lasting friendship with the future prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. In 1780, Wilberforce became member of parliament for Hull, later representing Yorkshire. His dissolute lifestyle changed completely when he became an evangelical Christian, and in 1790 joined a leading group known as the Clapham Sect. His Christian faith prompted him to become interested in social reform, particularly the improvement of factory conditions in Britain.
The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson had an enormous influence on Wilberforce. He and others were campaigning for an end to the trade in which British ships were carrying black slaves from Africa, in terrible conditions, to the West Indies as goods to be bought and sold. Wilberforce was persuaded to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade and for 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament. The campaign was supported by many members of the Clapham Sect and other abolitionists who raised public awareness of their cause with pamphlets, books, rallies and petitions. In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, but this did not free those who were already slaves. It was not until 1833 that an act was passed giving freedom to all slaves in the British empire.
…
Wilberforce retired from politics in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833, shortly after the act to free slaves in the British empire passed through the House of Commons. He was buried near his friend Pitt in Westminster Abbey.
America’s first antislavery society was founded in Philadelphia in 1775:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Abolition_Society
Coincidence that the British association wasn’t formed until after losing her Southern American colonies, in 1783?
“In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe signed the Act Against Slavery. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.”
For the record, these are my people – my family settled circa 1800 in Glengarry County, the easternmost and oldest County in Upper Canada (now Ontario). The first settlers to Glengarry arrived earlier, circa 1776, Highland Scots driven out of the Mohawk valley in New York State for choosing the wrong side in the American Revolutionary War.
History runs deep in Glengarry. The explorers David Thompson, Simon Fraser and Alexander Mackenzie all lived at times in Glengarry. Major rivers in western and northern Canada are named after these three intrepid gentlemen. Lewis and Clark had copies of David Thompson’s maps of their destination on the West Coast.
Before the new school was built, you could sit on my grandad’s front porch and see David Thompson’s house across the fields. Alexander Mackenzie donated the bell in their church, and Simon Fraser had lived a few miles west.
___________________________________________________________________
A few years earlier, we dealt with another gang of slavers. The Highland Scots threw the Vikings under King Haaken IV out of western Scotland at the Battle of Largs in 1263.
The Clan MacRae fought at Largs under the leadership of Alexander Stewart (1214–1283). It was a minor skirmish with only part of the huge Viking fleet, but it marked the end of Viking control over the Hebrides and the Isle of Man.
Scottish lore has it that “we partied with the Vikings on the beach at Largs on October 2, 1263 – perhaps we were poor hosts, because they never called back again.”
The evidence of the conversion of the Vikings to Christianity is preserved in a quote from King Haaken himself, who said “Jesus! WTF were those guys?” 🙂
Simcoe was a war criminal.
While commanding the Queens Rangers in 1778, he led a massacre by bayonet of ten Americans in their sleep in Lower Alloways Creek Township, southern New Jersey. The night attack on Judge William Hancock’s house, during a foraging expedition opposed by Patriot militia, also wounded five other Americans in their sleep. William Hancock was killed as well, although he was not with the Americans.
On August 31, then Lieut. Col. Simcoe led a massacre of forty Indian allies of the Continental Army, in what is today the Bronx. The site is now known as Indian Field in Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx. NY.
War is heck.
It is cold-blooded murder, amid squalor.
Being an unrepentant pragmatist, I must point out to everyone that slavery was on its last legs by the second half of the nineteenth century. Slavery is an economic-based institution, and the economics were about to change. John Deere, Cyrus McCormick, et al were about to revolutionize agriculture. How many would want to feed, house, and provide medical care for a farm laborer today, especially during the winter months?
As a Brit I can see one advantage of still having this rather large colony we might never have felt the need to join the EU. Now that would have been a good thing.
James Bull
James
My thoughts, concisely put.
A very good thing. I voted against joining the Common Market back in the day, because I saw the potential for the loss of sovereignty and independence.
I didn’t vote for Brexit as I’d made my own personal Brexit in 1988 and now live in the former colonies.
Wow, historical ignorance is big at Vox.
I hope the author and those who agree are too offended by American realuty to vote this November.
And even better, simply moving to another country and leaving America to the “deplorables”
I stand with legal immigrants.
I have no quarrel with the Tories, they were just on the wrong side of the ocean at the wrong moment. Glad to see this grand old party has survived the years and found a modern issue in climate change. Perhaps the Tories will field a candidate in 2020. All Hail King George III!
The ‘Whigs’ had a spasm after the Revolution as I recall, and proposed that George Washington should be their first king. He declined politely.
“He declined politely.”
A very wise man indeed.
There would be no America and no Canada. There would have been no Louisiana Purchase, no Alaska Purchase. Canada would not have needed to buy Rupert’s Land.
The formation of Canada was largely in response to the Fenian Raids from the United States. That and other pressures that led to Confederation would not have existed. For instance, much of Canada’s settlement was by United Empire Loyalists who were driven out of the United States after the Revolution.
The British attempted to prevent settlement into Indian territory. The pressure was too much though. Consider the settlers who wrested Texas from Mexico.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s, he found a people who were unlike those of France or England. Such people would not have meekly stayed under the British crown. My guess is they would have left and set up shop outside the original colonies.
Even if Washington had lost there is no telling what eventual countries would have developed. The idea of an America with the same boundaries but more like Canada is risible.
Now that’s something I hadn’t thought of. Had the Colonies lost the War, there would have been one crazy refugee swarm, heading to Canada, the West, Mexico and Florida, maybe even some back to Europe, and certainly South America. And all of history would have been changed in all those places, as well.
“The British attempted to prevent settlement into Indian territory.”
See my previous post re the original Indian Territory, NW (South) Carolina where I now reside.
Because of the pressure of the colonists to move “inland”, the British government set up a clearly defined Indian territory “way out west” on land that at the time no one valued; it was perceived to be no good to grow rice (and later cotton).
Remember there were no defined western boundaries to the colonies; the charters were presumed in most instances to extend the width of the continent. It was up to you to protect your western flank from the French coming from the Mississippi, or even the Spanish on the Pacific coast. Protection from the French and Indians was enforced by the British army and forts within Indian Territory. (I live a mile from the former Fort George which was purposely situated across the river from Keowee Village, a principle Cherokee hub and crossroad for the Iroquois nation.)
When even that segregation was not sufficient to appease the settlers’ appetite for western migration, the abominable “Trail of Tears” moved the original Indian Territory from Carolina to what is now Oklahoma. As horrible as that was, the precedent was set under British rule.
I believe that about 38 different Indian tribes now call Oklahoma home.
The lot of the American Indian has improved quite dramatically since the “Trail of Tears”.
The Cherokee Indian tribe (and others) is now in such a good financial state that they are constantly donating money to their non-Indian neighbors.
Americans of 1830 might have been different had the Revolution not succeeded.
Who can say, but Britain allied with the indigenous tribes might have kept colonists bottled up on the Atlantic seaboard.
I think we can say that the British allied with the indigenous tribes did keep the Americans bottled up south of what is now the Canadian border.
Britain banned development west of the original colonies. That was one of the things the colonists resented, especially the largest landholder in that area, some chappie, a former surveyor named Washingson…? Washingman…?
Washington’s biggest gripe against the Crown was that it didn’t give him a royal commission in the British Army, only a major of VA militia.
Had the Brits so honored him, he would probably not have sided with the colonials.
If we had not had a revolution and won, that blighted braindead numbnuts Matthews and his fellow travelers would likely not be alive to bitch about living in a free country.
Happy Birthday, US of A! I can’t think of a better place to be born, grow up or live. Glad it’s my home turf, always has been and always will be and anyone who doesn’t like freedom can pack it in and leave now.
what a complicated way to praise Britain and piss USA…
“They lead to much less gridlock.”
That’ll be Brexit then, where remainers are doing everything they can, to stab anyone in the back they can, in order to sabotage, overturn, or unduly influence the outcome of a democratic decision!
And that’s what this idiot aspires to?
The fact remains, America emerged from a political maelstrom and went on, with a presidential democracy, underpinned by the Constitution, to become, probably, the most successful and influential country the world has known.
Nothing but idealistic naval gazing. What a pillock!
The best thing about government is gridlock. The last thing the public needs is the latest fad of the ruling class rammed down their throats. Gridlock at least gives the public a chance to avoid planned disaster.
“Nothing but idealistic naval gazing.”
No gazing at the Army?
Jeff Alberts
Navel………….autocorrect!
A government slow to react is a feature, not a bug. Exactly as the framers of the Constitution intended it!
Exactly right. And that’s what’s exactly wrong with “progressives” aiming to get their latest fad or unpopular idea implemented through the court system because they can’t get it done legislatively. That was done on purpose by the Founders, and resorting to the Courts to, in essence, to change the law was not envisioned.
“You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps…. Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Al Qaeda-affiliated terror group launches war on ……..plastic bags” ?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/05/al-qaeda-affiliated-terror-group-launches-war-on-plastic-bags.html
Liberal “Watermelons” are the “Al Qaeda” of America
Amen and amen
Energy poverty in the UK due to green taxes (carbon tax) is killing people and costing the UK health service.
https://www.newstatesman.com/microsites/energy/2017/12/how-fuel-poverty-burdening-uk-economy-and-nhs
Thank god the yanks had the balls to tell our German king George where to shove it!
Just a shame the revolution didnt make it back across the atlantic…
MattS
As we speak, announcement on BBC news that E.ON is putting up it’s gas and electricity prices for the second time this year!
Undoubtedly followed by the rest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44724046
Good post Matt – please see our 2015 paper on Excess Winter Mortality and the huge death toll (approx. 48,000) this winter in the UK. Radical greens are the great killers of our age.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/17/oxford-professor-rich-people-fuel-climate-change-were-not-controlling-them/comment-page-1/#comment-2821009 old server
[excerpt]
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
From “EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS”
Charles Mackay (1841)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
______________________
I bought Charles Mackay’s excellent book recently for my daughter’s Science Fair project, and after more than 150 years it is still a good read. She used it to help debunk the 1972 ban on DDT, which DOUBLED the number of deaths from malaria, more than half of which are children 4 and under whose deaths peaked at almost 1 million per year – just babies for Christ’s sake – and half of these deaths were easily preventable.
With the exception of major wars and murderous leftist politics (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) the banning of DDT in the fight against malaria was probably the most deadly error in hundreds of years – and this incredibly stupid error was made by educated people based on faulty science and a poor grasp of reality.
An even greater error, in terms of human mortality, is the global warming scam and the “phony war” against increasing atmospheric CO2. The overwhelming evidence is that increasing atmospheric CO2 will lead to improved plant and crop growth, and any resulting warming will be mild and beneficial.
Earth is significantly colder-than-optimum for humanity and the environment. Meteorologist Joe d’Aleo and I wrote this conclusion in our 2015 paper, referenced below. Twenty times more people die from cold than die from heat – about 2 million Excess Winter Deaths every year worldwide – an average of about one hundred thousand in the USA, equivalent to two 9-11’s per week for 17 weeks every year!
Even more startling is the preliminary estimate of Excess Winter Deaths in the UK – about 48,000 this winter! The UK suffered about HALF the average annual Excess Winter Deaths of the USA, but the UK has only ONE-FIFTH the USA’s population. High energy prices, or “Heat or Eat” as it is termed in the UK, is becoming a significant cause of premature deaths of the elderly and the poor. Anti-fracking groups in the UK, many of whom are phony-green Marxist fronts, have cost your country dearly in billions of lost pounds and hundreds of thousands of needlessly-shortened lives.
This is very frustrating, because some of us knew that the global warming scam was false nonsense as early as ~1985, based on the evidence available then. Since that time, the evidence against the global warming scam has grown more and more credible, and yet this multi-trillion dollar-per-year scam continues.
I (we) published in 2002 that the global warming crisis did not exist in reality, and that green energy schemes would not be adequate to replace fossil fuels. Both these statements are now proven to be correct, for anyone who objectively examines the evidence.
I suggest that anyone who continues to support global warming alarmism and schemes to abate fossil fuels is seriously deluded at best, and more correctly is guilty of crimes against humanity.
Best personal regards, Allan in Calgary
________________________________________
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Let’s not forget that the average Brit at the time of the War of Independence was equally oppressed by the ruling elite and has managed over the intervening years to build a functioning democracy and managed to avoid a civil war in the process.
You are ignoring the whole issue of the Roundheads vs the Cavaliers, which began era of parliamentary dominance of the country. While the King was eventually put back in power, the true power lay in the elected officials ever since.
Even as a died in the wool Brit, I echo Eric’s sentiments.
Britain could not run a sophisticated European citizen Colony of such vigour at such a distance with the technology of the time and a rather pathetic king who was ultimately intermittently mad.
And only the most convinced self righteous Green/Red could consider that rule by edict bypassing the democratic process was, except in case of emergency, a Good Thing in general.
“And parliamentary democracies are a lot, lot better than presidential ones. They’re significantly less likely to collapse into dictatorship because they don’t lead to irresolvable conflicts between, say, the president and the legislature. They lead to much less gridlock.”
Did VOX forget the Germany & Hitler in 1932 or Italy/mussolini or Spain/Franco in the 1930’s?
Can VOX name any “presidential system” that became a dictatorship
Can Vox even know the United States is not a “Presidential system?
Does Vox even know what kind of government the United States Has?
Well, just one point…
We (in the US) have a leader that said that women would allow him to grope them.
They (in Canada) have a leader that did grope women without their permission.
One is a boor, true – but the other is a sexual predator.
Trump’s statement, taken in context, was not the chauvinistic boast the political press claimed it was. It was an expression of amazement at how loose some women he had met could be.
You mean women who “sleep” their way to the top ?? I thought they were a myth !! / sarc
You’re right, Dred.
There’s a story about Donald Trump in The November 9, 1992 issue of New York Magazine.
Trump had friends among movie stars and rock icons. In the story, he describes seeing women launch themselves over barricades to get at Michael Jackson (no accounting for taste, there).
He expressed serious distaste toward beautiful women who he saw abasing themselves to keep a relationship with a rock star, clutching a leg while being kicked away.
These are the women Trump was talking about in the Access Hollywood video. They’ll let rich or powerful men grab them in special ways, if only, if only, they could just share in that high-life with him.
Trump never said he did it himself. He never boasted about doing it. There’s no evidence he’s done it.
The entire narrative about Trump-grabbing is a false and negative inference deliberately manufactured in the interests of character assassination.
“The entire narrative about Trump-grabbing is a false and negative inference deliberately manufactured in the interests of character assassination.”
Yes, it is, and so is just about every other charge made against Trump by the radical Leftists and the Leftwing Media. They distort and misinterpret everything Trump does in an effort to portray him in the worst light possible.
It’s propaganda and lies all the way down.
Not for nuthin’, but the biggest reason Canada drifted away from Britain is that Britain decided Canada’s Southern border was indefensible and Canada wasn’t worth the cost of keeping it in the Empire. If the US didn’t break away, then it’s much less likely that Canada would have either.
You can carry this way further if you are so inclined, but this is far enough to show how asinine Vox is in thinking that if the US didn’t revolt, than everything except that would have moved forward as normal.
If Climatists hate America so much, then they should leave, Win-win!
Bruce – I’m with you on this point. Let’s keep it simple. Here we have a person (presumably) living in the US of A, who has available all of the comforts and largess of a first-world lifestyle, bemoaning the history of that same country that created the current conditions that keep him safe, warm, and which provides him an opportunity to create wealth by placing words into a system of hard and software (created for the most part by the technology of the same USA he appears to loath). Assuming he does not pen columns for free? All in the name of imposing a ‘carbon’ tax on his fellow citizens, for a mostly-fictional idea where the powering and moving of a modern society (read as: releasing the evil ‘carbon’ molecule combined with two oxygen molecules via the oxidation of hydrocarbon rich fuels) is causing a (distant future) world of hellfire and brimstone. Wishing historical change, and ruing his current lifestyle. Presenting a potential alternate future where his country has been radically changed by never having come into existence. A fiction, put out on the day where that same, actual history is to remembered and celebrated. And he is given the response he probably wished for – we here on WUWT present alternate historical possibilities based upon his fantastical premise of the USA having never began. Please do not misinterpret my point here; most of the comments posted in response are very well thought-out and intelligent in presenting the myriad of alternate histories based upon the premise of losing the War of Independence. However, I stand firm that carbon taxes are regressive, and should not be imposed for any reason, let alone demand the alteration of our country and it’s history in the name of changing our government to ease the imposition of same.