The Founding of America

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I am surprised nobody else has created a thread on this today. (Then again, who creates threads on Canada day about Canada?)

However, today is important for America, so the question that has to be asked is.... well.... a lot of them.

1) Was the American revolution justified?
2) What should we think of the American founding ideology in relationship to other ideas of its own time? A step forward or a step behind? Has the ideology become outdated, or is it still a top-notch ideology?
3) Do governments really govern by consent?
4) Is America a great country? Is it the greatest country? What are the strengths and flaws of America and where do they emerge from, do you think?
5) Is patriotism a good thing or is it a bad thing?
6) Are there any other questions worth asking on this sacred day?

It was justified in the sense that Americans were taxed without being represented in Parliement.

Could it have been avoided? Yes. If the Brits in the home country were a bit more reasonable we could have ended up with a deal like Canada. Canada enjoys pretty much the same rights as United Stateseans do and all without a Revolution or a Civil War.

ruveyn

Yes. Though perhaps a more amicable way could've been found. Georgie Three was only nuts half the time.

A step ahead of most. A step behind some. The Levellers had it nailed and that was more than a century earlier. The American revolution was a Magna Carta style "freedom and equality for rich men" gig. The ideology of the original constitution is horribly dated, but at least they left it open to amendment.

Yes and no. They don't usually draw their citizens from a pool of people free to choose to consent to them or not. You're born, you grow up, you look around and it's "do what we say, or else", so no from that angle - but if you're lucky enough to be born into a democracy with reasonable equality across the board you're likely to consent to that government if you're a decent person.

I take it you mean the ruling elite, who were only oppressing the colonists a little bit harder than they were oppressing their own...

Massachussetts, where the Revolution began consisted mostly of free-holders. There was no Aristocracy to oppress anyone. Massachussetts men were an ill behaved lot who acknowledged none as their master.

ruveyn

To be more current this thread should be "The foundering of America".

Was it justified? I don't know.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand were also British colonies and they saw no reason to fight against the mother country. They are all doing well to this day despite paying lip service that Queen Elizabeth is their monarch.

As much as I am aware of the total hypocrisy of much of the idealism touted each July 4 as to the immense freedom of the country there is no doubt a certain looseness of the absolute control of the financial elite that really has an iron grip on life in the USA. Hypocrisy has its uses and it is likely that whatever nods to real freedom in the world that exists out of the proclaimed but unattained US freedoms in actuality may be attributed to this misty vision. Perhaps Canada, Australia and New Zealand would not be as free as they are without the existence of the USA.

Of course there was an oppressive aristocracy. "Taxation without representation" is oppression.

(also, aristocracy is your word - I said ruling elite, to include mercantile interests)

The Oppressors were in England. The free-holders of Massachussetts did not constitute an Aristocracy as the word was understood in Europe. On the other hand, the slave and land owners of the Southern colonies were an Aristocracy in the European sense. Most of the people in the Southern colonies were not land owners (or owners of other property) so they did not have the vote nor did they have a high social standing.

Our revolution was started by free-holders. It did not end up that way. Our first President who was also the commander of the Revolutionary Army was an owner of lots of land and many slaves.

ruveyn

Good things about America:

We have the freedom, more or less, to say what we want.

We don't have hate speech laws (yet)

We don't have stringent gun control laws like most other industrialized nations.

Bad things about America:

We still are too eager to go to war, and our military is overly emphasized and worshipped.

We have this Christian, puritan attitude in regards to sex and homosexuality. Apparently, it's perfectly okay to kill people overseas for some questionable cause, but it's a crime against man if a naked boob is shown on television or homosexuals have rights.

Our two-party system is more like a one-party system, with little difference between the two parties. I'm not saying this is much different than other countries, but at least other countries have substantial differences between their two main parties (at least from what I can infer), as opposed to us.

Is the United States the greatest country on earth? I'll reserve my judgment until I actually visit some other country and see what it's like over there. I think we have some good and some bad, and I'm reluctant to be too black and white about this.

That's what I said. What point are you making?

Indeed. As they said at the time: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all old white rich Protestant males are created equal..."

I believe that some of our 4 fathers were somewhat atheists at the time they made the constitution. It was the age of enlightenment and then it regressed from there.

Ashame Thomas Jefferson was nothing more than a rich hypocrite who not only owned slaves but banged one only to leave her high and dry. I really liked that speech. /:

The life of my country is so inextricably caught up with yours that we are often left to define ourselves by the "negative space" that you do not occupy. With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek I hosted a party on July 4, billing it as my "Co-dependence Day" barbecue.

For all that many of us in Canada seek to distinguish ourselves from you, the truth is that we have taken different routes to arrive at some of the self-same goals.

Justified? Of course not. Justification comes from the application of law. Under the prevailing law in force at the time it was an illegal rebellion. The correct question is "Was the American revolution ethically correct?" In that case, history tends to speak for itself. The American Revolution gave rise to a nation that has survived for over 230 years, with a form of government that is widely supported by its citizens. It is hard to argue with success



For its time, the ideology was clearly on the cusp of Enlightenment thinking. It was neither the first foray into representative democracy, nor the first popular limit on sovereign power. It was not the first Republic, or even the first Republic of the post classical age. It was not the first federation. But it took Enlightenment ideas and implemented them on a grand scale.

The ideology may be in danger of being allowed to become obsolete. Some principles may be timeless, but the current fashion of "strict construction" risks leaving government to stagnate. Courts must be dynamic agents of government, otherwise they become completely subordinate to the legislature, which then has the power to run roughshod. Consider the example of the United Kingdom, where the supremacy of Parliament was virtually unchallengable at law. The rights of citizens were in the hands of Parliament, which was, in turn, in the hands of the Government of the Day.



Only in the very broadest sense. Government has become too complex for any individual to encompass all of it. The electorate have been reduced to making the most general of choices, and partisanship has replaced policy as the driver of most electoral choice. A government that chooses to callously disregard the electorate does so at its peril, but there are few governments with such temerity.



Is the United States a great country? Most assuredly. Is it the greatest county? It depends entirely upon the measurement that you choose.

Many characteristics of the American body politic give rise to both its strengths and its weaknesses. Take, for example, Americans' general distrust of government. This is a strength in so far as government is more restricted in its ability to participate in the marketplace, but it is a weakness when government is so restricted that it cannot exercise its proper function to regulate the marketplace. The classical liberalism of freedom from state interference gives individual citizens a great deal of economic latitude, and generally low levels of tax, but imposes high social costs that are the economic price of a limited public sector.



Patriotism is a good thing. Jingoism is not.



It is ironic that you choose the word, "sacred," which has, as its root, the latin sacrum which refers to that which is within the authority of the gods. It is interesting to me, as an outsider, to see the degree to which iconography has become a new idolatry among some people within the United States. The popular movement to prohibit flag-burning, for example, appears to me to be a movement that is prepared to put limits on freedom of expression, for the purpose of protection of a national icon. This seems to be the antithesis of what was intended by the liberal ideology of your country's founders.

He also oversaw the repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts and during his administration the U.S. finally got a functioning naval force. Jefferson also supervised the Louisiana Purchase which was the first step to extend the U.S. from a collection of Eastern Seaboard states westward to the Pacific Ocean.

He had many failings but he was probably the smartest President the U.S. ever had.

ruveyn