 |
 |
 |
| "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces guarding our country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." |
Posted on 07/02/2015 4:37:52 PM PDT by Kaslin
Generally, I’m not one to hammer on outlets as a whole, although some — Salon comes to mind — seem to use trolling people with ridiculous premises as their entire marketing strategy. Vox has its moments like this, although they also recently hired the estimable Jon Allen as a political editor to shore up their credibility. However, it’s essays like today’s “3 Reasons the American Revolution was a Mistake” two days before Independence Day that provide most of Vox’s reputation for intellectual heft. Well, it’s those and that West Bank to Gaza Bridge that inspired Sonny Bunch to offer “The Year in Voxfails” at the Free Beacon, along with the supposedly longest winter night ever that wasn’t.
At least this essay from Dylan Matthews is more of an opinion piece, and Dylan’s entitled to his opinions and to write about them, even if they are more or less spun out of pure fantasy. That’s what this is, of course — a series of improbable what-ifs that ignore historical realities and contexts for simplistic assumptions, built around a trollish central argument guaranteed to get clicks. It’s practically old-school undergrad blogging at its most pure, and only needs some Rule 5 imagery to complete the experience.
According to Matthews, a British colonial system would have produced fairer treatment for Native Americans, even though the British and French pitted them against each other mercilessly prior to the American Revolution. If the British stuck around, then that would have continued and gotten worse after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era as the British tried to eat into French territory. It might be true that we wouldn’t have pursued Native American land very far past the Ohio Valley, but only because the French held the Midwest all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Had the British been left in charge here rather than the Americans, the Louisiana Purchase likely would never have taken place, as the French wouldn’t have sold it to their enemies in England. That means that the US would only exist to the east of the Mississippi, which hardly sounds preferable to today, or the colonists would have had to fight more wars with France to gain the Midwest. And that would still leave us with Mexico owning most of the West Coast.
Matthews also argues that British control would have ended slavery sooner, apparently because the British managed to end the slave trade earlier than we did:
The main reason the revolution was a mistake is that the British Empire, in all likelihood, would have abolished slavery earlier than the US did, and with less bloodshed.
Abolition in most of the British Empire occurred in 1834, following the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. That left out India, but slavery was banned there too in 1843. In England itself, slavery was illegal at least going back to 1772. That’s decades earlier than the United States.
Can anyone spot the fallacy in this argument? In 1772, the colonies still belonged to the Crown … and it didn’t end slavery here at all. It didn’t impact the British slave trade much either; it took William Wilberforce more than three decades to end the British domination of the slave trade in 1807. Furthermore, the colonies here were not a conquered people but autonomous enough that the British abolition wouldn’t have impacted the southern colonies, not for a very long time. The outposts where the British managed to dictate emancipation didn’t have home rule in the same sense as the American colonies had it — nor would the South have just acquiesced on the question, as the Northern colonies found out to their frustration. We just would have had a civil war a few years earlier, and probably in a far more messy form, with an almost-certain political partition typical in former British Empire outposts in the post-colonial era.
Finally, Matthews insists that we would have protected ourselves better from dictatorship:
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.
Say, perhaps Matthews might want to look at 17th-century English history for an object lesson on that score. Oliver Cromwell became a de facto dictator by leveraging the power of Parliament against the King, which committed regicide and made Cromwell the Protector. Even if Matthews isn’t terribly familiar with that history, the founders of the American system certainly were. When drafting the Constitution, they ensured that the executive and legislative branches had co-equal power, with checks and balances to ensure that neither branch produced a dictatorship.
For that matter, Matthews might want to study the history of 20th-century parliamentary systems, especially one in particular — the Weimar Republic. Parliamentary systems provide no particular protection against dictatorships, and the instability of multi-party politics can actually create more of those dangers. But here’s a better question: why does Matthews want a parliamentary system and its supposed bulwark against dictatorships? Ironically, it’s because he likes their unchecked power. No, really:
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 presidential systems.
On second thought, skip the history lessons, and study the use of irony instead.
Bfl
Voxdrivel
This may be worthy of a Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping.
I love all the leftwing terms used like “might have, probably, more than likely, could have, would have,” etc.
Liberals live in a fake world of fantasy and retardation.
Well, lets see now. From the start, the Pilgrims coming to America seeking religious liberty, that, religious liberty the underlying basis of America, now officially ended with this SCOTUS ruling, what’s next on the agenda but to attack the revolution itself.
First goes religious liberty, next to go the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.
Yeah, because the UK is in such good shape right now. It’s not great here, but it’s a nightmare over there.
“The main reason the revolution was a mistake is that the British Empire, in all likelihood, would have abolished slavery earlier than the US did, and with less bloodshed.”
What a ninny. You can’t call something a mistake if the mistake is only apparent with the benefit of decades of hindsight. Nobody at the time knew when slavery would be abolished, in Britain or the colonies, so that couldn’t possibly factor into their decision.
“But what do we mean by the American Revolution?
Do we mean the American war?
The Revolution was effected before the war commenced.
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people;
a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.
That was the real American Revolution.”
~John Adams 1818
If they mean that the colonists’ lives were better under George III and they had more rights than we do under Obama, I agree!
...and if those evil Christians hadn’t kept burning down the Library at Alexandria then we would have had flying cars a lot earlier and because they were invented by Africans we would have had a lot more respect for Black people and not enslaved them and ...
Its defies common sense to assume their motives were altruistic.
Well, it was a highly risky maneuver that fortunately worked out just swell, ‘till lately....
Just a few days ago a comment here at Free Republic said that the British promised emancipation to any American slave who joined the British Army during the Revolutionary War - in other words, roughly “four score and seven years” before Lincoln and the Union Army got the job done.
The British promise, according to the FR comment, was not a hollow one.
When the British withdrew their troops in 1782, they transported all their black soldiers by ship to British controlled Canada.
Well we all know the rats hate the constitution
Still pushing the parliamentary system I see. That’s what this article is about, the stuff about slaves and Indians is just window dressing.
Minorities most affected...same old song and dance.
|
|
|
| "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces guarding our country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." |
First if no American revolution then there’s no French Revolution was inspired by it and all the other revolutions that happened afterwards overthrew monarchies
Well, there was improvement from the English Civil War, but it didn’t stick. That’s why it was necessary for many Europeans weary of tyranny to meet in Holland, come to America and win the Revolution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.