Replies

This is getting absolutely absurd. Both in historical context and personally.

Use some common sense perspective. In the great scheme of things, Britain is and was the next best thing to the USA. If you cannot acknowledge that, I can’t help you. We took their superior society a step further and made it better. To view it otherwise is to be as ridiculous as the liberals who whine that Christianity has been just as cruel and atrocious as Islam.

It doesn’t take much to look over my posting history. You can prove it yourself. You can even find me on the net at large under this name. I know my upbringing and my patriotism. Even ask Pharmboy how long I’ve been on the colonial & RevWar pings. Never mind my membership in the Friends of Monmouth Battlefield, and contributing to the save Paoli fund years ago. I’ve tried to be patient but you all libeling me personally is pushing the envelope.

Don’t libel me just because I see the right to secede. I don’t stop seeing that right just because the secessionists had or wanted slaves. Supporting that right is not supporting the slavery idea. You need to separate these issues. It’s a right for them as much as for the colonials, the American British (and that’s what they would actually have been).

If you persist in this, I suppose you can libel Walt Williams as a racist slaver who self-loathes.

the OlLine Rebel: "This is getting absolutely absurd.
Both in historical context and personally."

Yes, there is much you have so far failed to grasp.

the OlLine Rebel: "In the great scheme of things, Britain is and was the next best thing to the USA.
If you cannot acknowledge that, I can’t help you."

Sure, but so what?
Our Founders did not simply copy the British system, rather they looked at every political system in recorded history, and took what worked best from each.

But it seems your larger point is an effort to claim the Brits weren't really very oppressive, really they were nice friendly people, just like today, and so our Founders had no real cause for Revolution -- do I have that correct?

And somehow you seem unimpressed by our Founders' Declaration of Independence itemized list of dozens of complaints against "the King of England", including one eventually dropped, that "he" had imposed slavery on the colonies, and would not let them abolish it!
More to the point, the king wanted to rule over his colonies without giving them a voice in Parliament.
So "no taxation without representation" was the slogan which eventually won over our "low information" Founding generation.

the OlLine Rebel: "Don’t libel me just because I see the right to secede."

It's always amusing, and sometimes bemusing, to see how quick our Pro-Confederates are to insult those who disagree, and just as quick to "take offense" at words normal people consider non-insulting.

the OlLine Rebel: "I don’t stop seeing that right just because the secessionists had or wanted slaves.
Supporting that right is not supporting the slavery idea.
You need to separate these issues.
It’s a right for them as much as for the colonials, the American British (and that’s what they would actually have been)."

First of all, everyone on these threads acknowledges a "right to secede" -- lawfully, peacefully -- through Congress, the Supreme Court or a Constitutional Amendment, once it's approved: you're out of here, you're gone, you're history.

But if you unilaterally declare secession, "at pleasure", then start seizing property which doesn't belong to you, if you imprison, threaten and shoot at Federal officials, if you formally declare war on the United States, then you're fate will be pretty much the same as that last crowd which pulled such stunts.

Second, there's a huge difference between our Founders in 1775 and slave-holding secessionists in 1861.
For one: Founders like Ben Franklin had spent many years in London, trying to negotiate peaceful resolutions of Colonists concerns, with no results.
By contrast, the Slave-Power had ruled in Washington DC, virtually the entire time from the Republic's Founding in 1788 until secession in 1861.

For another difference: over many years, our Founders had developed a long list of actual oppressions and usurpations, which they spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.
By contrast, the Slave-Power having ruled for generations, had nothing serious to complain about, except a potential future threat to slavery represented by the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln.

the OlLine Rebel: "I suppose you can libel Walt Williams as a racist slaver who self-loathes."

Is that your opinion?
I've had no such thought.

In the great scheme of things, Britain is and was the next best thing to the USA.

In 1776, it was not the 'next best thing." The Americans, because of their isolation became something very different than the British, something much better.

In 1776, you could not serve in Parliament if you were a Catholic. But in America, you could sign the Declaration of Independence if you were a Catholic.

In England in 1776, if you were born working class or as a peasant, you would die as working class or a peasant.

In America, it did not matter what class you were born into. The sky was the limit based on your abilities and hard work.

In England in 1776, a King, who ruled under a notion of Divine Right, was the final arbertor of life or death over millions of people.

And the Founders either personally remembered or were told by the parents of the brutal religious and political wars in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

In 1776, outside of America, probably the best places were in The Netherlands or Switzerland which had their own democracys and did not engage in the folly religious and class distinctions.

In Europe, in 1776 under George III, England at best was in 3rd place as far as personal liberty and opportunity goes.

Don't have some rosy picture of the UK in the late 18th Century... even though it was far from the worse, for the average guy, it was not that nice of a place to be. America was far better, the people here knew it was better, and they fought to keep the Freedom they had made for themselves.

The Revolutionary War was was not about taxes as the left has been trying to brainwash us for the last 60 years. The taxes Parliament imposed and the King attempt to enforce were just the evidence of what a government people had no control over could do to them without their permission.

The War was about freedom and individual liberty. Not perfect then, but far better that England or any other nation on earth would achieve for well over 100 years.

The Founders and the United States set the standards and you seem to demean that by saying well, it wouldn't have been that bad to stay under the British.

That IMHO, is a desperate attempt to justify what a group of people who denied individual liberty in 1861 did.