It’s July the 4th and that means that it is 249 years since the United States of America declared independence from Great Britain (we were the Kingdom of Great Britain back then and not the United Kingdom that didn’t happen until 1801). The early years of the United States were shall we say politically interesting with much argument some political and some a bit more physical about what shape the new nation of the United States would take.
But the American experiment in self governance, an experiment that might have looked like it was going to fail in the latter years of the 18th century, has succeeded maybe beyond the wildest dreams of America’s Founding Fathers. The United States grew from a struggling new republic into one of the world’s superpowers. America’s scientific, industrial and cultural achievements have been many. It’s easy to forget how ubiquitous American technology is today and I’m typing this piece on a machine that would never had existed were it not for American ingenuity.
America leads the world on giving its citizens rights in areas such as freedom of speech that many of us in more oppressive nations such as the United Kingdom look upon with envy. What’s amazing is that American’s share their achievements with the world. For example: As a Briton I can write about subjects that might be considered as ‘controversial’ in the UK but I can publish my thoughts in America and therefore be at one remove protected to a minor extent by the USA’s First Amendment. The US First Amendment and its application to social networks like X has not only given voiceless Britons an opportunity to speak, but has probably helped keep some Britons who speak of controversial issues online, out of His Majesty’s Prisons.
America isn’t perfect, no nation created by man can ever by without flaw. As someone who takes an interest in US politics I can see that American politics is not in-corrupt and is often a roiling sea of discontent, but in that America is little different from many other nations. The difference between America and many other nations in that regard is that the American people can choose the path that best suits them. Americans can choose who serves them from in positions from the bottom to the top, from Sheriff or School Board members to their Head of State, none of those can Britons do.
Today is much like any other day for the majority of Britons, July 4th has no particular significance to them, it’s just another workday. But for some of us, those of us who have an interest in history and geopolitics, July the 4th is worth marking because of what came out of the Declaration of Independence and the influence that it has had not just on the United States but the world.
Happy Birthday America.
Not forgetting that the American founding fathers looked at the flaws and caveats in the English Bill of Rights and turned it onto the robust charter of inviolable rights and freedoms, a shield against creeping despotism that even smart-arse lawyers, corrupt politicians and various grifters cannot break, particularly the Second Amendment that empowers ordinary citizens to protect both it and themselves.
The second amendment was hewn out of the vague English Bill of Rights “right te bear arms as allowed by law” (in other words, no real right at all), to,
“the right to bear arms shall not be infringed” despite the gun-grabbers’ best/worst efforts.
The right to FREE SPEECH, which can have some negative connotations such as giving a voice to hate merchants and shit bags to exploit, while here in the once-UK those right “ought” to exist (but don’t actually) but only on the precincts of parliament.
Worse, Tony Blair’s (it’s always that fucker) much vaunted but caveat and get-out clause ridden Human Rights Act that should you actually read the text and not just the misleading title, actually removed them at a stroke, except it seems, for criminals, neredowells and those of the privileged “victim classes” which excludes the majority.
So, well done America, for identifying the self-serving shitbaggery of the English texts, and modifying them to protect “we the people” rather than “we the establishment”.
Happy Independence Day, and looking at how the UK has devolved I to a hard left, authoritarian, nannying, oppressive despotism under a dangerous bunch of sociopathic student union Trots, you had a lucky escape. The only fly in the ointment is that the same scumbags being protected and enabled by said Student Union Trots are also enabled by the American Bill of Rights but from a different direction, the former, as crawling abasement to the creeping leftist and islamic cancer, the latter, because their free speech is encoded in Law.