From Vox, an article actually titled "3 Reasons the American Revolution Was A Mistake." The first two reasons are slavery and Native Americans, but the third reason is -- I kid you not -- that it would have avoided the horrible Constitution, or as they put it, "We'd have had a better system of government."
AVI was saying the other day something to the effect that members of the global elite -- journalists seem to believe that they qualify -- think of themselves as belonging to an international tribe of each other, rather than to the nations of which they are actually citizens.
I may have to make re-watching Unforgiven a regular Independence Day tradition.
8 comments:
Appears his historical understanding of slavery is a mite off.
The Islamic slave trade in Africa was alive and well in the 1900's, and probably still going on.
How nice for him to have a government that brooks no opposition and, "just does it".
This sort of writing is so foreign to me- I grew up in a time when people had different ideas as to what the US should do or be, but never the idea that the nation itself was a mistake, or that all it's works were evil.
I first ran into it about twenty years ago, though it's older -- it just used to be a very radical opinion. I would say it's more or less positively the opinion of the First Couple today, and has become mainstreamed accordingly. As have many things that were fringe ideas twenty years ago.
I first encountered it in the late 60's as a church-basement coffee house folksinger. Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and all that. I was impressionable and identified with it deeply. I went to a fairly conservative college (William and Mary), but the Zeitgeist of the Really Cool Kids was internationalist, with disdain for patriotic display* and Americanism. I think the road out from that type of liberalism is not merely intellectual, but personal, as it involves some humility and admitting to one's own bad motives.
There were many who encouraged me on that journey, but none more than CS Lewis.
*The open disdain is more offensive, but I think the quiet disdain has been more powerful. It is harder to call people out on the subtle version, in any event, even when it is clear what is being hinted at.
Grim
I would say it's more or less positively the opinion of the First Couple today, and has become mainstreamed accordingly.
If that is so, given the hostility the POTUS has shown towards the British Empire, such as returning the Churchill bust, the POTUS might want to reconcile hostility towards the British Empire with the idea that the US should not have become independent. Bit of a contradiction there.
Years ago I read Kenneth Robert's Oliver Wiswell, which is about a Loyalist's reaction to the American Revolution. It gave me some sympathy for the Loyalists. I don't know how accurate it is, but I have read that the populace back then split about evenly between loyalist, Revo, and don't care. I don't know how my ancestors split back then, but some did fight for the Revo.
AVI
first encountered it in the late 60's as a church-basement coffee house folksinger. Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and all that.
An irony here is that the Folk Song Army worshipped rabble-rousers.For that matter, weren't Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger themselves rabble rousers? What did they think Samuel Adams was, if not a rabble-rouser?
but the Zeitgeist of the Really Cool Kids was internationalist, with disdain for patriotic display* and Americanism
A further irony is that my working in Latin America turned me from a left-wing progressive into a flag-waving right winger. By comparison to countries in Latin America, the US treated the common man a lot better. Which meant that flag-waving wasn't that absurd.
Found on Instapundit, a link to a Douthat piece on the cosmopolitanistas.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-cosmopolitanism.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2&referer=
I don't know that you have to reconcile disdain for America with disdain for British Colonialism. You can keep chasing that rabbit: 'It would have been better if America had never broken from Britain. It would have been better if America had never been settled by Britain at all. It would have been better if the English had lost the Battle of the Spanish Armada. It would have been better if the Spanish had never reconquered Spain from the Moors. It would have been better if Charles Martel had lost. It would have been better...'
Journalists are helping regimes and alliances on this planet to institute human slavery 3.0. Who are they to talk about their tribe and their preferences? If it is the power of propaganda they have, the natural counter is Death. If power is all they care to justify their Slavery 3.0 with, their rhetoric of so called anti slavery, then power is all that is needed to eliminate them. On their own justifications, they shall be eviscerated.
Had they been an ally, it would be different. But they are an enemy tribe.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that my first reaction to this was 'of course they think that way'. As you mentioned, it's no longer fringe- or at least it seems larger than that- and yet so many of our neighbors, while they may not agree, don't really car that these sorts of ideas are becoming more established and maybe even mainstream.
Happy Independence Day.
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