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Good Question. Was the Revolutionary War Justified? Americans fought a war to gain the kind of freedom that Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were simply given. February 8, Free Newsletters Get the best from CT editors, delivered straight to your inbox! Tags: Independence Day. Issue: February 8 , Vol. This article is from the February 8 issue. Log in. February 8 More from this Issue. Now it sneaks out when I least expect it.
At every opportunity, Great Britain tried to ensure peace for its colonists, to protect their property and provide representation through entertainment of colonial ambassadors.
Americans refused to help pay for a debt they were partly responsible for, undermined their government at every turn and revolted making an ally out of France, a centuries-old enemy of the British, in the process. Ultimately, the American Revolution is not so clearly justified, as the demands of the colonists were outlandish and the British government treated the colonies with fairness in their governing.
Cancel reply. Your email address will not be published. For those of you having what kind of looks like a hissy-fit on here debating politics like a couple of 4 year olds fighting over a toy that they both want, instead of acting mature and just dropping it… Remember that for someone like me, in middle school, assigned a Civics paper telling us we need to argue for the side of the British, and why the American Colonies were unjustified in leaving Great Britain, this information is quite helpful for us….
A storyline to which future generations will look back with a great deal of pride and jingoism. This was astute statecraft with sound foresight, particularly for a federal system which would come to value and rely on a unifying original story. The reality is that the war was not a revolution, not even close to a revolution. Some historians often like to position it as a parallel revolution to the French Revolution. Some of the same great minds were active in the sphere of both events but the two bear little resemblance to eachother.
In its purest form a revolution as experienced in France, Russia, China etc , results in the complete overthrow of the political institutions and systems from within and the establishment of a completely new order to replace it.
The American war of independence resulted in the creation of a new independent and sovereign nation, with a system that far from overthrowing, borrowed many facets of the British established order, with the exception of the monarchy. Although the early blueprint was simply an alternative form of demagoguery with a lifetime president appointed by the political elite rather than the electorat.
Not too far removed from the Aristocratic nature of the British heirarchy. The concept of a freely elected president coming much later.
They also adopted the Westminster bicameral parliamentary system of legislature, and the English common law legal system. The written constitution was a free think, in order to enshrine the basic rights of the citizen, but this too was put essentially together on the framework of both the medieval English principles of Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights.
The most radical and novel things to come out of the independence movement were the separation of powers and the devolution of powers to states within the new federation but neither of these can be described as revolutionary changes.
Learn some respect. Love is love, science is real, black lives matter, Biden The Brits did everything they could to defend our country, they bankrupted their Exchequer and impoverished the people in defence of the US.
In closing , when you look at all the other British colonies, particularly the English-speaking colonies, they all gained their independence once they were economically and militarily independent with a functional democratic government. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all stable, healthy democracies with none of the problems that we seem to have…….
Cmon with the rudeness. You can have an opinion that is different than someones and not be mean or rude about it. The most important fact to counter this article though is the Proclamation of Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems. It was the introduction of another unnecessary decisionmaking entity, very common in the veto point-heavy US system, that created the crisis in the first place.
This is no trivial matter. Efficient passage of legislation has huge humanitarian consequences. It makes measures of planetary importance, like carbon taxes, easier to get through; they still face political pushback, of course — Australia's tax got repealed, after all — but they can be enacted in the first place, which is far harder in the US system. And the efficiency of parliamentary systems enables larger social welfare programs that reduce inequality and improve life for poor citizens.
Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher , after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that's very good news indeed. The Westminister system of parliamentary democracy also benefits from weaker upper houses. The US is saddled with a Senate that gives Wyoming the same power as California, which has more than 66 times as many people.
Worse, the Senate is equal in power to the lower, more representative house. Most countries following the British system have upper houses — only New Zealand was wise enough to abolish it — but they're far, far weaker than their lower houses.
The Canadian Senate and the House of Lords affect legislation only in rare cases. At most, they can hold things up a bit or force minor tweaks. They aren't capable of obstruction anywhere near the level of the US Senate. Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man.
Generally speaking, in a parliamentary system, you need a head of state who is not the prime minister to serve as a disinterested arbiter when there are disputes about how to form a government — say, if the largest party should be allowed to form a minority government or if smaller parties should be allowed to form a coalition, to name a recent example from Canada.
That head of state is usually a figurehead president elected by the parliament Germany, Italy or the people Ireland, Finland , or a monarch. And monarchs are better. Monarchs are more effective than presidents precisely because they lack any semblance of legitimacy. Indeed, when the governor-general of Australia did so in it set off a constitutional crisis that made it clear such behavior would not be tolerated.
But figurehead presidents have some degree of democratic legitimacy and are typically former politicians. That enables a greater rate of shenanigans — like when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano schemed, successfully, to remove Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister due at least in part to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entreaties to do so.
Napolitano is the rule, rather than the exception. Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones have found that presidents, whether elected indirectly by parliament or directly by the people, are likelier to allow governments to change without new elections than monarchs are.
In other words, they're likelier to change the government without any democratic input at all. Monarchy is, perhaps paradoxically, the more democratic option. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.
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Emanuel Leutze This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in was a monumental mistake. Abolition would have come faster without independence 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. Independence was bad for Native Americans Starting with the Proclamation of , the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward settlement in the United States.
Robert Lindneux None of this is to minimize the extent of British and Canadian crimes against Natives. America would have a better system of government if we'd stuck with Britain 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.
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