It's almost safe to watch tv again, now that another July 4th is fading into the background. In case you don't know what July 4th is all about, it's the day that my American friends call Independance Day. Most people seem to think that it celebrates the day that the Thirteen Colonies became independant from English rule. Actually, the only thing that happened on July 4th, 1776, was that a small group of (mostly) rich people signed a pretentious piece of paper that they named The Declaration of Independance. None of these men were democratically elected by the people of the Colonies, and really had no legal or moral right to claim that they spoke for all the people. Nor did they have the moral right to commit illegal actions which led to the Revolutionary War.
Historians tell us that the majority of the colonists never supported the revolution. People who spoke out against the revolution often found that their homes and businesses were vandalized and they themselves were beaten up and some were even killed. Thousands of those who opposed the revolution, the United Empire Loyalists, were forced to leave their homes behind. Most of them fled to Canada, where they became valued assets to the five Canadian Colonies.
The Revolutionary War lasted for more than 5 years and caused untold misery, deaths and property losses. I wonder why my American friends don't celebrate the 19th of October, the day that Cornwallis and the British officially surrendered.
Sadly, when I look at the history of the United States during the 234 years since then, I see that the colonists just took a long jump out of the frying pan into the fire. They just traded one tyrant, the British king, for a government which has ultimately become far more tyrannical than King George could have even imagined becoming.
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