Does anyone worry that the American Revolution and the Mexican-American War were grossly unjust wars of aggression initiated by Americans?

[nordskoven]

Let’s grant statehood to Mexico’s states and we can work and buy American again without the oligarchy that concentrates wealth in the hands of a dozen families. I already threw the pearls of wisdom regarding Eastern seaboard tribes allying against the oppressive PEQUOT tribe; and Mexican tribes allying against the oppressive Montezuma II (after he threw out his two co-regents); and America’s debt to the Iriquois Confederation in helping shape our Constitution and Bill of Rights. A little real-time aid to the needy and ill-educated might be in order, not this self-hating what-if-ism. “Pray and work.” Most High God, make us salt and light to the world; and prosper the corporal works of mercy we effect by our hands and resources; all for Your honor and glory. AMEN

 

[sw85]

Guess I’m the odd man out here.

Yes, I do think the American Revolution was a bad thing. I don’t think it would or could pass muster by the relatively strict standards of a just war. I think the Founders were deist, Freemason traitors of the sort who went on to persecute Catholics in Calles-era Mexico (which, everyone seems to forget, was conducted with American aid). I think modern America in all its vile, Satanic antiglory is the logical fulfillment of the principles on which it was founded.

I don’t worry about it, though. I certainly don’t disobey it. Illegitimate though its founding was, it is now the authority of the United States, and we are enjoined to obey it, except when it commands us directly to sin.

 

[Tighty_Whitey]

Actually what I worry about are pseudointellectuals that think their Monday morning quarterback routine embues them with moral superiority and the right to pass judgment on people and events from ages past.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Guess I’m the odd man out here.

Yes, I do think the American Revolution was a bad thing. I don’t think it would or could pass muster by the relatively strict standards of a just war. I think the Founders were deist, Freemason traitors of the sort who went on to persecute Catholics in Calles-era Mexico (which, everyone seems to forget, was conducted with American aid). I think modern America in all its vile, Satanic antiglory is the logical fulfillment of the principles on which it was founded.

I don’t worry about it, though. I certainly don’t disobey it. Illegitimate though its founding was, it is now the authority of the United States, and we are enjoined to obey it, except when it commands us directly to sin.

Good points.

 

[benjohnson]

If the American Revolution didn’t happen, we would be reading this on the AAF (Anglican Answer Forum.)

 

[SaintPatrick333]

I think it should also be pointed out that the American colonists absolutely did not want to go to war. It was beyond doubt a last resort, which satisfies another criteria for Just War Theory.

This might seem slightly off topic but have you ever considered the hypocrisy america has become in todays age in retrospect to the times of the revolution? Americans fight against the British using guerrilla tactics for a unified separate nation from the british commonwealth and they are labeled “freedom fighters”. The Irish fight against the british using guerrilla tactics to fight for a unified nation separate from the british commonwealth (or united kingdom if you prefer) and the american government labels them as “terrorists”.

It just seems hypocritical for me. America is riddled with double standards. I don’t fault the people living here of course. But as always, our government is to blame. What else is new?

 

[GEddie]

This might seem slightly off topic but have you ever considered the hypocrisy america has become in todays age in retrospect to the times of the revolution? Americans fight against the British using guerrilla tactics for a unified separate nation from the british commonwealth and they are labeled “freedom fighters”. The Irish fight against the british using guerrilla tactics to fight for a unified nation separate from the british commonwealth (or united kingdom if you prefer) and the american government labels them as “terrorists”.

It just seems hypocritical for me. America is riddled with double standards. I don’t fault the people living here of course. But as always, our government is to blame. What else is new?

The difference is that as a rule, nonmilitary persons were not targeted in the Anerican Revolution. There were no “stagecoach bombs” analogous to what was done in the Troubles in Ireland. Continental soldiers confronted British ones in the field.

To be sure, the USA has had a soft spot for England since 1945, and so we are not neutral with respect to them. In some ways, we are them without a queen. But the AR and the Troubles are not equivalent.

God Bless, ICXC NIKA

 

[franc1sc0]

I think the Mex American war was unjust. But I am so happy my ancestors moved to Texas and that I am American. I wouldnt like it one bit if they gave back Texas to Mexico. I just dont like how Anglos in North Texas hate when someone talks Spanglish. Spanish has been spoken here for more than 500 yrs. people sure forget history pretty quick…

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

This might seem slightly off topic but have you ever considered the hypocrisy america has become in todays age in retrospect to the times of the revolution? Americans fight against the British using guerrilla tactics for a unified separate nation from the british commonwealth and they are labeled “freedom fighters”. The Irish fight against the british using guerrilla tactics to fight for a unified nation separate from the british commonwealth (or united kingdom if you prefer) and the american government labels them as “terrorists”.

It just seems hypocritical for me. America is riddled with double standards. I don’t fault the people living here of course. But as always, our government is to blame. What else is new?

Good point.

In view, no matter what the name of the land in which one lives, one’s first loyalty should be to God and to God’s Church.

Thus, I think we Catholics should make Catholic judgments on matters of actions and policies by secular governments, and not let ourselves be pushed or pulled into agreeing with or supporting unholy policies just because a worldly nation’s secular leaders or powerful citizens or majority of citizens the policies.

 

[GEddie]

I think the Mex American war was unjust. But I am so happy my ancestors moved to Texas and that I am American. I wouldnt like it one bit if they gave back Texas to Mexico. I just dont like how Anglos in North Texas hate when someone talks Spanglish. Spanish has been spoken here for more than 500 yrs. people sure forget history pretty quick…

If it were up to me, Spanish would be made an official language in this country, solely to require schoolkids to learn it. The old jokes about Americans and speaking only one language are too true and have gone on too long.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

I think the Mex American war was unjust. But I am so happy my ancestors moved to Texas and that I am American. I wouldnt like it one bit if they gave back Texas to Mexico. I just dont like how Anglos in North Texas hate when someone talks Spanglish. Spanish has been spoken here for more than 500 yrs. people sure forget history pretty quick…

The best thing would be to give all the lands of the earth back to GOD. For too long we’ve be acting like it is ours to do with as we please or as our human leaders please.

 

[Keith_W_OR_USA]

In the American Revolution of 1776-1781, the Americans were all British citizens who had a duty to honor and respect the British government. The British government was not enslaving or raping Americans (White Americans were doing that to Black Americans, but that is a different matter.) They were not carrying out genocide or running concentration camps. The British government simply imposed taxes that some of the people in the 13 colonies did not like. But today, we have taxes that some Americans do not like. There will always be taxes that lots of people will not like. Does taxation really ever justify shooting government soldiers in the head with a rifle–because that is what the American soldiers in the American Revolution did.

In the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, President Polk carried out a plan of his own making to obtain by force the Mexican states of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico. He had earlier tried to obtain those states by negotiation and payment, but the Mexican government refused to even meet with the emissary that President Polk sent to Mexico City to make a deal. The Mexican states of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico were larger than the current-day USA states of California and New Mexico. The Mexican states of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico contained, besides today’s California and New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. President Polk’s plan was to provoke a conflict over the dispute over southern border of Texas, and then to use that fighting in southern Texas (down by the Rio Grande) to justify an invasion and occupation of the the faraway Mexican-states of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico, and to also justify an invasion and occupation of all the major cities of Mexico. The US government refused to end its occupation of Mexico City until the Mexican government agreed to cede to the USA all the 2 Mexican states that President Polk had tried to buy from Mexico before the war. In the end, the US government got the 2 Mexican states and paid a few million dollars to the Mexican government. But since the deal was done “at gunpoint,” it was not a valid sale per all forms of law in all countries and in all times. Abraham Lincoln, was was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, publicly condemned President Polk for his dishonest and unjust actions and motives in starting the Mexican-American War. Later, Ulysses S. Grant, who was an officer in the Mexican-American War, condemned it as the most unjust thing he’d ever seen.

About 1/3 of the land in the lower 48 states of the USA was thus obtained by theft and murder. Or so it seems. The professional historians all seem to know this, yet few Americans seem to know this.

And I really never hear anyone asking if the American Revolution of 1776-1781 was perhaps, by Catholic just war standards, an unjust war.

In 2003, Blessed Pope John Paul II strongly condemned as unjust the planned and ultimately carried out 2003 USA and UK invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet, it seems like virtually no one in the USA paid any attention to that.

It seems like we have been deceived. It seems like we pay no attention to what our Church teaches, and just listen to “patriotic” propaganda.

The treaty of Gaudalope was ratified by both countries after the M-A war. So the settlement of the war was legal and valid.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

The treaty of Gaudalope was ratified by both countries after the M-A war. So the settlement of the war was legal and valid.

That is majority view.

That is the way the war is generally taught in schools in the USA, as far as I can tell.

In personal matters, is is clear that if Man A kills one son of Man B, and holds another son of Man B hostage until Man B deeds over his land to Man A, then the sale is not legal or valid at all, and no court in the world would enforce or uphold such a deal. Instead, Man A would be arrested and put on trail for murder, kidnapping, and theft.

By the standards of Catholic Just War Doctrine and by the standards of the Nuremberg Principles, I believe that President Polk was (beside being a forced slavery exploiter of his fellow human beings), a war criminal.

It seems noteworthy that there are no major monuments or memorials to the American victory in the Mexican-American War. It seems that the historians know too well what the nature of that war was. They know that that war was condemned by Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and, years after the fact, was condemned by Theodore Roosevelt (who was not a peace-monger in general).

 

[JNdoum]

It seems noteworthy that there are no major monuments or memorials to the American victory in the Mexican-American War. It seems that the historians know too well what the nature of that war was. They know that that war was condemned by Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and, years after the fact, was condemned by Theodore Roosevelt (who was not a peace-monger in general).

I would consider the lack of memorials to be pretty irrelevant. I think that’s mainly because it actually wasn’t a major war, even if we got a lot from it. We don’t have any monuments to the Spanish-American War, the American-Canadian War (I think that’s what it’s called), Sherman’s Rebellion, the French-Indian War, or the Korean War. On the other hand, we have monuments to the Vietnam War, which pretty much the entire nation condemned as an unnecessary and unjust war. Monuments have more to do with how important the war was in the national spirit, and how many people died. In fact, there may be small, non0national monuments to all of these wars, that nobody really cares about. I don’t believe that bad feelings about a war would prevent a monument.

 

[starshiptrooper]

In the American Revolution of 1776-1781, the Americans were all British citizens who had a duty to honor and respect the British government. The British government was not enslaving or raping Americans (White Americans were doing that to Black Americans, but that is a different matter.) They were not carrying out genocide or running concentration camps. The British government simply imposed taxes that some of the people in the 13 colonies did not like. But today, we have taxes that some Americans do not like. There will always be taxes that lots of people will not like. Does taxation really ever justify shooting government soldiers in the head with a rifle–because that is what the American soldiers in the American Revolution did.

I strongly suggest you read the Declaration of Independence. There were so many more wrongs committed by the British against the Americans besides taxation without representation, one example is deprivation of trial by jury.

 

[bearer]

To answers the OP’s question, no, I don’t.

 

[bearer]

The best thing would be to give all the lands of the earth back to GOD. For too long we’ve be acting like it is ours to do with as we please or as our human leaders please.

Have you read the OT, particularly Genesis? God specifically and deliberately gave land to man.

 

[wasserfall]

Was it wrong? I wasn’t there. I don’t know and I certainly would not sign a petition to give this and back to Mexico…

I dunno… Maybe we would be better off if California were back in Mexico.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I strongly suggest you read the Declaration of Independence. There were so many more wrongs committed by the British against the Americans besides taxation without representation, one example is deprivation of trial by jury.

At the time of the American Revolution, Britain, and all of its colonies, were ruled by a king. At the time, the king actually had some serious power, and could do at least some things by whim. But the more serious power, perhaps, was composed of the nobility and gentry; the ones who ran parliament. At the time, few had the franchise, even in Britain, and the colonies were supposed to be satisfied with “virtual representation” in parliament. Americans had no members of parliament or any prospect of ever having any. We all purport to believe in democracy, or so I have been reliably informed. Imagine if we were told today that we couldn’t vote at all in the government that controlled us, and that we would be ruled by a handful of privileged men.

And what if we further knew that we were, then and there, the most prosperous people, man for man, in the world, and that the British social class system that ensured the relative poverty of most, was our future? There are a number of reasons why Americans were more prosperous than actual Britons at the time, but the relative freedom of action Americans had, due to the distance from Britain, was no small part of it.

And, of course, there was a great deal more anti-Catholicism and anti-Dissenter pressure in Britain than we thought to be our right. After all, many of the original colonists left Britain precisely because they had no freedom of religion there. And Britain had not changed its mind about it, either.

In other words, we could readily see what strong British control would almost certainly mean to us eventually, and we rebelled against it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If it were up to me, Spanish would be made an official language in this country, solely to require schoolkids to learn it. The old jokes about Americans and speaking only one language are too true and have gone on too long.

ICXC NIKA

Well, maybe it would be a good thing. But being multilingual has not been all that much help in making the EU cohesive, has it? There actually might be some merit in a nation having a single official language.