Was the American Revolution justified?

[Pitcairn17]

The British Empire never committed genocide of the kind meted out to the American Indians.

I believe the aboriginal peoples of Australia, who were driven off their lands and slaughtered in the decades after the First Fleet, would beg to differ.

 

[VonDerTann]

False - in large part because there was no such genocide.

 

[VonDerTann]

The evils inflicted by the natives upon people like St. Isaac Jogues is beyond description. The tortures they inflicted on him and others like him rivalled the worst tortures meted out by the KGB or the Gestapo. Gnawing his and his compatriots’ thumbs off, and pulling out their arm tendons by the wrists, were just one of them.

Yeah, those usually get passed over in school, in favor of the whole “white men committed genocide”-thing.

 

[VonDerTann]

The narative of white genocide against native americans is a myth. It is fiction, created largely by anti-Americans.

 

[Diaconia]

Thank God for it!

Our Republic would not exist without it. The greatest nation in the world would not exist without it.

In fact, this very forum would not exist had it not occurred; Catholic Answers would not exist, etc.

Popes are elected, monarchs just win a lottery being born into lucky families. Not the same thing. Are there any remaining monarchies where the king or queen is the actual ruler? Not the prime minister?

Emigration is allowed. Any American who waxes eloquently about the glory of the monarchy can move to one any time they wish. Anyone who doesn’t like our Republic can leave any time.

In the meantime — I’ll keep my religious freedom, my guns, and my redneck, patriotic liberties without apology.

Further, I give my eternal respect and unending thanks for those men who gave their lives to secure my freedom. So, either thank a veteran (living and dead), or pick up a weapon and stand the post. Freedom isn’t free.

Americans saved Europe, by last count, from two World Wars. Without us, the remaining monarchies would be speaking German today. Bitte schön!

God bless America, my home sweet home,
Deacon Christopher

 

[VonDerTann]

Yeah, and everybody runs to thank the “army of rapists” as one historian called them, aka the red army, and forgets or ignores the millions of tons shipped to them by the USA during WWII.

And few thank the USA.

 

[VonDerTann]

Post of the year!

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Commonwealth membership might be an option, but many if not most Americans would absolutely freak out — assuming they understood what that even means. The typical American neither knows, nor cares, that there is even such a thing AS the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth contains republics. All countries are independent. It’s just a club of nations where leaders meet and discuss. There’s no treaties being signed. No free trade or free movement of people. Though one benefit is Americans living in the UK would automatically be able to vote in UK elections as Commonwealth citizens without having to gain UK citizenship and the US doesn’t even have to do the same! Canada certainly doesn’t allow UK nationals living here without Canadian citizenship to vote in our elections but if I were to move to the UK on a 5 year visa, I would be able to vote in any election while living there.

Commonwealth realms are different. These actually have the Queen as head of state and it fundamentally changes the way a country is run though probably no visible day-to-day effects are seen.

You know all of that, and I know all of that, but your typical, garden-variety American wouldn’t have the slightest idea what any of that means.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The British Empire never committed genocide of the kind meted out to the American Indians.

Those who spread smallpox with infected blankets WERE the Brits. Ultimately, though, the “American genocide” was disease, which preceded the immigration of white settlers by at least a century if not two. Indians traded widely among themselves and spread disease well ahead of immigration.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Say what?

I don’t deny that — you’re the Irishman here and you would know if anyone would — but I never heard that before. Indeed, you learn something new every day.

The argument for Revolution was not simply that “taxes were too high.” It was much more than that, and there were profound constitutional issues at stake. Essentially, the question was this:

Were the colonies in a relationship with the Crown or Parliament?

If the answer to that question was the Crown, then Parliament had no authority to tax the colonies. Parliament was the legislature for Great Britain only. Each colony had its own legislature, which was equal to Parliament within its own sphere.

This is what the Patriots believed. The colonies were united to the Crown, and therefore, the colonial legislatures were mini-Parliaments…

This is very educational. I didn’t know that either. Thank you.

Seems to run contrary to concepts such as free speech. ‘Love it or leave it’ seems a particularly jejune argument to use when people disagree.
[/quote]

How true. Many Americans are not as supportive of “free speech” as they think they are. Without realizing it, they mean something more like "the freedom to be a ‘good, patriotic American’ ". Genuine “freedom of speech” should include the freedom to call into question the very foundations of this country.

Not on their own they didn’t. I know the American narrative is that you lads stepped in on a white horse and saved everyone but the Soviets did a fair bit of the heavy lifting too as did many others.
[/quote]

They sure did.

Not defending atheistic Bolshevist Communism, just giving credit where credit is due.

 

[StudentMI]

Emigration is allowed. Any American who waxes eloquently about the glory of the monarchy can move to one any time they wish. Anyone who doesn’t like our Republic can leave any time.

I’ve always found that a particularly lame argument. I’ve seen it used against those who argued against going to war in Iraq, to those who thought Obama was a terrible president, etc. Free speech is still a right here, isn’t it?

 

[StudentMI]

 

[ltwin]

The “truths” which it goes on to enumerate are in fact “self-evidently” false. Man is not necessarily born free, as the slaves of some of the Founding Fathers could testify;

The Declaration isn’t talking about one’s legal status when born, though. It’s talking about how we are created by God:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

Is this not what the Bible teaches? We are all created in God’s image == equally. Our natures are the same. You do not have any more inherent dignity or worth than I do and vice versa. One’s legal status as a slave does not make one a lesser creation. In God’s eye, there is no difference between the master and the slave, the rich and the poor.

nor is man’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unalienable (just ask the guys on death row if their right to these things has been alienated or not.)

As a person, you have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but you don’t have the right to violate other people’s rights. Those rights can be taken by the government (after due process) in order to protect the rights of other people. This is part of the government’s biblical responsibility to restrain evil. If you are on death row, its because you’ve been found guilty of murder, and murder violates divine law.

The grievances of the revolutionaries were imaginary.

What was imaginary? Keeping standing armies in the colonies in time of peace? Holding mock trials for British soldiers accused of murdering colonists instead of letting them be tried in colonial courts? Taxation without representation? The creation of courts without juries? Trying to make corrupt the judges? Using patronage to corrupt colonial politics? The British attempts to disrupt colonial legislatures so that necessary local laws could not be passed?

All of that stuff happened. You can say it wasn’t a big deal, but I’d disagree with you.

If you were the colonists facing a future in which a Parliament thousands of miles a way claimed absolute power over you, these abuses would look intolerable. No one wants to live under a government that claims unlimited and arbitrary power where there is no rule of law. At least in Britain, the people had the rule of law. In America, they wouldn’t even have that because Parliament claimed that its power over the colonies was unlimited. The Americans would have had to live in fear and uncertainty every day completely at Parliament’s mercy.

I really don’t understand why conservative Americans are so proud of it. It was a total violation of conservative

American conservatism is not the same as European conservatism. US conservatives are trying to conserve the principles of the American Revolution, which was essentially classical liberalism.

Therefore, modern American conservatism is classical liberalism. Modern American liberalism is more accurately called progressivism or social liberalism.

 

[StudentMI]

US conservatives are trying to conserve the principles of the American Revolution, which was essentially classical liberalism.

Which was and is remains revolutionary against traditional values. Go back and read Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu.

The grievances of the colonists were a mix of classical liberal values and some real grievances against a pretty mild King. And the ‘revolutionaries’ quickly proved the adage that a revolutionary is a conservative the day after the revolution with such things as Shays’ Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, Fries Rebellion, the veritable coup d’etat that enshrined the Constitution, etc.

 

[PickyPicky]

Here’s a thoughtful article by a Catholic scholar on the American Revolution and just war theory.

https://kennedyinstitute.georgetown.edu/files/KeownAmericasWar.pdf

Whether one endorses his finding or not, he is at least clearly right about the groundless hyperbole in the Declaration of Independence.

 

[VonDerTann]

I don’t think it’s thoughtful. I think it’s ridiculous.

Right off, his framework is incorrect - rather than use the just war doctrine
(the war started before there even was a United States), the better analysis would be StudentMI’s framework of resistance. So right off his analysis is suspect.

But assuming it’s even fair to look at this from the just war concept, he’s still wrong:

First off, the author notes that essentially all other authorities - including Queen Elizabeth herself, 200 years later - conclude that the war was justified.

Second, the author himself does not even conclude the criteria for a just war weren’t met: he talks in vague, watered down generalities that maybe they weren’t; or that they were “questionable.”

Third, anyone can always conclude, as he does, “the colonists could have tried harder to avert war.” That’s an easy dodge, because you can always say - with benefit of hindsight as you sit at your computer in your nice warm house - “something else might have worked!”

Fourth, he assumes people had access to the same information then as we do now. For example, he makes a big point that British commanders had been given conflicting orders including to negotiate. But how on earth would colonists - many of whom were farmers with no formal military training - know what their formally-trained military opponents’ orders were, especially when the orders were secret and were given to generals and admirals? The colonists could no more know that than you could know what orders have been given to an admiral at sea today.

It’s obvious that he’s wrong that the war had no chance of success - as history proves.

He blames the war for causing death and asks if the deaths were justified. All wars cause death. The fact that deaths happen in war doesn’t make them unjust.

This is all just off the top of my head!

This author has little to offer. His article is armchair-historian navel gazing.

 

[GKMotley]

And a fair bit of what they lifted came to them from US sources, in US/British bottoms.

And I think you know what I think of the part the Soviets played in bringing the ETO to a successful conclusion.

 

[PickyPicky]

First off, the author notes that essentially all other authorities - including Queen Elizabeth herself, 200 years later - conclude that the war was justified

Yes indeed. Interesting, isn’t it? That Americans would so conclude is not surprising — it is, after all, their origin myth — but the British concurrence is more surprising. Somehow we managed to absorb it into the Whig view of history. Now that the Whig view has been jettisoned, who can say how opinions may change?

I’m afraid I am not persuaded by the rest of your post, but that won’t bother you.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m guessing if the U.S. had not “seceded” from Britain, the Brits would have set us adrift long ago anyway. I really can’t see England being happy with an appendage several times its size and population.

 

[VonDerTann]

And yet India fit that bill perfectly, and look what happened.