Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Get Over It

Declaration Of Independence Is Illegal, Say British Lawyers
During the American bicentenary in 1976, British Airways ran some very funny commercials in which the late comic actor Robert Morley would implore us Yanks: "Do come home, all is forgiven!"

2 comments:

Ecgbert said...

I can go either way on that. I love the principles of the old republic (that Ron Paul still has) but I don't forget that the American Revolution was a civil war. We learn about Benedict Arnold (who was screwed over by the Continental Army and whom the British didn't like for what he did) but not of the many Loyalists, fine folk who took their oath to the King seriously and/or (like many Commonwealth monarchists today) would rather have a weak head of state far away than a real tyrant at home. And what's wrong with loving the mother country? The colonists' grievances weren't the King's fault but Parliament's. George III is one of history's maligned figures.

I like the Loyalists but lefty Canada today (SWPL paradise propped up by American economic power, nyah), not so much.

William Tighe said...

I agree with YF, up to a point. However, George III both supported and encouraged Parliament in the late 1760s and early 70s in its "confrontational" policies (rather than seeking to act as a mediator), and that was because, as he fully recognized, he owed his title to the Crown to the "Revolution Settlement" of 1689. That, in turn, leads me on to reflect that "1776 and All That" was merely turning against Crown & Parliament alike the same "Revolution Principles" of the Whigs that "justified" the events of 1688-89, in a systematized and updated form.