In re: US July 4 - Maybe it was all a mistake?

[wordswordswords]

Has anyone ever wondered if the United States might be better off if it had stayed British? If the whole Revolution hadn't happened (or if the colonies had lost)?

Of course there would probably be no July 4 celebration.

And we'd have an established church.

--Happy Independence Day to all of us in the US and A!

[Wyndham]

Words: that's treachery! Happy 4 July anyway.

Me, I think things would have been better if the founding fathers of the US had just taken some prozac (or the period equivalent, Jamaica Rum) and paid the few taxes asked of them. Some things that would have been different:

No US civil war. Slavery would have been done down long before 1863) and if it had happened (perhaps in 1807 when the slave trade was outlawed, or 1833 when slavery was outlawed in the British Empire -- or even sometime earlier as individual colonies wrestled with the Masefield decision (1777): 'slavery not known to the common law') it would have been the Southern States vs. a living British Empire. Over in six months.

No first and second world war: who would have tried us on?

Many of those areas of the world into which Western troops are now being drawn by local troubles would still be tight-money, minimum force, indirect rule colonies, getting ready, ultimately, for citizenship and the election of MPs to the imperial parliament in New York. Indeed, alteration to the Westminster system to make allowance for the fact of the US might have provided a precedent for the admission of other territories. The UN is a mess. The American alternative (US led, purpose built coalitions founded on the 'Anglosphere) is worse. An evolved/evolving empire would have been a world state -- the Anglosphere a solid fact.

In the US -- or better, British North America, as there would be no US-Canada border -- there would be no Dems and Republicans. There would probably be Labour, Liberals, and Conservatives. Maybe even Whigs and Tories -- I don't think you Yanks would have let the old 'high Whig' interpretation of reality die an easy death. Whigs would always win. Jefferson would have been an Imperial PM!

Best of all, when I drive to Chicago for a long weekend, I wouldn't be jerked about by some US customs clown with an Okie accent because I'm crossing a border without a passport ( middle aged, bald white men, and their portly blonde wives might commit cross border crime, but its SMUGGLING, not terrorism ), and then once again by a French Canadian as we cross back into Canada.

[Tenarke]

Yessir! I can see it now. Some good ole boys at Sam’s Longhorn down in Plano, TX, raising a can of Lone Star to the health of the Queen.

The mind is again boggled.

[wordswordswords]

But as things are we have the good ole boys from Texas raising their cans of Lone Star in the White House.

A belated Happy Birthday, Tenarke!