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Another Perspective

America’s Unjust Revolution: A Rejoinder to Mark Tooley

By on 8.18.10 @ 6:08AM

Georgetown’s Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics defends his argument that the American War of Indpendence was not a just war.

Mark Tooley has kindly replied to my paper which argued that America’s War for Independence was unjust. His reply, much of which is taken up with a broadly accurate summary of my paper, makes some interesting points. It fails, however, to dent my argument.

Tooley begins and ends by targeting the “Religious Left” for trying to reinterpret the traditional “just war” criteria into “impossibly stratospheric standards, so that no war can ever be moral.” He claims that this “stratospheric standard” seems to afflict my analysis. Not so. Regardless of what the “Religious Left” may or may not think about war, I adopt the traditional just war criteria without gloss. And while those criteria are not “stratospheric” they are strict: a war must satisfy them all, and do so convincingly, if it is to be just. The American War for Independence signally failed to do so.

Tooley notes my conclusion that the colonial uprising may have satisfied two of the seven criteria: “competent authority” and “probability of success.” Of the latter he writes that it seems obvious that it was satisfied because the rebels won. This does not follow: the probability of success must be judged at the beginning, not the end. As David McCullough puts it in his impressive book 1776 the result seemed, to those who had been with George Washington from the beginning of the conflict, “little short of a miracle.” What, then, of Tooley’s response to my conclusion that the war did not satisfy the remaining criteria?

Was war a “last resort”? Tooley comments that the colonial trade embargo was “disrupted by events at Lexington and Concord.” These “events” were, of course, the deliberate resort to lethal violence by rebels in order to retain arms they had stolen from the authorities (clearly with a view to turning them on their lawful owners). Lexington and Concord were evidence, as one military historian has put it, of “planned aggression” by the rebels. Moreover, the response of the Continental Congress to these “events” was not the reigning in of the New England aggressors but an endorsement and escalation of their violence.

To my point that other colonies, like Canada and India, gained independence without resort to arms, Tooley replies that I did not consider fully what effect America’s successful Revolution had on British governance. Not only did I not consider it fully, I did not consider it at all. I did not do so because it has no bearing on whether the American rebels used force as a “last resort.”

As for “right intention,” the rebels failed to meet this criterion not only because they lacked a “just cause” which they could intentionally pursue, but also because they unfairly subjected loyalist Americans to unjust expropriation and exile. Tooley’s speculation that the loyalists were treated better than defeated rebels would have been is but another irrelevance. He mentions the thousands of deaths of rebels on British prison hulks. This was, indeed, appalling. But deaths from imprisonment, disease and starvation are an obviously foreseeable consequence of wars and serve to reinforce the immorality of waging war unless all the just war criteria are satisfied. The “Patriot” leaders must bear the awesome responsibility for much if not all of the dreadful death and destruction which resulted, on both sides, from the unjust war they prosecuted.

Tooley claims that my “most egregious” charge is that the war surely prolonged slavery, since Britain abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1833 whereas it would take another 30 years, and a civil war of obscene, fraternal carnage to achieve the same result in America. Would Britain have abolished slavery in 1833, he asks, if it had meant freeing the many slaves in America and compensating their owners? But, as he notes, the British abolished their profitable slave trade in 1807 and, “after decades of humanitarian appeals,” slavery itself. The force of those appeals would surely have applied as much to slavery in America as elsewhere. And why need abolition have involved compensating owners? He may speculate that Britain would not have abolished slavery in its American colonies in 1833. But what we know is that Britain freed its slaves decades before America and without resort to war. The burden is on Tooley to show that, without the Revolution, the British would have maintained slavery in its American colonies (and even were he able to do so it would not justify the Revolution.)

Significantly, only four years before the Revolution an English court had freed an American slave in London on the ground that slavery was “odious” to the common law. This celebrated case may well have encouraged the American colonies, at least the southern colonies, to break with Britain precisely to forestall abolition of slavery by the British. For all the hypocritical rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence (drafted by a man who even enslaved his own children) about all men being created equal, it was the British who abolished slavery first. As Dr. Samuel Johnson so witheringly put it in his brilliant refutation of the rebel cause: “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

What of the requirement of a “just cause”? Tooley claims that the British “aroused not unjustified suspicions” and that the Founders, many inspired by Calvinist doubts about human nature, feared “any assaults upon liberty, however incremental, as potential steps towards tyranny.” But “suspicions” of “potential steps towards tyranny,” whether inspired by questionable religious beliefs or otherwise, are a long, long way from providing an objectively just cause for war. This is all the more so when those suspicions prove utterly unfounded, for it is accepted that the British had no wish to impose tyranny on the colonies. As a leading source on “just cause” explains, war is permissible only to confront a “real and certain” danger, that is, “to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence, and basic human rights.” As another puts it: “the damage inflicted by the aggressor…must be lasting, grave and certain.” Suspicions of potential future steps toward tyranny, particularly when they are imaginary, simply do not suffice.

What, in any event, were these supposedly “tyrannical” steps? Indiscriminate slaughter? Pillage? Torture? No: steps such as reasonable taxation. That the colonists could not elect members of Parliament is neither here nor there. Many in Britain were taxed, and taxed far higher than the American colonists, but had no right to vote. “Taxation without representation” is a crude slogan, not a rational argument. Why was it unjust (let alone tyrannical) for the mother country to tax its colonies? In particular, why was it unjust when the tax was to help offset the massive cost the mother country had incurred to protect the colonies from the predations of the French? (Had it not been for that enormous expenditure, Americans might well now be eating garlic rather than granola and playing boules rather than baseball.) There is certainly nothing in the just war tradition to support the extravagant claim that taxpayers who (like the author, a resident of D.C.) cannot elect members of the sovereign legislature have a just cause for rebellion.

The other alleged justifications for the rebellion cited by Tooley, which are also answered in my original paper, fare no better. For example, legislation was indeed enacted by Parliament to provide for the quartering of soldiers (though not, contrary to popular myth, in private homes). What did the rebels expect when they engaged in treason by arson, assault, riot and robbery? The British Government in 1776 did no more than the U.S. Federal Government would have done in 1876 if confronted with open rebellion in one of its Territories.

Tooley claims that I blame the repression of the French Revolution on the example of the American Revolution’s ideals of ordered liberty. This is misleading. I merely observed that the financial cost of the war may have helped bankrupt the ancien régime and thereby have precipitated the French Revolution.

In conclusion, America’s War for Independence falls so far short of meeting the just war criteria that it is surprising that anyone who has considered the matter, at least anyone who subscribes to the just war tradition, should think otherwise. Endorsement of the Revolution rests more on emotion and myth than on reason and fact. The war’s blatant injustice may well be why two out of three American colonists did not support it. They were right.

About the Author

John Keown is Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics of Georgetown University.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (80) |

Dan| 8.18.10 @ 6:28AM

I would think with all your sophisticated blathering here you would actually study history a little bit. They hand delivered many letters to England asking for Independance without war. Keep in mind it was no easy task to do this at the time. So in your well -written piece, you expose yourself to be nothing morer than an opinionated anti-war zealot, while ignoring the facts. You work for mediamatters do you? Sure looks like it .

Alan Brooks| 8.18.10 @ 9:50AM

Besides, England had no moral right to take the territory from the 17th and 18th-century natives. I am glad England did; but it was based on a shall we say 'Manifest Destiny', not ethics.

Clinton nee Publius| 8.18.10 @ 6:22PM

Fine, take all your money and all your property and give it to the nearest Indian and then you can say for the first time in your entire useless life you actually walked the walk.

Bob Miller| 8.18.10 @ 10:47AM

The site of an abortive peace conference back then still stands on Staten Island and is worth a visit:
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=7891

Mark James| 8.22.10 @ 11:50AM

Keown seems to be saying in both articles that since the British were "benign dictators" we had no right to resort to violence to get rid of them. I subscribe to the idea that tyranny in any form must be resisted my any means necessary to return individual rights. Else you suborn the tyranny and harm your peers and your posterity.

Jefferson W.| 8.18.10 @ 6:33AM

I'll try to keep this observation quick and dirty. Just War theory seems to me to largely consist of scholastic abstractions.

The original Americans were not Just War theorists, and would not have been impressed by that kind of argumentation. The fundamental legal point on which the Revolution was fought was: who rules?

The Americans claimed that Parliament possessed no right to rule them at all, and that the king alone had only the right of indirect rule. Thus Parliamentary taxation was an illegal innovation meant to destroy American self-government.

Of course, we live in an era when the Supreme Court can alter the Constitution at will and no one would think of an armed revolt. Mr. Keown's essay is a rationalization for accepting tyranny as law, which -- I suppose -- is one form of modern "conservatism."

John L| 8.20.10 @ 8:38PM

The Supreme Court does alter the Constitution at will and we have done more than "think" about armed revolt, i.e. Civil War. Sure modern "conservatiatism" is tyranny but a far cry from modern "progressivism".

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.18.10 @ 7:01AM

Mr. Keown,
...surely has more to do with his life than pontificate on life over two hundred years ago.

The US revolution once and for all put "divine right of Kings" in the dust-bin of history.

A worthy cause in my estimation.

European "subjects" didn't even recognize their own chains.
The colonists who moved here and wrested a living from a howling wilderness can be forgiven, I think for getting a mite testy being treated like the stay-at-home peasants.

As a Roman Church guy, Mr. Keown seems quite content with the idea of "hierarchies".

I prefer liberty, thankyouverymuch.

Tim*| 8.18.10 @ 8:54AM

Hey anti-Catholic Ken !

" Keown acknowledged that many Roman Catholics in revolutionary America enthusiastically supported independence from Britain. John Carroll, later America's first Catholic bishop, famously accompanied Benjamin Franklin to Quebec to persuade (unsuccessfully ) Quebecers to join them against Britain. John's brother, the statesman Charles Carroll, became the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. "

Aaaaand , Keown is a Brit .

Now Get Bent .

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.18.10 @ 12:09PM

Hi Tim*
What does "bent" mean?

...By the way, I am not anti-catholic. I believe most strongly in the catholic church.

Hmmm, I just have a slight difference in definitions. I consider myself a catholic. ie: a member of the "Church" founded upon the fact that the historical Jesus..."Is the unique Son of the living God, who was with God from the beginning."

Tim*, you might not know this, but in the Baptist churches, we trust in the Bible as our final arbiter...except we trust in "The Priesthood of Every Believer", and the Grace of The Holy Spirit if we err.
Or,
like an early American colonist put it..."I bow a knee to NO ONE except God."

Again, I am certainly not "anti-catholic". I must admit though, I sometimes tire of Roman church uppity.
See, I have spent time in South America. (Have you?). I have seen the catholic abuses there.

On every project my company did in South America, I carried a letter from the catholic Bishop here in Galveston...(He did not know I read and write Latin fluently), to the effect that I was one of the 'good guys'.
The local parish priests always introduced us to their finest parishoners for labor needs.

We never had so much as a single nail stolen from a project.
.....but boy oh boy...On Sundays, we always had a five minute, (three hours in wages), Christian prayer service.

These days...evangelicalism is sweeping the whole continent.
I'm sorta' proud of helping that.

Finally, as one of my best friends who happens to be a Roman priest says: "The United States is the best thing that ever happened to the Roman church, since the Apostle Paul... they threw out."

I will be punished, have been punished, for my proclivities.
God bless

Tim*| 8.18.10 @ 3:59PM

Ask your pal , the priest , Baptist Boy .

Verbum sapienti satis est .

joli| 8.18.10 @ 3:12PM

Whew, I'm glad I'm not the only one! I couldn't wade through all the blather without suffering a serious case of ennui.

GTT| 8.18.10 @ 7:15AM

It is not responsible or well-informed to describe Thomas Jefferson as a man who enslaved his own children. DNA evidence indicates that it is highly likely that a Jefferson male fathered Sally Heming's children, but does not identify TJ as the father. Much evidence points to TJ's brother Randolph. See, for example, David Mayer's discussion at http://www.ashbrook.org/articl.....mings.html

jeff| 8.18.10 @ 9:11AM

Bravo. You beat me to it. It is correct that the DNA test that the media commonly refers to as definitive could not have narrowed down paternity to Thomas Jefferson. Moreover, a great deal of historical and circumstantial evidence points to the president's brother.

Ret. Marine| 8.18.10 @ 7:16AM

Amen brother Ken, Amen. And just like the old rebels of our forefathers, I too am willing and able to pick up the old time tested methode of the will to move it back to it's intent, regardless of criteria's. "Live free or die."

gypsy| 8.18.10 @ 10:56AM

As a schoolteacher who actually takes his job seriously, I am currently working my a$$ off getting ready for the first day: no easy feat when you are the district's only computer instructor. I have just enough time to say this:

I SERIOUSLY wish that I had enough idle time on my hands to spout off some blathering nonsense about how the Americans were "unjustified" in declaring independence from a "dunce of a king, born without brains" Then, after I was done with that, I would next take up to prove that Moses should have stayed in Egypt, Jesus should have refused the cross, the Spartans should have surrendered at Thermopylae, Warsaw should never launched an uprising against the Nazis, the Hungarians were unjustified in rebelling against the Soviets, and the Germans had no right to tear down the Berlin Wall.
There will always be tyrants thirsting for power, and there will always be free people who will defeat their mad schemes, despite the babbling of the "learned" apologists who know nothing of real JUSTICE

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.18.10 @ 12:18PM

Gypsy,
Splendid Post!
Amen and Amen!

REB | 8.19.10 @ 12:04AM

Gypsy...Amen! This pro- tyrant anti -liberty braying fool is more than uneducated hes retarded in a very sad way!

Richard Baker| 8.18.10 @ 7:22AM

This is more of the "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin" nonsense which is all too common in academic/scholastic endeavors these days. This shows the depths to which Georgetown has sunk. Mind you, the Liberty that the Founding Revolutionaries fought for give these "academics" the ability to spout off so. Twaddle.

Bob K.| 8.18.10 @ 7:47AM

More Nonsense! Don't waste time on this!

Old Soldier| 8.18.10 @ 8:04AM

I could not care less about the just war nonsense.

I have always admired the Founding Fathers for their willingness to stand and fight for freedom with relatively little provocation.

They certainly had far less reason to fight against an oppressive government than we do. That is an incitement of us, not them.

Mark Long| 8.18.10 @ 8:07AM

As a historian, I am mindful of the admonition that we should not judge past events by modern standards. But "just war" doctrine goes back at least as far as the early 17th century jurist Hugo Grotius that many of the Founding Fathers respected as authoritative. This argument cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it is merely a philosophical construct because the Founding Fathers were guided by philosophers such as John Locke and the Baron de Montesquieu.

That said, the argument is flawed on historical grounds. First of all, the colonists' disagreements with England had been brewing for more than a decade before the war (i.e. the Stamp Act crisis). And even after Lexington & Concord, the Continental Congress had sent the Olive Branch Petition to the king seeking redress of grievances. He ignored them. They had sought peaceful resolution over and over only to be rebuffed by the British. They finally declared independence because they believed they had no alternative.

The War of Independence was about fundamental principles that even the British claimed to respect but clearly did not honor in the colonies (i.e. trial by jury).

More important, the Founding Fathers claimed an even higher authority: God. Most were deeply spiritual individuals and relied on scripture as the ultimate authority.

Historian David Barton developed these ideas more throughly in his essay "Was the American Revolution a Biblically Justified Act?" which can be found on his web site. I recommend it to anyone who is interested. His conclusion was that the Founding Fathers thought so for sound Biblical reasons. That is good enough for me.

Ryan| 8.18.10 @ 8:57AM

As a historian, you should realize that Barton may be a hack. Simply because his critics may be left-of-center doesn't make him right.

He's got a LOT of issues with accuracy and interpretation of events.

Richard| 8.18.10 @ 10:56AM

No "maybe' about it: Barton IS a hack. I'm amazed an historian can cite him as authority for anything.

Sam Vaughn| 8.18.10 @ 8:24AM

There is nothing like the point of bayonet that changes the relationship between the governed and those who would pretend to govern. When free men decide the those who govern are doing so unjustly and their sensitivities, arguments concerns are ignored, indeed, spat upon and then you say you will submit or else, what on earth do you thing a man with any testicles whatsoever will do. If you do not know the answer to that question I pity you. My grandfather who judged men based on their worthiness in the the foxhole next to him would throw you out immediately....

D. Singh| 8.18.10 @ 8:37AM

Sir

The reason why Mr Keown’s thesis rapidly collapses is that the ‘American War of Independence’ did not begin as a war between two nations.

It was a civil war with the body politic being sub-divided into two nation-states and still united by a common language and legal inheritance.

To put it briefly and bluntly: revolutions, civil wars, rebellions tend not to fit Just War criteria: it is the wrong legal standard to judge them by.

As William Pitt (the Elder) said in the House of Commons on January 14, 1766:

"I rejoice that America has resisted."

William Pitt's speech against the Stamp Act

Gentlemen, Sir,

I have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime.

Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House, imputed as a crime. No gentleman ought to be afraid to exercise it. It is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited, by which he ought to have profited. He ought to have desisted from this project.

The gentleman tells us, America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three million of people so dead to all feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

I come not here armed at all points, with law cases and acts of Parliament, with the statute book doubled down in dog's-ears, to defend the cause of liberty: if I had, I myself would have cited the two cases of Chester and Durham. I would have cited them, to have shown that even under former arbitrary reigns, Parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives.

Why did the gentleman confine himself to Chester and Durham? He might have taken a higher example in Wales; Wales, that never was taxed by Parliament till it was incorporated.

I would not debate a particular point of law with the gentleman. I know his abilities. I have been obliged to his diligent researches: but, for the defense of liberty, upon a general principle, upon a constitutional principle, it is a ground on which I stand firm; on which I dare meet any man.

The gentleman tells us of many who are taxed, and are not represented. The India Company, merchants, stock-holders, manufacturers. Surely many of these are represented in other capacities, as owners of land, or as freemen of boroughs.

It is a misfortune that more are not equally represented: but they are all inhabitants, and as such, are they not virtually represented? . . . They have connections with those that elect, and they have influence over them. The gentleman mentioned the stockholders: I hope he does not reckon the debts of the nation as a part of the national estate. Since the accession of King William, many ministers, some of great, others of more moderate abilities, have taken the lead of government.

(passage omitted)

None of these thought, or ever dreamed, of robbing the colonies of their constitutional rights. That was to mark the era of the late administration: not that there were wanting some, when I had the honour to serve his Majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with an American Stamp-Act.

With the enemy at their back, with our bayonets at their breasts, in the day of their distress, perhaps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition: but it would have been taking an ungenerous and unjust advantage.

The gentleman boasts of his bounties to America. Are not those bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures.
I am no courtier of America; I stand up for this kingdom. I maintain, that the parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. When it ceases to be sovereign and supreme, I would advise every gentleman to sell his lands, if he can, and embark for that country.

When two countries are connected together, like England and her colonies, without being incorporated, the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less; but so rule it, as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both.

If the gentleman does not understand the difference between external and internal taxes, I cannot help it; but there is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, for the accommodation of the subject; although, in the consequences, some revenue might incidentally arise from the latter.

The gentleman asks, when were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know, when were they made slaves. But I dwell not upon words. When I had the honour of serving his Majesty, I availed myself of the means of information which I derived from my office: I speak, therefore, from knowledge. My materials were good; I was at pains to collect, to digest, to consider them; and I will be bold to affirm, that the profits to Great Britain from the trade of the colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war....

You owe this to America: this is the price America pays you for her protection. And shall a miserable financier come with a boast, that he can bring a pepper-corn into the exchequer, to the loss of millions to the nation?

I dare not say, how much higher these profits may be augmented. Omitting the immense increase of people by natural population, and the emigration from every part of Europe, I am convinced the whole commercial system of America may be altered to advantage. You have prohibited where you ought to have encouraged, encouraged where you ought to have prohibited. Improper restraints have been laid on the continent, in favour of the islands. You have but two nations to trade with in America. Would you had twenty! Let acts of parliament in consequence of treaties remain, but let not an English minister become a custom-house officer for Spain, or for any foreign power. Much is wrong; much may be amended for the general good of the whole....

The gentleman must not wonder he was not contradicted, when, as minister, he asserted the right of Parliament to tax America. I know not how it is, but there is a modesty in this House, which does not choose to contradict a minister. I wish gentlemen would get the better of this modesty. Even that chair, Sir, sometimes looks towards St. James's. If they do not, perhaps the collective body may begin to abate of its respect for the representative...

A great deal has been said without doors of the power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know the valour of your troops. I know the skill of your officers. There is not a company of foot that has served in America out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make him governor of a colony there. But on this ground, on the Stamp Act, when so many here will think a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands against it.

In such a cause, your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like a strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her. Is this your boasted peace? Not to sheathe the sword in it scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your countrymen? Will you quarrel with yourselves, now the whole House of Bourbon is united against you...

The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper. They have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America, that she will follow the example. There are two lines in a ballad of Prior's, of a man's behaviour to his wife, so applicable to you and your colonies, that I cannot help repeating them:

"Be to her faults a little blind
Be to her virtues very kind."

Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is really my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately; that the reason for the repeal should be assigned, because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend every point of legislation whatsoever: that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever - except that of taking money out of their pockets without their consent.

P.Smith| 8.18.10 @ 8:46AM

Can anyone see our founding fathers looking at a check sheet with the seven criteria for a just war? “Well George our cause meets these six criteria, but not this seventh one here, so we just better stand down.” I doubt hardly any war has followed Keown’s proposed just war criteria. History is full of lost causes that have won, or if the battle was lost, eventually led to a much larger objective.

Political/religious/whatever movements do not involve a majority of the population, but a small determined lot who eventually take the bystanders, naysayers and appeasers with them. I for one am thankful for that small determined lot.

Waco Kid| 8.18.10 @ 9:02AM

Yes, absolutely the freedoms fought and won by these great men allow this fool to sit around and come up with lame-asssed notions of just war theory. Sometimes, violence is needed to make a point, to wrest control and to set right wrongs done to man by corrupt and uncaring rulers. As Gus McCrae says in Lonesome Dove ' I'd like a chance t' shoot at a educated man once in my life.' Maybe educated is not the best word to describe Mr. Keown, but, something my father said comes to mind; 'You must be highly educated to say something that stupid.'

Martin| 8.18.10 @ 9:03AM

Very well argued, Mr. Keown. As a delayed colonist who has been here over 25 years I always feel deeply uncomfortable on July 4. The American colonies were the most prosperous, freest and lowest taxed society the world had ever seen up to that point (they remain the lowest taxed -- taxes on Americans were far higher in the 1790s than in the 1760s. Thus the 1776 rebellion is for me the epitome of an unjust war, though there's no question a better government (such as that of Pitt's son, not in power until 1783) would have given representation to the Colonies, maybe 2 seats for each colony and a couple for each of the major cities, so that Jefferson could have made himself obnoxious and powerless on the radical Whig back benches.

As for Chatham, by his overblown rhetoric against the perfectly reasonable Stamp Act he did much to create the problem -- it gave the colonist extremists an excuse for their actions among moderate opinion.

Waco Kid| 8.18.10 @ 9:28AM

Martin, there is no denying the fact that we went to war with the most liberal of nations to win our independence. Unjust taxation is still unjust.
So, if you feel uncomfortable on the 4th, go back to where you came from. I detect a hint of elitism in your use of the word Colonies. Are you from England? Those snooty, over-educated monarchist types still like to refer to us as the colonies.

Vic | 8.18.10 @ 10:09AM

Let us see what those of the day had to say about this most liberal government of king George;

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.=quote from DOI

I would have to say we have now a government that is guilty of as many abuses. That may be the source of your uneasy feeling concerning 7-4.

Bob Miller| 8.18.10 @ 11:06AM

"As a delayed colonist who has been here over 25 years I always feel deeply uncomfortable on July 4. "

Perhaps Martin's discomfort was that he arrived when we were no longer colonies. It could have been avoided by his not arriving.

RCV| 8.18.10 @ 11:57AM

Well, Martin, you just don't get it. The colonists came to realize, as that rascal Tom Paine reminded them, that it was pretty silly to be ruled by some bloated piece of "royalty" on a little island across the ocean, instead of by themselves. That they had a better idea of what was best for them than some pampered king did. It took much of the rest of the world a little more time to learn that lesson.

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.18.10 @ 12:26PM

RCV

DAMNED STRAIGHT, RCV!

( By the way, we left our conversation when you wrote that we probably wanted the "same ends", for our country, but by different means.)

I would genuinely appreciate your thoughts on where we should "head".
My political e-mail address is :
kbjudgeroybean06@gmail.com

You have my WORD that any conversations there are sacrosanct.

Old Soldier| 8.18.10 @ 2:26PM

I get uncomfortable when I see European countries still tolerating Kings and Queens. When suffer these fools who happen to be descended from medieval war lords?

I never understood why the British invited Charles II back to be king after Cromwell's death. The just didn't have the guts to establish a Republic? Or were the aristocrats worried about loosing the privileged status and wanted a king to protect them from the peasantry.

REB| 8.19.10 @ 12:24AM

Sorry ole bloke but we aint colonies,so you are not a delayed colonist,delayed brain development perhaps,delayed common sense,perhaps but not a colonist,uncomfortable ...why dont you just go back to dear ole britian, we certainly dont need your tyrant butt kissing attitude here!? Free men never need the consent of the govenor to rebel,quit trying to soothe your sorry backside,we kicked your butt fair and square,saved your sorry rearend in two world wars and made it possible for ole england to keep on existing,maybe next time(and there will be a next time) we wont bother,silly rebels that we are.

Dai Alanye | 8.18.10 @ 9:52AM

Why a Brit historian would spend time arguing a moot point based on standards set by those not a party to the quarrel is beyond me. Better he should harrow his own nation's history and solve the question of whether Richard Plantagenet was unjustly overthrown by the Tudors. Not only would this undo an infamous historical injustice but also prevent the future crowning of Charlie Windsor, a consummation devoutly to be wished by all rational Englishmen and Americans.

SammytheJust| 8.18.10 @ 9:58AM

These comments simply demonstrate the whole point for having objective criteria: People are very bad at judging their own cause. Of course we all appreciate the wonderful gifts of American society and freedoms and all the wonderful things America has done over the years. That does not mean that the revolution itself satisfied the Just War criteria (which, by the way, go back to the Fourth Century). Nor is it correct to say that the criteria are not applicable to civil wars and insurrections - obviously fratricide is no less in need of moral justification as force against strangers.

And ad hominem comments simply demonstrate the weakness of the counter arguments. Either say you reject the Just War criteria, or show how they are satisfied. Otherwise you are reinforcing Keown's case.

Bydand76| 8.18.10 @ 11:19AM

I reject the Just War criteria


Pro Libertate!

Bill_in_CT| 8.18.10 @ 1:38PM

I reject the Just War Criteria.

These criteria are an attempt to codify the impulses of people to effect by violent means their objectives between nation states. Like many attempts to take complex and mysterious instances of reality and write down a literal description that reduces the instance to an arguable point, the Just War Criteria fall far short. Reality is much to complex to reduce to words in this manner.

GW| 8.18.10 @ 1:47PM

What moral authority does any man have to cite the "Just War" criteria? Unlike, say, the Ten Commandments, it is merely something devised by philosophers who, like all humans, err. It's a premise I reject and instead refer to the Declaration of Independence as the reasons why a group of (relatively) wealthy, powerful men committed an act of treason punishable by death had they lost the war. The Declaration first mentions man has "unalienable rights" given to him by the Creator before going further...

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Not only did the patriots feel it necessary to revolt, they found it to be the only morally justified option. Not doing something would have been wrong.

REB| 8.19.10 @ 12:29AM

It is always just to overthrow a tyrant,to question that is to deny liberty,there is never ajust tyrant,so overthrowing his rule over oneself is a natural reaction one Americans may do well to consider reenacting shortly if things dont straighten out soon! "When in the course of human events it becomes nessessary......."

Petronius| 8.18.10 @ 10:01AM

Moral indignation by hindsight strikes again: Not. The choice to fight and die on one's feet instead of living on one's knees is not the purview of any intellectual's concepts of justice. The Right to be Free comes from nature. All governments oppose that because their nature has 2 aspects. Economically they are parasitic since they do not produce anything. And culturally they are despotic, as officials are prone to abuse their powers arbitrarily and unlawfully against those they dislike. The founding fathers of these United States wanted what we Real Americans want today: Real Freedom. So long as any person's activities bring no direct harm to others, he has the Right to live by and for himself without any hindrance.
Second guessing our successful Revolution has been mostly flights of whimsy by history buffs like me. But had the Continental Congress reconciled with Westminster, been granted Peerages by the Crown and elected to seats in the Commons, I'd be writing this in French.

Sheila| 8.18.10 @ 10:13AM

"Moral Indignation by hindsight strikes again." I like that, Petronius. Perfectly encapsulates not only Alan Brooks and many other commenters here, but also well summarizes the view of most right liberals (movement conservatives).

Dan Hirsch| 8.18.10 @ 10:16AM

Methinks a quote from the movie "Quigley Down Under" would be appropriate here:

Major Ashley-Pitt: In our experience, Americans are uncouth misfits who should be run out of their own barbaric country.

Matthew Quigley: Well, Lieutenant...

Major Ashley-Pitt: Major.

Matthew Quigley: Major. We already run the misfits outta our country. We sent 'em back to England.

'nuff said.

Thanks to IMDB dot com.

Patrick Henry| 8.18.10 @ 10:28AM

Better scholars than I have given better quotes than I've dug up. Allow me one paraphrase. What's this representation stuff? You Americans have as much representation as Ireland.
Simply put then, we had no intention of waiting till were as oppressed as the Irish have been for 500 years!

HMS| 8.18.10 @ 11:07AM

The "founding fathers" were traitors. They betrayed their king on whom God had bestowed the right to rule the nation.
Any other interpretation means that God given rights do not exist, and man's only rights derive from the consent of the governed.

BilboMcfonzie| 8.18.10 @ 12:05PM

I think most here embrace God given rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). Were these rights granted to only the King, or to everyone?

RCV| 8.18.10 @ 1:17PM

I for one am not willing to blame God for the fact that mad King George was on the throne of England.

hms| 8.18.10 @ 1:56PM

He had the divine right, who are you to argue with what God had ordained?

Old Soldier| 8.18.10 @ 2:35PM

Strange that God chose a crazy man who was made king only because his German grandfathers bred with their cousins until they produced a man so defective he couldn't make a living - except as an idle monarch.

Petronius| 8.18.10 @ 2:34PM

Our founding fathers were not traitors to the Crown as they did not desire to wrest the Crown from King George and depose Him.

REB | 8.19.10 @ 12:38AM

Whoa there mule.....God given rights belong to everyone,and not to some imbred retard who happened to fall into power,dont go blaming God for that one ,besides if God were so on the kings side then why did he allow some God fearing rebels to overthrow his king? Because the idiot was not a God appointed tyrant....never has been any God appointed tyrants,but theres been a heap of tyrants thrown into historys trashheap...good riddance!

Bydand76| 8.18.10 @ 11:15AM

Ok,
I would like to see the argument from Mr Keown on Englands "just" wars against Scotland and Ireland.

I would also like to understand the meaning behind this moronic statment:

"Endorsement of the Revolution rests more on emotion and myth than on reason and fact."

Ummm.... Maybe Mr Keown should read "The Glorious Cause" by Robert Middlekauff because he pretty much destroys this stupid argument.

I would also like to know how Mr Keown can refute the fact that the Founders tried to do everything they could to avoid a civil war with England.

This is the biggest piece of male bovine fecal matter that I have ever read here at TAS.

I think Mr Keown should count himself lucky he did'nt live during the time that he has chosen to write about. More than likely he would have been tarred and feathered.

Mr Keown would do well to remember what John F. Kennedy said.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable".

To bad the Crown never understood this in its attempts to avoid the "just war" the colonies propogated on it.

I also like how Mr Keown ignores the social, economic, and political issues that pertains to the slavery issue. Again, Mr Keown shows that he needs to do some reading on the subject because he is woefully ignorant.

I really hope that at some point in the past. My Highland Scottish ancestors whupped your English ancestors ass! Put that in your psuedo-intellectual pipe and smoke it!


Pro Libertate!

J.P. Travis | 8.18.10 @ 11:40AM

"...the probability of success must be judged at the beginning, not the end."

Oh really? Why, because you say so? Your position is absurd, and humorous because apparently you don't realize that you've undermined your own profession. What good are historians, after all, if the outcome tells us nothing about the process?

Jim Wilson | 8.19.10 @ 4:48PM

You put your finger on the very thing that most annoyed me about the piece. I was unaware that precognition was one of the requirements for a just war. Just War theory is bunk anyway; it's a product of its time, and that was not an age of reason and freedom. And of course, like all philosophical arguments, it's subject to negation by anybody who disagrees. A mixture of pagan philosophy and post-Constantinian Christianity with a few additions by Aquinas and others is not the last word on the subject.

Vern Crisler | 8.18.10 @ 11:55AM

For anyone interested in a critique of Tory revisionism about the American war for independence, see my essay at:

http://vernerable.wordpress.co.....evolution/

EWoldcrow| 8.18.10 @ 12:46PM

GET OVER IT!!!!

It's been a hundred and sixty years, get over it. I'm tired of blacks blaming slavery for their own sloth. Get an education and get a job quit blaming the plantation owner who held your sixth great grandfather.

If I thought this country had done my family wrong I would have been on the plane back to Bellfast years ago. If this country is SOOO HORIBLE go on back to the Congo and see how you get treated. Wait a minute you would have to work or you'd starve over there then you had better be a member of the right tribe.

Y'all have it good so quit complaining or go back.

David S.| 8.18.10 @ 12:59PM

The Only Perspective
I read both of the articles by Mr. Tooley and Mr Keown when they were published and sadly shook my head that both of these, in their own sphere, ruling class Elitists missed the mark in their writings. There is no way they can judge the actions of peoples of the past. As with most people, Mr. Tooley and Mr Keown fell into the trap of attempting to judge the actions of those in the past against the standards and prejudices of modern man. Unless a person immerses themselves so deeply into the culture and beliefs of the time they are pontificating about…. that they become an actual person of that time then to say anything about those people’s actions and decisions is to engage in pure intellectual offal.
All people who ponder the actions of our Nation’s Founding Fathers should simply accept the fact that enough people gathered together to stand against what they considered an offense to their beliefs and ambitions. To do otherwise is to delude yourself and your followers with ignorant pseudo intellectual canine defecation.

Louis Jenkins| 8.18.10 @ 1:41PM

Basically, Mr. David S., these two authors are arguing over a bunch of nothing. What happened happened. Let's be thankful that those Patriots made their stand, and brought this nation into being. I cannot imagine what this nation would be like, other than we'd still be paying lip service to the Queen and possibly petitioning the Parliment for this or that. A tempest is in teapot.

Anarcho-austrian 77| 8.18.10 @ 2:22PM

There were two just wars in American history, one in 1776 and the other one in 1861. A war is justified on the side of the seceding party, since the seceding faction no longer consents to the governed. I would like to see what he would say WAS a justified war, since I am sure that it would not be justified in the Grotius formulation.

Anarcho-Austrian 77| 8.18.10 @ 2:31PM

I disagree that 2/3rds of the residents of America did not support the secession. That number comes from a short quip by John Adams, who was probably the closest of the cheerleaders for secession to the Tory oligarchy, which became evident during his presidency. The fact is that if popular support was so low for such an endeavor, then the Continental Army might have come into existence, but would never had gained the amount of support needed to defeat one of the largest imperial armies at the time. That is not to say that there weren't a lot of royalists in the colonies, but the number was a lot less than 2/3rds, since they were not decisive.

skip| 8.18.10 @ 3:51PM

Keown argues 'just cause' for war is permissible only to protect innocent life, preserve decent human existence, preserve basic human rights, and prevent grave and certain damage to humans. Ironic that he claims our nation's foundation was unjustly caused, but today we are justified to go to war to abolish abortion. Let us take up arms today. Even Keown has justified our cause!

jrjr| 8.18.10 @ 5:21PM

Still fighting the Revolution? Why? Nothing else to write about? How about picking on the need for an Obama revolution?
(Why does Spectator tell me that the word "Obama" is wrong or something is wrong with it- underlined with a jagged line?)

John - TMF| 8.18.10 @ 8:07PM

"Ultimately, slavery requires the acquiescence of the slave." - my old man some time in early 1969 on a discussion of the American Civil War for my 4th grade Virginia History class...

It would seem that the author is rather passive when it comes to the price of securing liberty, and not particularly sanguine regarding the motivations of others who are more active in their desire to pass on serfdom.

The American Revolution was a perfectly just war. Those who embarked upon it formed a sovereign entity, presented their rationale for the action, established a government that then proceeded to defend itself against an aggressor.

On April 19, 1775 the Royal Army in full military regalia and operating under military rules, chain of command, and order marched into the Massachusetts country-side in order to confiscate the colony's legally possessed militia firearms and powder. This was an act of war.

No other justification need be presented. As Benjamin Franklin reminded us; "There never was a good war or a bad peace."

"Just War" is moral froth wrapped in tissue. Just a pile of useless pulp waiting to dry in the heat.

I part with another aphorism handed down to me by my father;

A man who cannot defend himself is a cripple and an object of pity.
A man who will not defend himself is a coward and deserves no liberty.
A man who may not defend himself is a slave who will receive neither mercy nor liberty.

r/The Mighty Fahvaag

Rich Rostrom| 8.18.10 @ 9:15PM

"the deliberate resort to lethal violence by rebels in order to retain arms they had stolen from the authorities... their lawful owners..."

The arms in question were the property of the Massachusetts militia, acting under orders of the Massachetts Provisional Congress. The battle of Concord was the climax of a series of efforts by the British to seize all arms and ammunition in the possession of the colonists.

For Professor Keown to describe these arms as "stolen" is evidence of either dishonesty or ignorance.

Or just possibly, Keown regards General Gage's arbitrary dissolution of the Massachusetts provincial government and assertion of unlimited Royal power there as binding on the people of Massachusetts. If so, then these arms, procured by them for their own defense, had become the property of the Royal authority, and failure to deliver them up would be the same as stealing.

But that is a pretty convoluted argument.

Jim Hunter| 8.18.10 @ 9:22PM

Mr. Keown,

I have done an independent study of colonial America prior to the Revolutionary War and am posting my "write-up" on it below. This is a copy and paste, so hope it works.

The
Independence of the American Colonies
A Legal Separation

"That the question was not whether, by a declaration of Independence, we should make ourselveswhat we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists: That as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the late act of parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us, a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection; it being a certain position in law that allegiance and protection are reciprocal, the one
ceasing when the other is withdrawn:"
1
These statements were made on the floor of the Continental Congress, June 7, 1776. What "fact
which already exists" were the delegates talking about?

Historians tell us that separation of the American colonies from Great Britain took place on July 4,
1776. That was not the case. It took place on December 22, 1775. It was on that date that King
George III gave assent to the Prohibitory Act in Parliament, the provisions of which cast the
American colonies out of the British Empire. 2

The Declaration of Independence was not written bythe delegates to announce a separation that was to occur, but to declare a condition of separation
that already existed.

Elements of the Prohibitory Act are listed among the grievances against King George in the Declaration. Point 23 of the Declaration of Independence refers to Article XXIV of the Prohibitory Act, and states; He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging Waragainst us. 3

The issue of the king's protection was the "certain position in law" to which the Congressional
delegates were referring. According to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of
England; "...and yet they are, reciprocally, the rights as well as duties of each other. Allegiance is the right of the magistrate, and protection the right of the people." 4

The reciprocal duties, allegiance from the people, and protection from the king, were the foundations in English law concerning civil relationships. The colonists maintained their allegiance to King George throughout the events leading up to the separation. By removing his protection, King George broke the colonial charters, thus ending his legal position with the Americancolonies.

The American colonists did not "rebel" and break away from Great Britain. King George, on his
own initiative, cast them out of the British Empire.

Copyright 2005 by James E. Hunter
1
Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, Notes of Debates, Furnished to J[ames] M[adison] by Mr Jefferson in his hand writing; as a copy from his original notes. In Congress (Friday, June 7, 1776) 1089. HTTP [Online] http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwac.html (April 20, 2005).
2
Gene Fisher and Glen Chambers, introduction, The Revolution Myth (Bob Jones University Press, 1981) x.
3
University of Oklahoma Law Center, Declaration of Independence.
4
The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book the First - Chapter the First : Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals, 119. HTTP [Online http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/ava.....acksto.htm (April 20, 2005).

Dick Simmons| 8.18.10 @ 10:09PM

I absolutely love The American Spectator! where else do you get to rehash and re-fight World War II (the Hiroshima piece) the Civil War (the Lincoln haters & Lincoln lovers) and now the Revolution? No wonder the rest of the web thinks we're all geeks!

Matt| 8.19.10 @ 12:20AM

These self imposed rationale to a 'just' war is ridiculous. If Nazi's invade, and it doesn't meet ALL of the criteria of being just...fight them and kill them. It will still be just regardless of some dimwit revisionist trying to rewrite history.

Yosemeti Sam| 8.19.10 @ 1:12AM

Mr. John Keown might place close attention to our upcoming November elections:

As to what spurred the American Revolution, the citizenry then did not appreciate the BOOT on their necks.

Come this November, the citizenry of America will again demonstrate - albeit in a non-violent manner - that a BOOT is still not appreciated on their necks.

D. Singh| 8.19.10 @ 5:38AM

Sir

Mr Martin| 8.18.10 @ 9:03AM in his support for Mr Keown’s thesis states that:

William Pitt (the Elder’s) son William Pitt (the Younger) ‘… would have given representation to the Colonies, maybe 2 seats for each colony and a couple for each of the major cities…’

That is a mere bald assertion without the support of historical evidence.

Yet, his father William Pitt (the Elder) had already said in the House of Commons on January 14, 1766:

‘…Parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives.’

He went on to state that when Great Britain’s power ‘… ceases to be sovereign and supreme, [he] would advise every gentleman to sell his lands, if he can, and embark for that country.’ In other words, abandon Great Britain and begin a new life in America.

Again, William Pitt (the Elder) was willing to give far more than mere representation in parliament as Mr Martin conjectures (without the support of evidence):

‘When two countries are connected together, like England and her colonies, without being incorporated, the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less; but so rule it, as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both.’

So, let us all be clear; in the view of William Pitt (the Elder) the sun (America) was to ‘rule’ the moon (Great Britain): ‘… the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less…’

And, so it has ‘proved’.

D. Singh| 8.19.10 @ 6:07AM

Sir

May I just add a few more notes to Mr Martin| 8.18.10 @ 9:03AM in his support for Mr Keown’s thesis? Mr Martin has stated that:

William Pitt (the Elder’s) son William Pitt (the Younger) ‘… would have given representation to the Colonies, maybe 2 seats for each colony and a couple for each of the major cities…’

When William Pitt (the Younger’s) father made his famous speech ‘I rejoice that America has resisted’ Pitt (the Younger) was four years old.

By the time William Pitt (the Younger) became Prime Minister in 1783 Great Britain had lost the war. It, therefore, clearly follows that the Prime Minister, William Pitt (the Younger), was not in a position to give ‘…representation to the Colonies, maybe 2 seats for each colony and a couple for each of the major cities…’

I am sure your readers will now understand why Mr Martin says, ‘As a delayed colonist who has been here over 25 years I always feel deeply uncomfortable on July 4.’

The fact that he feels uncomfortable is not because of the events of July 4. He feels uncomfortable because he is ignorant of British and American history (after 25 years!).

Tex Expatriate| 8.19.10 @ 3:12PM

This is the kind of bullshit that keeps academics employed. The war that is just is the war that you and yours have just completed and won.

Jones | 8.20.10 @ 12:09AM

I'm just a caveman. I was out searching for food one day and fell into a crevasse and was frozen in snow. Some years later your scientists thawed me out and sent me to public school. Your modern world frightens and confuses me, but I do know this: I thank God Almighty that He blessed the patriots of 1776 with the courage and wisdom to throw off the chains of tyranny and create for themselves and posterity (that's you and me, Professor) a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, rather than one that exists at the pleasure of a distant king.

And John keown can blow it out his @$$.

bobbymike| 8.21.10 @ 2:39AM

Because America came forth from this conflagration makes it was a just war. Think of all America has done since to free the oppressed and defeat evil around the globe.

But I hope everyone realizes the reason to try and destroy the founding is to then be able to say the whole facade is rotten and remake America in their socialist Utopian image.

Michele San Pietro| 8.22.10 @ 5:49PM

Mr. Keown, go jump in the lake!

Johnny Knuckles| 8.31.10 @ 11:34PM

Canada gained its "independence" peaceably because the Americans softened up the Brits. Even so, Canadians have never won their liberty from an elite government that knows better and can do no wrong.

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