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Re: What would Pat Robertson have said if it rained on the Obama parade

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Sat, 06 Jul 19 10:09 AM | 68 view(s)
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Msg. 30799 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 30798 by Cactus Flower)

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And by the way, George III wasn't a tyrant. He was a dullish constitutional monarch.

For better or worse, the US argument was with the British government, whose policies were defined by its prime ministers and their cabinets, who themselves were elected by eligible voters among the British people to act as their representatives in parliament.

The US colonists disputed the British government's right to tax them without their consent. The amount of the tax was not injurious. The tax was used to defray the cost of defending and administering the US. Americans wanted a say in the decision-making about the country they inhabited.

One can argue the merits of the colonists' position without setting up a straw man tyrant as the person with whom they were arguing. For myself, I am glad Americans won their independence. But I don't see the revolutionaries as holding all the cards in the political argument between Britain and America. Indeed, looking back on it, it is clear an accommodation could have been found involving taxation and representation if both parties had been willing to seek one.

But essentially, enough Americans wanted to be independent that a war was doomed to occur. The pretext that George behaved in a tyrannical fashion isn't so much the explanation for the revolution as the desire of many colonists to become masters of their own fate. Which is a wholly reasonable thing.

But the need to paint one's opponent as a villain suggests a flaw in one's own case. Once the preamble was written, the argument Jefferson presents for American independence isn't as candid as it might be. The revolutionaries were guilty of lese-majeste and had no honest argument to make against it, even if they thought their demands for independence were more important.


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: What would Pat Robertson have said if it rained on the Obama parade
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Sat, 06 Jul 19 9:51 AM
Msg. 30798 of 54959

"the people who ... harnessed science."

Huh?

The Americans are A people that harnessed science.

Like many other peoples who depend upon the scientific revolution for their prosperity. We might begin with people like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. And then remember the Industrial Revolution and the development of steam as a source of energy.

There would be no USA without, for instance, advances in ship-building and mapmaking. These obviously harnessed science before the US harnessed it, whatever that means.

Perhaps the purpose of rhetoric is to make people believe things about themselves which are not entirely true.

But when you have big achievements, like flying the first planes and visiting the moon, why not just define them, rather than big them up into grand but spurious claims.


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