Why Have Americans Forgotten Their British Roots?

Hey Mark,

Because it would give the Brits a sense of entitlement which only Americans are entitled to.

Have a good everything, as well.

A Lyn

Well, ****, I'm irish.

I trust that sentence will annoy batches of people, including people born there, like Heeven.

Have a day rife with divisions between generations of isolated peoples moving around in their protective modes.

To people who cringe at swearing, I'll agree overswearing is somewhat stupid as it is reactive. On the other hand, precision swearing is swell.

Ah well. And the Irish have forgotten that their island is one of the islands of British Isles ...

I don't want to get into it with you, Walter, tonight. I will, though, listen to your pov.

quite so.

I guess I'll add, I find this obnoxious, Walter.

In a nutshell, I guess it's this:

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 dissolutions, 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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration 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 harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to 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 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 offenses:


For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 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 in 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, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and 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 endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is 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.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity

Signed:
Your Dear Friends, The Colonies

That George, what a putz.
Joe(I think it was Sam Adams who said that.)Nation

In America we have a little thing called "Freedom of Speech"

If it bothers you, (not talking to you osso) don't listen, or leave the room.

Otherwise, **** you and the horse you rode in on (again, not you osso, I'm just exercising one of my rights as a god damn 'merican)

Effin A, ladies.

<curtsies>

I'll just say this: in the mid 1600s, the two British Colonial areas, Virginia and Massachusetts/Connecticut were tottering along. The Virginians had nearly starved to death about three times and the 'Assachutians were very much bound up in a) killing innocent Pequots, b) expelling unworthies especially women (see http://www.annehutchinson.com/ Ann Hutchinson ) and c) generally employing every repressive method possible against anything that might be construed as free. (as in Free Trade)

Twas the Dutch Hollanders at New Amsterdam to whom we present day Americans owe our sense of ourselves as free beings. The Colony at the tip of Manhattan was, for the most part, a free and open society of tradespeople. When the British arrived and took the place (it was basically un-armed) without firing a shot, they tried valiantly to make the now named New York as bad and as unprofitable as both Virginia and Massachusetts/Connecticut.

They did not succeed. American ideas of citizenship and freedom, born of the Dutch not the Puritans, continued to spread up and down the colonial coast for the next hundred years.

This Fourth of July thank your stars America had a Dutch Uncle.

Joe(Homework: VAN DER DONCK, look him up, Yonkers is named after him)Nation

Hi All!

So you still feel a little tender about the tea thing, I take it?

Do you think that - for as long as our seperate nations (I mean all nations) fly alternate flags, and recall easily and dwell everin the frustrations of bygone defeats and triumphs - that we will never forge a true peaceful world, with which to rear our children into?

Kind regards!
Mark...

Aw, Mark, it's all in the past. We just ribbing ya. I believe a true world government will eventually be in place, but I expect to be long dead and forgotten by then.

Hi Edgar!

I know, my friend. The purpose of this thread was to discover the inherency of bygone frustrations. I am human, not patriotic to any nation. I just like living where I live.

I wonder how ripe the memories of past battles and conflicts remain in the hearts of fundamentalists every time I look toward the middle-east, and seriously doubt that humans can stand united. I doubt this among individuals, let alone nations.

Edgar, you are always a pleasant intrusion on my existence. Just so you know.

Have a brilliant day, my friend!
Mark...

Right back acha, bud.

Who wants American gratitude?

Don't matter. You ain't getting it.

Good. That's the best news I ever heard.

I always knew you was an America hater.