I post this mainly because it is challenges a fundamental belief of Americans. I don't necessarily agree, but it is an interesting thought experiment. The article lists three reasons, and the first two relate to treatment of non-white people. As a white American I enjoy a great standard of living, and I don't want to give that up. But my way of life was achieved through the exploitation of others. I do wonder what another path would have led to.
The last point is about our style of government, and I agree completely. I would love to change to a more parliamentarian form of government.
Who knows how American and the world would be different if the American revolution hadn't happened or been won by the British. History is too complicated to simplify as much as this article does, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
Just because the British Empire ended slavery doesn't mean they weren't exploiting people for economic gain- they were and continued to do so for nearly another century. The worst abuses in colonial India happened after the abolition of the slave trade. Would Americans let Britian abolish slavery anyway? The slave states revolted against even the idea of abolition in reality, and that wasn't being imposed by an imperial power across the sea. I also find it hard to believe that native Americans would have been treated any better. The US was going to expand westwards regardless. The Louisiana purchase might not have happened, but we would probably have gotten that territory anyway after Napoleons defeat. Losing the revolution wouldn't make us any less likely to exploit the West.
It's a very interesting thought that America might have revolted over the abolition of slavery
if they hadn't gained their independence before it happened. I'm sure that if the states were willing to revolt against Britain because they had a few taxes imposed upon them against their will, that they'd definitely revolt if Britain tried to force them to comply with something that would have such a massive impact on the American (considerably labour based) economy. And even if the northern states were still as (comparatively) progressive as they were at the time in our history, they'd probably side with the south in order to make a stand against British influence. Just think, instead of a nation divided by slavery, it would be a nation united by slavery. I wonder how different America would be today if the union was founded on a basis of oppression, rather than principles of "liberty", and "freedom from oppression".
Likely, you would've seen the more northern states siding with Britain, since a lot of their workforce was immigration-based. The southern states, which relied heavily on slavery, could have revolted, but without support of every state, they'd likely be crushed without foreign intervention.
Disclaimer: I'm not a history major. I've just glanced over the references that the author provided, as well as do some cursory Googling. I could be completely wrong. Somerset v Stewart outlawed chattel slavery in England in 1772, but the rest of the British Empire was unaffected. Therefore, colonial America would have been unaffected until 1833, when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. I don't think that using the case in England to say that slavery would've been abolished in colonial America, had we not seceded, is a fair or truthful claim. Britain was fond of using the concept of terra nullius to lay claim to lands, most notably in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Britain also killed quite a few natives on their own. The only reasons that you see less atrocities committed by Britain in Canada/Australia is due to there being less people and Britain didn't have as much of a desire or reason to have an expansion explosion like the original thirteen colonies. The author claims that yes, Britain would have eventually expanded west in North America, but there would have been less deaths. That's 100% opinion and has no basis in fact. Furthermore, while mentioning the Mexican-American war and some vague note of how Mexicans "were no angels," he conveniently leaves out the fact that the Mexican government put a price on the scalps of Apache men, women, and children. As for the government side of things, I really don't know enough about how all of that works to really agree with or refute his points. I don't particularly enjoy the current government. It seems to move slowly and then backwards. Things go in circles for years, it seems, and nothing gets done. However, I don't necessarily think that the ability of the government to "decide it want[s] a carbon tax" and then it become a reality is a good thing either. One could argue that the carbon tax is a good thing. I'm not going to get into that one way or the other, but the ability of the government to get exactly what it wants is not a good thing. When speaking about the ease of passing laws, you have to consider both the laws that you would support and those that you wouldn't. Again, the author only presents a single side to the argument. Thanks for linking the article. It definitely provoked some thought!
I don't think I agree with the idea of parliamentarian government - I much prefer the idea of having a President as both head of state and head of government. We weren't always so affected by gridlock (and hell, parliamentarian governments can be affected by that as well - just look at what happened to Sweden's government late last year) and I don't necessarily that it is a symptom of our republican democracy.
The counterargument I see for that is: The founding fathers were aware of those problems, and chose to act anyway. They did not claim to solve all problems, only lay a framework in which problems could be solved. It is a huge mistake to blame our current government on the choices of the founding fathers (let's be honest, reason 3 is the biggest reason people promote this view). Yes, there are mathematical flaws in their system, but there are like flaws in other systems.
Would the world have been able to stop the Nazi's without the US. Or provide a counter balance to post WWII Russia?