Stars and Stripes or Union Jack? Two diverse views on American independence

Richard Lorenc: We celebrate America’s freedoms on the 4th of July, not Britain’s

Fast on the heels of the recent “No Kings” protests against President Trump comes an odd suggestion that Americans would be better off today if we had remained part of the British Empire — an empire whose titular head (drum roll, please) is King Charles III, the British monarch.

The fact that some Americans even think this way illustrates how out of touch they are with America’s history and ideals.

Granted, the British throne today doesn’t wield broad authority as it did in 1776, when the American colonists, in their Declaration of Independence, spelled out King George III’s “History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny.” But the nature of today’s ceremonial monarchy doesn’t make the United Kingdom’s form of government preferable to ours.

For starters, power in the United States is vested in the people, not in the government, and certainly not in a sovereign. We have no kings. We have no princes or princesses, counts or countesses, dukes or duchesses. As President Abraham Lincoln stressed in his “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating the cemetery where 3,500 Union soldiers were laid to rest after the historic Civil War battle, ours is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is not a government of the nobility, by the king, for the benefit of the gentry.

Moreover, the presidency, unlike the Crown, isn’t hereditary — it is not passed from parent to child, dynasty to dynasty. We can kick elected officials out, as we do regularly. Not so the British monarchy, which traces its bloodlines back to 1707, when the English and Scottish kingdoms were united as Great Britain.

Then, there’s the critical matter of the U.S. Constitution, the legal bedrock of our country, and the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, spelling out the all-important “unalienable Rights,” or personal liberties, to which the Declaration of Independence refers.

Although the U.K. is described as a “constitutional monarchy” or a “parliamentary democracy,” and is ranked among the world’s freest countries, it has no formal constitution. Instead, as the London-based Constitution Society points out, its constitution is an amalgam of Acts of Parliament, court decisions, common law, and “understandings of how the system should operate.” More important, there are “few checks on the power of a government with a majority in the House of Commons” — unlike the U.S., where the Constitution itself established an ingenious system of checks and balances meant to right the ship of state when politics pulls it too far off course.

 Ours is a nation of ideas and ideals. That’s what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are all about: the people’s freedoms and how to organize a government that respects and protects those freedoms.

This is not to say things are perfect. For example, the U.S. has been having an issue with the liberties outlined in the First Amendment, from cancel culture to the unhinged voices in politics and on social media.

However, as we’ve seen time again during America’s 250-year history, the most effective antidote to unhinged speech is more speech — rational speech — not repression.

The U.K., regrettably, has chosen the latter: repression. According to Dominic Green, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, British police during the past decade have investigated more than a quarter million “non-crime hate incidents,” which he described in The Wall Street Journal last fall as speech exhibiting “‘perceived’ hostility or prejudice against any ‘protected characteristic.’” Imagine being investigated because you said or wrote something that somebody else “perceived” as hostile, prejudicial or hurtful.

At each major crossroad in America's history — the Revolutionary War, the westward migration, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the two world wars — we’ve leaned into our values and ideals and emerged stronger for it.

If you’d rather live in a society where the police can be called whenever someone says something that hurts someone else’s feelings, send me a postcard. I’m staying here.

Because, despite the imperfect nature of the continuing American project, the U.S. is and remains the only nation founded on ideas — ideas intended to enhance and expand human liberty.

Editor’s note: Richard Lorenc is president and CEO of Lexandria, a project of the education nonprofit Certell Inc. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Tom Shattuck: Forgive us, England; we shouldn’t have won

It is time once again to celebrate the red, white and blue. Of course, by that, I mean the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom.

Our rightful flag.

The American Revolution was successful only because the ledger looked ugly in London, and as a matter of pragmatism, the project had to end. And what a shame it is.

We’d be better under the Crown.

The United States of America is a product of Britain, fueled by the bold practitioners of Enlightenment thought. All the innovation, discovery, vision and drive of the early settlers were not derived from Boston Harbor at low tide; it came from British society and culture. 

Americans’ zest  for freedom had its roots in the thinking of such philosophers as fellow Brit John Locke, who famously delineated man’s natural right to “life, liberty and property.” And centuries earlier, the colonists’ British forebears had brought an earlier monarch to heel, forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta and thereby setting a precedent of powerful limits on royal power.

Speaking of all men being created equal, the British began dismantling slavery a half-century before the U.S. did.

And what did the free British do with their abundance while stateside Americans were coming up with clever rebrands such as New England, New Britain and New York? The British were busy inventing antibiotics, the steam engine, the jet engine, the radio and television, the light bulb, and the internet.  

Almost every trapping of Independence Day is due to Mother England in some way or another. In fact, it is fair to ask why we ever declared independence from England in the first place.

And the answer is tawdry.

Colonists didn’t want to cough up money to pay for the French and Indian Wars. We took the protection and security and then walked out on the bill. Screw you, Crown. We’re keeping this place.

The United States of Ingrates.

We could all be British today if we hadn’t drunkenly launched tea into the ocean. How proud we would have been.

“Yes, I’m British, just like the Beatles.”

“Yes, I’m British, just like Monty Python.”

Just like Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Horatio Nelson, Ricky Gervais and Dudley Moore.

Baseball belongs to the Brits, too, as Rounders.

And literature, come on. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dickens, Dahl, Doyle, Austen, Woolf and J. K. Rowling, to start. The entire world of Harry Potter has captivated generations of readers worldwide, just as the James Bond franchise has captivated moviegoers.

Rock ’n’ roll is dominated by the Brits — there can be no argument. From the Fab Four to the Stones to The Who to Zeppelin and on and on. We could have called David Bowie our countryman had we not ambushed a British patrol on the way to Concord. 

But no, the closest affiliation we have with the crown in popular culture is Meghan Markle, the single most vacuous human to inhabit the earth while making candles.

And while we’re patting ourselves on the back on July 4 for casting off the shackles of King George III, we should remember that we spent most of the Revolutionary War losing.

The redcoats won the Battle of Bunker Hill, and Lexington and Concord, and Quebec. They chased Washington all over New York, and in the South, they won the battles of Camden and Charleston.

Unfortunately for England and all of us, they lost the battle of the budget and sailed away.

Finally, the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, is not even symmetrical. Talk about “You had one job.”

Like the British flag over our capitals, our dream of good, British order disappeared in 1783.

Editor’s note: Tom Shattuck is the host of Tom Shattuck’s Burn Barrel podcast. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.