Political Crossfire Forums

thundertaker · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:21 pm Post subject: As July 4th approaches....

Now might be an appropriate time to ask, what might the world be like today if there was no american declration of independence?

TwinkieDP · Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 3704 Location: US

thundertaker wrote: Now might be an appropriate time to ask, what might the world be like today if there was no american declration of independence? No McDonalds and PizzaHuts for one...p

good90 · Joined: 10 Nov 2004 Posts: 85 Location: Hoosier Country

We first would probably be left in the dark since Thomas Edison would be called crazy for some of his ideas and thrown in jail because he wouldn't have the freedom to try invent new things. This means the lightbulb wouldn't be invented and perhaps the airplane. Communism would have been spread easier without the idea of democracy meaning that eventually we would all end up pretty crappy. It's kind of crazy because there are so many things able to go different that it's impossible to give any accurate prediction. Who knows? :duh1:

Wyatt Earp · Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 358

No civil war, Slavery would of been abolished in 1833 the same time England abolished it though out her empire.
Hockey would of been the National past time, we would of had Health care for all.

thundertaker · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 7:41 pm Post subject:

good90 wrote: We first would probably be left in the dark since Thomas Edison would be called crazy for some of his ideas and thrown in jail because he wouldn't have the freedom to try invent new things. This means the lightbulb wouldn't be invented and perhaps the airplane.

I doubt Edison would have been thrown in jail for being 'crazy'. Assuming he was ever born. Believe it or not, most European countries weren't insane despotisms that did all they could to stifle innovation on pain of death :roll: . Countries like Britain especially encouraged technological progress (and I assume from Edison's surname, his forefathers were from Great Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution).
Besides, Joseph Swann, an Englishman, invented the lightbulb at the same time as Edison. Rather than fight each other for the patent, they decided to join forces and form the Edison-Swan company to manufacture lightbulbs, making them both extremely wealthy in the process.
Powered flight was also inevitable, The Wright brothers built upon the principles worked upon by people such as Frenchman Clement Alder, German Otto Lilienthal and many others.
English inventor Percy Pilcher came perilously close to beating the Wright brothers to powered flight. He was set to demonstrate a working prototype of a powered triplane in 1899, but the engine broke down before he could give a demonstration of the plane. Tragedy then struck when he decided to fly in his unpowered glider so as not to disappoint the crowd that had assembled in which he crashed landed and was killed. Where he was thwarted by the narrowest of margins (and a tragic accident), the Wright Brothers succeeded. But had the Wright brothers also failed, it would only have been a short while before one of the multitude of others working towards powered flight would have succeeded, and claimed a place in history as the pioneers of powered flight....

Quote: Communism would have been spread easier without the idea of democracy meaning that eventually we would all end up pretty crappy.

Communism may never have existed. The American revolution influenced the French Revolution, which set the precedent of changing social injustice by means of violent revolution and overthrowing the existing power by force. Without that precedent, Marx may never have been inspired by historical events to formulate his theories....

Ragnar Danneskjold · Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 2628 Location: Mulligan's Valley

Wyatt Earp wrote: No civil war, Slavery would of been abolished in 1833 the same time England abolished it though out her empire.
Hockey would of been the National past time, we would of had Health care for all.

So life would suck?

mojo · Joined: 08 Sep 2005 Posts: 5487 Location: Dreamland, NC

thundertaker wrote: Quote: Communism would have been spread easier without the idea of democracy meaning that eventually we would all end up pretty crappy.

Communism may never have existed. The American revolution influenced the French Revolution, which set the precedent of changing social injustice by means of violent revolution and overthrowing the existing power by force. Without that precedent, Marx may never have been inspired by historical events to formulate his theories....

Violent revolutions may have created the marxist revolution but marxism is not really any better or worse than an acceptance of despots. Authoritarian kings were an accepted part of life in the world. After the American revolution tyrants were rejected for what they were.

Simon De Montfort · Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 2204 Location: Huntsville, Al

TwinkieDP wrote: thundertaker wrote: Now might be an appropriate time to ask, what might the world be like today if there was no american declration of independence? No McDonalds and PizzaHuts for one...p

Yes, it would be so much better if the world was forced to eat English cuisine. :rotf:

cap'n queasy · Joined: 15 May 2004 Posts: 34968

There would be a lot more colonies paying tribute to the royal families of Europe. :lol:

Simon De Montfort · Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 2204 Location: Huntsville, Al

Wyatt Earp wrote: No civil war, Slavery would of been abolished in 1833 the same time England abolished it though out her empire.
Hockey would of been the National past time, we would of had Health care for all.

I find this kind of thinking actually amazing. For some reason they can only focus on the bad in American history and not the good. And they seem to think that there would have been no problems with America still united to Britain. :roll:

I will address one of the issues you raised specifically, slavery. To accept the idea that slaves would have been better off in an America united to Britain requires one to ignore some important facts. First, several American states abolished slavery long before slavery was abolished by Britain in 1833. Second, Britain would have been less willing to end slavery it had been slaves working on their plantation. In the mid 1800s Britain textile manufactures were dependent on the slave labor of southern cotton plantations. Britain even aided the Confederacy by buying its cotton thus supporting the South's attempts to preserve slavery. Given that, I seriously doubt that British investors in British owned cotton plantations which provided the cotton needed by British owned textile mills would have eagerly embraced the abolition of slavery.

Spider · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:41 am Post subject:

thundertaker wrote: good90 wrote: We first would probably be left in the dark since Thomas Edison would be called crazy for some of his ideas and thrown in jail because he wouldn't have the freedom to try invent new things. This means the lightbulb wouldn't be invented and perhaps the airplane.

I doubt Edison would have been thrown in jail for being 'crazy'. Assuming he was ever born. Believe it or not, most European countries weren't insane despotisms that did all they could to stifle innovation on pain of death :roll: . Countries like Britain especially encouraged technological progress (and I assume from Edison's surname, his forefathers were from Great Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution).
Besides, Joseph Swann, an Englishman, invented the lightbulb at the same time as Edison. Rather than fight each other for the patent, they decided to join forces and form the Edison-Swan company to manufacture lightbulbs, making them both extremely wealthy in the process.
Powered flight was also inevitable, The Wright brothers built upon the principles worked upon by people such as Frenchman Clement Alder, German Otto Lilienthal and many others.
English inventor Percy Pilcher came perilously close to beating the Wright brothers to powered flight. He was set to demonstrate a working prototype of a powered triplane in 1899, but the engine broke down before he could give a demonstration of the plane. Tragedy then struck when he decided to fly in his unpowered glider so as not to disappoint the crowd that had assembled in which he crashed landed and was killed. Where he was thwarted by the narrowest of margins (and a tragic accident), the Wright Brothers succeeded. But had the Wright brothers also failed, it would only have been a short while before one of the multitude of others working towards powered flight would have succeeded, and claimed a place in history as the pioneers of powered flight....

Quote: Communism would have been spread easier without the idea of democracy meaning that eventually we would all end up pretty crappy.

Communism may never have existed. The American revolution influenced the French Revolution, which set the precedent of changing social injustice by means of violent revolution and overthrowing the existing power by force. Without that precedent, Marx may never have been inspired by historical events to formulate his theories....

I find it annoying that people try so hard to diminish the acheivements of America and its people. Why? Whats the point? Why go to so much effort? What are you gaining by attempting to tear people down all the time? Let us have an occasional, "Well done!" Would it kill you?

Yes, some of our achivements are evolutions of the past ideas of others. So what? We still acheived them. The french invented the automobile. But we mass produced it. The brits invented the steam engine. But we built continental railroads that required the advancement of the technology.The french invented the altimeter, but despite the many failures of others in their attempts to acheive flight, a couple of americans managed to get a plane into the air. It happened. It was accomplished. Nobody else had pulled it off, for whatever reason. And then when the sound barrier first needed to broken, we all know how that worked out. The fact that basic principles behind modern invention may have been discovered before the US existed does not diminish the accomplishments of those americans that put them to use.

I look around my office, I see things like Microsoft windows, the pentium chip, the picture of the 1969 moonlanding on my wall, the telephone on my desk, the computer I'm typing this on...the amount that the US has contributed in its short history is pretty big news. If there had been no America, someone else would have figured all this out instead. But thats not how it worked out. Americans were the ones who figured it out.

I don't diminish the achievements of other nations. Its all progress. Its all good. But I notice a tremendous amount of effort people put into finding roundabout ways of attempting to reduce the importance of American acheivements. And I can't help but wonder...why?

And happy Independence Day all.

DSwain · Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 3552

Spider wrote: thundertaker wrote: good90 wrote: We first would probably be left in the dark since Thomas Edison would be called crazy for some of his ideas and thrown in jail because he wouldn't have the freedom to try invent new things. This means the lightbulb wouldn't be invented and perhaps the airplane.

I doubt Edison would have been thrown in jail for being 'crazy'. Assuming he was ever born. Believe it or not, most European countries weren't insane despotisms that did all they could to stifle innovation on pain of death :roll: . Countries like Britain especially encouraged technological progress (and I assume from Edison's surname, his forefathers were from Great Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution).
Besides, Joseph Swann, an Englishman, invented the lightbulb at the same time as Edison. Rather than fight each other for the patent, they decided to join forces and form the Edison-Swan company to manufacture lightbulbs, making them both extremely wealthy in the process.
Powered flight was also inevitable, The Wright brothers built upon the principles worked upon by people such as Frenchman Clement Alder, German Otto Lilienthal and many others.
English inventor Percy Pilcher came perilously close to beating the Wright brothers to powered flight. He was set to demonstrate a working prototype of a powered triplane in 1899, but the engine broke down before he could give a demonstration of the plane. Tragedy then struck when he decided to fly in his unpowered glider so as not to disappoint the crowd that had assembled in which he crashed landed and was killed. Where he was thwarted by the narrowest of margins (and a tragic accident), the Wright Brothers succeeded. But had the Wright brothers also failed, it would only have been a short while before one of the multitude of others working towards powered flight would have succeeded, and claimed a place in history as the pioneers of powered flight....

Quote: Communism would have been spread easier without the idea of democracy meaning that eventually we would all end up pretty crappy.

Communism may never have existed. The American revolution influenced the French Revolution, which set the precedent of changing social injustice by means of violent revolution and overthrowing the existing power by force. Without that precedent, Marx may never have been inspired by historical events to formulate his theories....

I find it annoying that people try so hard to diminish the acheivements of America and its people. Why? Whats the point? Why go to so much effort? What are you gaining by attempting to tear people down all the time? Let us have an occasional, "Well done!" Would it kill you?

Yes, some of our achivements are evolutions of the past ideas of others. So what? We still acheived them. The french invented the automobile. But we mass produced it. The brits invented the steam engine. But we built continental railroads that required the advancement of the technology.The french invented the altimeter, but despite the many failures of others in their attempts to acheive flight, a couple of americans managed to get a plane into the air. It happened. It was accomplished. Nobody else had pulled it off, for whatever reason. And then when the sound barrier first needed to broken, we all know how that worked out. The fact that basic principles behind modern invention may have been discovered before the US existed does not diminish the accomplishments of those americans that put them to use.

I look around my office, I see things like Microsoft windows, the pentium chip, the picture of the 1969 moonlanding on my wall, the telephone on my desk, the computer I'm typing this on...the amount that the US has contributed in its short history is pretty big news. If there had been no America, someone else would have figured all this out instead. But thats not how it worked out. Americans were the ones who figured it out.

I don't diminish the achievements of other nations. Its all progress. Its all good. But I notice a tremendous amount of effort people put into finding roundabout ways of attempting to reduce the importance of American acheivements. And I can't help but wonder...why?

And happy Independence Day all.

Spider - no one here is being mealy mouthed about US achievements. You've got a lot to be very very proud of. Thundertaker was responding to an earlier post in which it was suggested the lightbulb and the aeroplane would not have been invented but for the American War of Independence and he was drawing attention to the fact that inventions work within a broad tapestry of innovation and progress across many nations.

Have a very happy 4th of July.

antonio62 · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:21 am Post subject:

thundertaker wrote: Besides, Joseph Swann, an Englishman, invented the lightbulb at the same time as Edison. Rather than fight each other for the patent, they decided to join forces and form the Edison-Swan company to manufacture lightbulbs, making them both extremely wealthy in the process.

Swan beat Edison to it. Only because a German invented a vaccum pump and he got it first. It wasn't exactly a scientific breakthrough everyone knew how to do it they were just waiting for a vaccum pump.

Quote: Powered flight was also inevitable, The Wright brothers built upon the principles worked upon by people such as Frenchman Clement Alder, German Otto Lilienthal and many others.
English inventor Percy Pilcher came perilously close to beating the Wright brothers to powered flight. He was set to demonstrate a working prototype of a powered triplane in 1899, but the engine broke down before he could give a demonstration of the plane. Tragedy then struck when he decided to fly in his unpowered glider so as not to disappoint the crowd that had assembled in which he crashed landed and was killed. Where he was thwarted by the narrowest of margins (and a tragic accident), the Wright Brothers succeeded. But had the Wright brothers also failed, it would only have been a short while before one of the multitude of others working towards powered flight would have succeeded, and claimed a place in history as the pioneers of powered flight....

I think there was a British guy built a working plane that was steam powered in the 19th century but it wasn't manned.

thundertaker · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:05 am Post subject:

politicalmojo wrote:
Violent revolutions may have created the marxist revolution but marxism is not really any better or worse than an acceptance of despots. Authoritarian kings were an accepted part of life in the world. After the American revolution tyrants were rejected for what they were.

Communism is the worst, most brutal ideology ever to scar the face of the planet. Nothing in the history of absolute monarchism can compare to the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, or to the genocide of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

I blame the French Revolution for setting such an horrendous precedent for overthrowing the existing order by brute force and mass executions. The French Revolutionaries were inspired by the American Revolutionaries (not getting at them, as they were in turn inspired by the English Revolutionaries of 1688-89).
Marx cut his political teeth in the revolutions of 1848 that swept throughout Europe, which was almost directly inspired by the French Revolution of 60 years prior, when he wrote his Communist Manifesto....

Quote: I will address one of the issues you raised specifically, slavery. To accept the idea that slaves would have been better off in an America united to Britain requires one to ignore some important facts. First, several American states abolished slavery long before slavery was abolished by Britain in 1833. Second, Britain would have been less willing to end slavery it had been slaves working on their plantation. In the mid 1800s Britain textile manufactures were dependent on the slave labor of southern cotton plantations. Britain even aided the Confederacy by buying its cotton thus supporting the South's attempts to preserve slavery. Given that, I seriously doubt that British investors in British owned cotton plantations which provided the cotton needed by British owned textile mills would have eagerly embraced the abolition of slavery.

Britain's Carribean colonies still benefited greatly from slavery in the early 19th century when Britain made moves to abolish it. The Royal Navy also went to considerble expense to try and stop other nations from engaging in the trade on the high seas.
It has been said that one of the reasons for much of the support in the south for american independence was the fear that britain was turning against slavery in light of rulings such as that of Lord Mansfield in 1772, declaring that slavery was illegal in the British Isles, thus freeing James Somerset from the clutches of his american owner.

However, the southern planters were particularly sensitive about the issue of slavery, so Britain may not have wanted to risk a serious confrontation of provoking a rebellion in the south over the issue, as the Federal US government did in the 1860s......

Quote: he brits invented the steam engine. But we built continental railroads that required the advancement of the technology.

We also invented the steam locomotive, and built the first Railways. (And also produced the first fatal railway accident when cabinet minister William Huskinson was knocked down in 1830 on the Manchester to Liverpool line in the presence of the Duke of Wellington)....

Quote: Spider - no one here is being mealy mouthed about US achievements. You've got a lot to be very very proud of. Thundertaker was responding to an earlier post in which it was suggested the lightbulb and the aeroplane would not have been invented but for the American War of Independence and he was drawing attention to the fact that inventions work within a broad tapestry of innovation and progress across many nations.

Have a very happy 4th of July.

Took the words right out of my mouth....
:wink:

Spider · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 12:39 pm Post subject:

Perhaps I got a little snappish there. This is just a very, very old peeve of mine. I studied at the University of Nottingham for 2 years, and it seems that I spent about half my time listening to people explain to me how we've accomplished about nill, in the final analysis. I think it gave me a complex. And maybe those people had a complex about me as well.

My apologies for the outpouring of indignation. If you'll excuse me, I've got barbeque to eat, beer to drink, etc :-D

DSwain · Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 3552

Spider wrote: Perhaps I got a little snappish there. This is just a very, very old peeve of mine. I studied at the University of Nottingham for 2 years, and it seems that I spent about half my time listening to people explain to me how we've accomplished about nill, in the final analysis. I think it gave me a complex. And maybe those people had a complex about me as well.

My apologies for the outpouring of indignation. If you'll excuse me, I've got barbeque to eat, beer to drink, etc :-D

Totally understood - the stupid anti-Americanism of some Brits turns me cold.

I'd like to share with you a letter in this morning's 'Daily Telegraph' - in response to an opinion poll that says that increasing numbers of Britons find Americans to be vulgar and crude.

"SIR - Before we condemn America, during the celebration of the 230th anniversary of its independence, let us not forget that, if it wasn't for America, we would all be speaking German or Russian."

I can do nothing but agree with that!

thundertaker · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:02 pm Post subject:

I do disagree that we would be speaking German or Russian. Even before the battle of Britain, Germany didn't have the means to invade and conquer Britain with it's pathetically small surface fleet, and the Soviet Union was a land power, but never a sea power. Even then they couldn't complete their attempted conquest of Finland in the 1930s-1940s, how would they have faired against a major world power?
Britain may well have been forced to accept peace terms from the Germans or be isolated from a Soviet dominated continent, but being conquered and occupied by either of these two totalitarian regimes was beyond their means......

DSwain · Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 3552

thundertaker wrote: I do disagree that we would be speaking German or Russian. Even before the battle of Britain, Germany didn't have the means to invade and conquer Britain with it's pathetically small surface fleet, and the Soviet Union was a land power, but never a sea power. Even then they couldn't complete their attempted conquest of Finland in the 1930s-1940s, how would they have faired against a major world power?
Britain may well have been forced to accept peace terms from the Germans or be isolated from a Soviet dominated continent, but being conquered and occupied by either of these two totalitarian regimes was beyond their means......

WW2:
No lend lease? No USN to assist the RN in the Atlantic even before December 1941? No US supported landings in North Africa? No opportunity for a Second Front? No US force deployed in the Far East? No US resources for atomic weapons?

Cold War:
No massive US defence spending while European NATO allies dragged their feet? No US nuclear umbrella? No threat of Star Wars?

I'm willing to split the difference and simply say: Thank You America; if you'd not been there when we needed you this country and the world would be a LOT worse off.

antonio62 · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:20 pm Post subject:

DSwain wrote: WW2:
No lend lease? No USN to assist the RN in the Atlantic even before December 1941? No US supported landings in North Africa? No opportunity for a Second Front? No US force deployed in the Far East? No US resources for atomic weapons?

Russia would have defeated Germany and kicked Japan out of mainland Asia whether the US and Britain helped or not.

Quote: Cold War:
No massive US defence spending while European NATO allies dragged their feet? No US nuclear umbrella? No threat of Star Wars?

We could have developed nuclear wepons and built a navy large enough to protect us from a Soviet invasion. The Soviets would never have risked war once we got nuclear wepons and then would have eventually crumbled from the inside.

thundertaker · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:23 pm Post subject:

I'm not saying we could have liberated the (half of the) continent without them. And the Germans may well have persuaded Britian to come to terms (Hitler didn't really want to fight with Britain and could have made peace terms very attractive to Britain if American help was not forthcoming).
Though to be honest, I think Hitler's attempt to invade and conquer Russia sealed his doom. It was an impossible task, and the contribution of the Soviets to the defeat of Nazi Germany makes that of the western allies seem trivial.
As for the Far East, Japan never threatened the British mainland, only her Empire. Besides which, if America had not existed, it is likely Japan would have ended up as just another European colony. Japan maintained it's independence long enough to develop technologically because the Americans took a special interest in Japan as a trading partner, and none of the European colonial powers thought it was worth upsetting the americans by incorporating her into their Empires.