http://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_american_independence.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/a_us_history/am_rev_timeline.htm
http://www.britishbattles.com/american-revolution.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
America celebrates on July 4th that it is a free nation, but there is far more to it than this simplified statement, for in it are ideals that shape the way America, rather than looking inward and only thinking of its own interests, fights for and protects the interests of other nations too. America has no King or Queen and is not under the rule of any other nation but is a huge active player in world affairs. Britain has always acknowledged that we would not have won The Second World War and beaten Nazi Germany without the support of our allies The United States. More recently, The United Kingdom voted on one of the most significant issues to affect us for years, whether we stayed in or left the European Union. No man is an island so the saying goes and no nation is either, some were not too happy in the UK when President Obama came to London and spoke trying to persuade the UK to remain in Europe, but within hours of the UK voting to leave, the £ had dropped to its lowest level for 30 years and taken the $ with it ….By Monday four days after the vote, President Obama, unable to come back again , probably in at least part due to the fact that in these his last months in office he had made it clear that the visit he made would be his last as President, dispatched the Secretary of State John Kerry to both Brussels and London to emphasis the United States commitment to both Europe and the UK. The United States is an independent but not isolated nation …
So, while looking at this declaration of independence and celebrating it, what does it stand for in a world of such obvious inter dependency on each other as nation states? What are the symbols it represents? Certainly one of the founding principles is the right to live within religious freedom without fear of persecution. This is an ideology of the UK also, but has become increasingly hard for people to feel confident about adhering to. The past years have seen a rise in Muslim fundamentalist extremism and resulting acts of terrorism. Of course it is impossible to expect those who have lost loved ones to bombs and shootings to not feel bitter, but these actions are the actions of a few, not the basis on which to judge and hate the masses
Anti-Semitism did not end with the peace treaties of the end of World War 2, Jewish graves are regularly desecrated and anti-Jewish graffiti painted on buildings, neither was mistrust of Catholics just a historical period, part of the reformation of Medieval and Tudor Europe. Right wing Christian fundamentalism has been especially brutal in the image it has portrayed of Catholicism. These days, rather than religion being dead, many are seekers, experiencing hardships such as loss of income and homelessness and health issues, rather than turning away from religion, it is very easy to be drawn to something promising salvation and fundamentalism certainly claims to be the route to it , but the saying beware of false prophets is far from unfounded. Is it maybe, just maybe no coincidence that in the cases of targeting Muslims, Jews and Catholics for persecution there are grounds for jealousy and fear albeit imagined ? While many Muslims do live in poverty, also the Muslim nations are in their business and economic sectors rapidly progressing and accumulating wealth. The IT industry has played a major factor in this, Once you have a computer , electricity at least for part of the day and internet access, it is not difficult at all for even a young man in a poor village to if he has the knowledge, set up a web design business that goes global, I see them every day …and if it takes them out of poverty and squalor then good luck .
Indeed, an irony is that one of the major routes of circulating hate speech, is in fact also an essential means to this business and economic progress ~ again the Internet …many times have I seen and made my objections known to such posts on Facebook that say The only good Muslim is a dead one and other such similar hate campaigns. People like and use Social media for effect, response and interaction, and this kind of thing certainly increases effect, response and interaction.
During the EU referendum, both sides, leave and remain made of course much use of the internet and social media, but I noticed that one of the biggest users was the right wing group Britain First. How much is owed to the effects of social media that a man, socially isolated, known to have mental health issues, fond of wearing army combat suits, later found to have been purchasing gun kits and information about explosives online, shot and stabbed a member of the UK Parliament, a mother of two small children and killed her, shouting Britain First as he did it?
Envy, fear and mistrust of the Jewish people has been ongoing since recorded time, while there is no doubt that many are good sound business people and wealthy, many have lived in and do live in poverty. After World War 2, on the liberation of the concentration camps , many Jews tried to return home, except that there often was nothing to go back to, their homes, lands and businesses had been given to Germans and there was no way to get them back .In Poland as late as 1946, Jews were being murdered, this time by the Polish people afraid of the returning Jews trying to reclaim what had been theirs .
In the UK, some of our highest ranking nobility are Catholics just as they were before the Reformation, an example is the Howards. They managed to hold on to their faith and their position, a rare thing for Catholics to do as we still have to this day many anti -Catholic laws preventing them holding positions of power, but such families simply appeared to conform to the laws of the monarch and government of the day, while doing their own thing in private. This is why many surviving Tudor homes have a carefully concealed priests hole …for hiding the Catholic Priest who had come to give them mass in their own chapels, if they were caught and at immediate risk of arrest, the priest was hidden until danger had passed. Today, the sovereign of the United Kingdom still cannot be a Catholic. Actually Henry V111 did not invent the reformation so that he could make The Church of England and so divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn, rather he took advantage of resentments and suspicions against the Catholic church and its beliefs, practises and power that was already growing in Europe. When his daughter Mary, married Philip of Spain, while many of the English people loved her as the daughter of the much loved Queen Catherine of Aragon, accepting her Spanish husband was another matter, for a woman, Queen or not was under the control of her husband and the husband she had chosen was a prince of Spain, due to be King, a Catholic and while married to Mary …King also of England and Ireland. The early settlers of what was to become The United States of America went there because neither the Church of England nor the Catholic Church gave them the freedom to worship as they saw fit, these Puritan separatists from the Church of England wanted to rid the church of all remaining Catholic influences and practises. The fledgling America gave them this freedom , however, the growth of fundamentalism is not as it may sound taking the church back to a simpler approach but rather fanning the old flames of superstition, with such attitudes as Catholics are idol worshippers who worship statues, saints and The Virgin Mary …but not The Lord .
Today my friend, the author Rhonda Partin-Sharp wrote ~ I have absolutely no patience left with anyone throwing out laundry lists of hate that they expect everyone to believe without debate and that shares "facts" they can't support by any valid source or even any source at all.
Over the past week, someone said a bunch of things about my commitment to speaking and sharing honestly -- he was mad that I rejected laundry lists of hate until they could be proven -- that two things stood out amongst those many comments: 1) taking the time to ensure I'm speaking and sharing honestly is a heavy burden that would ruin a person's life, and 2) faith and the mind are separate and thus speaking whatever we feel is faith and checking it out to make sure it is accurate is the opposite of faith. I blocked him.
I and I am sure many others fail to see how checking that what we share in public is accurate is a heavy burden that would ruin a person's life, but misrepresentation leads to such events as acts of terrorism and the result of the EU referendum that changed the economic future stability of the world, based on a campaign of lies and exaggerated claims that immigration would end and the immigrants would all go back home if we left the EU.
The American Declaration of Independence is a symbol ~ a symbol that people can live together in a land, governed by the people where everyone in that land is essential to its social and economic wellbeing. The Ideal of the declaration also is that the USA wants for all people to be free, even though the current head of this nation that most prides itself on Independence recognised that the United Kingdom was better in the European Union than out of it and that freedom is not about isolation …
Happy Birthday to The United States of America!!!
Valerie Hartland
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