"God Bless America"

Were they rebels and traitors or men and women loyal "to the higher cause of English rights and liberty", as an American friend who is a fervent Anglospherist wrote to me? A bit both, I would guess but one thing is true: whenever we are asked by europhiliacs to come up with a better vision than theirs of carefully controlled rabbit hutches for people with their lives strictly ruled and defined for their own good, we can say this.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These are English ideas even if they were penned by the Francophile Thomas Jefferson. (Unlike the American Constitution, which he did not even sign.) One look at the course of the American Revolution (which can really be described as the third English Revolution) and that of the various French Revolutions, especially the first one, will convince all.