So it goes again. Mr Haque with his usual blend of good intentions, mild naivete and inability to get things quite right (Umair, mate, will you just once look up the dictionary definition of ‘fascism’ and apply it to what is happening to America?).
The usual slew of replies from the Woke ‘you’re so right’ brigade to the MAGA brain-dead and all points in between. The mildly-obsessive Mr Volek, always pushing his own ideas of governance, regardless of topic.
So here comes the sarcastic and bad-mannered English guy.
America is not, and has never been from its origins, a nation or even really a state. It was, and is, a commercial enterprise designed to give its’ rulers the power to exploit everything they could reach for profit. The original colonies were businesses set up under Royal Charter (basically the monarch was the majority shareholder) to exploit the resources of the New World for profit.
Along about the 1770s, the French, as is their wont, were making trouble in both India and North America, both places in which Britain had commercial and colonial interests. Now by that time, the East India Company had been in existence for over 150 years, was massively wealthy and had its own army of around 60 000 to defend its’ interests. No chance for the French there!
North America was a different matter. Even with a brisk trade , America wasn’t very profitable for English businessmen. The reason for that being that most of the profits went straight into the Kings’ coffers( and the King didn’t pay tax), or was hung onto by the American businessmen. Excise duty was evaded more often than paid, and tax revenue from the multiple companies hard to collect. So when the King started demanding more protection for his business interests, Parliament asked “Are you going to pay for it?”, to which the King answered “That’s your job!”.
Now the thing to do would have been to split the colonies into a number of Parliamentary boroughs, and have them elect MPs. This would have enabled a Colonial Parliament to raise taxes within the colonies, or the colonies to send MPs to Westminster and agree taxation levels there. However, that would have meant the dissolution of the various companies, and the King granting borough status, which he wasn’t about to do. That was the situation that led to taxation without representation and sparked the coup d’etat that created the United States.
Now be it noted that the Founding Fathers were not philosophers, aristocrats or Churchmen. They were businessmen, and as such both the Constitution and Bill of Rights have more in common with Articles of Incorporation than the foundations of a society. There is no suggestion of a ‘common weal’, common good, the ‘inalienable rights’ are just another way of saying ‘every man for himself’, and all the stuff about protection from tyranny is about making sure that nobody could ever curb commercial enterprise.
Americans are not citizens of a state. A state must attend to the common good of its’ citizens, protect them and provide for them. Americans are either shareholders or employees in a massive commercial enterprise. Until that changes, the fortunes of ordinary folk in the US depend upon the shareholders finding someone or something else to exploit. You do realise that slavery was only banned because as free people, they would become consumers?
