This all comes out of a ‘conventional’ or ‘traditional’ interpretation of history and, as such, is riddled with errors and misunderstandings.

In the 1770s, the British Empire was not ‘all-powerful’, and in fact did not exist, as such. It was a phenomenon of the 19th Century. What happened is that a series of commercial enterprises were making vast profits for the King, but not much for anyone else. The King refused to charter the Colonies as English Boroughs or cities, because that would have reduced his profits, so Parliament, in order to cover the costs of maintaining law and order, protecting trade routes to the colonies and civilians in them, had to levy taxes in the form of excise duty. This cut into the companies profits, and eventually they decided to go it alone. The British put up a token fight, just to shut the King up, then went back to trading with America, but far more profitably, for both sides, than before.

So it was all about profits, and it’s been that way ever since! The Constitution and Bill of Rights were not and are not an experiment in human freedom, but an attempt to set up the basic necessary functions to ensure that business can proceed with minimal interference and disruption. The intentions of the Founding Fathers were as close as an 18th Century thinker could come to self-responsible anarchy -every man for himself and Devil take the hindmost.

The inalienable right to life — but Native Americans were subject to genocide and ethnic cleansing so that their territory could be seized for commercial exploitation. The right to liberty —millions were enslaved to increase the profits of plantation-owners. The pursuit of happiness? Translates as the pursuit of wealth, and those who have it are hanging on to it, so hard cheese, bub!

So we get the America of today. Under-governed -politicians bought and paid for by business interests so they will fight against any and all regulation. Under-policed and crime-ridden. Millions living in abject poverty while working under employment regimes harsher than any Charles Dickens could have imagined (by contrast with modern American employers, Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit with liberality, dignity and respect). A few thousand living in unimaginable luxury while doing and producing virtually nothing — just as the French aristocracy did before their Revolution.

The America which is now facing a lethal global pandemic without proper healthcare, without the means to enforce the necessary quarantine measures, with neither the infrastructure to, nor the intention of, supporting its citizens in the crisis. “Get America back to work!” Because there is no sick pay, because profits will be lost, etc. etc. All dressed up as ‘constitutional rights’ in a society which is not and has never been a country or a nation, just a gigantic commercial enterprise. In a time when a Conservative British government has promised to pay companies up to 80% of their wage-bill so that they can continue to pay furloughed workers instead of laying them off -because “this is not a time for ideology”, America is still trying to make money. At the cost of peoples’ lives. Poor people, of course. The ones who are guilty of not getting rich, and deserve the death sentence for this, the most heinous crime any American can commit.