After 250 years, we’ve become accustomed to our freedom and independence. Have you ever contemplated what the country would be like if the American Revolution never happened?
Without the revolution, the United States wouldn’t exist today. The world would be a very, very different place. See, no revolution means we never had that Tea Party in Boston harbor. The thirteen colonies remain British territories. That means no Honest Abe, FDR or JFK. No Congress, no Constitution, and no Supreme Court as we know them. We also drive on the wrong side of the street, obsess over cricket and we all have really bad teeth. Starbucks sells pumpkin spiced tea in the fall.
If things go differently at Valley Forge and Saratoga,, George Washington’s face isn’t on the quarter coin or the dollar bill. Without the war, Washington subdivides Mount Vernon into the nation’s first swim/tennis neighborhood. Later he is elected the first President of the Homeowners Association.
The US dollar bill with Margaret Thatcher’s face.
Instead the dollar bill had the face of King George III, until Margaret Thatcher died. The quarter was changed from Queen Victoria to Princess Diana after her untimely death.
Princess Diana on the US quarter coin.
Americans vote for mayors, governors, and local representatives, but national representation is nonexistent. CNN has nightly talk shows about the absurdity of Parliament.
Without a horrific US Civil War, slavery remains economically entrenched for decades. Slavery ends through economic and moral MK pressure—but it survives into the mid 1900’s.
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Fearing diseases that were killing off their tribes, Tecumseh negotiates for the native Americans to have their own territory. They consolidate and retreat west of the Mississippi to form the Indian Colonies of America. They master agriculture and grow wealthy exporting grain and livestock across North America and Europe.
Around 750,000 men died in the American Revolution and Civil War, many simply due to disease or exposure. Without those deaths, roughly 25 million more babies are born. Among them are some exceptional founders, engineers, scientists, and leaders with unusual combinations of intelligence, ambition, courage and an insane amount of energy.
The 25 million babies include hundreds more people like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Walt Disney, etc.
Most of humanity’s greatest technological leaps were born here, in America. In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew 120 feet at 6.8 mph. Just forty-one years later, the Lockheed P-80 fighter jet reached 600 mph.
Just 65 years after the Wright brothers took flight, Neil Armstrong took one “small step for man” and planted the American flag on the moon.
In the 1980s the US defense department wanted to create a way to communicate after a potential catastrophic nuclear attack. They created a communications network called the internet.
“Without a horrific US Civil War with 500,000 deaths, slavery likely survives far longer.”
Later the defense department arranged to launch satellites to better monitor troop movements and to improve missile targeting. That created the Global Positioning System or GPS.
The telephone, telegraph, air conditioning, transistor, light bulb, zipper, microwave oven and smoke detector were all invented here. More importantly, we also invented fried chicken and bourbon.
Without the American Revolution there is no United States of America. Without the internet and GPS there is no Google, iPhone, Waze, Uber, etc. There is no Google, Apple, Waze, Uber, Tesla, etc. We’d still be struggling to re-fold Rand-McNally maps and talking on pay phones in those red phone booths. Why? Because unlike most other countries, striving is admired and success celebrated here.
The question isn’t whether war is horrible. It is. But it’s worth remembering that what emerged from the ashes is the most prosperous, innovative and powerful nation in human history.
It’s become fashionable for aspiring socialist politicians to take shots at our form of government and our approach to capitalism. Ignore them. There’s no whining on the yacht.
We should be grateful to live in a country built by extraordinary risk-takers, builders, inventors and dreamers. We inherited freedom, opportunity and abundance that much of the world still dreams about.
Thank God for the brave men who stepped forward and risked everything for our freedom. May God bless them and these United States of America for another 250 years.
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