Political philosophy has always been integral to who we are as a country, though. Empty philosophical bloviation helped reframe the Revolutionary War from "we don't want to pay taxes to help pay for the wars fought in our defense" to the load of high-minded nonsense everyone's taught in history class about self-evident truths and so forth, and it's been getting poor people to go along with what the rich and powerful want ever since. We have always been a plutocracy in all but name, we have always had hereditary nobility in all but title, and we have always fought tooth and nail over our preferred rhetorical justification for the vast disparity between what we profess philosophically and what we actually practice politically rather than anything substantive. We're trained socially to punch sideways at the other party so the aristocracy doesn't have to dirty their gloves punching down; this is also why social justice movements have been cropping up with increasing frequency to fill in the gaps for people too disgusted with the system to play politics: so that poor women can blame poor men and poor black people can blame poor white people and everybody has a favorite way to cast the overarching class war in a way that gives them targets they can actually reach. Everyone's so concerned with who's in the boardroom that they never ask why the board controls their lives. American Exceptionalism is just another way we're encouraged to think about philosophy rather than reality, because reality is deeply at odds with the worldview our political system has been paid to advertise.
Claiming it was just about "we don't want to pay taxes" is vastly oversimplifying the situation. It was a combination of unjust and onerous tax impositions, the colonies feeling like they were dragged into wars they had no desire to be in, the British ignoring laws passed in the colonies, the imposition of requiring the colonies to maintain the British soldiers in food, shelter and other comfort (in addition to pay taxes for their salaries), a series of violent outbursts between colonists and those same British soldiers they were required to care for, and finally culminating in the Intolerable acts, essentially punishing the entire city of Boston by closing their port and ending self governance of Massachusetts as a whole and basically gave British officials legal immunity while in the colonies by allowing any trial involving them take place in Britain or elsewhere, making it nearly impossible for most people to call witnesses or otherwise pursue a legal battle.
The constitution and the Bill of Rights didn't just come out of nowhere. While a lot of it is just basic framework for a government, the 10 amendments of the bill of rights specifically tended to guarantee against specific actions the British government tried to force on the colonies in the years leading up to the war.
The Third amendment specifically covered quartering soldiers in private residences.
The Fourth amendment while broad enough to have been any number of issues, seems to stem from the Gaspee incident and other similar situations where Rhode Island viewed the British as unreasonably searching and seizing their ships and cargo.
The Sixth Amendment covers having a speedy and public trial in the place where the crime was committed. Direct response to British officials having their trials take place elsewhere to avoid their accusers.
The Seventh Amendment covers the trial by Jury. Specifically limiting the ability of corrupt officials deciding important cases (Literally anything worth more than 20 dollars.)
The Ninth amendment specifically separates the powers of government just to avoid any given person becoming too powerful.
We may be a plutocracy in effect, but that's not for lack of trying to avoid such a situation. Attempts were made to avoid that but a document so old and thrown together in a couple of years could not foresee over 200 years of future ahead of it with which those working against its goal could undermine it and find loopholes to work within it. Changes have more or less been made to assist in this goal over the years, but the constitution, while not immutable, is very hard to modify, for better or worse. Any reaction to people taking advantage of society in unjust ways is always going to be slow even in the best of cases and will still have to overcome significant inertia on the part of the constitution, by its own rules and the attitudes of those who work with it, to remain as it is.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4434612 times)