The importance of Independence – Happy 4 July

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wishing all my USA visitors a Happy 4 th of July.

It is customary for people up here in Canada to be somewhat anti-American.

As a relative newcomer to North America, I find that attitude difficult to understand. If it was not for the USA’s decisive entry into WW2, its military and economic strength to counter the USSR during the cold war, the world today would be a far different place. Had things gone differently Canada could well have become a resource rich province of an emboldened USSR intent on world domination.

Perhaps my thinking stems both from being a baby boomer with parents who fought in WW2  and having lost my own country Rhodesia, which had become a proud, independent, peaceful and successful nation in exactly the same way as the USA had some 189 years earlier by unilaterally declaring independence from Great Britain.

That both actions were the right ones at the time, has been adequately proven by America’s evolution into the only world power and the economic and human rights disaster that Zimbabwe has become under the terrorist government of Mugabe. That tragedy forced on us by Britain and other Western Nations choosing to abandon a WW2 ally in a cowardly attempt to appease newly independent African and Asian states showing far greater ability to manipulate the UN than democratically govern their countries.

Given that the USA went along with Britain’s betrayal of its own descendants in Rhodesia, I should also share the popular Canadian anti-American sentiment. I don’t, at the time, apart from being the world’s largest producer of quality tobacco, Rhodesia was about as important to the USA as Zimbabwe is today. Any strategic advantage we may have held by resisting the spread of communism in Southern Africa was lost with the end of the cold war and the USSR’s collapse. That South Africa was later allowed to be taken over by the same type (if so far, slightly more moderate) of ruling party as in Zimbabwe, is further proof of the irrelevance of the region to US interests.

Had there been significant oil reserves in the region, as in Iraq, I am certain that the situation would have been entirely different.

Therefore I take the more benevolent view that the USA acted, or failed to act, out of ignorance or disinterest rather than with malice. The people with blood on their hands are the largely long deceased British politicians from Harold Wilson onwards. Even Margaret Thatcher, supremely effective at getting  the British economy working again and renowned for not allowing herself to be deceived bears some responsibility for chaos in Zimbabwe. It does appear that she was misled to a degree by those in her government with vested interests, but that does not entirely excuse her own actions.

Independence was worth your founding fathers fighting for in 1776, it is worth fighting for now. It is a different fight, against an insidious internal enemy – political correctness and rampant government control, not just in the USA but in most of the West. That is how we will all lose our independence, not to external enemies with guns or bombs. Believe me, seeing your own country, one that you have fought for and in many cases seen your friends and family die for, lose its independence is a sad day that changes your life irrevocably.

Here then are best wishes from one Canadian who should have an axe to grind but doesn’t and sincerely wishes that the USA will sort its economic and political problems out and get back to its rightful place as an undisputed world power.

 

Happy 4th July.

 

 

 

Graphics by