Yes, today’s the day! Happy 250th birthday, America!
On the whole you’ve been a pretty good to the world since you had your 125th. Where would we be if you hadn’t intervened in both world wars?
Yes, there have been ups and downs, and at the moment we’re in one of the downs. But let’s not despair.
However, while not wanting to spoil your birthday, I feel compelled to suggest that, if you Yanks have a besetting sin, it is perhaps hypocrisy.
I am reminded of this by a short article in today’s Times about Thomas Jefferson, “a brilliant polymath and a hero of the Age of Enlightenment” who “wrote the Declaration of Independence on a portable lap-desk [not a lap-top!] in a rented Philadelphia home in 1776”.
It included this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Meanwhile, old Tom “was the owner of more than 600 [!] slaves and had six children with one of them, Sally Hemings. It appears to have begun when she was just 14 years old [!] and Jefferson was in his mid-40s.”
Hmm. The “that was then, this is now” argument sometimes has a certain validity but I’m afraid, Tom, that in this instance it just won’t wash.
I would also note that in modern times Americans have frequently put the boot into the British Empire and our record in Ireland (and, to be fair, we have a strong case to answer in both instances, and over slavery too) – but readily forget that we have no stain on our national record that even begins to compare in quality or quantity with the fact that after 1776 some 100,000 to 500,000 Native Americans in the U.S were killed (and millions more dispossessed); and that in 1776 there were an estimated 500,000 slaves living in the thirteen American colonies.
