With the fourth of July having passed us by, what sparked my interests were the Occupy movement of Denver who were burning their own American flags which to me was incomprehensible, perhaps because I don’t believe that is the answer. We understand that the American government has gotten out of control but for me I found it personally offensive to those who love their country and are proud to have fought under that flag irrespective of the wrongdoing of government. The fourth of July is a day for American people to proudly fly that flag and remember the day they won their Independence from the British colonialists.
What had sparked the American Revolution were the tariffs the British government were laying on the American people. The first of the tariffs came in 1764 known as the Sugar Act, which the British government had levied high taxation on sugar imports to the country. The British government ensured that all trade had to go through Britain first before being exported or imported forcing the American people with this taxation. The import taxes led to pirating with smuggling imports and in response to this the British had sent more bureaucrats across to America to enforce the Sugar Act as well as enforcing regulations to keep the Act in place. To quote Thomas J. Dilorenzo:
“British enforces could board all vessels, large and small, and confiscate the entire vessel and its cargo if it was determined to have run afoul of the new tax law. Pro-British “Kangaroo courts” were established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to deny the accused a fair trial, and informers were given one-third of the confiscated goods. In other words, the Sugar Act created a war-on-drugs-style bureaucracy with powers to confiscate private property on the mere suspicion of committing the “grievous” offense of not paying enough sugar tax.”
This gives you a sense of how restricted American people would have felt feeling they couldn’t trade freely in their own country without having to deal constantly with the British government and its high tax rates. It was then in 1765 the Stamp Act had been established a year later, to quote Thomas J. Dilorenzo:
“The act required a government stamp to be placed on every paper transaction in the colonies—marriage licences, property titles, and so forth; to purchase the stamp, Americans had to pay a tax to the British.”
In response to the Stamp Act, the first American Continental Congress had formed that coined the famous phrase “no taxation without representation” expressing their anger which pressured the British parliament to end the Act a year later in 1766. The Townshend Acts of 1767 the following year was a serious of new import tariffs, the American people felt this was something replicated off the back of the Stamp Act, it was thanks to the American Capitalist Merchant class that led the charge in boycotting the British imports which impacted British businesses forcing the British government to repeal that Act. Then as if that weren’t enough, in 1773 the British government yet again had laid on more taxation with the famous Tea Act, it was from this the famous Boston Tea Party had formed, which were the American Merchant Capitalist class again leading charge, which led to them throwing tea overboard which sparked the American Revolution.
The American Revolution itself would have largely been viewed as a Capitalist Revolution and for myself I feel largely connected as my own countrymen had fought and colonised the entire South, no less than half the colonial army that fought and won the American Revolutionary War were Scots, so I have a great sense of pride and connection to my fellow American Scots. One thing I can say for sure is that a lot of those American Scots have stood true to their Scottish heritage having stood by in support of Capitalism, sadly my own country in the past 100 years has been swept away by Socialist indoctrination which I wish would change.
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Libertarian Scot 