{"id":9964,"date":"2011-06-21T12:13:44","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T16:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9964"},"modified":"2011-06-21T10:47:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T14:47:15","slug":"american-history-retold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/21\/american-history-retold\/","title":{"rendered":"American history, retold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank J. Fleming<\/a> reminds his readers about “the principles this country was founded on”:<\/p>\n

\n

Back before the Unites States was an independent nation, people lived in horrific conditions under British rule. The British weren\u2019t providing very good free health care (wait time for a poor person to get an MRI was over 200 years), they were refusing to increase taxes on the rich, and they had very few laws dictating what colonists were allowed to eat, causing many to become obese on the high-fructose maize syrup the Indians taught them to make.<\/p>\n

So the colonists kept demanding that the British give them big government to regulate their lives and provide for their basic needs while confiscating all their wealth. \u201cWe\u2019re stupid,\u201d they\u2019d cry out to the British. \u201cPlease rule us and make us do what you think is best!\u201d But the British kept refusing, saying, \u201cNo, you guys are doing okay by yourselves. We want you to have the freedom to run your own lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was this laissez-faire attitude that led to the Boston Massacre, in which five people died of heart attacks in Boston from eating fatty foods a proper government would never have let them eat in the first place. Finally the colonists had enough of not being bossed around and decided if the British weren\u2019t going to provide them the all-encompassing government they wanted, they had to make it themselves.<\/p>\n

They started by throwing tea into the Boston Harbor since they determined it had too much caffeine and people shouldn\u2019t have been allowed to drink it. Then they formed militias to collect more taxes from the colonists to spend on welfare and government works projects. The British tried to strike back by ending regulations and giving tax rebates, but the colonists were now ready to fight to make sure some large entity would tell them what to do. And many were rallied to the cause by Patrick Henry\u2019s cry of \u201cGive me a large government telling me what I can and can\u2019t do while spending most of my money, or give me death!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank J. Fleming reminds his readers about “the principles this country was founded on”: Back before the Unites States was an independent nation, people lived in horrific conditions under British rule. The British weren\u2019t providing very good free health care (wait time for a poor person to get an MRI was over 200 years), they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,57,13],"tags":[322,463,661],"class_list":["post-9964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-humour","category-usa","tag-nannystate","tag-parody","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2AI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9965,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions\/9965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}