Has anyone asked the Heritage Foundation what exactly it means when they

[malaise]

said that the British monarchy is the cornerstone of American Democracy.
That is fucking madness on steroids. You either have a democracy or a monarchy and the American Revolution overthrew the monarchy in favor of equality before the law and against all the fucking titles and hierarchical structures..

[Dawson Leery]

1. Monarchs keep order and maintain purity. Conservatives love order and purity.

[lark]

11. I disagree, conservatives care nothing, zip, nada, about their own purity, it's irrelevant.

They only care about the purity of low demographics people, women & minorities. Rich men can do anything they want, including trying to overturn the US government, and not be punished any per the reich wing asses. So, they truly care nothing about purity, they just want to be able to hurt anyone they want that's not a straight white male.

[leftieNanner]

2. But, but, but

Princess Ivanka??

[malaise]

3. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[IronLionZion]

16. Czarina

[leftieNanner]

19. Czarina!

Nice Russian twist!

[smirkymonkey]

32. That would be Melania.

Ivanka would be a Grand Duchess.

[Hela]

5. Thank u, next.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

[snip]

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America...do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved..."



https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

[Hela]

6. Cool feature at Wikipedia...

If you go the the Wikipedia site for the Trumbull painting and click on a face, it will open the Wikipedia page for that person.

[malaise]

7. Thanks for this

These people are stark raving mad revisionists

[Oldem]

22. These people are

Tories. They've never accepted that their side lost the revolution.

[uponit7771]

8. +1

[jaxexpat]

14. There ya go talking about the Declaration of Co-Dependence as if it were a thing.

[Nictuku]

9. It has to do with the Magna Carta

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/magna_carta

The Magna Carta was a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England in 1215, and was Europe’s first written constitution. Prior to the implementation of the Magna Carta, English monarchs were considered above the law of the land and ruled with relatively absolute power. King John was pressured into agreeing to the Magna Carta to make peace in England, as barons from the north and east of England rebelled against his rule and demanded protection from the king’s unbridled power. The Magna Carta created a legal system by which the king had to abide, instilling protections for the clergy and nobility. The Magna Carta was the basis for English common law, and thereby indirectly also had influence on American law. The Founding Fathers of the United States particularly admired the charter’s rebellious nature against the English throne. The writers of the Bill of Rights and state constitutions were inspired by concepts born in the Magna Carta: that a government should be constitutional, that the law of the land should apply to everyone, and that certain rights and liberties were so fundamental that their violation was an abuse of governmental authority.

[Klaralven]

12. Wouldn't the cornerstone of American democracy then be obstreperous 13th Century English barons?

Rather than the English monarchy?

Which, if I recall, also had its reign usefully interrupted when Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and a republic, The Commonwealth of England, was established.

[Harker]

17. That crossed my mind.

Most republican'ts probably think that Magna Carta is a Clint Eastwood movie.

[wnylib]

20. A few points of disagreement for

the sake of historical accuracy.

True that the Magna Carta did establish that the king had to recognize certain rights of the nobility. It was a step toward a constitution, but it did not secure the idea that the monarchy was subject to the rule of law. That took much longer, as several monarchs and King John himself, the original signer of the MC, reneged on its terms many times under the notion of the divine right of kings. Not until the revolution, in which Charles I lost his standoff with Parliament, and his head (literally), was the inclusion of the monarchy in the rule of law firmly secured.

Second, the term "common law" does not mean common equality under the law. It means a standard of law to be applied in all parts of the realm, so that all regions follow the same laws. Prior to the establishment of the common law, the laws varied from one noble fiefdom to another, one village to another. Common law established a universal code of laws.

Third, King John and the Magna Carta were not the founders of the rule of common (or standard) law. John's father, Henry II, was the founder of the common law. He surveyed the kingdom to see what the regional standards were and from them, evolved a more uniform standard to be applied everywhere.

Neither common law nor the Magna Carta established equality under the law for all subjects. Royals, nobles, clergy, and aristocracy had more rights, privileges, freedoms, exemptions from prosecution, and more lenient punishments in many situations than the lower classes for many centuries.

Finally, it is true that US common law principles derive from British common law.

Oh - one more point. Social equality without the hierarchy of titles and privileges was a growing movement in Britain and some other European nations at the time of the American Revolution. But the colonists looked to Native Americans for concrete examples that people actually could govern themselves that way. The writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and NY colonial governor Cadwallader all mention the Native American examples.

[malaise]

26. Great post

[hunter]

10. So maybe we'd have been better off if English Crown had won the war of 1812?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

Wouldn't that have made us Canada?

Maybe half my ancestors landed in North America and ran into the wilderness because the British Monarchy wanted them out of the way or dead.

[BobTheSubgenius]

13. And large factions within America have been busily trying to offer up their own royal family.

The Roosevelts didn't work out, nor did the Kennedys, Bushes or Drumpfs. With any luck, none ever will.

[malaise]

27. Yes everyone wants to be royalty

Sickening

[BobTheSubgenius]

33. Well, not me, for one...and I very much doubt you want it, either.

I am VERY happy with my comfortable-but-no-frills, anonymous life.

[bucolic_frolic]

15. It clearly means there are 3 more Royal cornerstones trying to get a piece of the action

I'm guessing 2 of them are French and German and the third is a wildcard for a changing lot of Royal Houses deposed long ago - Czech, Spanish, Russian, Eastern-European. This way you have 4 cornerstones of American Democracy.

[peppertree]

18. They're a Fifth Column against their own country - and don't bother hiding it anymore

When Hitler said "we lost the war - but shall win the peace" - miscreants like the GOP and propaganda arms like the Heritage Foundation is what he meant.

[calimary]

21. Maybe they yearn for a king.

Like trump, maybe?

[Nululu]

23. Conservative think tank now a fascist supporter

They've lied for years about economics. Now they're lying about democracy. Nothing really new with those oligarch supporters.

[msfiddlestix]

24. What the Heritage Foundation capitalizes among other things is

That most of the Colonialists, especially the Southern Colonialists were also Loyalist to the Crown.

We have nurtured a romantic version of our revolution against British Authority / The Crown in terms of the actual numbers on the side of the Revolutionaries. I can easily imagine if Polling were a thing back then, we certainly would have lost just on the demoralization factor as related to the numbers who actually supported the Crown/British rule.

It's just miraculous that the Revolutionaries won at all, frankly. Out gunned, out numbered, not just in military but in support of the
population.

Southern Aristocracy know this all too well. Hence The Heritage Foundation.

[2naSalit]

25. +1

[malaise]

28. Mother Nature appears to prefer Democrats

Hurricanes did help

[msfiddlestix]

31. yeppers

[dalton99a]

29. They know what they're doing

[malaise]

30. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

That needs a graphic warning

[Elwood P Dowd]

34. Hope my keyboard survives the moisture after I clicked on that post.

Seems okay so far.

[malaise]

35. ROFL