It is time once again to celebrate the red, white and blue. Of course, by that, I mean the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom.

Our rightful flag.

The American Revolution was successful only because the ledger looked ugly in London, and as a matter of pragmatism, the project had to end. And what a shame it is.

We’d be better under the Crown.

The United States of America is a product of Britain, fueled by the bold practitioners of Enlightenment thought. All the innovation, discovery, vision and drive of the early settlers were not derived from Boston Harbor at low tide; it came from British society and culture.

Americans’ zest for freedom had its roots in the thinking of such philosophers as fellow Brit John Locke, who famously delineated man’s natural right to “life, liberty and property.” And centuries earlier, the colonists’ British forebears had brought an earlier monarch to heel, forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta and thereby setting a precedent of powerful limits on royal power.

Speaking of all men being created equal, the British began dismantling slavery a half-century before the United States did.

And what did the free British do with their abundance while stateside Americans were coming up with clever rebrands such as New England, New Britain and New York? The British were busy inventing antibiotics, the steam engine, the jet engine, the radio and television, the light bulb, and the internet.

Almost every trapping of Independence Day is due to Mother England in some way or another. In fact, it is fair to ask why we ever declared independence from England in the first place.

And the answer is tawdry.

Colonists didn’t want to cough up money to pay for the French and Indian Wars. We took the protection and security and then walked out on the bill. Screw you, Crown. We’re keeping this place.

The United States of Ingrates.

We could all be British today if we hadn’t drunkenly launched tea into the ocean. How proud we would have been.

“Yes, I’m British, just like the Beatles.”

“Yes, I’m British, just like Monty Python.”

Just like Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Horatio Nelson, Ricky Gervais and Dudley Moore.

Baseball belongs to the Brits, too, as Rounders.

And literature, come on. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dickens, Dahl, Doyle, Austen, Woolf, and J. K. Rowling, to start. The entire world of Harry Potter has captivated generations of readers worldwide, just as the James Bond franchise has captivated moviegoers.

Rock ’n’ roll is dominated by the Brits — there can be no argument. From the Fab Four to the Stones to The Who to Zeppelin and on and on. We could have called David Bowie our countryman had we not ambushed a British patrol on the way to Concord.

But no, the closest affiliation we have with the crown in popular culture is Meghan Markle, the single most vacuous human to inhabit the earth while making candles.

And while we’re patting ourselves on the back on July 4 for casting off the shackles of King George III, we should remember that we spent most of the Revolutionary War losing.

The redcoats won the Battle of Bunker Hill, and Lexington and Concord, and Quebec. They chased Washington all over New York, and in the South, they won the battles of Camden and Charleston.

Unfortunately for England and all of us, they lost the battle of the budget and sailed away.

Finally, the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, is not even symmetrical. Talk about “You had one job.”

Like the British flag over our capitals, our dream of good, British order disappeared in 1783.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Tom Shattuck is the host of Tom Shattuck’s Burn Barrel podcast. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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