We celebrate the winners

          Watching people celebrate the 4th of July made me think about what it is that Americans really think they have, and how we got here, and where it might all be going.
      For instance, do people realize that our nation exists because a few rational men seized control from a few radical hotheads at the last moment, and were successful only because of the complacency and arrogance of the ruling British.
     Most average citizens didn't walk around every day saying, "We the People need change!"  It was more like, "Those nuts in Massachusetts are going to bring trouble on us all if they don't calm down."
     They didn't have much of a stake in who was in charge, knew only that they were not; never had been, never would be.
     Freedom meant holding church services as they saw fit, in company with like-minded people, without the intrusion of some king or church other than one of their own choosing. It meant being left alone, for the most part. Big idea for the time; being left alone had not been an option to their forebears in the old country.
     So as the zealots stoked the fires of rebellion here, it's likely that many average farm workers, craftsmen and shopkeepers were just keeping a low profile, hoping that the troublemakers did not bring upon them some of the restrictions that had inspired people to migrate to the colonies in the first place.
     For the zealots, then as now, it was about taxes and over-reaching government. The ones that had a little money didn't want to part with it. Those who dealt mostly within the barter system -- almost everyone else -- probably didn't care much one was or another.
     The really big money guys saw calamity if they didn't wrest control from the thugs who pulled off the tea party thing in Boston. Landowners had the most to lose if Britain decided to really crack down. So they wrote up a plan, described the objective, and sold it to the general population. More independence, less government, low taxes, and so on. Standard campaign stuff.
     They fought the  British and won, almost by accident, certainly mostly on luck, and began a contentious process of forming a government of our own. King, no king? No king. Parliament or states running their own show?  Neither; compromise (which did not work, and led to the Civil War 70 years later).
     Within a few years, the new government of the people and by the people was telling the people they can't make their own whiskey without paying taxes on it, and so you had a quick but bloody rebellion, a mini-revolution, as it were, which you do not hear too much about.
     Brits, American politicians, either one will impose a government on you and tell you it's the will of the people. We celebrate the version of history as preserved by the winners of the conflicts.