Mills Chapman wrote:phoenix wrote:... and boy am I pissed off with you Yanks for introducing it to us! .. Thanks . . . but are you ever going to introduce anything worthwhile?
Uh, on July 4, 1776 we introduced the Declaration of Independence, a statement ridding us of a nasty and arrogant imperialist power that was horribly taxing us. When we told them to "be gone," they didn't listen and sailed over across the pond to make us kneel before them, but they eventually sailed home with their tail between their legs.
Several other emerging countries (like the Vietnamese against the French) modeled their independence declarations off the US's Declaration of Independence. Hardly anyone knows that Ho Chi Minh was inspired by the US's 1776 statement and based Vietnam's proclamation in 1946 off of it. He approached Harry Truman (president of the US then) for help against the French, but Truman refused and aided the French instead. This could have prevented America's war against Vietnam. Aargh.
oranos64, many Christians and Muslims in the US celebrate Halloween too, but we just don't pay that much attention to the history behind the holiday. It's just a fun time for children to dress up in costumes and collect candy from the neighbors.
Sorry Mills, I still abide by my request for the U.S. to introduce anything worthwhile (not just a re-hash of existing policy)
The Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with only minor participation by a committee that included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, pursuant to a resolution of the Second Continental Congress. It was adopted by Congress on 4 July 1776. Jefferson himself belittled the originality of his work, stating that, though he penned the Declaration without consulting other sources, it contained nothing novel in the way of political thought. In this, he was correct: the basic theory of the Declaration was derivative of the thought of Locke and reflected English Whig theory as it had evolved in the preceding century and a half. George Mason had anticipated much of the substance of Jefferson's ideas in his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (12 June 1776), though the literary grace and felicity of Jefferson's Declaration eclipsed the ponderous lawyer's couplets and triplets of the Virginia Declaration.
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