The War of 1812 wasn’t an attempt by the British to reconquer the colonies.
No they aren’t. The current Queen has a vague symbolic role as the “symbol of the members free association”, but Britain doesn’t have any unique standing in the organization.
Agree there isn’t any reason for the US to join (and given certain political parties suspicion of international organizations, doing so would probably be politically impossible even if it was a good idea). But doing so wouldn’t be making the US subserviant to Britain in even a symbolic sense.
That’s a good point. Maybe we should just change our moto to include “America - Cradle of the English language” instead of joining anything new. As an American, I am generally opposed to genocide and will buy any bumper sticker I can to help stop one somewhere.
The American seaman says to the British seaman “How’s the second biggest Navy on Earth?”, to which the British seaman replies “Just fine, thanks. How’s the second best?”
Hey, we’re very sensitive about the distance from one coastline to the other! Not every country can be as narrow as England!
And yeah, as far as I know, joining the Commonwealth wouldn’t really make a huge difference in any concrete way, as we already seem to be on pretty favorable terms with many of the commonwealth nations. The US and the UK are friends as only guys who have been in a bar fight can be.
And yeah, the US declared war on the British Empire during the War of 1812 because the Brits were attacking our shipping (as were the French, but we kicked their asses back in 1800).
Also, something about liberating the oppressed peoples of Canada. We may have hindered our goals of liberating Canada by kinda-sorta torching and destroying the first major city we freed from the British Terrour. Also, we may have neglected to ask the Canadians if they felt oppressed. :smack:
You mean recognize the queen as sovereign, get a governor general with a right to veto acts that have passed congress and signed by the president? No thanks.
Now I know that no act of the Canadian parliament has been vetoed by the GG in about 85 years, but in theory it could be. And Canada had to go hat in hand to the British parliament about 30 years ago to get a constitution. What a crock.
I’m against the idea, but wouldn’t our GG essentially just be our president?
Have some deal in there where all GG duties are assigned to whomever holds office as President? We’d be like “Aye, we’re in the Common wealth, but fuck you guys – we’re doin’ it our way!” as we light a cigarette and ride our horse off into the sunset with our gun slung over our back.
Or, we could be like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and most of the others, and have our own government without any reference to Her Majesty, or any representative thereof.
