What better day is there than our Independence Day to rethink the meaning of our nation’s independence?

So, let’s start rethinking: What if our Founders had not won our independence from England? We can wonder and speculate only because, if we had not separated from Mother England, we would be like Canada. Deep in our hearts and minds, Canada, our neighbor to the north, a formerly British colony like America — seems to be so much more civilized and peaceful than the United States. By not severing its subconscious connection to England, Canadians stayed anchored with English history and its tribal solidarity. On the other hand, by violently severing all that was the Old World, America was cast adrift on its creed of freedom. As a result of this historical accident, Canada is peaceful now and we are beset with turmoil in America.

Many Americans believe that liberty was gained through our national independence, and, without it, ours would not be a free nation at all. Of course, this is faulty thinking. At the time in 1776, Europe was rife with the idea of the Enlightenment and egalitarian yearnings for change. With the teachings of Rousseau, Locke and many other philosophers who advocated universal liberty and equality, the American colonies would have eventually become constitutional-liberal nations, pretty much like Canada today. Our untamed pursuit of individual freedom and its everyman-for-himself savagery of life would not have become the very millstone that is drowning us today. Very certainly, there would be no Trumpism.

Now, the idea that the U.S. could be more like Canada truly scintillates our imagination. In so many ways of measuring the quality of life, Canada ranks consistently high near the top. Our northern neighbors have everything we have that’s good, like political liberty, while avoiding the undesirable, like gun violence. Their social safety net is much better than ours, especially considering the shamefully neglected minorities in America. In much of Canada, even in cities, they don’t lock their houses, unlike us in America whose homes have become fortresses with locks, guns and surveillances for protection. With our world-dominant military, we fear each other more than we fear foreign terrorists. If we were more like Canadians, it’s also possible that we as Americans wouldn’t be so keen on protecting our property from our fellow citizens. Like our own military bases where everyone has a job and an income so they all own what everybody else owns, Canadians don’t fear their neighbors of stealing their similarly owned stuff. Unlike Canadians, we are distrustful of our fellow citizens as we suspect everyone is a thief ready to steal from us.

If you want freedom and independence, you must make sure that everybody in your city is equally free and independent. With so many Americans constantly in poverty and neglect from their society, while being always encouraged to pursue materialism, those Americans who have what little they have are always afraid of those who have even less. Just think about the peace of mind of not having to lock your car or house constantly.

There is nothing like equality that brings citizen trust and peace. In all “good societies” like Canada, and also like those of Scandinavia and Japan, economic and political equality is at the center of their goodness. By contrast, our revolutionary victory led us to our freedom to pursue our own self-interest, that led us to selfishness as our national creed, that led us to unbridled capitalism, that led us to the deep rich-poor gap, superimposed on white America’s anger, that led us to the specter of Trumpism — all beginning from our independence. It should boggle our minds that America might be like Canada in peace and security only if we had not fought so hard for our independence!

Would the world have become much worse off if the U.S. were not the world-police superpower in Pax Americana? There our role is mixed: For being responsible for over 90% of world conflicts since the end of World War II, our federal health authorities have been unequivocal: They declare that the U.S. military is “a hazard to public health.”

What about the two world wars our history says we fought and won, WWI and WWII? Historically, we are also wrong about this. In WWI, both sides, without Americans, had fought each other to utter exhaustion and the fresh Yankees just walked in and decided who the winner was (which eventually led to WWII). In WWII, it was the Soviet Union that thwarted the Nazis at the Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad and subsequently defeated Hitler’s Germany. With or without Pearl Harbor, with or without U.S. military involvement — the Russians, with their deep manpower and deeper patriotism, with material help from resource-rich America — would have won WWII.

Didn’t we win the Cold War and stop the spread of communism? True. But not many people believe that capitalism has been good for the world, especially for its developing nations. Even after the victory in the Cold War, capitalism has run amok in its global ambition, wasting its much-anticipated “peace dividend.” Inequality has only grown between rich and poor, largely modeled after America’s example. In the meantime, Russian-Hungarian-style fascism, capitalism’s political counterpart, is welcome in soon-to-be GOP-dominant America.

In historical reckoning, it seems we won our independence, but at what cost? We lost equality to capitalism and are about to lose freedom to fascism. All that started on the day the British surrendered to our demand.

As you cook your barbeque, you might feel grateful to America’s independence that brought you such abundance. But, across the border in Canada, they are cooking better-quality meats–without packed feedlots and force-feeding of corn that fattened the cows.

What if, what if ...

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and professor emeritus, lives in Greenfield.

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