American Independence may in part be something to celebrate. If Edmund Burke, the arch conservative, Ben Franklin, the arch moderate, and Tom Paine, the arch radical, could all agree on the need for the Americans to break away from the British, then they must have a point. No doubt, the English were heavy handed. True, fundamentally, the English did seem to have a point that the American should pay at least a fraction of the taxes that the people back in England had to pay in order to cover the costs of defending the colonies from the French and Indians. Still, the war was justified due to the lack of compromise on the English side.
But was American independence good or bad? It's hardly a slam dunk either way. Let's think about a few things:
