Posted on 11/21/2013 12:10:38 PM PST by Nelson Hultberg
In 1776, the Tories timidly hid behind closed doors where it was safe and popular. They wallowed in pessimism and lamented that nothing could be done. The British were too strong. Why make a big fuss? But the rebels – men like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere – would have none of it. They possessed only a rag-tag army, but they knew they had moral truth on their side, and that the British Gargantua would fall precisely because of that.
Entrenched authority has to justify itself morally and philosophically. And that is something that today’s Demopublican elites cannot do. They are terribly vulnerable. They are rotted from within. They are ripe for a challenge just as the Soviet Politburo was ripe. And they can be brought down. It might take a decade to do it. But someone has to start the ball rolling somewhere.
The nature of our choice can be explained with a recent example from history. The Vichy government of France and its collaborators quietly tolerated the Nazis in 1940. Yet DeGaulle and a small group of partisans went underground and refused to accept the superior power of the German army. They had no idea whether they could win or not. They only knew that they could not live as collaborators. They had to take the fight to the tyrants, and even if they lost, at least they knew they would be aligning themselves with the forces of truth and freedom. That is the only attitude that will save America. And it will take more than lip service, more than bland Republican caucuses. It will require courageous, activist, “outside the box” commitment. We need gallant Rebels, not compliant Tories....
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Historically inaccurate. The safe and popular thing to do was to keep a low profile. Many Tories put themselves out there for what they believed in and suffered economic retaliation, mob violence, state confiscation of their property, imprisonment and even death.
A great many of them were eventually forcibly or voluntarily exiled from their homes. They totaled about 3% of the population of the USA at the time, which would equate to about 10M Americans today.
Some of them, as on the Patriot side, were no doubt opportunists and siding with those they thought would win.
But there is no reason not to believe many of them were honorable men. Just as in our second civil war, honorable men and scoundrels were found on both sides.
What ever you do, do not teach history. Your two examples are factually incorrect. It seems our society no matter left or right gets more and more historically ignorant.
The timid thing to do was to not take sides. Tories were routed and burned out all over, their properties seized and auctioned to pay for the war. They were wrong, but they were not timid.
Tories were people who supported the British.
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