Tuesday 11 October 2011

Flashman on American independence



      But try telling that to a smart New Yorker, or an Arkansas chawbacon, or a pot-bellied Virginian Senator; point out Canada and Australia managed their way to peaceful independence without any tomfool Declarations or Bunker Hills or Shilohs or Gettysburgs, and are every bit as much “the land of the free” as Kentucky or Oregon, and all you’ll get is a great harangue about “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, damn your Limey impudence, from the first; a haw-haw and stream of tobacco juice across your boots from the second; and a deal of pious fustian about a new nation forged in blood emerging into the sunlight under Freedom’s flag, from the third. You might as well be listening to an intoxicated Frog.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.105, Harper Collins, 1995.


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