Top Ten Reason We Don’t Want to Be Great Britain

(Or any other European, Asian, African or South American Country for that matter)

© 2013 by Tom King



British cop rushes to the rescue....

It matters not what topic a feeble-minded old conservative like me wants to bring up, it never fails but that some liberal jumps up to tell me how much better it’s done in England or France or anywhere not the United States.  I’m beginning to think these folk don’t like it here in America.  So in order to save myself time in looking up stuff for use in future arguments with leftists, I wish to respond categorically as to why I don’t even want to live in Great Britain, much less any of the less civilized countries of the world.  Here goes:

Reason # 10:  There’s too much bloody history in the place.  I’d never get any work done.  Something historical’s happened on just about every square foot of ground in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.  I couldn’t drive ten feet in that place without there being some statue or memorial where Prince Humperdink fought the Saxon hordes or the Viking hordes or the French hordes or some horde or other and got his head chopped off for his troubles.  I’m one of those people that need a break in my historical sites so I can stop reading for a bit and rest my eyes.  In Texas you can drive for hundreds of miles over ground where nothing has ever happened of any significance.  It’s kind of peaceful.

Reason # 9:  You don’t have to carry a passport to get decent food.  In America, we’ve brought fine cuisine from all over the world here where we can eat it without having to drive to Europe .  It’s too far to fly across an ocean from here to get decent Italian food, so we have set up Italian restaurants just down the street.  We also have French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Tex-Mex lined up cheek by jowl along the boulevard.  Notice, if you will how hard it is to find an English, Scots or Irish restaurant in an American city.   There’s a good reason for that I suspect.  I’ve seen pictures of bangers and mash and I wasn’t impressed.

Reason # 8:  In England you have Magna Carta.  In the United States we have the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.  The difference between these documents is the difference between our countries.   Magna Carta is a list of rights that are granted by the King, mostly to the other nobles with a few scraps they threw to the peasants that were standing around pointing swords and pitchforks at his highness at the time.  In England, your rights devolve from the Crown.  In the United States we start out with the people having certain inalienable rights to start with and we dribble out a very limited amount of power to the town, then the county, state and national governments in smaller and smaller bits.  The direction from which power comes is the whole point of the thing.

Reason # 7:  We don’t want to hear about how Great Britain is “Great” because it had an empire and we didn’t.  How’s that empire thing working out for you by the way?  The reason America never got itself an empire is because we didn’t want one.  We didn’t colonize anything after we filled up the empty spaces in North America, though we picked up a couple of nice land deals along the way.  We got some islands and stuff as dependents when we liberated them in wars and stuff, we let them move into our basement and couldn’t get them to leave.  We were able to nudge Cuba and the Philippines out on their own, but some of the little ones wanted to join our gang for protection.  We decided NOT to grab everything in sight and make ourselves an empire.  Cuts way down on the number of insurrections we have to handle.

Reason # 6:  Spanish is easier to learn than Welsh and Gaelic and even a Cajun is easier to understand than a Yorkshire farmer.  Spanish will eventually become so intermeshed with American English that pretty soon we’ll all be speaking the same language anyway.  In Great Britain, you’re never going to get the Welsh to use some vowels for crying out loud and the Scots and Irish are just making up weird ways to spell stuff that bears no relationship to the sound of the words and nobody will tell you how to say “No comprende’, senor,” in Welsh.

Reason # 5:  British cops don’t carry guns.  If you’re being robbed, you might get a Bobby with a truncheon to wander by after he finishes his tea and today’s episode of Emmerdale on the telly.  If I’m being robbed, I want Chuck Norris with a bazooka coming to my rescue in a helicopter, not some stuffy prig in a Mini-Cooper who’s going to rap on the door and ask the bad guys, “What’s going on here, Sport?”

Reason # 4:  You cannot have a gun.  Since the 1996 school shooting at Dunblane, Scotland, Britain has pretty much eliminated personal gun ownership.  The Crown believes only the government should have guns, therefore only the government, terrorists, drug lords and hardened criminals carry guns.  The rate of gun deaths has dropped below that of the United States while the rate of violent assaults, robberies and murders by stabbing, strangulation, clubbing and explosions have soared far above the US rates for those sorts of arguably more painful deaths; this despite the fact that Britain has more cops per capita than the US. 

Reason # 3:  In Britain, criminals are protected from citizens.  In the United States, criminals do not know which homeowners own guns and which will shoot them which discourages robbery.  It is legal in many states to shoot anyone who tries to break into your house or attack you in any way.  In Britain, the police believe it isn’t cricket for a homeowner or crime victim to respond with greater force than that being used by the criminal to commit his crime against you.  In other words, you are expected to put down the butcher knife you picked up off the kitchen cabinet and ask the burglar if you might pop off to the garage to get your cricket bat so as not to have a more deadly weapon to defend yourself with than the tire iron he’s carrying. 

Reason # 2:  If you did have a gun, you could not use it to defend yourself in Britain.   The government believes that law enforcement is their job even though it takes them forever to get there when you call.  They expect you to ask the home invader to sit down for a spot of tea while you wait for the Bobbies.    Don’t believe me?  A Norfolk farmer is now serving a life sentence in England for shooting a knife-wielding youth who broke into his house intent on robbing him.  In Texas he’d have been given a medal by the sheriff’s department and a box of replacement ammo.

 Reason # 1:  You cannot escape crime by moving away from it in Britain.  In the United States, you can move out of “bad” neighborhoods or crime-ridden cities, go to a nice place out in the country where everyone pretty much owns a gun and pretty much have a reasonable expectation that nothing really bad will happen to you in the way of a crime.  In Britain it doesn’t do any good to move.  Criminals know you are all unarmed and that you aren’t allowed to shoot them if you were.  Therefore, they can go anywhere to commit a crime.  Rural areas and small towns make perfect targets because the police tend to be far away, not terribly motivated to hurry and don’t like their sleep disturbed. It’s safer, the likelihood of being caught is far less (remember citizens are not allowed to hurt them) and neighbors aren’t allowed to interfere.  If you attack and rape a woman, and her neighbor comes to her rescue and beats the crap out of you, he’s the one who will go to jail.  The police rationale is that the criminal wasn’t attacking the neighbor so he doesn’t have a legitimate horse in the race.   He is therefore guilty of assault.

Not only that, but more violent burglaries happen when people are at home than when they are not.  In Britain, insurance companies require security systems.  The security system is most likely turned off when the homeowner is at home, so that’s the safest time for home invaders and burglars to strike. They aren’t afraid of the homeowners (remember – no guns allowed).

Summary:  Most houses in Britain are older than most of our most ancient historical landmarks here in the States and I am allergic to mildew.  Criminals are not afraid of me and if they come in MY house, I’m most likely going to jail for at least attempted murder not to mention having to pay for British Health to install their new kneecaps.  I also didn’t mention British universal healthcare which is really more like British Universal Health Neglect since most Britishers die waiting in a que. Mostly I like it that in America we have rights.  In England, they grant you rights at the whim of the Crown.  That's why we left England in the first place.  We didn't trust the government there and we don't much trust it here.  Excuse me now while I go clean my shotgun, in case we get very late company out here in the woods.