Jacob Rees-Mogg Gets The US Wrong

I've noted before that I've recently discovered the UK Thatcherite toff Jacob Rees-Mogg, who gets things wrong in an entertainingly stuffy way. In the video above, he congratulates the US for having what he implies is a copy of the UK constitultional system. This is the sort of comfortable patter that Winston Churchill used to ingratiate himself with Roosevelt, and the sort of thing King Charles said to the US congress not long ago in a similar effort to get the US to continue to spend money on the UK's defense.

Of the events in 1776, Rees-Mogg says, at 1:40:

[T]he Americans said they were English gentlemen who just happened to live in another place, and they wanted the rights of Englishmen. They wanted taxation with representation. . . . Edmund Burke pointed out that there was a precedent for people living abroad being able to to send MPs. That is to say, up until the reign of Mary Tudor, Mary I, people living in Calais had sent members to Parliament, to the House of Commons.

A little earlier, he says,

The Americans blamed poor old George III, harmless old, mad in the end, George III for what happened and their departure.

On one hand, he's correct in that the Declaration of Independence is in part a list of specific grievances against poor old King George, but Jefferson, the lawyer who wrote it, was certainly aware that on one hand, even as of 1776, the king had little or no power to do the things the Declaration accuses him of doing, such as:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

In the UK, parliamentary supremacy had been codified almost a century earlier, first in practice during the civil war, and then via the Bil of Rights 1689. But on the other hand, Jefferson didn't assert any legal right for the colonists; the complaint wasn't that the king via parliament hadn't given the colonists legal rights; the complaint in the Declaration of Independence was based on natural law, not any sort of UK legal precedent, Edmund Burke notwithstanding:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The list of grievances is formally against the nominal sovereign, King George, but practically it's against the system by which parliament embodies the sovereign power. The king as a practical matter couldn't do of his own volition any of the things alleged against him in the Declaration.

Rees-Mogg then goes on to list the guarantees provided in the US Bill of Rights and suggests that these are traditionally also establised in the UK, but then he defeats his own argtument by saying those guarantees have been eroded in recent years in the UK -- but it's parliamentary supremacy that's allowed this; it was allowed in 1776 just as much as it's allowed now. Parliament can abridge freedom of speech in any way it chooses. There's no wording in UK law equivalent to "Congress shall make no law" in the US First Amendment.

In fact, a little over a decade later, the Constitutional Convention moved to circumscribe the power of congress and establish an executive that could act independently, something the UK monarchy hadn't been able to do for 100 years. Clearly this was done with the experience of the UK in mind.

Rees-Mogg concludes,

My goodness, how well our two constitutions have done in making the world rich, successful, and safe.

Wait a moment. It's been roughly 100 years since the UK had much of anything at all to do with making the world rich, successful, or safe. UK policies had a great deal to do with bringing about the Great Depression and then World War II. The US, on the other hand, has had everything to do with making the world rich, successful, and safe; the UK has just been along for the ride but seems eager to convince itself it's somehow responsible.