Help Help I'm Being Oppressed

Over at Balkinization today, Mark Graber has a provocative post for the wake of the Fourth of July. Cutting to the chase:

The Fourth of July may be a difficult holiday for those with pacifist tendencies. Not the least of the bad practices associated with independence day is the American tendency to define oppression downwards. Might Americans have been better off forming an independent nation in 1776. Of course. But whether the level of injustice justified shooting a lot of people strikes me as dubious, at best. And worse, when we teach our children that conditions in 1776 were so oppressive as to justify violence, they are inclined to think of oppression indiscriminately.

I never really thought of it that way. Revolutionary America was hardly the most oppressive place on Earth at the time and would have been well down any all-time list of oppressive places to live. Was it unjust to be ruled from thousands of miles away by a monarch who claimed a divine right to rule and a Parliament in which you had no voice? Yes. Was it worth the bloodshed that ensued? Who knows. Certainly the Canadians and Australians got out from under the yoke of Your Majesty with less violence (I think). Bringing up the question while you were waiting on the fireworks to start probably wouldn't make you very popular, tho'.