How on earth does this apply to the cartoon? The point of the cartoon doesn’t concern whether or not America was a single united country at this time of the Boston massacre, the point of it is that there were American values common to all the colonies at the time. That sentiment was the basis for the Declaration of Independence, signed 11 years before the Constitution, which included many of these values as the justification for seccession from GB. In fact, take a look at this line of the Declaration:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

And lay off the ad hominems. It only makes you seem more deluded.

First, I believe we do extend our value system to all people, under our control or not. If others in the world want what we have to offer, that is their gain (or loss if they choose other paths). This was the “idea” of America starting with the Founding Fathers. Lincoln summed it up best with, “…last best hope of Earth.”

Next, the fact that we have not executed captured terrorists in the field is an indication that we value life. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that we are not obligated to make a terrorist in civilian garb a prisoner of war, but we do anyway. In this, they are lucky to have been captured by us. I just don’t believe they should be treated better than the hundreds of thousands of soldiers we have captured on thousands of battlefields in all our wars. It makes no sense to me that an Al Qaeda terrorist has the right, under our Constitution, to a fair trial when the Germans, Italians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Iraqis were made to sit around until those wars ended (or perform menial labor).

Lastly, I took offense to the second panel – it distorts history. The incident was an “All British” affair, just in the colonies instead of the home islands. British soldiers were notorious for firing on civilians and resented in London just as much as in Boston. Plus, it wasn’t as much a horrible massacre of innocent civilians as Sam Adams made it out to be. The mob had some responsibility for what happened too.

BTW, Sam Adams’ editorials were also seminal events leading to the war – maybe more so than the actual firing on the mob.

I totally disagree with his statement, though, that people in the colonies did not think of themselves as Americans before 1776. Even those that thought of themselves as loyal British subjects thought of themselves as Americans.

If his point was the notion Adams only believed in fair trials for British subjects at least we know his son, John Quincy Adamas believed that the Africans on the Armistad were entitled to a fair trial. Even if John Adams did think that, we have to remember that in those days “all men are created equal” meant “all white males who owned property”, although I think Abigail pretty much had him convinced that women otherwise.