Happy 4th!

Lazy day here at home. I suppose this is entirely appropriate since part of our birthright as Americans is to be lazy and pay someone else (or buy something else) to do the work for us. (Just kidding.)

Anyway, I was lying on the couch, exercising my right to be slothful and browsing the web, when I found this interesting post by Matthew Yglesias. I have myself wondered what America would be like had the Revolution never taken place. Would we be more like Canada, except with better weather? Would the Monarchy have relocated from London to New York City back in the 1800s, as the economic center of the British Empire shifted to the New World? With the entry of America into World War 2 in 1939 (as part of the Commonwealth), Hitler would have lost much earlier, possibly preventing the rise of the Soviet Union and much of the Cold War. The possibilities for counterfactual history are boundless and require too much thinking for me on this holiday.