>How hard could this be? It's all about the character of the reader.
The English language changes a lot, even for educated readers. Furthermore, historical degeneration of a country makes it hard to be a man of good character in a degenerate country. Over long years of relative prosperity, the population of the USA became much less legally savvy and much less capable of critical thinking. The Americans of 1776 were amazingly strong in body, mind, and spirit. They had little formal education, but were capable of paying attention to important matters (e.g. Washington's farewell address). The Americans of today are barely strong enough to emulate the example of the Founders.
Quote:
So why did so many average Americans eventually leave their homes to fight against the British? One perspective was given by Captain Preston, an American who had fought the British at Concord on April 19, 1775. In 1842, this ninety-one-year-old veteran was interviewed by a twenty-one-year-old reporter. The young reporter apparently expected to hear stories of unjust taxes and oppression, and of revolutionaries schooled in theories of liberty. What he got was far different, and more to the point:
Reporter: “Captain Preston, did you take up arms against intolerable oppressions?”
Preston: “Oppression? I didn’t feel them.”
R: “What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?”
P: “I never saw one of those stamps. I certainly never paid a penny for one of them.”
R: “Well, what then about the tea tax?”
P: “I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard.”
R: “Then I suppose you had been reading Harrington or Sidney or Locke about the eternal principles of liberty?”
P: “Never heard of ‘em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ Psalms, and the Almanac.”
R: “Well, then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to this fight?”
P: “Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”
https://vultureofcritique.wordpress.com/quotations/we-always-had-governed-ourselves-and-we-always-meant-to-they-didnt-mean-we-should/