This episode of A Worldview Apart, released the day after the July 4 Independence Day holiday in the United States, explores the history leading up to the declaration of the 13 original colonies from Great Britain and the formation of the United States of America. It also explores independence as a false ideal that drives American ideology as well as US policy.

Links & Resources

• Support A Worldview Apart on Patreon!
• This Day in History: 1776, American Colonies Declare Independence
• The Tea Act: The Catalyst of the Boston Tea Party
• Use It and Lose It: The Outsize Effect of U.S. Consumption on the Environment
• Consumption by the United States (Washington State University web page)
• James Rice. 2007. Ecological Unequal Exchange: Consumption, Equity, and Unsustainable Structural Relationships Within the Global Economy. International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Vol 48, Issue 1, Pages 43-72.
• Under NAFTA, Mexico Suffered, and the United States Felt Its Pain (NYT)
• We Are Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality – The text of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail.