When I got to the end of Pat Buchanan’s latest column, Rise of a Judicial Dictatorship, I laughed and shuddered at the same time:

“Today, we meekly await the court’s judgment on whether we will have to legalize marriage between homosexuals. Were George III to return to life, he would roar with laughter at what a flock of sheep the descendants of the American rebels have become.”

After reading that, my mind drifted back to my Sesame Street/Electric Company days (I’m dating myself), and I started thinking about those Schoolhouse Rock songs that came on between cartoons. By watching these short cartoons I memorized the Preamble to the Constitution as a child, how a bill becomes law, how the nervous system works and many other things.

My favorite was the one about the American Revolution. As I sang, “No more kings, no more kings!” along with the colonists, I had no idea what that meant. I do now, but it seems many Americans don’t. The American Revolution is little more than a footnote in the history of our country, but Buchanan’s column inspired me to blog about this astounding event.

In a nutshell: King George III wanted his American colonies to remain subservient subjects. As Great Britain’s empire grew, it needed more money, so it passed a series of laws to raise revenue from the colonies, including the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act (which applied to newspapers, pamphlets, licenses, leases, or other legal documents). The colonists began to organize in revolt. Lead by Patrick Henry, the Virginia legislature denounced the acts as taxation without representation.

Concessions were made, but after a brief lull Britian was soon at it again, this time imposing duties on paper, glass, lead, and tea exported to the colonies. The rebellion eventually culminated in the Boston Tea Party, where a group of men disguised as Indians boarded three British ships docked in Boston harbor and dumped the tea.

To bring the colonies back in line, Britain passed a series of acts called Coercive Acts (the last straw!), designed to punish them. The war was on. I think you know how the story ends.

Buchanan reminds us that we’re a nation of laws, not of men. Regarding the Warren Court’s action in Brown v. Board of Education, he writes: “[T]he Warren Court launched a social, cultural and moral revolution and began openly to dictate to what had been a self-governing people.” Whether black or white, we should all be concerned about a runaway judiciary that seeks to write laws rather than interpret them, as designated in the Constitution.

Buchanan lists a series of Supreme Court decisions during the 50 years after Brown, which created new rights for criminals, declared that women had a right to kill their babies, approved continued, blatantly unconstitutional race discrimination (against whites), etc.

The more I read the last sentence of his column, the more I realized how right Buchanan is. Isn’t it ironic that we’ve forgotten how hard-won American freedom was? Blacks should especially be wary of a country run by a Court that routinely makes law. That’s how “Jim Crow” became the law of the land. But as long as they’re getting stuff they like (racial quotas and other perks) instead of stuff they don’t (slavery), many don’t care. Americans — black or white — have no sense of history.

After all, we’re “free.” So why are we still acting like subjects of a king?