Amid today’s Independence Day festivities, let’s reflect … Why don’t we see closer political cooperation among all English-speaking peoples, to borrow Winston Churchill’s beautiful phrase? Suppose, for example, that the 13 North American colonies had never declared their independence from Britain or that the British had actually won the Revolutionary War. [*] Would the United States (and Australia and Canada, for that matter) have become an integral member of the United Kingdom, like Scotland (for now) and Northern Ireland, or would the British Empire have evolved into a loose but more unified federation? Bonus question: Why are hypothetical historical questions like these worth asking? [*] Addendum: Uri Friedman poses this same question in The Atlantic.

Happy 4th of July!