The hell? The colony outgrowing the parent country was a well-established model literally thousands of years before 1776.
And the concepts of personal freedom, separation of church and state and the rights of the citizen against the state would have been set back significantly.
Those concepts were implemented in Europe through a slow (century-long) but steady process with occasional flare-ups; by 1848 most nations in Europe had been thoroughly transformed by it. This is in contrast with the USA, which is still stuck in some weird half-medieval/half-modern political model.
It's not as much that you fall short of your nation's ideals as that you (at least from the outside) seem to have some strange Orwellian alternative interpretation of them. What freedom? Your middle class people are serfs, your lower class people are worse off than slaves. What separation of church and state? Your government (locally and nationally) is completely committed to Christianity, and your political debate seems to be based on the bible's teachings. What rights of the citizen? Do you have any rights at all beyond what your personal wealth or power afford you?
I'm venting frustration here, and I'm probably unfair both to you and to your country. It's just so painful to see how USA is currently disgracing itself and pulling down the rest of the world into war and oppression at the same time.
no subject
The hell? The colony outgrowing the parent country was a well-established model literally thousands of years before 1776.
And the concepts of personal freedom, separation of church and state and the rights of the citizen against the state would have been set back significantly.
Those concepts were implemented in Europe through a slow (century-long) but steady process with occasional flare-ups; by 1848 most nations in Europe had been thoroughly transformed by it. This is in contrast with the USA, which is still stuck in some weird half-medieval/half-modern political model.
It's not as much that you fall short of your nation's ideals as that you (at least from the outside) seem to have some strange Orwellian alternative interpretation of them. What freedom? Your middle class people are serfs, your lower class people are worse off than slaves. What separation of church and state? Your government (locally and nationally) is completely committed to Christianity, and your political debate seems to be based on the bible's teachings. What rights of the citizen? Do you have any rights at all beyond what your personal wealth or power afford you?
I'm venting frustration here, and I'm probably unfair both to you and to your country. It's just so painful to see how USA is currently disgracing itself and pulling down the rest of the world into war and oppression at the same time.