(March 3, 2014 at 11:02 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Well, not all that good at history myself, but by coincidence I did happen to see this a little earlier:
6 Myths You Probably Believe About the American Revolution
I include it for some background on the subject.
One part of our history that I didn't learn about until I got to college was that our founder's first attempt at a government was a dismal failure.
Technically, our first president was John Hancock but he was little more than a figurehead. Evidently, like many countries shifting from monarchy to democracy, we were so fearful of centralized authority that our first attempt was a government that couldn't get anything done.
Our founders hit the "do over" button in 1787 and the result was a Constitution that largely shamelessly copied the British system as it existed at that time with some cosmetic name changes. The powers of the US president were mostly identical to that of the king of England at that time, except that the supreme court was spun out into a third branch of government (the king was also the supreme judge, from what I understand). Like the Parliament, Congress held the purse strings while the president, like the king, held the sword. Struggles between president and congress today are much like how the struggles between king and parliament used to be in England. There was even the suggestion to call the president "his majesty" but that was quickly voted down and now we have the more simple, "Mr. President".
British democracy more evolved piecemeal and in many stages, so the similarity might be hard to recognize today.
So to use the anthropomorphic understanding of history that I'm so fond of, America was the rebellious hell-raising child of Britain (Canada was the good sibling), we stormed out of the house only to find being on our own was more complicated than we thought, we reflected on how mom does it and within 10 years we became like our parents. It just goes to show you that even the wild, unruly nut doesn't fall far from the tree.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
