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--- cornel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Carlos,
> I am puzzled that you think that the US is the
> world's oldest democracy.
>
Mario adds:
>
Cornel,
>
Maybe it will puzzle you less if you realized that the
US was the first country in history to have a written
Constitution and a written Bill of Rights, which are
features of a true democracy that protects the
interests and rights of every one of a country's
citizens.
>
It took the gentlemen farmers 12 years after defeating
the British to invent, develop and ratify the US
Constitution, which included several unprecendented
notions, a co-equal, three legged stool of checks and
balances between the Executive, Legislative and
Judicial branches, the local, state and Federal
hierarchy of government, the Electoral College, two
Senate seats for every state, large or small, the
latter two notions designed to provide regional
balance to prevent large or populous states from
dominating less populous or smaller states. The
concern was to avoid the potential anarchy of the
majority from trampling the interests and rights of
the smallest minority.
>
Even the ingenious framers of the US Constitution
didn't get it right the first time, when slavery was
legal and women dis-enfranchised, but subsequent
amendments fixed those early problems, and the US
Constitution became the model of freedom and
democracy.
>
>
We are now demanding that the Iraqis, write a
constitution within a few months, while people like
you still strenuously object to their hard-earned
freedom..
