The smartest people in a backwoods country did what was thought impossible a couple of times. They defeated the British, and then after the Disaster that was the Articles of Confederation, established a written constitution that quite literally took their ideas from the Reformation, Natural Rights, and individual liberty and tempered it to withstand the man's worker instincts. They created a four page document that not only created the legal framework to establish a nation but also provided the necessary cohesion to keep rival cultures, and opposing religions working cooperatively toward a better future.

The model of European governance is that God shined his grace upon a king who then decided what rights the people got. With The Constitution was enshrined the model of governance that God gave all the rights to man, and it was man that decided what limited rights were given to the State.

They did all of this recognizing their own imperfections, and providing a way for their own creation, The Constitution, to be amended. That document, amended 27 times, still stands as the governing document for our country.

What the founding fathers did was quite astounding.

It helps that they were all in one place at one time. Imagine if King Richard the lion hearted, Henry III, Stephen Hawking, Elizabeth I, Lord Nelson, Alan Turing, Benjamin Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher, William Wallace, Newton, and Richard Branson all got together and said let us make a new country and they all hammered out their ideas and despite their own egos managed to create a structure wherein they all agreed. And it worked! And 231 years later it was still working.

:liberty-weeping: