[roscoe]

One of the reasons I posted is because we need to understand that, in 1787, the signing of the US Constitution made the first modern representative democracy in history. Nowadays, we take for granted that a democracy is what every country should be working towards, but that was not the case for the first 5,000 years of human history (and we almost lost all that in 1939-1945).

The people fighting in the American Revolution were doing something no one else had ever done in history. That meant taking an enormous risk. Yes, the founders were not perfect, but they were pushing the world towards something new and important, and the later fights for freedom within the country were logical extensions of that initial spark.

The fact that the majority of fighting-age males took up arms this struggle says something very important about the origins of the country, and I get irritated when some group tries to hijack it or lay claim to it. It belongs to all of us!