400 years ago a group of Englishmen on three small ships were looking for a place to settle. On the 13th they settled on a swampy but defensible island and started building a fort. The settlement was originally called James Fort but as it grew the name was changed to James City or Jamestown.
Our government is a direct result of this settlement.
It is unfashionable today to speak of American exceptionalism. According to modern multicultural thought, no nation is better than any other and anyone who says otherwise is a nationalist which is first cousin to being a racist.
I don't accept this. I think that America is unique and is better in most ways than other countries. A lot of this comes from our unique heritage.
When the English landed in 1607 they had no concept of religious freedom, freedom of speech, or the other freedoms that make upp the Bill of Rights. They didn't come here to found a new nation or even for religious freedom. They came here to make money.
At first they didn't The colony lost money for years. By the time John Rolf bred a form of tobacco that would grow in Virginia but was mild enough to smoke, the King had revoked the charter and made it a royal colony.
While John Smith and Pocohontas make a good story, nether was around very long. In fact, most of the colonists died within months of when they arrived. Those who did come usually sold themselves as indentured servants for seven years to pay for their passage. Once that period was worked off, they often had to sign up for another seven years in order to earn land.
By the 1650s, the urge to leave England for new lands had passed. Virginia needed a constant supply of new farmhands so they started importng them from Africa. Within a couple of decades there were so many Africans that it started to change the ethnic balance. To keep the status quo, they stopped treating the Africans as servants and kept them as slaves.
Through all of this, they still thought of themselves as English and stayed current on English thought.
By the 1770s several new ideas were popular in England. A big one was that the government should be responsive to the people. The colonies learned from England's mistakes as well as its successes. Freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly were considered fundamental rights.
Our government reflects the structure of the English government as it existed in the 18th century. Where it had a king and two strong houses of Parliament, we set up a president and two houses of Congress. We also added a separate judiciary.
In many ways I think that our system is better than when the English system evolved into. At its best, the parliamentary system gives a great deal of power to a single ruling party. At its worst, there is no ruling party, just a weak coalition government. Our separation of the White House and Congress smooths over a lot of the lurches back and forth that the parliamentary system is subject to. In fact, our electorate seems to prefer dividing power between the parties.The Democrats held the House for most of the 20th century while the Republicans held the White House most of the time following FDR. The Senate has shifted back and forth several times.
The American system has avoided or minimized many of the problems that have crippled the rest of the world. Our version of the European social contract may seem harsher but the economy it produced is the envy of the world. Corruption in the US is minor and punished when found. In most of the world, it is the way things are done. Up until the last decade, we assimilated our immigrants and we continue to do a better job at it than Europe.
Slavery may have been a stain on American history but we ended it a century and a half ago. It continues on many countries to this day. Other nations may decry American racism but many of them have a permanent underclass.
The English, dying of hunger and foreign disease 400 years ago had no idea that their sacrifice would eventually build something the world had not seen before.
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