Please stay on topic, folks. This is not a race to see who's the smartest, or (shudder) the most educated. The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the land and should be given the respect it deserves. THAT is my topic. If you agree, say so. If you don't, then also say so. Little governments are constantly passing laws that violate not only the Bill of Rights, but just about everything else in the Constitution, and somebodies need to say, "I'm mad as hell, and I can't take it anymore."
Yeah. As Facebook would have it, I like this .
Botch,
Any people that controlled the land area that is now the United States was almost destined to become a great and wealthy power in the world with the kind of technology developed over the last 300 years. The US land mass is one of the greatest on the planet for economic development. Nothing in Latin America comes close, not even Brazil.
Not to take away anything from the political and cultural foundations of the country which allowed the natural wealth to be used efficiently and to the greatest extent, but in terms of navigable rivers, arable land near those rivers, ports, distance from aggressor nations, and so on, the US is hard to top.
My short comment is "no".
First, you guys started out as meagre 13 colonies. There was not a government that initially controlled that mass of land or those resources. That came to happen little by little. Haiti was then the most prosperous colony in the American continent. When the US were only thirteen colonies, and Boston, for example, no more than a village, Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, already had an university. The same is true of Lima, in Peru. Most independent observers of what the United States were at the time wouldn't have thought it would achieve what it achieved ("and so it came to pass", as in the Book of Mormon). Alexis de Tocqueville and the Count of Aranda DID see that, did understand why that would happen, but most other men of their time dismissed their opinions. The Count of Aranda suggested that the King of Spain gave autonomy to its possessions in the American continent and made them real political entities that would be able to contain the new nation. The King did not pay attention.
This would seem like staying off-topic, (pace, Farkel) but I think it needs to be said to add a little outside perspective. Please bear with me.
Immigrants do not go to poor lands where they have no opportunities. People left their lands for the United States because they did find opportunities there. Immigrants also moved in large numbers to Brazil (particularly the south of it), Mexico, Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina. But, why didn't they prosper as much in those lands? Why didn't they move there in such numbers? Why was it that Argentina, a nation that was way more developed than either Canada or Australia in the 1920's, is now in its sorry state? Lest we forget, Argentina became white because of the large number of European immigrants. No one today finds a trace of the "pardos and morenos" (mixed-races and coloureds) that fought for their independence.
The reason people moved to the US, in my humble opinion, is that they found a different legal environment in the United States, one where they could prosper. I think a lot of that had to do with American laws and the American way of life. There was also a way to prosper here if you used your mind and worked your ass. That was not true in the rest of the continent. Why is it that an American of Mexican descent who is in the space program said, when interviewed, that he would have stayed in his tomato field if he hadn't moved to the US?
You could argue (pace, polite Canadians) that Canada isn't as strong or as powerful as the US because of its weather. But, why is it that, in recent times, Canada being a nicer country to live in, one where health care, for example, is free, immigrants still go to the United States over Canada?
Why is is that emigrating to Russia isn't exactly in the minds of many people, but people do want to move to Norway?
Why is is that the Jews who moved to Argentina, after the war, are just not as prosperous as their close relatives who moved to the US? Was it invariably the lazy and dumb brother who moved south?
BACK TO THE MAIN TOPIC, I'm sure that many a group who finds it difficult to make amendments to the American constitution will try a less noticeable way to achieve the same end. They will find a way to make it look like they respect the letter of the constitution, but will betray its spirit. I think those changes could be made for the better, or for the worse, but you guys should keep an eye on all, however, because the way the constitution is amended should be important as well.
This also makes me think that, from outside, we should have an interest on how these things happen in the United States. If you guys were not a democracy, we would all fare much worse. Many of us see the US as a land where no antidemocratic thing can happen. It's time we realize that's not the case.
