I sorta loathe this sort of revisionist history. Especially the type which casually tries to wipe out 200+ years of American democratic history by simply saying

I sorta loathe this sort of revisionist history. Especially the type which casually tries to wipe out 200+ years of American democratic history by simply saying, "Yeah, but it wasn't a real democracy." So cliche! There's just too many pedantic definitions, technicalities and arbitrary choices which make any sort of analysis like this arguable in soooo many ways. Just one glaring example: The US has "technically" been a Democratic Republic since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. But Boston, where I grew up, was founded in 1630, 159 years earlier. Massachusetts and other states implemented various democratic systems that continued through the founding of the Federal government. Putting the line at 1789 doesn't tell the full story because the states of the United States are all pseudo-nation states and existed decades before the Union, and I will bet many exist nearly unchanged after the Union is dissolved some day as well. One could also argue that after the English Civil War, the king was mostly a figurehead and that the Parliament was actually a form of representative government that was copied by the Americans, and that we were basically throwing a hissy fit for having to pay our fair share of taxes and not really rebelling against tyranny. In fact England had been electing representatives to Parliament since the 1500s. And that's totally a valid way of looking at it. The point stands. Anyways, I feel that the American pride in the fact that we're the first "real" democracy (for whatever definition of real you want) is well founded *without any caveats*. Our ancestors could have done better, and so can we!