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Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution. Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and with observations gleane

Australia has profited enormously from the US Constitution. Our own Constitution was drafted in the wake of the American Civil War and with observations gleaned from decades of US politics. If you read the Federalist Papers, it's interesting to note how much of history (going back to the ancients, ie Sparta, Athens, etc) the writers of the US constitution studied. That's not to say that they were perfect (I try not to hero worship myself; it often leads either to disappointment or distortions), but it's also nice to see the whole "learn from history" aphorism put into practice.

dragonwriter 13y ago
The Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution -- they were political ads for the campaign for ratification.
- npsimons 13y ago
  Oops, my bad; corrected. EDIT: While I will agree that the Federalist Papers were strong rhetoric, and I can think of examples that contradict many of the axioms of them, I also believe it is very enlightening to read them because they reveal how much the framers of the US constitution had studied of other governments.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    They were also familiar with the concepts and theories that had not long before been published in France by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and others. Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. It was a struggle of a local elite against a remote elite. He exclusively uses "War of Independence" in his historical writing.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. While they sometimes coincide, political, social, and economic revolutions are really separate things; the absence of the elements identified doesn't really say anything about whether or not it was a political revolution.

dragonwriter 13y ago

The Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution -- they were political ads for the campaign for ratification.

npsimons 13y ago
Oops, my bad; corrected. EDIT: While I will agree that the Federalist Papers were strong rhetoric, and I can think of examples that contradict many of the axioms of them, I also believe it is very enlightening to read them because they reveal how much the framers of the US constitution had studied of other governments.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  They were also familiar with the concepts and theories that had not long before been published in France by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and others. Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. It was a struggle of a local elite against a remote elite. He exclusively uses "War of Independence" in his historical writing.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Jacques Barzun argues that "Revolution" is the wrong term for what happened in the USA, even as a convenient shorthand. There was no widespread transfer of property and no wholesale breakdown of social order. While they sometimes coincide, political, social, and economic revolutions are really separate things; the absence of the elements identified doesn't really say anything about whether or not it was a political revolution.