Every modern democracy is good in some areas and bad in others in regards to this topic. For example America has less restrictive freedom of speech laws (we have some of the same issues, I might add) but is bad at social rights compared to most other first world nations. By the way, almost every modern democracy is secular (Britain and Norway being the two most obvious exceptions but even then they are for the most part secular in practice).

Almost every modern democracy has freedom of speech in writing, although I just read that in Australia it is only implied, so that must be affecting your perspective.

And here is the biggest thing you are wrong about (in my opinion): America was not founded on freedom- this is such a huge myth. A nation is not simply 'founded', they develop over time. America was founded on colonial interests, and much like Australia, we were basically a penal colony. When we gained independence we just used a modified version of the British system of government. We kept the same property qualifications and all (although I will credit us with the abolishment of the peerage system and being less insane about capital punishment at the time); we just seemed more democratic because we had much more land and far fewer people.

The history of democracy is more complex than one nation doing most of it by itself. It is complex. There were democracies before America, and human rights were awful everywhere. Looking at the history of Western Europe, America, Australia, etc., democracy expanded parallel to each other.

I'll just sum this all up with saying both America and Australia are both great nations with shameful histories, but there is good to both of our histories. I am always critical of America and Australia for our treatment of indigenous nations but I accept that in the modern world our nations have a right to exist and do not need to be ashamed forever, if we take our foot off of said indigenous nations.

One last thing- Australia gave the world the secret ballot, which is one of the most important developments in modern democracy. That's one thing I know on the top of my head.

http://www.whitehat.com.au/australi...ntributions.asp

That's how America was at its founding and much later. As we all know, slavery in the United States wasn't abolished until 1863 (not effective until a few years later). We were the second to last nation in the Western world to abolish forced labour- Russia (who abolished serfdom in 1865, although both nations made efforts to suppress newly freed slaves/serfs for quite some time)being the last (if you count Brazil as Western we are third to last).

We didn't have universal suffrage until 1920, approx. the same period everybody else was giving women the vote. New Zealand was the first to do that in 1893 (you probably know that but whatever). That's what I meant earlier about democracy being an international progression, not America being 'the democracy' leading everyone.



There are several others. France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Portugal, and even Israel are a few examples of first world democracies without monarchies or state religion. In the second and third worlds around two-thirds (my estimate) fall into this category as well (even though they have other problems).

Also I know constitutional monarchies are silly but I don't have any qualms with any of the European-style constitutional monarchies. It's not like people hold Sweden and Japan, for example, in low political esteem because of their monarchs.



The Declaration of Independence also has this wonderful quote:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The quote you listed is just a rip off of John Locke's 'life, liberty, and property' philosophy anyway, who, as I'm sure you know, was an Englishman alive decades before the Revolution.



Also as I said earlier, that's not really the founding of our nation. That's the founding of our current system of government. With this logic every other democracy should feel proud. Why should France feel like an 'untrue' democracy after they have fought multiple times to establish a democratic system? So many of America's ideas were coming from French philosophers, if that changes anything. I'd argue that France has had a larger impact on the development of democracy than America, but that doesn't discredit America in any way.

You could argue that Iceland was first anyway considering the Althing was created in 930 during the settlement of Iceland (those settlers, if I'm not mistaken, left Scandinavia as political exiles) which at the time was arguably more democratic in nature (there were no modern elections- instead the head of each household/farm attended meetings and made decisions) than the early modern representative systems. It didn't really do anything once the Danish took control but I could still argue that they were 'first'. Even then, as great as Iceland is, that's no reason to worship them.

I think it's kind of cool that you admire America. If you ever want to visit or even live here I wouldn't discourage you, I just think you are wrong about a lot of things.