The effect of America on the world's political thought has been incalculable, even those who hate us and want nothing to do with our system pretend they have representative government and call themselves democracies. We have created the language of government for the world, and no one speaks another (although a lot of them are still lying through their teeth).

I've just finished reading a book on the French Revolution,and it is amazing what an influence we had on 18th century France. Think about it, this distant little rag-tag cluster of former colonies barely clinging to the edges of a great wilderness, inhabited by bumpkins and rubes, besieged by savages, surrounded by enemies. It had a profound effect on one of the most sophisticated and complex societies on the planet, the end result of a thousand years of European civilization. And even though the French Revolution is considered the end of the Enlightenment and the true birth of modern times, the French of that era would have been the first to admit they owed everything to the American experiment.

It isn't necessary to collapse into fawning obsequiousness and sycophancy about the founding fathers; they were human and they had human shortcomings, and they were the flawed products of a cruel society and unforgiving time. But they were intellectuals and men of action, farmers, merchants, lawyers, businessmen, politicians, soldiers, journalists, writers, scholars and preachers, splendidly educated but seasoned by a harsh life at the edge of the world. Their synthesis brought together the best of the European Enlightenment but kept it grounded in the practicality and compromise of frontier life and the crucible of war against the world's greatest empire. They were political geniuses but they were not gods. And they were perfectly aware of that themselves.

The system they hammered out will be part of the human legacy for centuries to come, but it will grow and evolve too. We honor them most if we preserve what we can but change what we must.