musicmick, I gotta correct you on somethin' here. The USA was definitely not the first country to change governments peacefully (through elections). Far from it. There were plenty of other places that changed governments peacefully long before the USA even existed.

England had a parliamentary system, for instance, and held multi-party elections regularly, and changed governments peacefully. Yes, they still had a king (or queen) for traditional reasons and ceremonial reasons...a constitutional monarch, but the king didn't control the government and pass legislation...parliament did. The king served as a constitutional monarch and a ceremonial head of state, but parliament could overrule the king. The kind could do nothing without parliament agreein' to it.

The British were under the impression they already had a democracy before the American Revolution ever happened, and they were right about that. They did. And they had a modern Bill of Rights and free speech and all that stuff.

What the colonists were bugged about was that they were bein' taxed and ruled from across the Atlantic, without proper representation IN the English parliament, but don't think the English didn't already have a system at home that changed governments peacefully, cos they did.

Furthermore, the Dutch had a multi-party Republic long before the American Revolution, and they also changed governments peacefully through regularly scheduled elections. Look it up under "the United Provinces". It was a very similar arrangement to the Thirteen States that came much later in the USA...only in Holland they had 7 provinces.

And there were other republics here and there in Europe prior to the birth of the USA. Some of the Mediterranean states had republics and parliamentary elections.

And there was the Roman Republic which had free elections back in the earlier Roman times before the Roman Emperors took over.

And the Greek democracy in Athens.

It is a popular myth that the USA was the first republic, and the first place with democratic elections. It was not. It likes to think it was...just like the Soviets used to like to think that they came up with everything first. It's similar mythology in both cases.