>>I'd really advise you to deepen yourself into the political history of europe before making the assumptions you make above. Things are very complex, certainly not as straight and simple as you imply. Remember that europe still exists out of many different countries with their own political systems. It is far more complex than that of the US.
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>I agree with almost everything you said, except I like to believe that I have a decent working knowledge of European political history - heh.
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>As far as democracy versus republicanism in the early USA, read the Federalist Papers (all online) for more information on what they thought at the time.
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>There *was* democracy of a sort in Europe prior to both wars but it was very fragile. In countries like Britain, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, Russia, Denmark, etc. if was a "soft" revolution where a parliamentary body with a prime minister gained more and more power from the monarchy, relegating the monarch to a figurehead. In countries like Germany, after WWI, it was imposed (the Weimar republic). A lot of those countries came under dictatorships, becoming failed democracies, during the interwar period. Spain - France. Greece - Metaxas. Italy - Mussolini. Finland - Mannerheim. Germany - Hitler. Russia - Lenin. Romania - Antonescu.

Right. It really was the consequence of several factors. The poor economical situation being the most important one.A dictatorship can work very effective in war situations (As hitler showed) because the opposition is suppressed so the citizens are forced to think in terms of the dictator. Also a dictator can make decisions very, very quickly where as in a democracy it is just too slow. So yes democracies are fragile in distress situations where people are calling a strong man.

>None of these democracies or failed democracies had the slightest political influence on the US. Generally speaking, Americans and the American media during that time held Europe in contempt. Europe was considered "old school" and we were the one's who knew how it should be done....as far as US opinion went.

Yeah. I've heard that one before. And even if they were right (I think the situation in europe was just far too complex to draw that conclusion), things changed dramatically after the wars.

>That's why I say that Europe has been on the receiving end of far more political theory from here than the opposite.

Again, I can't tell (And I doubt anyone can), how big the influence of the US political system was. Remember democracy existed before the war and the allied force did realise that this disasterous event should never occur again. They have decided that implementing democracy through a district voting system into Germany was the best solution to solve that problem. I can't see that anything significant (appart from decolonisation) changed in the Netherlands or any other country arround us. Even though receiving aids from the marshal plan, europe was not intending to be a US clone. There far too many complex problems to solve that were directly related to the many different cultures and countries with their own political systems. On top of that we had to deal with holding off russia in the cold war. The simplicity of the US system simply did not apply here as things were far too complex. Looking at the political map in europe I have a hard time to find any influence of the american system. Even your biggest allies, the british, have not changed anything I can see.

What has been triggered, however, is the realise that europe needed to unite. But again, not in the form of the US, but in a form that the countries still could be souverign. First step was the creation of NATO where under the flag of the NATO, military action could be taken against an aggressor if anyone of the members were attacked.

The form of the UN was neccesary to have a platform to make global political decisions.

The economical union was born with the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourgh), the forerunning of the later EEU (economical european union) which later was renamed to EU. Despite many citizens of europe being emotional about losing their own currency, the euro is a slamming succes.

Europe is no long the 'old europe'. It has developed at a stunning rate to where we are right now. It cannot be compared to the ashes of europe after WWII. On all fronts giant steps have been made. And realistically, it is so much different from the US it does not make sense to say it is modelled upon the US. See http://www.utne.com/2004-09-01/the-european-dream.aspx?page=1 for a global comparison.


Since we are talking about democracies. Nowerdays, many european countries are considered to be more democratic than the US democracy. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index .