Tom Red, thanks for your feedback and welcome to the forum. I have a few remarks though.
Conservatism: Americans are actually very conservative. I think this is a very important point in understanding our differences from Europeans.
What exactly do you mean by conservative ? It can mean many different things to different people. The basic definition of conservatism is the rejection of change, but this can be seen in many respects. For example, a stance against change can mean being anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, anti-progress, anti-science, anti-free-market, anti-gay-rights, anti-technology, anti-cannabis... I don't think anybody can be all this at once (I hope). The Amish are very conservative in being anti-technology/progress, but they are a very small American minority. Fundamentalist Christian, known in politics as the neo-conservatives, are anti-science, but once again they are a minority (though more substantial). The French are seen as relatively conservative in Europe because a majority of them are anti-globalisation, anti-immigration and anti-cannabis. Americans may be conservative in many respects, but few are anti-globalisation and anti-free-market or downright anti-technology. Many Americans oppose the decriminalisation or legalisation of cannabis, and yet non-medical cannabis has been decriminalised in 13 states, and is on the way to full legalisation in California and Colorado, which will make these states more liberal in this regard than any European country (on a par with the Netherlands only, which is much smaller than either state). So I am not really satisfied when one says that a country of 310 million inhabitants (nearly a continent) is conservative. It just depends where and for what. In many respects Californians and New Yorkers are less conservative than most Europeans, and for the outside world America is first and foremost California and New York.
The American revolution of 1776 happened because Americans wanted to conserve their traditional governmental structure free from English interference.
That's not exactly correct. Before the independence, each of the 13 colonies had its own autonomous government, completely separate from the other 12 colonies, and often with quite different local cultures and religious affiliations too. The US independence brought these 13 disconnected entities together, and created for the first time a common government for all 13 colonies. Each colony, which had been until then de facto self-governing until then, apart from paying some taxes to London, had to surrender some of their precious autonomy to a new centralised government. This was actually quite a strong rupture with the past system.
It is often forgotten that in spite of being the "New World," America has the oldest written Constitution and oldest political party in the world.
This is a nice sign of patriotism, that shows that you have listened well to the US government propaganda diffused through the education system. Nevertheless it is completely wrong. The Romans first codified their constitution in 450 BCE. The Indians of the Maurya Empire in the 3rd century BCE. Most Germanic tribes that overran the Roman Empire codified their own written constitution too, like the Visigoths in 471, the Burgunds in 473, the Franks in 500, the Lombards in 643, etc. Japan wrote a seventeen-article constitution in 604. The Arabs wrote the Constitution of Medina around 622. there are dozens of other examples that precede the US Constitution by many centuries and often over a millennium. Among modern countries, the Netherlands got its first written constitution in 1579, San Marino in 1600, Ukraine (well, the Zaporozhians) in 1702 and Sweden in 1772 - all before the USA.
As for political parties, Roman obviously had them too, and so did most of Europe at least since the 17th century. In England, the Tory and Whig parties both emerged in 1679. Both still exist today (under the modern names of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats), contrarily to the original parties of the USA (the Democratic Party was only founded in 1828 and the Republican Party in 1854).
This the mark of a conservative people, one whose government has been basically democratic for over 400 years.
You mean 230 years. Before the independence, colonies were not ruled particularly democratically. Big landlords had a lot more power than anybody else.
When European revolutions occured, they were a bitter tearing apart of the old and the new. There was a sense that religion had betrayed the people and that the upper classes had to be destroyed. It was a real struggle that had effects that lasted for decades if not centuries. Just look at the French and Russian revolutions. France went through how many republics and empires? Russia still has not recovered from its revolution.
Countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden or even Britain have not suffered any revolution since the mid-17th century or earlier.
