alt Hacker NewsThe founding fathers created a document that was already struggling with modern realities prior to Trump. 250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart.
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Care to elaborate on concrete examples on where it struggled? 250 years is quite impressive even if you don't believe it or not because only a handful of countries in the whole world has an older constitution.
US Constitution has aged pretty well. Some things in there don't seem as relevant today, but some are more relevant now than ever.
>250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart.
250 years is older than almost every country in Europe (by that I mean current borders and form of government, not the ancient historical ones).
Most were monarchies or various forms of dictatorship till only a few decades ago and finally settled on their current borders only after WW2 or the fall of the USSR or the Yugoslav wars.
For example Spain had its first democratic elections in 1977 and then the UK was dealing with "The Troubles" sectarian conflict in northern Ireland. Europe always was a powder keg around forms of governance, culture, religion and sects. All that is not something that goes away overnight just because EU membership happened.
In contrast, 250 years of continuous governance and conflict free stability is super impressive by that standard.
"250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart." ?
Sure it is, it's very impressive.
What other nations have lasted that long?
Chinese Dynasties usually collapse within that range.
Aside from the UK, maybe Sweden (?) which have been fairly contiguous, most nations are more short-lived. France is on it's 5th Republic in the same time-frame.
America is way more than the gong show in charge right now.
Most of the 'tests' of it's integrity are due to really just that one guy.
But you're right to point out inherent problems with the Union.
Because EU is not a 'right wing flag waving' entity, we don't really think about it in terms of 'nationalism', but the EU has among the loudest, most clearly visceral and virulent nationalist supporters.
You can say anything you want about national governments but critique of the EU is met with a lot of rancour.
I've worked for EU bodies, it's full of well meaning people and it has tremendous value as an economic unions, but as a political entity it has existential flaws, too many to name, and it is absolutely an elitist project and it absolutely has a 'regulate first' attitude, which is quite upside down.
'Doing The Stuff' matters 10x more than 'Talking About The Stuff'.
The U.S. Constitution is older than the current constitution of every EU member state and has remained continuously in force longer than any of them.