American Exceptionalism and "Historians"

@professormeredithThis is more @Tad Stoermer bailiwick but if I have to explain to one more student that America didn't invent seperation of powers or religious freedom, I'm gonna scream (at people like Jack Warren specifically, not my students). #americanexceptionalism #americanhistory #wearentspecial

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The 1579 Netherlands Constitution and the Founders’ Vision for Careful Balance of Federal Powers While Protecting the States

The Solonian Constitution

The Edicts of Ashoka

The Theodosian Code

Lex Burgondionum

The Constitution of Prince Shotoku

The Magna Carta

Commonwealth Instrument of Government, 1653

The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk

The Twelve Tables of Rome

From my response on LinkedIn:

No...they didn't. There were written constitutions well before the US Constitution (most obviously the articles of Confederation). Some argument can be made that the US constitution was vaguely different in some ways than previous ones, but that's a very different thing.

American Exceptionalism is almost a mental illness at this point. At the very least it's based on intentional misinformation and refusal to research.

Someone in the comments tried to tell me "The Articles of Confederation was a treaty between States, not a Constitution. There were written codes of laws before. But no nation had sought to govern itself with a written structure of government, enumerating the specific powers of the separate branches of government."

First of, take up your argument on the Articles of Confederation with the National Archives. They call it the first U.S. Constitution. And as for the second part, even if we discount the largely uncodified constitution of the Roman Republic that's still absurd.* Both the English Instrument of Government in 1653 and the Ukrainian 1710 of Pylyp Orlyk (a constitution written in exile and never put in practice in all of Ukraine, but 🤷🏼‍♀️) had tripartite governments with separated powers.

Now both of those examples certainly have their own issues (religious freedom was NOT included in the Pylyp Orlyk constitution at all) but that's not the argument being made. These constitutions existed. They were written. They even functioned as government for a time in England and parts of what is Modern Ukraine.

The American founding fathers didn't invent these ideas out of whole cloth from just their own brilliant minds. To pretend they did is propaganda pure and simple and historically dishonest.

*Correction, the laws were in fact codified in the 12 Tables.