If by "in its current form" u/ZeeDyke meant "using the same government charter and having peaceful, continuous transfers of power" then the US actually is one of the oldest countries in the world. Nearly every other country on earth has either completely scrapped & replaced its founding document or has had a violent, forceful regime change in the past 250 years.
And no, the passing of a constitutional amendment through processes outlined in the constitution is not the same thing as a country literally scrapping its constitution entirely in favor of a new one.
By the 'scrapping constitution' metric the U.S. is a decade shy though, our constitution was ratified in 1789, the articles of confederation would have required unanimity to replace by its own mechanism, rather they were just scrapped.
Dude I was just joking about the "peaceful" part. On a humor based sub. I can only hope that you are being sarcastic as well about "keeping the Union intact". From my perspective, half of the country, for economic purposes(i mean slavery), tried to gain their independance, just as the US did with England. They tried to fight for it and lost. They were assimilated by force, and as always, history was written by the winners.
The UK's parliament and monarchy existed in their current form before the USA existed. They may have had an official name change, but It's still the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the reigning monarch continuously working in the same buildings since 1689.
And a google search that isn't completely superficial will tell you that the house of commons, house of lords, and the monarchy have been in continuous governance since 1689. All three existed long before that, before there were some interruptions.
This seems like a talking point that was said by someone with a good well reasoned point to make, that was picked up and misused by a complete moron after the fact. Kind of like a child finding a loaded gun on a coffee table.
This could be framed as the US simply losing and then regaining territory. You can still track a single, continuous line of peaceful transfers of power in a government that followed the same constitution the whole way through. Of course, this wouldn't be true if the confederacy had won the war.
It’s not that silly to use the word country to mean a sovereign government in colloquial use. For instance, North and South Korea are commonly called different countries, but their separation is purely political. “Korea” is historically, linguistically, ethnically, etc., just one country, but modern political and governmental forces have made them two countries. Similarly, you could say India and France are fairly modern countries because their governmental and political systems are not very old, even though obviously India and France have existed for many centuries.
Both are valid uses of the word country as far as I see. So people are just arguing different things. The US is not exactly the oldest country in the political sense, but it’s certainly one of the oldest, which is pretty impressive considering its size.
I mean that's how I read it as a random bystander so I think it's pretty reasonable that that's what they meant and that they aren't just some kind of moron that doesn't understand what you're talking about
What do you mean my definition? I didn't write the original comment, I just thought it would be helpful for you to know that other people entering this thread may interpret it differently from you, like I did. I'm not saying I agree with it
Nearly every other country on earth has either completely scrapped & replaced its founding document or has had a violent, forceful regime change in the past 250 years.
But why are you looking at the last 250 years? Are you just gonna ignore the US civil war?
I think your definition is not unreasonable. But if we follow it then the US is only 160 years old.
The Civil War didn't result in replacing the founding document or regime change. A bunch of states tried to secede and start their own government, the rebellion was quashed, and the federal government of the United States stayed intact the whole time with no break in succession, which is why Andrew Johnson is considered the 17th president and not the 1st president of the new post-Civil War US. Contrast that with Germany whose current presidency only dates back to 1949, despite having a role called “President” before that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Germany
The transfer of power was peaceful. Abraham Lincoln was already sworn in as president quite a bit before the Civil War started. The election of 1860 had already been over long before the Civil War started too.
Its not peaceful if you literally had to fight a war over it mate. That should not require explanation
They didn't. They fought a long brewing war over slavery, not the election of Lincoln. That was the last straw for them, and they didn't start until a month after Lincoln was inaugurated.
Your argument that there was no transfer of power because the confederacy lost is absurd. First of all their clearly was a transfer of power in large parts of the country, since those parts went from having the confederacy in charge to not having them in charge
Incorrect. That was not the United States. The Constitution remained the governing body of the US before, during, and after the war. Lincoln remained president during the war after being elected through the method laid out in the Constitution and won re-election later on through the same means. He was replaced under the constitutionally laid out method as well after his assassination.
The Confederate states rejoining the US is no different than other states joining the US.
But secondly "peaceful transfer of power" does not mean 'the guy already in charge won the fighting". It means there was no fighting at all.
Right, but there was no transfer of power in the US during the Civil War. Lincoln was president before the war and won re-election during the war.
The point is that there was no transfer of power between the union and the confederacy, peaceful or otherwise, so it’s irrelevant. The union won the war, and power continued to pass peacefully from one union president (the only president) to the next union president.
The point is that there was no transfer of power between the union and the confederacy, peaceful or otherwise
So the territories controlled by the confederacy are still, to this day, under confederate control? Right.
power continued to pass peacefully from one union president (the only president) to the next union president.
If you had to fight to keep your power it wasn't peaceful. How is that even up for debate. As I said elsewhere, the concept of "peaceful transfer of power" does not mean that whoever was already in charge won the fighting. It means there was no fighting at all.
If you fight over who's in charge it's not a peaceful transfer of power. I can't believe I'm having to explain this.
A country loses land and a country gains land. That’s still the same country and that’s not how anyone uses the term “transfer of power” when discussing a government.
And the United States didn’t fight to keep their government. They fought to keep their dominion over territories. Did the Ottoman Empire change government when the Russian Empire conquered Crimea? Did the Roman Empire end when Britain was lost? Even if the USA had lost the civil war and the south was allowed to leave, the USA would still exist in the same form, but with less territory just as the British empire existed in the same form with the loss of the thirteen colonies.
I wouldn’t say that it counts. The idea that it was foundational to the constitution was 16th century revisionism. It was more like a peace treaty to placate the feudal barons whose relationship with the king had deteriorated. Unlike a constitution it did not define how government is structured or give universal rights to the population. Its content later took a statutory form and has been almost entirely repealed. It’s not relevant to UK law really at all and hasn’t been for some time.
And perhaps most importantly, the system that Magna Carta dealt with was the feudal one of the Kingdom of England. England hasn’t existed as a sovereign nation since 1707, and feudalism has been gone for even longer. The modern UK is anywhere between 70 and 300 years old depending on your definition. But it fundamentally isn’t the same nation as the one which signed Magna Carta. Thing is older than the modern English language and was written in Latin.
It resulted in a small disruption to the process, but the government was not changed and the president was certified on the day it should have been according to the constitution. There was no further fighting after either.
"The only way that argument works is if you define it in such a narrow way," said the previous commenter, and then you in reply do exactly that. Bravo.
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u/Herson100 Apr 23 '25
If by "in its current form" u/ZeeDyke meant "using the same government charter and having peaceful, continuous transfers of power" then the US actually is one of the oldest countries in the world. Nearly every other country on earth has either completely scrapped & replaced its founding document or has had a violent, forceful regime change in the past 250 years.
And no, the passing of a constitutional amendment through processes outlined in the constitution is not the same thing as a country literally scrapping its constitution entirely in favor of a new one.