Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
Historically, the US has imposed its republican (small "R"... most of the time ) ideology on many societies where it was totally inappropriate to do so. Indeed, I am forced to ask why you consider US ideology and governance as "superior"? Superior for whom in what conditions?
Good point. I, for one, don't consider the US system to be inherently superior (or inferior, for that matter). Governments tend to arise (and fall) due more to local conditions than anything else, and ours has evolved over time to match our specific conditions and needs. Which, I might add, are (like most such things) almost impossible to duplicate.

Much of the early US dynamism was based on the idea of growth (more or less for its own sake), and that soon became conjoined with the idea that anything that created that much energy and movement must be superior to other things around it. Once it ran "from sea to shining sea," it started exporting itself (linked with masses of post-Civil War enthusiasm for the republic and all things linked to it) in ways that I don't know that its originators would have foreseen (aside from their fixation on Canada....).