[eru]

The Brits had a gradual accumulation of rights. First more for the upper nobility, later for the common man, too. They also had pretty stable governance for quite a while now.

The Civil War interrupted that stability a bit (as AlgorithmicTime in a dead comment points out), but that wasn't as much upheaval as eg the French revolution.

> Not that important for what?

Western Democracy. Sorry for the confusion, I was relying too much on context here.

[redial]

I now get what you are saying, thanks for the clarification.

I agree with you, democracy can be traced to the British, and further back to the Romans, and even the Greeks, but it wasn't until the French Revolution that the core concept of it was implemented; namely that there are no divine rights of kings (Britain also contemplated that idea, it is a shame they didn't follow thru).

Democracy is not only about voting or rights or property, it is also the idea that the people can decide for themselves they way they want to live. Voting is just the best way we've come up to decide that until now.

[eru]

The North American natives had strong traditions of freedom and something like democracy. Alas, they didn't have the military power to resist the USA.

For a very interesting take on this, see "The White Indians of Colonial America". (http://www.amstudy.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/engl56_kj_axtel...)