At 11:46 AM 9/21/2003 -0400, Nancy Gish wrote:

  > For most of our short history,

   While US history may be relatively short, the US government is one of
the longest continuous governments in the world. Going in it's present form
back to the American revolution. Whereas governments in countries where we
might commonly think of the history as going deeper than the US's may go
back only a few decades. Italy, Germany, China, Japan, many others, etc.

Ken A.