“Someone appears to have forgotten the UK – whose political system has been essentially unchanged for a heck of a lot longer than that.”-Fletcher Christian (54)

The UK was most certainly not forgotten by Mr. Derbyshire. Review his criteria: “How many of those countries made it from 1911 to today, nearly a century later, with their systems of government and law intact … without having suffered revolution, civil war, major dismemberment, or foreign occupation?”

“FC/54; That’s a quote from your countryman, John Derbyshire –found at home base, the National Review. My guess would be that he left you off the list due to post WWII de-colonialization.”-Buddy Larsen (56)

You’re thinking about the “major dismemberment,” I suppose. Right direction but wrong example. As Mr. Derbyshire explains in his latest book, “Not even Britain qualifies, because of the secession, accompanied with revolutionary violence and a brief but nasty civil war, of the Republic of Ireland, nearly 30 percent of the area of the 1911 United Kingdom.”(We Are Doomed p. 213)