No and probably they thought they were being perfectly clear. But once you lose the context of the times, the meaning can be lost.
I agree. I like they way you use the adjective "elected". There seems to be some disconnect between voting and the consequences of you vote. Probably, in the USA your vote means less than in any other Western democracy in the sense that both the Democratic and Republican parties are pretty corporate.
Perhaps the difference can be explained by Hanlon's Razor ("Never ascribe to deliberate malice that which can be explained by bungling incompetence"). For as much as Britons grumble and grouse about the government - all governments - I don't think it's a widespread belief that they're actively, sinisterly malicious. Useless, yes; clueless, yes; deliberately downright evil, not really. In America it seems to be widely held to be the opposite; there's very much a sense that government (frequently preceded by the word
big) is the enemy of the individual and his (needless to say, God-given) rights. I'm not convinced that Britons typically think that way. In rare and isolated examples, possibly - the mooted introduction of compulsory ID cards, for example - but not as a rule.
And then there's manifest destiny - America was/is a nation stolen from the indigenous people who had inhabited the land for millennia. Settlers had to grind their way west and doubtless felt in need of protection from those who were less than delighted about having their land and culture taken from them.
