More Chesterton on our great country:

It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism. and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/america.html It's from a book he wrote on visiting America (What I Saw in America) published in 1922.

I think he has a better idea about the nature of America than most Americans have anymore. It's a common sense, clear cut, obvious interpretation. If people'd look, they'd see he's absolutely right. I hope that America doesn't forget the Declaration of Independence, because without it we're no better than the Terror, and we're bound to be in for it sooner or later.