America emerged out of endless fertile soil, temperate climate and the British Empire, who ruled all of its colonies with a system based on English Common Law, the Magna Carta, and no small measure of benevolence, although not always unconditional.
The budding republic's main objection to English rule was taxes, an imposition that they believed was largely characteristic of a totalitarian government. And the people - apart from the Founding Fathers - had faith that the principles of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," plus the balances of Law and Justice, would be fairhandedly applied to every tenant of the new republic, (pointedly) regardless of the size of an individual's holdings, whether it be one (1) million acres of land (of which there was plenty to go around) or just enough to put a cabin on; or none.
How things change! And how they remain the same!
It's an ironic twist of history that Mexicans - born and bred in the crucible of the Americas where Native Son and new-comer meld - have to defend their rights of tenancy inside the house of their invention. When did border lines become critical to national identity?
The ink was barely dry on the U.S. Constitution before men harried men over the right to "own" men bound with chains. Growing pains were such things then.
The most prevailing hope of Americans has always been that the individuals they elect to public office will perform their jobs as defined in the Constitution: to stand between them and any power-hungry psychopath whose intentions are to utilize "We the People" as a means of crystalizing his own personal dreams of empire.
But no empire, no "greatest army" has survived the wrath of the oppressed.
Let it always be that way.