Oh I am very well aware of how much American distrust the government ;-)

But I will actually challenge you a bit on the the idea that this is about the founders. The American constitution and the Norwegian constitution in its original form are not that radically different. Much of how government operated, elections were carried out etc was quite similar in Norway relative to the US 100 - 150 years ago.

One can probably say the same about many other countries but Norway is a useful comparison because it has the second oldest constitution in the world and it is thus useful to contrast with the US one.

So if the differences upon inception are not that big why are they quite big today? Because Norway like many other European countries simply don't have the same reverence for out founders.

The kind of debate that exist in the US with regards "What did the founders really mean" is completely non-existent in Norway. E.g. the way you start your argument for why things are the way in the US by invoking the ideas of the founders would not be the start of any argument in Norway about why our laws are the way they are.

If a law remains unchanged since Norway was founded, you can bet it is because successive government and voters have found it useful. It has been reaffirmed. But stuff only survives because people believe in them. That the founders once believed something carries significantly less weight.

I think that is the key difference. I am not by any stretch of the imagination the first to point out that the US constitution and system of government is getting really old and many would say outdated. Too many seem to treat the constitution as holy scripture despite the fact that one of key founders argued strongly against the constitution being treated that way.

I suspect the US is a bit of a victim of its own success. The fact that the US has worked out quite well has gotten people into thinking that the constitution is far more perfect than it actually is.

Thus the US constitution and legal thinking in the US is stuck in what was the dominant ideology when the US was founded: A classic liberal ideology. Europe saw far more profound changes to thought about government through strife and revolutions through the 1800s and early 1900s. It is from here the ideas of government as protector of rights come. These concepts did not exist anywhere when the US constitution was written. The dominant ideology within Europe as well as the US was that government was mainly an obstacle to the pursuit of happiness.

A large powerful class of capitalists had still not emerged and changed society profoundly. It is easy to forget that the US constitution was not really built for a capitalist society. It was built on the assumption that more of a country of shopkeepers and farmers rather than workers and factory owners.