As IF Times

On a long enough time perspective, you would notice that throughout recorded history, very small groups within a given society controlled the vast majority of their populations.  There have always been hierarchies of influence and power and if you were lucky enough to have been born on the right side of this power dynamic, your life was pretty good.  If you were not so lucky, your life was spent under the dictates of those born on the fortunate side of fate.

So that was how life was for centuries.  This changed in the late 1700’s when a group of British men went across the Atlantic Ocean to eventually create an entirely new nation, completely different in structure to their old political system.  This was the genuine, “no kings” movement that occurred 250 years ago.  This was pretty radical because it was the first large scale repudiation of the entitled, hierarchal system of governance in place everywhere throughout history.  When the old colonial masters in Britain demanded that the new colony pay taxes to support the old regime, the upstart colonies banded together and declared, “nah, we’re good, we’ll keep our money here instead”.

This didn’t sit well with the British colonial empire and thus a war was declared to rein in the upstart colonies.  In the aftermath, a new nation was born, completely separate from the old colonial masters with a distinctly different type of governance.  There truly were no kings and instead a republican form of governance was formed with individuals able to express free will to create laws.

As you’d expect, this rather novel environment of freedom and liberty to choose your own life-path became quite popular and the new American colonies became the desired place for those with ambition and drive.   The United States came to represent the new world of individualism and aspiration as opposed to the old world regimes of collectivism and subjugation.  This new style of government gave rise to the incredible ascent of the United States within only a short time to become the most powerful and influential nation in the world, both economically and socially.   To paraphrase an old cliché, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  In the new United States, there were multitudes of strong links unleashed to make a very strong larger chain.  In the old colonial nations, the strength of the chain was dictated by the monarchs at the top. Thus, nations could only progress as much as the rulers permitted.

To this day, even in the 21^st century, many of the old imperial empires cling to the traditions of Kings and Queens presiding over their subjects.  Parenthetically, this dynamic also exists in the Church, but that’s another discussion. Granted, most of these roles are ceremonial, but nonetheless, such people still occupy positions of wealth and prestige within their nations.  However, most of these nations have adopted the democratic model of the United States so that their government leaders are nominally elected by their citizens.  Still, the transition hasn’t been as robust as in America because of long national traditions and sensibilities.  Whereas the US started from a clean slate, the old imperial powers still wrestled with their legacy influences. For example, the acceptance of collectivism as a mindset is quite strong on most European countries even as they pretend to admire individualism.

In the 1960’s, a few European nations, notably West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands mused that a federation of states would be more effective in countering the continued strength and influence of the United States.  In essence, they began to create the idea of the United States of Europe, or as it was finally called, the European Union, complete with a common currency and laws amongst all members.

It seemed like a great idea….at the time.