[cajungirl]

I just read Founding Brothers, the John Adams Bio and am now reading American Sphinx about Jefferson. Europpeans don't have the same problem we had at the dawn of our country,,the vast size and the disparate regions. We had all these colonies, all different, all established by pretty strong people. Plus even at the beginning, our founders were looking west and south and thinking that one day the entire Americas would be US. So the idea of a central government determining all things was pretty impractical. Plus Jefferson and his Republicans were pretty much anti government anyway. But a small country, as most Europeans countries are, might make sense to have a central government. These countries also had Kings and Queens and their tradition was centralised authority.

[Stultis]

Good points all, but even (if not especially) the kinds of things we leave to city and county level government, leave alone the states, seems to be an amazement to the Eurons.