The United States of America. Never has a phrase been so all consumingly evocative since The Holy Roman Empire.
First question: What is it about these powers that fills a strong man with awe, and brings an emotional one to tears?
If it is it’s sheer might, then we need to look at the cause, the root of this might.
How could these empires grow so mighty? And why do we not feel the same way with the British Empire?
Because I don’t. It is too stoic. Brits are protestants at heart, no matter how clever they are with symbols. Americans are at catholics, no matter how rational they claim their beliefs. No matter how sober and stoic their hardest thinkers imagine their soul. It is so filled with drama, craving for glory, that what is sober to them is magnificent theatre when you look at it from the dim alleys of northern Europe. That is the reason many Europeans detest all that is American - they fel it is a violation of their highest values. Higher values are meant to be abstract. They cannot be practiced. It is a bit like speaking a common tongue Hebrew. Blasphemy!
Impenitent. The drama is pertinent to it - the dramatic setup of a continental nation to the Holy Quest for Happiness. This type of attitude does not easily stand in our costs. We learn, we think we grow ever more American - but since land is scarce, firearms are illegal and the government is invisible, and has never stated it’s purpose, most of us don’t have a clue. We are all penitent. Bound to the land of our ancestors, unknown in the tribal darkness of euro-asiatic history.
America is all new. An open space with a brand new set of laws.
What would change, structurally and effectively, if only the original bill of rights was valid tomorrow?