It is easy
to get locked into a certain way of viewing something, even if the perspective,
it turns out, has more to do with one’s epoch than the thing itself, including
how it came about and was designed. I contend that one of the main category
mistakes is that wherein one Union is treated as equivalent to a state in
another Union. It is astounding when citizens of the former acquiesce in the
likening of “apples and oranges” at their own expense—in this case, citizens of
the United States unwittingly treating their Union as though it were simply
France with a very big backyard rather than a Union commensurate with the
European Union (in which France is a state). The affable “going along” is
caused in part by a willful indifference that relegates any study of the
origins and history of the United States. I submit that a proper comparison
between the U.S. and E.U. takes both after their respective first fifty
years—hence most Americans are ill-equipped to refute the asseverations of
European friends that the U.S. itself is somehow equivalent to a state in their
own Union.