Posted by CB on December 19, 2008 at 19:17:40
In Reply to: Re: Global Governance posted by Farmer on December 17, 2008 at 17:02:52:
"The world's most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen's political identity remains stubbornly local."
People in the US are citizens of states, and that's a "stubbornly local" political identity similar to being a citizen of France or Germany or Switzerland. Even within some of the individual U.S. states, such as Ohio, political identities and governance are localized at the county level.
Within of the left and right coasts of the continental US, the average citizen is parochial, nationalist, and isn't likely to know the three countries that comprise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), much less what the initials "EU" stand for. The state governor who ran for vice president didn't know that Africa is the name of a continent, not a country. "I can see Russia from my front door" qualified as foreign policy experience. While political reporters snicker about this, Sarah Palin simply reflects the ethos of many US citizens.
The Obama administration may be more internationalist in its world view than Cheney & Bush, but the US is centuries away from countenancing the idea of shared sovereignty. A crack in the wall is not equivalent to taking a wall down.