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Too true. I once had what amounted to an epiphany waiting in line in a post office in Brussels. The postal workers behind the counter, seven or eight of them behind two service windows, were lounging and laughing, obviously having a very good time. The two unlucky ones who were manning the windows moved with a slow and surly mope.

No one in the long waiting line with me seemed at all impatient and acted with a sort of grateful obeisance when they finally reached the counter. It suddenly occurred to me that in Europe the idea of proper order from top to bottom is still the State (replacing God), the Executive (replacing the King), the Bureaucracy (replacing the Nobility), the Security Apparatus (replacing the Knights and Junkers), and at the bottom the mass of Citizenry (aka Peasants and Serfs).

In America our idea is quite different, in fact turning that European pyramid on its head to put the Citizenry on top. And while reality is subject to the greed of the self styled "elites" and willingness of humans to be intimidated, we nonetheless work from a very different set of beliefs and principles than the descendants of those who lacked the balls to say "f#(& this!", board rickety leaking boats, and cross an ocean.