Thanks to all of you Europeans for your input, but . . . I don't want to be a European, if I did, I would move there and become a citizen . . . oops, can't do that very easily. I'd have to jump through all sorts of hoops and surrender many of my inherent rights to do so and then, if I chose a nation like the UK, be observed on video cameras 24/7.
This is America and we value our Constitutionally protected rights very highly. We fought a war to gain our freedom from your one-size-fits-all form of government. We value our individuality and our personal independence and liberty.
We are naturally suspicious of government and we agree with our Founding Fathers that the best government is a highly limited and restricted government. We believe that our government should be answerable to "We the people," not the people answerable to the government.
You may consider us quaint, provencial, you may feel free to look down your collective noses at us and sniff, "bunch of hicks and heathens!" Welcome to it; we don't need your respect and you can keep your condescention to yourself because we don't want it.
We are suspicious of government because we have seen what government is capable and, unlike some living in certain nations I could mention--Germany--we haven't lost our memories of what surrendering total control to a government can lead to.
Any surrender of liberty, however seemingly minor, leads to less freedom and less independence for the citizen. We know this, we live it, and we prefer to keep it that way.
So let us live in our primitive little nation filled with backwards rubes and hicks and go on about your statist lives bowing down to your un-elected EU government and your limited citizenship and limited rights.
We love you anyway--afterall many of us have ancestors there from where they fled to seek greater freedom and greater opportunity.
Cheers!