Steven Den Beste, on why the French still have not figured us out yet:
“The people of the United States are many and are powerful. We lend some of that power to our government, but we retain even more. Our government serves us, but does not rule us.
Most of the time we let our government speak for us, but we can speak for ourselves. Each individual voice is very small, but if enough of us commit to something, it is impossible to ignore. We can directly reward friends and directly punish enemies. We don’t need our government’s permission and our government can’t stop us, because though the US government is the most powerful in history and more powerful than any other in the world, we are even more powerful yet and will replace the US government if it tries to do so. That is part of the power we retained, and every two years the government submits itself to us for reapproval.”