Your asking for a doctoral thesis, for which I don't have time, frankly. Here's a short version.
The US is rather a free state for a number of reasons. We've had a tradition of freedom for nearly 400 years. This helps. We have a constitution that "guarantees" it...this helps, too, except there are no guarantees. The biggest single factor is, I think, that nobody...no level...within the US has power that is not offset or _threatened_ by some other power or powers. Thus, we split the federal government into three. Then we further split the legislature into two. Then we split sovereignty between Fed and States, even to the extent of putting substantial military forces at the disposal of the states and leaving it open for them to create more on their own (some 40 or so, last time I checked, had unfederalizable state guards or militias, for example), and - whether intended or not - the Second Amendment puts considerable potential for violence in individual hands.
So far, it works fairly well, though I think it is working less well all the time. If it ceases to work, one could leave. This, too, acts as a brake in governmental conduct, because it is costly to lose one's citizens and about as costly to try to keep them if they want to leave.
I would anticipate that a world government would grow even as our own federal one has...but I see nothing, and I have dealt with transnational progressives quite a bit over the years, that inclines me to think they would accept separation of powers, or any limit on their own power, could they seize it. I've seen nothing, all protestations of their own wonderfulness aside, that suggests to me that they are anything but Stalinists in Birkenstocks.
And there would be no escape from a world government. You _can't_ leave.
The downside is obvious; we (humanity) fight a lot of wars, kill a lot of people, and expend a lot of resources in preparing to do same. It's something inherent in the nation state...you go armed and are prepared to kill. That doesn't bother me overmuch because the alternative, world government, would turn oppressive and would cause revolts that would likely kill as many or more. That's supposition, of course, but I think it sound. Has there ever been an institution, created for the betterment of mankind, that didn't rot, in time?
The alternative to world government is pretty much what we have and that is sustained by nationalism. I'll call myself ultra-nationalist because I accept few or no compromises to our national sovereignty because every trivial surrender of our sovereignty puts us one step closer to a world government that has all the power. I want power to be highly diffuse (except of course that I want the United States to have a large enough share of it that there are no threats to _my_ people that can't be handled).
Tom
