Just my personal take -- I can't speak for Americans in general. From my perspective, European politics has never really gotten away from the idea that there s

Just my personal take -- I can't speak for Americans in general. From my perspective, European politics has never really gotten away from the idea that there should be a ruling class and a ruled class. What those classes are called, and how one becomes a member of them, has changed over time, but whether you call it "the nobility" or "the politburo" or "the EU", the idea that there is a ruling class who make decisions with little or no accountability to the ruled class appears to always be there. Unfortunately, we seem to be headed down that road ourselves. Pity, that. The mistake most Europeans (and many Americans) seem to make is attempting to map American politics onto European notions of "right" and "left", so you get people doing bizarre things like equating U.S. libertarians with Nazis (because they're both supposedly "right wing", despite having absolutely nothing in common with each other). My sense is that the difference between European "right" and "left" wings is the difference between being ruled by communist bureaucrats or being ruled by large property owners (nobles or rich people). Some of us here don't like either of those ideologies. :-)