I think the history of the world paints a different picture. Worldwide, and since our earliest recordings of history, governments have tried to expand themselve

I think the history of the world paints a different picture. Worldwide, and since our earliest recordings of history, governments have tried to expand themselves to encompass ever greater regions and ultimately grant themselves ever more expansive power. And invariably there is a backlash, frequently a war, and then a dissolution before another great power emerges and starts combining the disparate pieces into a new whole to repeat the entire process all over again. The only thing that really slowed this cycle (which had been accelerating) was nuclear weapons which make outright war between developed nations basically impossible. This beautiful [1] video shows the remarkably frequent shifting or Europe's borders through the centuries. It's easy to just look at that and zone out but you have to consider that each color there was at one time a real and genuine government that the people likely expected to last more or less indefinitely. Many of those blips which you see so seemingly rapidly evaporate were longer lived than the United States. For instance the strikingly visible Ottoman empire lasted for some 600 years. And, in a story told a countless times before and one that will be told a countless number of times in the centuries to come, it wasn't some great force or power that brought it down. It was internal political disagreements which culminated in an armed revolution. The problem with humanity is that the only thing we want as much as the power to rule ourselves, is the power to rule others. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfdXoL3Xck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfdXoL3Xck