>You need a common culture to govern a country Or, an Empire. The EU is decidedly not that, however. Perhaps this article was published 10-20 years too soon,

>You need a common culture to govern a country Or, an Empire. The EU is decidedly not that, however. Perhaps this article was published 10-20 years too soon, and one day in the future an Imperial American (or French) bureaucracy decides that it's time to bring the friends across the pond closer into the orbit of the Imperial State. Joking, of course. The problems within the United States today (where I am made to care about the goings on in States not my own) are of course the same problems this hypothetical Empire would face.