If the US didn't have the rest of the world to feed on, how democratic would it be?

There are also many things about federalisation which don't work. The advantage the US has isn't so much because of its peculiar federal model, but because of its mythologies of manifest destiny and the American Dream.

The EU will shamble along in a divided way without an equivalent. There's some consensus on what the European Dream is within the core, but much less so at the periphery, especially in those countries which have a strong competing Anglo or Anglo-affiliated mythology of their own.