U.S. states are integral parts of a single nation with shared sovereignty. Our language, history, culture and tradition are highly integrated and emerged over a fairly short period of time.
The idea of taking an existing nation and making a supercedeing nation state on top seems like a massive forfeit of sovereign power.
The original colonies weren't national states. More like city states with slightly different rules and cultural values.
I understand what you mean now. Yes the common culture is huge. But the States *could* have gone independent and North America would be a land of 50 independent countries.
In fact, in Europe I tend to think of countries as equivalent to states (Portugal has the same population as Michigan, etc)
But is true that Europeans focus a lot more on what makes them different, centuries of war w
ill do that to you.
Little things like our Electoral College ensures that even the smallest states priorities must be considered by Presidential candidates. But this also tends to collapse into a 2 party system as well so there are tradeoffs.
