"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too"
J.L.

+1 and for opposite of the intentions of that slaveholding agrarian. Read about the ancient Greeks of Miletus and Acragas. When their cities were besieged, they took their money and whatever else, got in their ships and rowed away. They were merchants. The Romans were farmers and the loins of Italy produced tens of thousands to die for Rome every generation. Not for nothing were both Caesar and Washington called Pater Patriae (Father of His Country).

In Rome, if you were a successful businessman, you turned it over to your freemen and slaves and retired to the country to live on a farm like a gentleman. Commerce was held in low esteem.

Now, Genoa, now there was a place and time! Their coins were struck in the name of Conrad, a pretender to the Holy Roman Empire who never actually set foot in the republic. Genoa had at least five different constitutions, but it was alway a republic.

If you read The City by Max Weber you will recognize the fundamentals of America. We are a bourgeois society, even to the point of having firearms. Firearms require little training. So, the merchant and the apprentice can carry out their real work and still be able to defend the city. They city has almost no native population. Cities are filled with foreigners. City people are not tied to the ground, not bound to the soil because city people are free. "Stadtluft macht frei. City air makes you free. Here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...