The state looms extraordinarily large in the way of life of the modern West. Its presence and reach is not just a conspicuous, but definitive, feature of that way of life. It has become conventional to characterize our societies simply as liberal democracies, in terms of their state form alone. Individual rights, legal equality, representative government, church-state separation, the rule of law, and above all, political independence have come to replace shared culture and descent as hallmark...
