Such an interpretation, however, would be essentially erroneous.

It would be based upon the very idea against which I have been continually protesting--the idea that the American nation, instead of embodying a living formative political principle, is merely the political system created by the Federal Constitution; and it would end in the absurd conclusion that the only way in which the Promise of American democracy can be fulfilled would be by the abolition of American local political institutions.
The nationalizing of American political, economic, and social life means something more than Federal centralization and something very different therefrom.

To nationalize a people has never meant merely to centralize their government.

Little by little a thoroughly national political organization has come to mean in Europe an organization which combined effective authority with certain responsibilities to the people; but the national interest has been just as likely to demand de-centralization as it has to demand centralization.

The Prussia of Frederick the Great, for instance, was over-centralized; and the restoration of the national vitality, at which the Prussian government aimed after the disasters of 1806, necessarily took the form of reinvigorating the local members of the national body.