It strikes me that all your concerns about a world government are based on the assumption that the system won't work as intended. That, for example, the principle of Federalism writ on the global scale fails to maximize local autonomy, and individual nations lose their individuality and distinctiveness. Could happen--we've seen an evolution away from Federalism here in America. That's a known danger, and one that could be addressed in a new "Earth Constitution". I was reading the draft Iraqi constitution, and noticed a couple of places where they seemed to be addressing weaknesses in our Constitution; I was particularly struck by how the Iraqi judiciary will nominate its own judges for approval by the legislature, avoiding the conflicts and conflicts-of-interest inherent in the way we entangle the Executive and Judiciary branches. We'd have the chance to apply the lessons we've learned.

The marketplace for government that you describe is an intriguing concept. A global government would tend to impose representative democracy down on member nations, because the members would be participating in the global government through representative democracy. The Earth Constitution would have to be carefuly written to recognize the freedom of members to have a different system internally than externally; an "asymmetrical political interface", if you will. For example, people in a theocracy might give up their say in local governance, but still be able to participate in global elections.

The second enabler would be the free right of emigration to allow people to vote with their feet. (But not necessarily a free right of immigration; you could emigrate to wherever would take you, and maybe the GG would have to establish a default zone-of-last-resort for unwanted emigrants.) It might even be reasonable to require the emigrant's home government to pay moving expenses for those unable to pay, to overcome economic bondage as a barrier to free emigration. There'd be justice in imposing an economic penalty on a system of government so flawed that people want to escape it.

The notion that Bush invaded Iraq to make an object lesson of it isn't new, and it does make a brutal sort of sense. If I saw Bush trying to reinforce that message, I might not be so worried that he doesn't have a plan--it would fit Iraq into a larger strategy. But what I actually see is Bush going to some trouble to distance himself from the idea, taking a conciliatory stance toward the Middle East, essentially saying, "don't worry, this can't happen to you". He vows to bring democracy to the Middle East through peaceful means, unlike in Iraq.

I can't top your gun experiences. The only other one I can add is another shotgun, this one wielded by a guy who claimed (not very credibly) to be an arms supplier to the SLA (this was soooo long ago). We were walking through the woods, he was behind me carrying a shotgun he'd just dug up from under a bush (well, OK, that does add some versimilitude to his story), when boom he dropped the gun and I hit the dirt. He'd been carrying it barrel pointed to the sky, so if it had been tipped just a couple of degrees forward when it hit the ground he'd have taken off my head.

So much for gun stories. Then there are the stories involving high explosives like C4. But I'll save those for another day.

I look back on my youth, and it's a wonder that I'm here to tell the tales.