The author neglects to mention that "family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world" have all but been destroyed in today's world, to the point where national identities barely exist in my generation. We are not weird, just the product of our times. We are more taxpayers and consumers than citizens, this is actually more prevalent in europe than the US at the moment. I don't know how strong the American national identity still is, but seeing how they literally need to spy on everyone to keep the congregation from breaking apart is pretty alarming.

Maybe the author should wonder how it came to be that people trust facebook, google and other corporations(!) more than they trust the government they elect and its institutions.