It's a deep-seated cultural paranoia that the federal government is out to get us. Initially, the US tried to be a confederation like the EU or Canada, but it turned out that we needed slightly more federal power than that to stay as a unified country. But the tension between "loose coalition of independent states" and "unified government that grants some powers to the states" is a pretty fundamental theme throughout US politics.

Among the man weird corners of US national ID politics, is the set of Americans who think a national ID is an unforgivable invasion of liberty but that an ID should be required to vote.