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To: MeganC
The United States is one of the oldest nation-states in existence--and 15 years before the Declaration of Independence no one expected that we would renounce our British identity and become Americans. Of the 192 members of the UN, most have independent existence as a nation-state only from some time after 1900, and only a handful from before 1800. Even the United Kingdom has existed as such only since 1707.

Even the peoples with very ancient histories--Jews, Greeks, Italians, Chinese, etc., in most cases became nation-states only in the 19th or 20th centuries.

The Greek nation may take pride in the ancient Greeks but their existence as a modern nation owes more to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution--and their present-day borders date only to 1947.

Most of the African nations are the result of European powers drawing lines on maps in the late 1800s. The Palestinians may have started thinking of themselves as Palestinians rather than Arabs only in the 1960s, but there are plenty of nations that are only slightly older (ca. 1960) and some that are younger (East Timor, South Sudan, Moldova, etc.).

35 posted on 12/09/2011 8:55:04 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: Verginius Rufus

You’re using the Western metaphorical interpretation of ‘nation’ to mean something that has to do with arbitrary lines drawn upon a map. I’m using the classical interpretation of ‘nation’ which refers to a people regardless of where they are on a map. When Israel was exiled to Babylon and to Egypt they were still a nation even though they were landless. The same with Native American tribes that are landless or which are no longer on their ancestral lands. Having some survey lines does not make a nation. A people with a collective identity makes a nation.

Which is part of why I worry about the future of America and that’s because we are becoming a place on the map without a collective identity amongst our people.


44 posted on 12/12/2011 10:30:33 AM PST by MeganC (No way in Hell am I voting for Mitt Romney. Not now, not ever. Deal with it.)
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