They Aren’t What They Used to Be May 27, 2004 If I had to sum up American history in one sentence, I’d put it this way: The United States aren’t what they used to be. That’s not nostalgia. That’s literal fact. Before the Civil War, the United States was a plural noun. The U.S. Constitution uses the plural form when, for example, it refers to enemies of the United States as “their” enemies. And this was the usage of everyone who understood that the union was a voluntary federation of sovereign states, delegating only a few specified powers, and not...