United Warts
September 20th, 2011 by Vader
A discourse on semantics, with a conclusion I find congenial.
His Majesty: “All that matters is the ‘United’ part. One team under a single yoke.”
Comments (2)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
September 20th, 2011 12:43:33
Zen
September 20, 2011
His Majesty’s comments are unassailable as always, but I am not sure I understand the distinction that the author was making.
Vader
September 21, 2011
As best I understand it:
Nation == a natural development sharing a common tongue and culture. Closer to an ethnicity than:
State == a government jurisdiction. Established by legal fiat and not always coinciding with a nation as just defined. Thus Great Britain (a state) is a cobbling together of England, Wales, and Scotland, each arguably a distinct nation.
The United States is almost unique in going the other way, being a nation composed of many states. Of course, the decline of federalism is erasing this distinctive character.