Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "Monsieur Z"
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I think this concept of "empire" is flawed as it forgets the very simple concept that an empire is based with a dominant population who conquers and annexes populations for subjugation.
The Hapsburgs were an empire who dominated as Austrians above the rest, and only gave concessions to the minority groups (but first the largest minority, the Magyars, to form the dual monarchy) once the forces of nationalism threatened to pull the empire apart. This was due to the gained consciousness. No-one felt loyalty to the universal empire of the Habsburgs. They felt loyalty to their nations (their ethnic group).
The problem is that nations can be either ethnic or civic. The American identity is a civic identity, much like the Roman one.
Though, another wrinkle is trying to find the difference between tribal and national identities, especially in regards to the Roman empire.
Few in the integrated parts of the Roman empire felt their tribal identities. However, those who weren't still identified with their tribes. But by virtue of being tribes, they don't for a nation make, as they don't identify with each other to really any extent.
The Roman empire, however, is actually a good example of an integrated nation. One who assimilated other peoples. This then formed a united Roman identity strong enough to resist foreign conquest in many parts of the Mediterranean for centuries.
See, the key to any nation is the identity of one. The people of the British isles see themselves as distinct, even from each other. However, their descendents across the globe don't even view themselves as from those islands. Even more relevant, they've mixed to such an extent that they'd have no way to even try to tell which is which. Though they share blood, the English genetic diaspora doesn't see itself anywhere their cousins.
In contrast, we have the Arabs. Though they were made of very distinct peoples and cultures at one point in the past, and don't share blood very often with one another (and don't even speak the same language even if they can all read what's written), but they still see themselves as Arab. The Syrians, Egyptians, and Tunisians have basically nothing in common in terms of genetic lineage. However, if you were to ask the Egyptians about the Copts or the Syrians about the Syriacs, chances are you could offend them with the question for comparing them.
Thus brings us back to America. Although America is an amalgamation of populations who share little in the way of actual history or blood but, you can't find significant pockets of those who identify with the countries of origin past the third generation. Their heritage becomes a footnote, a shared marker of the fact that their ancestry is, in fact, a migration from developed states from across the sea. The fact that they've been born on this soil (or perhaps they are migrants), and the fact that they do identify with this country, while their fellow countrymen too identify them as such, indicates merely that it's a very unique and malleable national identity, and not in itself not being a nation. You won't find a man from small town Alabama denying that people from New York or LA are his people (Americans), even if he wish it were not so. This is of course in contrast to being of the many other peoples, which is what all nations are. A shared group who differentiate themselves from other groups of people by virtue of a shared identity.
Finally, though you say they are "disguised" nations, the reality is that nations themselves are tricky things. Remember that if you wish, you can separate people into even the individual family level. At some point you have to realize that the identity is in itself an agglomeration. It is flexible and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Thus the assertion that the nationalities are "confused" rather than realizing that they're simply not truly nations in the traditional sense, is in itself flawed and arguably misguided.
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@stellarjayatkins4749 Genealogy is not so true. It's very much a shared culture and history, but genealogy only really applies to one type of nation. Even more relevant... even in that type of nation, you can actually not share much in the way of genealogy so long as you simply don't look radically different. And even that isn't necessarily true.
To give an example: the Anatolian Turks and the Greeks are effectively the same People by blood and most genetic evidence, however they've gone to war most times and literally cannot understand what the other is saying while also not sharing a religion.
As another example, the Berber peoples are a pretty cohesive group while also having a range of skin colors from pure African to European. It doesn't quite work as that.
Shared blood, shared values, and shared enemies. That's what unites people. They're also effectively the core ingredients of nation formation. It all comes from a few founding families. If people are able to join that nation and add families to the nation is the only question. The American nations can.
Finally, the military force of Washington isn't really keeping this together. It did it once when a political disagreement due to economic changes and a moral crusade divided it, but since then that's been it. America didn't go into the world wars divided, it went united.
An empire is not merely a collection of nations, it is a result of the direct conquest of one nation above the others, and staffs the upper level government, bureaucracy, and military with its own people rather than local peoples. That's not what America is, and that's a VERY bad lens to look at things. America may have differences within, but nations also have to have consciousness, which none of the American nations do. They all share the sense of belonging to that singular American nation. It's in that sense that nations can theoretically come in and out overnight, provided everyone magically changed their minds one day, even if no physical change has occurred in the world.
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