Happy Fourth of July!

[achinhibitor]

For the Fourth of July, I quote Collections: My Country Isn’t a Nation by Bret Devereaux:

So we have our definition of a nation: a people, historically connected geographically coherent territory, with a shared language, culture and myth of common birth-origin. The United States obviously fails this definition. It isn’t even remotely close

Comments

[davidfcooper]

While the USA as a whole does not have a blood and soil common identity, Colin Woodard argues in his 2011 book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America that its composite regions have something close to that.

[achinhibitor]

Albion's Seed has a similar thesis.

Woodard's thesis is that there are territorial divisions that contain relatively uniform cultures and much of whose population has been there since the founding. But I think the latter point runs up against the same problems Devereaux points out: Woodard's cultures aren't generally newer than the United States as a polity, most of them are distinctly older. But there is the phenomenon that migrants (both immigrants and internal) tend to move to areas with cultures they are personally comfortable. So lots of late-1800s immigrants got sorted into areas where they've grafted themselves onto a blood-and-soil story they culturally conform to.

Which reminds me of an observation by some prominent academic I forget that in the 1800s, when French intellectuals were developing the blood-and-soil story of France, a fellow coined the beautiful phrase "The soil does not lie." Though it turns out he was Jewish and had immigrated from Germany, he became an exponent of la France profonde.

[davidfcooper]

Happy Birthday!