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Entry: Further Notes on Nationalism Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/further_notes_on_nationalism#23500 Post contents: I don't disagree with much that Aaron writes above, though I'm not sure that I would insist upon such a sharp division of "nation" and "nationality." I mean by the latter the quality (or combination of qualities) that make one a member of a nation. My use of the word "compound" may need some explication. There may be some ethnically pure nations out there -- perhaps some island tribe -- but most peoples are a mixture of several bloodlines, and the existence of a "nation" has cultural and psychological dimensions as well as genetic ones. It seems possible to me that two individuals with very similar genes may be part of different nations, if they speak different languages, were born in different areas, are members of different religions, and partake of different cultures. My guess is that there are separate nations, which we would all agree are nations, that are more closely related to one another than are some members within a single nation. But that is just conjecture. Is there enough of a nation in the United States to have (traditional) nationalism? Maybe. Americans do have a sense of themselves as distinct from Canadians, Mexicans, Englishmen, and Iraqis. That American sense of self or national identity derives in part from a traditional ethnonational core -- English and Protestant -- but also has an ideological component and accretions of other ethnonational elements (Scots-Irish, Dutch, African, German, etc.). This does not mean that America cannot be a nation more or less like other nations. The English nation is an alloy of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, various Celtic and Germanic peoples, and heaven knows what else, just as the English tongue is a Germanic base overlaid with French and other influences. Thus America as a compound is not necessarily so different from other nations, although there may be differences in extent. The time-frame and circumstances in which the American nation has formed, if indeed it has formed, are also important. They are unusual and may be disqualifying. The relationship of nations-as-peoples, or ethnai, to nation-states is a bigger topic than I can take on here. In short, though, I think that the historical and ideational (socially-constructed, psychological, etc.) ingredients exist for an American nation. Nations, like families, are not purely matters of blood (and nations are less defined by blood than families are). Husbands and wives, one hopes, are not closely related by blood, and children may be adopted or repudiated. Continuity of property also once meant something in the existence of a family -- and slaves were members of the ancient "family," too. Nations and families are not airtight, self-contained units. They are semi-closed. Sent at: 2008 08 21