Offsite Post: ‘One Nation or Many Nations?’

 

It is not very often that we would say something good came of the Super Bowl, but this year is a little different thanks to the dustup over the response (or lack thereof) to the Black National Anthem:  ‘White Tennessee Democrat Congressman Steve Cohen was incensed that Super Bowl fans did not stand in respect for what he called the “Negro National Anthem” during Sunday night’s big game.’

Those who disagree with Rep. Cohen have generally stuck to some form of the argument that because the United States is one nation, it should and does have only one national anthem.  It is precisely here that a helpful opportunity presents itself, an opportunity to remind one and all that the United States are not one country, but many countries.  This may be done via two ways.

First, politically.  Fifty States make up the federation called the United States.  Each one is a sovereign, independent country.  This truth has been expressed since the earliest days of their independence from the British Empire.  One important example:  The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the war between Great Britain and the States, says explicitly that each State is a nation in her own right:  ‘His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such . . . .’

It has generally been the authoritarian centralizers in the US who have tried to spin out a different version of reality – that the 50 States are one country – folks like Alexander Hamilton and Justice Joseph Story.  Abraham Lincoln took their theory and put into practice by force of arms in an illegal, unjust war, but delusions will last only so long before falling apart.  The Soviet Union affirms that:  Fifteen very different countries forcefully united under the rule of Godless communists in Moscow broke apart in 1991.  The European Union is constantly in danger of falling apart because it is similarly trying to amalgamate 27 independent countries into one giant supernation; Charlemagne’s earlier version of a European superstate fell apart for similar reasons.

The United States are not immune from these political dynamics.  Dissatisfaction with an all-powerful government in DC continues to manifest in the States.  . . .

The rest may be read here:

https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/one-nation-or-many-nations

Or here:

https://thehayride.com/2024/02/garlington-one-nation-or-many-nations/

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!