Dear God, what kind of farcical totalitarian dystopia have you serfs allowed your country to become?

https://youtu.be/NKZNijT4crg?t=88

Yup, it all started with John Howard's gun buybacks after the Port Arthur massacre. Can't say I agree with it. Knives are the next thing up here in Queensland.

As for mustard in mash, can't say I've tried it. For brekkie today I'm having Vegemite and cheese on toast. Yum!

But slingshots, kaner? Really afraid of even potential Davids aren't your political overlords, no?

Pretty sure slingshots are perfectly legal to buy in Queensland and Tasmania.

You're right Kaner, they are in Qld.

If they have been banned in NSW and Victoria and those two states hold ~60% of the seats in your legislature, then a national ban seems inevitable as soon as someone proposes it. But you have bigger problems. If 60% of your population passively submits to such ridiculousness out of deference to authority and mistrust of their fellow citizens, I have difficulty imagining what sorts of foolishness they would not submit to.

One could argue very similar logic on <insert topic here> between, let's say, California and Idaho.

California does not control 60% of our Congress. Plus Eastern Oregon is actively trying to secede from the Western third of their state to join Idaho for precisely that reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lve5ptLT56Y

Americans seemingly and in major parts cannot understand how and why people of their state would trust each other. Giving away arms is based on trust, arming yourself is based on distrust. This distrust is ruling US policy on the matter. And maybe -regionally- rightly so.

@GOD...I think you are failing to understand the distinction and difference that exists between your "state" from your "nation".

"The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot [will not] give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. THAT RIFLE HANGING ON THE WALL OF THE WORKING CLASS FLAT OR LABOURER'S COTTAGE IS THE SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY. IT IS OUR JOB TO SEE THAT IT STAYS THERE" --George Orwell

But even on your own terms, I disagree with you. Wishing the state to bar your neighbor from owning a slingshot does not speak to me of social trust in the least.

How does it speak about your trust, then?

That I do not demand that my government use violence and coercive force to disarm my neighbors?

I would rather live with some neighbors who own slingshots than with a government that cannot allow its citizens to do so.

Gopher - 'state' and 'nation' can be synonymous.

Some sovereign states (generally federalised ones) will also call their internal divisions 'states' as well (eg. USA, Australia). But yeah, the nation *is* the (sovereign) state.

There is no "nation of the Americans" or "nation of the Australians" in the sense that France is the nation of the French or Germany is the nation of the Germans. The alignment of "states" with "nations" is the essence of the Herderian project that dominated 150 years of European History.

What would you call the people being called nationalists in the USA then?

There absolutely is a 'nation of Australians'. It's inhabited by 25 million of us.

Unless you're trying to claim that some Australians, aren't? But I can't think of a reason to do so that's *not* so fucking racist it's not funny, so I really hope that's not what you're trying to do...

Australia is a social contract society. Nothing binds y'all together except mutual agreement. I can become an Australian by simply declaring myself one just as you could become an American by making a similar declaration whereas neither of us can become Japanese (irrespective of what early 80s British pop songs about masturbation might lead us to believe). I have to say that I think much less of you for resorting to those kinds of cheap rhetorical tactics. I judge them beneath anyone on here.

There is no such thing as an American Nationalist. Nationalism is so alien to Americans that many Americans use the word without having any understanding of what it means. Interestingly enough, I spent about three hours having this exact conversation with a philosophically inclined Czech international student a few days ago. This is in line with the reality that there does not exist, never has existed and ultimately cannot exist an American fascism. It is foundationally alien to American society, or for that matter Canadian society. This is why there have been Quebecois fascists or at least proto-fascists, whose politics are almost incomprehensible to the rest of Canada. Any sort of extremely right wing version of politics that developed in America or Australia or Canada would be quite distinct and almost completely different from fascism because there is no underlying Nationalism to build upon. Nationalism is not merely chauvinistic patriotism. "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!" cannot function as a fascist slogan.

This is just dumb. The USA shares common history, language, culture. You are confusing ethnicity with nation. The USA also features a lot of institutions that literally have „National …“ in their name.

The election and presidency of Donald Trump are in large parts playbook nationalist, I don’t see how with this recent history you would say that this thing that has happened in the USA did not actually happen.

Maybe you’re trolling though.

Please just read this speech by a certain Mr. Washington, wherein without even arguing he just presumed nationhood of the USA and US-nationality of it’s citizens:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf

There are no Americans without America. There were Germans before there was a Germany. There would still be Germans without Germany. There are multigenerational Germans outside of Germany at least some of whom have never lived in Germany.

George Washington was speaking prior to Herder and prior to de Maistre. These ideas are frequently toxic and destructive, but they are real. It is a cowardly liberal who does not face them and wrestle with them seriously.

One can say that the Fenians or the Molly Maguires were Nationalists. One could say that the members of the German American Bund were Nationalists. One could say that the Black Panthers were Nationalists. However, there are no American Nationalists...not in the meaningful sense. One might make an argument that the first Ku Klux Klan was Nationalists, but I view that argument to be weak and that original incarnation of the Klan to have been anti-American. The second larger Klan in the 1920s was not really at all Nationalist.

Hitler genuinely believed that the Japanese would defeat us after they attacked Pearl Harbor as he was declaring war upon us. Whether or not he had ever read Ibn Khaldun, his thinking seemed to follow a logical path that since he viewed us as a mongrel society divorced from national consciousness that we were incapable of the kind of force that Ibn Khaldun labeled "social cohesion" and therefore we would crumble when set in direct conflict of arms against a united Japanese Nation. While this mindset demonstrates the stupidity of National Socialism as an ideology, Hitler viewed the USA as a society entire divorced from Nationalism as it existed at the foundational level of National Socialism and Fascism.

On a completely different subject I just saw that Ryan Crouser broke his own World Record over the weekend in the shot put. He first set the World Record two years ago, and when he did so, it had stood since the dismantling of East Germany as a state.

The women's hammer throw did not become a tracked record until 1994, but women's shot put, men's hammer throw, women's discus and men's discus (all of the strength throwing events in track & field) have seen their records stand since the days of the East German athletic machine, irrespective of whether the records were held by the East Germans.

Steroid technology does not seem to have improved very much since the heyday of Manfred Ewald and the Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund.

There actually have been quite a lot Americans before the birth of the USA.

No, they were British.

This is a slightly stylized version of reality but it is viewed to be largely accurate and grounded in record of the actual debates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDzwtl5Z2cA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTxVHQAp8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBgYMRBe-M

Amby informs me that I need to provide references to be understood.

"...you could become an American by making a similar declaration whereas neither of us can become Japanese (irrespective of what early 80s British pop songs about masturbation might lead us to believe)."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGy9uomagO4

I was referring to the native Americans.

Besides, the pre-revolutionary population of what would become the 13 states was a mix of many different European and African people, not just Brits.

The various Native American tribes possessed no National consciousness among themselves. The population in the 13 Colonies in 1775 was overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic. I believe that the Polish enclave at Jamestown more or less all eventually returned home. The laws of Virginia actually treated enslaved Blacks and Catholics essentially the same in terms of excluding them from the legal protections of the state until the laws that directly and indirectly governed slavery were racialized in (I believe) the 1800s. The laws initially spoke of "Christians" rather than of "citizens" or "white men", and within that context Catholics were not deemed to be "Christians" as these codes were largely imported from Ascendency era Ireland.

The African population thrived and multiplied later, but only between 1-2% of the total flows of the Atlantic slave trade ended up in the 13 colonies (~300,000 set against ~20,000,000). The US has a large Black population today because African slaves in North America survived and produced children (by 1860, the enslaved population had grown to around 4,000,000). The life expectancy of an African slave arriving in the sugar islands of the Caribbean was as low as three years at the height of the slave trade, and at the moment that the Haitian Revolution began, roughly 70% of the total population of western Hispaniola had been born in Africa because the mortality rates were so high. The Caribbean plantations were an ungodly meat grinder that is almost beyond human comprehension. Ibn Battuta's descriptions of the Malian salt mines (and speculations about the more secretive gold mines) come to mind.

Excellent point GOD.

Just the Brits were generally speaking the boss, at least in the 13 colonies.

Fun fact, while some folks disparagingly say Australian culture is based on being a dumping ground for the Brits' convicts, I learned today that they also sent a lot to America before you guys decided to throw tea in the harbor.

https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-land-of-the-free-criminal-transportation-to-america/

Are nations not generally preceded by states? Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't French, Italian, or Spanish identities just as artificial as the American? The products of ambitious kings and queens and aggressive education policies. In a vacuum, languages and cultures exist on a regional dialect spectrum like in the Arab and Chinese worlds. In any case, I'd argue America or Australia has been around long enough for the populations to form nations. On the other hand, I've seen some people argue that North Korea and South Korea don't form a cohesive Korean nation anymore since the cultures have diverged so much. Heck, just look at Ukraine and Russia. You can't separate the politics out of it.

An interesting case study on national identity is the ancient Assyrians. While today we have nationalists who think that outsiders can't integrate into their culture, the Assyrians were quite the opposite. In fact, they would forcibly assimilate people by deporting people to different parts of the empire, basically building new provinces from the scraps of conquered peoples. That's how you get the lost tribes of Israel.

Did they trust their people with weapons? Sure, they did! That's because they'd ship these deportees to provinces bordering hostile countries. To some raiding Medes or Scythians, they didn't really care where you came from, you were an Assyrian enemy. So, you really didn't have much of a choice when everyone around you sees you as Assyrian anyway. I guess if there's a less here it's this: if the Assyrians could be so accepting of outsiders 3500 years ago, why can't we today?

"Are nations not generally preceded by states?" I would respond by pointing to Ukraine. The argument that you are making is essentially the argument of the Putin that Ukraine is an artificial construction and not real: the Ukrainians are simply Little Russians. The Ukrainians are fighting and dying because they believe that they are a Nation. They are fighting to be ruled by their own corrupt, kleptocratic oligarchs. :oP

"Nationalism" as it exists conceptually today is a byproduct of the political and philosophical writings of Herder and de Maistre during the Napoleonic Wars and further articulated by subsequent thinkers. The better argument would be Lajos Kossuth, the great spokesman for chauvinistic Hungarian Nationalism who diverted resources from a war of National survival to fund programs that were effectively culturally geocidal in their objective. He was half German and half Slovakian and had not a "drop of Hungarian blood in him". Ergo he believed that Slavic Slovaks and Teutonic Germans could become Magyars. Similarly, Josef Pilsudski seemed quasi-fascistic in a lot of ways while himself not being ethnically Polish. He was Lithuanian, and his conception of "Poland" was the pre-Nationalistic Commonwealth that was only about a third Polish. But ultimately, Kossuth's conception of Hungary as a historic political claim (the lands of the Crown of St. Steven including Slovakia, Transylvania, Vojvodina and non-coastal Croatia) was accepted by Hungarians in the middle of the 19th Century whereas Pilsudski's analogous conception of "Poland" was not embraced by Poles in the 1920s.

After citing a few thinkers on the idea of nations: what criteria would your raise for the definition of a nation?

Clearly not the land of freedom fries and liberty toast! No, clearly nothing nationalistic to see there!