Sublime

The world’s newly discovered lands were thus to be divided between two Catholic nations, Portugal and Spain. Yet other newcomers had quite different ideas. From the early sixteenth century onward, two other rising Atlantic powers, Britain and Holland, both part of the Reformation that rejected papal authority, aggressively contested the papal treat

America existed as a nation in a particular place and with a particular people, but unlike most other nations it was founded as a moral project, a place where both human rights and the national interest could thrive. The United States has been torn since its founding between these two principles.

The invented people invented things and invented themselves. And for this to happen, the American had to discover his own self-reliance and add that to the courage he had displayed simply in coming here. There were many vices attached to Americans, as there are to all people, but these were the virtues, a combination that created a unique people.

Jefferson Curl

When the network identity is more salient than the neighor relationship, it challenges the very premise of the Westphalian state, which is that (a) people who live geographically near each other share values and (b) therefore laws should be based on geographic boundaries.

The political scientist Benedict Anderson called it the “logo map.” Meaning that if the country had a logo, this shape would be it. The logo map The problem with the logo map, however, is that it isn’t right. Its shape doesn’t match the country’s legal borders. Most obviously, the logo map excludes Hawai‘i and Alaska, which became states in 1959 an