Seems to be some confusion over this. Everyone is a Schroedinger's American, or an American who wants to be, or its defined by immigration laws, or living here, or going to a football game wearing a cowboy hat.
I think we can use a more scientific first principles method of inquiry - and go to the master for that, Aristotle. He answered this question cleanly hundreds of years ago in his book Politics. In Book 3 he writes that the state is...
The words bolded above for are hard to directly translate. Family connections (kedaiai) are specifically ties of affinity created through marriage or intermarriage (vs just blood relationship). A brotherhood (phratry) was a civic and religious kinship tradition, and was a subdivision of tribal affiliation that had multiple clan groups. This was an actual social institution. So it would kind of be like saying immediate family connections and extended family relations. And sacrifice rites there (thysai) is shared cultic or religious sacrifices, which were a part of both social and professional life. That sentence as a whole is something close to "ties from intermarriage, organized kinship associations, common religious observances, and shared social life."
So to me, to have a coherent state we would need all of those things. Beginning with friendship, having a shared vision of the Good (a philosophical commonality, meaning a shared moral framework), and then family units forming real, durable social bonds and institutional connections (like marriage, worship, social life) is how a state is formed.
I think this is useful because its actually descriptive and testable. Has the group formed bonds of marriage? Have they joined in social institutions? Do they participate in community worship? Do they participate in society?
Immigration law can't make any of those things happen. It also explains why groups who immigrated here a time ago have become part of our society, and why some groups simply cannot (e.g., Muslims who wish to practice Sharia law).
The people who have done these things are my countrymen.
I think we can use a more scientific first principles method of inquiry - and go to the master for that, Aristotle. He answered this question cleanly hundreds of years ago in his book Politics. In Book 3 he writes that the state is...
Quote:
a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, sacrificial rites*, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship, for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.
The words bolded above for are hard to directly translate. Family connections (kedaiai) are specifically ties of affinity created through marriage or intermarriage (vs just blood relationship). A brotherhood (phratry) was a civic and religious kinship tradition, and was a subdivision of tribal affiliation that had multiple clan groups. This was an actual social institution. So it would kind of be like saying immediate family connections and extended family relations. And sacrifice rites there (thysai) is shared cultic or religious sacrifices, which were a part of both social and professional life. That sentence as a whole is something close to "ties from intermarriage, organized kinship associations, common religious observances, and shared social life."
So to me, to have a coherent state we would need all of those things. Beginning with friendship, having a shared vision of the Good (a philosophical commonality, meaning a shared moral framework), and then family units forming real, durable social bonds and institutional connections (like marriage, worship, social life) is how a state is formed.
I think this is useful because its actually descriptive and testable. Has the group formed bonds of marriage? Have they joined in social institutions? Do they participate in community worship? Do they participate in society?
Immigration law can't make any of those things happen. It also explains why groups who immigrated here a time ago have become part of our society, and why some groups simply cannot (e.g., Muslims who wish to practice Sharia law).
The people who have done these things are my countrymen.
