Should we divide the United States between the north and south?

[Sunseeker]

I take it you mean cultural integration should be an incidental result rather than an actively pursued goal?

More or less.

[Elegiac]

More or less.

Good, that's the pragmatic thing. States of a relatively uniform urban culture tend to be a little more stable in the long run.

[Deleted]

I don't recall a single one of those attempting to be "inclusive". The French Nationalists did(and do) seek to eliminate non-Parisian French culture. The Spanish did the same though much more violent means, and I'm honestly not too sure about the Italians. None of them attempted unification through providing a superior culture that naturally drew in the variants. The French used brainwashing in education and social pressure, the Spanish just murdered.

Pan-Germanism was little different than the French conception, absorb the variants through means by which they cannot refuse.

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This isn't about getting everyone on the same page culturally. I specifically said that.

They claimed and claim their nationalism is inclusive, and that people should get over trivial differences and go for the things we have in common. And that it was a selfless effort for their own good anyway.

Even though i'm Galician, i want to have a word for Spain: i am not aware that Spain murdered as a tool of cultural destruction. From what i have read, French nationalism was more "violent" and more insidious in their way to destroy the cultures it wanted to "include", than Spanish was (or got the chance to be).

[Sunseeker]

Good, that's the pragmatic thing. States of a relatively uniform urban culture tend to be a little more stable in the long run.

More specifically, there are layers to culture, national, state, city, racial, religious, family, etc. and only the national layer, the generalized cultural values the that nation emphasizes is where unification is needed.

---------- Post added 2013-06-27 at 09:57 PM ----------

They claimed and claim their nationalism is inclusive, and that people should get over trivial differences and go for the things we have in common. And that it was a selfless effort for their own good anyway.

Which isn't what I was suggesting.

[Deleted]

Good, that's the pragmatic thing. States of a relatively uniform urban culture tend to be a little more stable in the long run.

It's a good thing that it happens so. Even though urban cultures will end up being very similar, they will hold on many token traditions as mark of their cultural identity, so they will not be really equal, in any case. Which is good as well: cultural uniformity would lead to cultural stagnation, which arguably* could lead to scientific stagnation.

*arguably because arguably it was the cultural stagnation what led the Chinese empire to completely stop its scientific pursuits despite their vast power and knowledge.

---------- Post added 2013-06-28 at 06:04 AM ----------

Which isn't what I was suggesting.

What you said earlier was:

Unifying the people within an existing nation on the basis of certain shared traits, values, or what have you is nationalism. So by it's very action of splitting people up, it is the opposite of nationalism

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Which is extremely similar to their rationale.

Incidentally, you were also saying that defending independent states for each nation wasn't nationalism: "There is if you're a European and think every little sub-culture needs it's own personal "zone" to help "preserve" them...quite possibly the most disgusting idea wealthy white men have ever developed." which is what had made me jump initially, and it's extremely similar to what the defendants of these "inclusive" nationalists say.

[Sunseeker]

Which is extremely similar to their rationale.

Sure, all nationalism shares similar rationale, the end-game is some form of unification.

Incidentally, you were also saying that defending independent states for each nation wasn't nationalism: "There is if you're a European and think every little sub-culture needs it's own personal "zone" to help "preserve" them...quite possibly the most disgusting idea wealthy white men have ever developed." which is what had made me jump initially.

I don't recall deviating from that position. Locking everyone up in a cultural reservation, where they cannot leave unless they become thing else does not preserve the culture. It stagnates it. Forces it to live like a museum piece gathering dust.

[Deleted]

I don't recall deviating from that position. Locking everyone up in a cultural reservation, where they cannot leave unless they become thing else does not preserve the culture. It stagnates it. Forces it to live like a museum piece gathering dust.

A cultural reservation is a very different concept of what a(n independent) state is. Which is what was being discussed ("There is nothing about the US' diversity that precludes central government.": a central government implies a state, be it independent or not).

I don't defend a cultural reservation. But a culture needs a good share of the tools of a state in order to survive. Why? because if it doesn't, it will be swallowed up by the most powerful culture with which it's forced to share the state.

I stress the concept of helping a culture survive rather than preserving it. Preserving a culture is killing it, because it stagnates, as you said. But helping it survive allows it to modify, to evolve and adapt to changes through contact and exchange with neighbour cultures. If you don't give a culture the tools to survive, and it dies, the amount of cultures in the world reduces, increasing the risk of cultural stagnation, because the rate of cultural exchanges is reduced.

[Sunseeker]

A cultural reservation is a very different concept of what a(n independent) state is. Which is what was being discussed ("There is nothing about the US' diversity that precludes central government.": a central government implies a state, be it independent or not).

I don't defend a cultural reservation. But a culture needs a good share of the tools of a state in order to survive. Why? because if it doesn't, it will be swallowed up by the most powerful culture with which it's forced to share the state.

I stress the concept of helping a culture survive rather than preserving it. Preserving a culture is killing it, because it stagnates, as you said. But helping it survive allows it to modify, to evolve and adapt to changes through contact and exchange with neighbour cultures. If you don't give a culture the tools to survive, and it dies, the amount of cultures in the world reduces, increasing the risk of cultural stagnation, because the rate of cultural exchanges is reduced.

National borders won't save a culture too weak to make its mark. Pity welfare for a weak culture won't help it grow either. How do borders and a government just for that culture do anything except erect boundaries between that culture an others, preventing interaction, preventing growth. If the neighboring culture is strong enough, it will overwhelm smaller cultures, borders or not. All borders do is stave off the inevitable.

I don't think either of us can claim that there should or should not be a certain amount of cultures in the world. Like all things it will swing towards fewer, and then back towards greater. But again, there are cultural layers. We can have a "world culture", "national culture", "city culture", "ethic culture" all at the same time.

[Deleted]

National borders won't save a culture too weak to make its mark. Pity welfare for a weak culture won't help it grow either. How do borders and a government just for that culture do anything except erect boundaries between that culture an others, preventing interaction, preventing growth. If the neighboring culture is strong enough, it will overwhelm smaller cultures, borders or not. All borders do is stave off the inevitable.

If a culture is too weak to survive, it will assimilate whether they stablish a "cultural preservation" or not. That's moot point.

Having some of the tools of an independent state is not necesarily a mechanism to give new vitality to a dying culture. It's to avoid that the stronger culture that lives together with you uses the tools of the state to annihilate yours, as it happened in the countries we mentioned previously: Catalonia, Galicia, Occitania... might have their own thriving cultures right now if the states they were included within hadn't been used to demolish them. The case of Galicia is particularly interesting: a chunk of the originary cultural region of Galicia became independent, and we can see now that it became one of the most important cultures in the world, the Portuguese culture. Meanwhile, Galician culture has been on a lifeline since Spain began to use the state against it (XIX century). This is the difference, for a culture, between having its own state and being included in the state of a more powerful culture.

[Daelak]

Well, until the utter devastation of the Southern infrastructure caused by the War Between the States, they were.

Also, Texas would be the 14th largest economy in the world and is the state responsible for the highest amount of export dollars (to foreign countries) in the US.

Yeah, but what are their metrics and rankings on their quality of life?

Hell, if anything, most of the south would probably be annexed/bought by Mexico or the theoretical Northern federal government.