The USA is totally a nation

In summary for this week and in response to those (i.e. Cas) who think the matter is really less clear-cut than it is:

First, it would serve us well to define "nation."  I agree with Mr. Renan in the sense that "Ethnographic considerations have... played no part in the formation of modern nations," and also that linguistic and religious considerations are equally inconsequential.  I also agree with his argument that it is the wish of the people that creates a nation, though I disagree with the idea that a nation is "a soul, a spiritual principle."  I posit that a nation is a social organization;  and, like clubs, nations have entirely arcane prerequisites for membership.

What defines a nation is its exclusivity:  in the case of the USA, the world is filled with people who want to be Americans, people that cherish and love the idea of individual freedoms and personal accomplishment (life, liberty, etc.).  Likewise, France, for instance, is highly desirable for some, and Qatar is intensely desirable if you are a wannabe Olympian.

What does membership get you?  Besides a home team and stuff like that, membership gives you access to all the primo perks of citizenship, such as a police force and a school system.

We adopt the notion of legitimacy practiced by the Concert of Europe, i.e. the notion that "if we say it's legit., then it's legit."  Essentially, nationhood is a product of (1) the desire of the people to be a nation and (2) arcane and arbitrary exclusivity.  You can't be a nation and let everyone in.

By this measure, the USA falls easily within the realm of nationhood.

On nationalism (762-767)

The emergence of the nation-state in the second half of the nineteenth century was an expression of both the revolutionary and conservative elements in Europe that followed the Napoleonic era.  On the revolutionary hand, there were the ethnically driven national movements (for instance,  the Slavophilic Russian movement); on the conservative hand, the more politically driven national movements, which seem more to be nations of convenience than nations of principle (consider the rise of Austria-Hungary, what with all its dissenting minorities in spite of its strong, centralized government).  As the conservatives of the Concert of Europe had feared, the pro-people, pro-individual rights tilt of the more populist elements led to widespread increasing entropy.  The worries of the Concert of Europe were further realized by the growth of the extra-large Austria-Hungary.

Also:  Coffin devotes a section to "centrifugal forces in the Austrian Empire."  Luckily for the Austrians, there is no such thing as the centrifugal force; it is a fictitious force in the sense that it only exists in non-inertial reference frames, and I believe the Austrian Empire is at least mostly an inertial frame of reference.  Ms. Coffin and Mr. Stacey could have evidently paid some more attention during high school science courses.

To "Makaveli"

In response to your post about the alleged inevitability of Marx's revolution:

1.  It's not a question of opinions or views.  Marx thought of history as a science and, believing that he had studied it sufficiently, found it to be a certainty that this revolution would come.

2.  I assume you mean "void," rather than "devoid."

3.  The argument that no perpetrators of the capitalist machine are endowed with the magical ability to understand the proletariat's will doesn't seem to be based on anything.  Also:  remember that Marx's family was pretty solidly bourgeois, and he didn't think that this precluded him from an understanding of the proletariat.

4.  Unemployment during the Great Depression went over twenty percent (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica article), but the revolution count by the end of the thirties was still zero.  Suffice it to say that ten percent unemployment alone is not enough to incite a revolution.

5.  It's difficult to believe that the mighty warriors of the proletariat who will destroy the oppressive capitalist regime are--right now--starving in the streets.  This sort of polarization is not going to lead to revolution.

In defense of the monarchs after Napoleon

In response to the post that shed an unflattering light on the Concert of Europe and the Congress of Vienna:

It's not a matter of dispute that each monarch acted extravagantly in his own interests by protecting his power with sometimes undue force.  This, though, is a little bit of a simplification:  "Stability, for these monarchs, meant stability of their power, not necessarily of the lives of the people over whom they ruled."  In the volatile post-Napoleonic Europe that these monarchs were ruling in, stability of their power was in fact stability for their subjects.  Whether or not stability was desired, stability was what was being offered.  The freedoms that were suppressed at this time were the cost of this stability.  Each leader feared that a revolution in Europe (which would necessarily be overthrowing a so-called legitimate government) would every time result in the complete immolation of European stability.  The fact that the Concert of Europe supported (visibly and invisibly) the Greek revolution against the Ottomans is not contrary to these codes in the sense that the Greek revolution, unlike, say, a possible Polish uprising, was legitimate:  it was rendering unto Europe what was Europe's.  Also, a revolution in Greece destabilized the Ottomans, not Europe, and was not a threat to the stability of the legitimate governments of the Concert.

Ground Control to Major Tom

Major Tom, this is Ground Control (there's something wrong).

If you re-read what I wrote, you may find that we are in agreement with respect to your first point.  I am indeed saying that Tsar Nicolas's actions were absolutist in that he equated the state's safety with his own.

With respect to your second point, I posit that an action in the interest of self- or power-preservation can very well be absolutist.  For instance, Louis XIV brought the nobility (i.e. those most likely to overthrow him:  Coffin, 540) to Versailles so that he could better preserve his power.  If you were trying to say that preservative efforts are not by definition absolutist, we are in agreement.

But, to qualify my conveniently cryptic comment that the Concert of Europe and the new idea of legitimacy following from it were "almost absolutist in nature," I will enumerate the reasons why I said this.

1.  The Concert of Europe promised safety, security, and order at some cost to personal (in this case, state-related) freedom.

2.  Just as Tsar Nicolas took the assault on the state to be an assault on his person, the Concert of Europe viewed an attack on a state of Europe as an attack on Europe in its entirety; thus the power in Europe was centralized and personified.

3.  Legitimacy and authority both stem from the Concert.

My thoughts on the Marx-man and the dialectic theory of history

Altogether:  a stupid simplification.  Let's consider a couple of important aspects, starting with the premise:  The history of the world is the history of class struggles.  This argument falls under one of two headings:  obviously accurate or obviously inaccurate; either way, it's useless.  Of course the thesis is true if we define classes broadly as "groups of people," but if we take the definition that Marx uses later when he lists the classes in Rome, i.e. socio-economic classes, then the thesis becomes obviously false.  The sacking of Rome was due to workers rising up against their oppressors just as much as the conquests of Napoleon represented the gilded heel of oppressive decadence striking against the unarmed peasantry of Europe.  The mechanism for creating unrest among the workers then neglects several aspects of the world that reverse his mechanism:  the constant drive for innovation, the cultural imperative (at least in the United States) for production and consumption, and the availability of credit.  Predicting the future, as they say, is a risky business, but more so when predictions are based on somewhat limiting assumptions.

709-717 and the woes of being rich and powerful (also: genesis)

The framers of the US Constitution, frightened by the concept of rule by the mob, placed the electoral college as a protection against democracy.  Their fear, predicated on the belief that a commoner does not know what is good for him, is visible throughout the crowns of post-Napoleonic Europe.  The few in power feared a violent shift towards democracy and did their best to protect what was theirs:  the thrones of Europe.  The Concert of Europe and the concept of the balance of power, ostensibly for the good of all of Europe, came to being as the result of various personal and national interests (most of them were personal and national safety and the preservation of the status quo).  Out of this fear grew a new conception of a legitimate state.  This new state, the international state (my coinage), was legitimized by international recognition, treaties and guarantees (as it says on age 712).  In that they protect the interests of the few over the many and reject the glorified individual of the Enlightenment, the formation of the Concert of Europe and the new conception of legitimacy associated with it seem almost absolutist in nature, just like Tsar Nicolas's brutal suppression of the Decembrists, when he treated them as if they, by attacking the state, had been attacking him personally.