Nation-states are actually modern developments. Regional, linguistic, ethnic, class, religious, and other forms of solidarity or connection that were either smaller or larger were to be radically subordinated to national identity. The only reason why US was able to succeed is that it has been able to persuade wave after wave of immigrants to relinquish all competing attachments and to identify with this country, this land, and to be part of this experiment in settlement. In return, the US promised to protect its citizens at home and abroad, hence the importance of borders and the promise of protection is the passport.

Although the Civil War is the moral core of American history, it was nonetheless part of the larger history of the invention of the modern nation-state. That new understanding of nation transformed the political meaning of slavery and established the logic of Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech. The house had always been divided, and maintaining political stability had been a matter of negotiating compromises. By the 1850s, however, a nation had to be all one or the other. This framing provides an essential context for understanding the road to reunion that achieved national solidarity at the cost of removing American Indians and denying African-Americans rights. The link between nationalism and freedom was broken, as Americans embraced a conservative nationalism approach that essentially weakened a lot of human rights.

We are now at an impasse, where two ideologies that are at the core of this country are now colliding. One has to do this country’s economic ideology and the other has to do with our idea of a nation-state. This does not have to do if somebody is in favor of it or not, but the truth is that this is a capitalistic state. With the unprecedented development of electronic information Western prosperity, Western legal systems, Western forms of banking, and Western communications have easily reached across frontiers to affect the lives and aspirations of people all over the globe. The irony of this is that Western civilization depends on an idea of citizenship that is not global at all, but rooted in territorial jurisdiction and national loyalty. We cannot have it both ways.

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