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Comment by mcphage

4 days ago

> Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrative at the expensive of the native-born Americans who actually built most of this country's prosperity is, at best, ahistorical.

Most of those native-born Americans were the children or grandchildren of immigrants.

What do you think a nation is? Is it a sports team or economic zone that hands out name tags to whoever steps off the boat with the right attitude? Or is it a specific group of people in a specific place with a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, and common destiny? I submit to you that it's the latter, and no empire nor state organized as the former can endure.

  • > Or is it a specific group of people in a specific place with a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, and common destiny?

    I'm American, so I've never lived in this kind of nation.

    > no empire nor state organized as the former can endure.

    Looking at many of the longer-lived nations and empires of the past—having a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, common destiny? They had none of those. They were a conglomeration of people speaking different languages, from different lineages, with different cultures, different histories, and practicing different faiths.