this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
973 points (84.6% liked)
Memes
45655 readers
2529 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
To be fair, it's not that old, as far as countries go
Define country, because the American government is actually one of the oldest continuous governmental systems in the world. Certainly the oldest republic that isn't a micro-state.
Now if you want argue that France, for example, is an older country than America because there's been a fairly stable region largely called France for several centuries you can, you'd just be wrong.
Now if you want to start talking about nations that's different, but also a much, much blurrier subject in general.
I'm using the term to mean more or less the collectively agreed upon "identity" of a state. Not merely a single contiguous government (for the same reason you just bring up, people still consider France to be France even though the government has changed fundamentally many times over the years), but I'm not using it to just mean "nation" either, since were France to be completely conquered and annexed by a foreign power, the French nation, as in the group of people, would still exist, but the country would not, at least until such time as it could be recreated, or for a different reason, that one can have a national identity split between different states, or a state involving different such groups.
It's also been just over 150 years since the last civil war.