Hey, greetings Terrans. And Americans, congratulations on: the awesome SCOTUS wins, the Babylon Bee being freed on twitter, and on Texas securing its sovereignty. Wait. Well, on the first thing then. By the way, if Texans really did secede, would they still be Americans? I mean Canadians, at least sometimes, refer to the U.S. as the Americans. Why don't Canadians count? Is it Trudeau? It's probably Trudeau right? (And, what do you do with Mexico? If all of South America gets included but not Mexico, I'd have to wonder why.)
Really I am stranger to your world, so please do not take offense. I sometimes forget that the unnatural situation of states and rulers via impersonal entities is common place in your world. I imagine, it is as strange to me as a fuppy would be to you.
You know, all of this “What is an American?” talk and the state talk too, they remind me of some reading I was doing today in that ol' Libertarian Anarchy book. (God bless you Terra; there are some real good thought gems in the rough of your internet.)
Anyway the book was talking about the definition to be used for a state. The author is very humble about said definition, saying that his is not beyond dispute but that it is also not idiosyncratic. I was impressed there. But I think he also managed a good definition, and maybe I'm hard to please on that score. Here's what it is and why:
that group of people or that organization which wields a monopoly of allegedly legitimate force over the inhabitants of a determinate territory financed by a compulsory levy imposed on those inhabitants.
Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy
I especially liked it because he used a that-definition. I've noticed that, sometimes, defining work is done more by trying to exhaust everything that a kind is essentially and then… it is very involved. Lots of room for error and exhausting. That-definitions may not tell us much about the thing, but they do successfully point it out among a bunch of other things. Easier to get the bull's eye when aiming at something rather than writing a book on just the definition. And it seems like Gerard Casey nailed it.
Well for me I am going to have to crash. I had a full day. (I've been working on a fun surprise for the locals. Think of it as a HUGE Easter egg.) Anyway, I wish you well.
-Pen
P.S. Congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Woods. God bless.