You cannot compare the US’ setup to Europe’s. One is a nation that is still incredibly young and was sliced up like a cake for several territories that still are relatively homogenous in culture.
The other is a continent consisting of countries with very diverse cultures and thousands of years of history, who made a union to collaborate on certain political issues.
The two are not even close to being the same. Not even close.
I did not compare them. I asked where the line is between a bunch of countries working together in a union and that union being a new larger country.
The line is when all the countries agree to become one big country. Which will never happen in Europe. The US is different as it never got to be a bunch of individual countries with centuries long history (if we ignore the native americans’ old territories) before becoming the US. That development happened simultaneously while the country and its rules were formed. The concept of country was already well known at the time too, while Europe, like most of the world, figured that shit out slowly and over centuries.
This is why Europe will never become one country. The history is too ancient and the cultures run too deep. There is no way that I as a Dane would agree to become a citizen of United Europe where I lose my identity and history as a Dane and now have to build some new identity with other Europeans. We have many things in common, but we are not the same. The Soviet Union already experimented with this stuff, and it didn’t work out because the countries it forced to become part of a unified nation with the same identity, didn’t agree to it. It was forced and it was damaging to these countries’ identities.
I do not know a single European who would want to become one country and none of us would agree that the European Union’s setup is in any way similar to the US. It is not the same.
There is no way that I as a Dane would agree to become a citizen of United Europe where I lose my identity and history as a Dane and now have to build some new identity with other Europeans. We have many things in common, but we are not the same. […] It was forced and it was damaging to these countries’ identities.
This is an interesting line of arguments that parallels much of the rhetoric that came out of many British during Brexit. They felt the EU had started to dissolve their identity and was forcing policy that was bad for them that they had no representation in. Whether or not they were correct, or making those arguments in good faith, it once again points back to the line being quite blurry
I made a similar line of questioning recently in the anarchy Lemmy, after disagreeing to how anarchists usually approach why community is better than government. “when is a community so large it is no longer a community and it is a state” I think your focus on cultural identity is interesting given they use the same line of arguments to define community vs government. I also wonder if that line of thinking is dangerously close to the kind of thinking that creates isolationism and xenophobia.
