Posted on 01/28/2010 4:16:03 PM PST by history_48
Sometimes they coincide, and sometimes they don't.
One of our most difficult battles in the Middle East has to be fought right here at home because we have so many of our leadership elite who were never taught of the existence of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Islamic Caliphate.
Osama Bin Laden seeks to restore the Islamic Caliphate. It will include all the Moslem nations there ever were.
His followers ~ mostly from the upper crust in their own countries ~ educated people with money ~ seek to do the same.
They have a sense of nationalism about the Islamic Caliphate even though it no longer constitutes a single government with a single unitary state with a coherent defended land mass with a similarity of culture ~ and languages (three or four major ones, but religion resides in the command of Classical Arabic).
If about a billion Moslems think of themselves as a "nation", 7 million dirt farmers and wood cutters certainly had no difficulty doing that in the earliest times in this country.
The United States existed BEFORE the creation of its government ~ it's an English fiction that the colonists were divided into separate communes.
A story ~ a tremendous percentage of my ancestors were members of George Rogers Clark's militia in the Ohio Valley during the American Revolution. Several of them followed in the chest deep flood waters of the Wabash to advance on and take Vincinnes. Others joined the American militia at that point as the residual of French North America fell into Clark's hands.
It took the government another 50 years to straighten out the French land claims ~ on the other hand, the land agent who handled the sales of all the grants, and private holdings, and government lands (also an ancestor) didn't sell a single piece of French claimed property ~ so whatever government's act had perfected the individuals' titles to their various claims ~ such government not having been in the area since roughly the 1750s, those claims were recognized by the land agent based on nothing more than the moral authority that existed among the militia members ~ kind of like the Mayflower Compact.
There was a Constitution. It resided with the people. Progress was assisted thereby, and eventually organized government finally came 'round.
These men were all Revolutionary War veterans. In examining the family's records, a large number of them actually held additional land patents awarded to other relatives who, alas, died with the majority of the men in the Flying Geese ~ the Maryland 400.
They saved the Revolution by protecting Washington's withdrawal from New York.
You cannot tell me those men had no sense of nationhood ~ might have been some effete politicians somewhere thought them rather unsophisticated and not given to notions of who they were and what country they might reside in ~ but those men knew they were Americans and they lived in the United States.
BTW, we still have a surplus of politicians who don't know who they are or where they live. They should be dealt with brutally this Fall.
The sense of nationhood was bound by the united stand for independence but their first allegiance at the time was more to their state. It wasn't until after the Civil War that a real sense of nationhood took hold as we define it today. But officially the USA became a Republic after the Constitution was ratified. Ben Franklin said this himself in 1787 when he was asked what was created at the Constitutional Convention and his answer was "a republic, if you can keep it."
I think it’s fairly obvious Obama got the two documents mixed up. A great many people do this, of course.
I had an extended conversation with a guy who claimed the Constitution referenced God, which, unlike the DOI, it does not.
He finally came up with date at the bottom, which refers to the year of our Lord.
Which I thought was really stretching things.
The DOI and Constitution have very different roles. DOI is aspirational. The Constitution is an operating manual for a gvernment which is capable of implementing those aspirations, if we don’t screw it up, which we’re well on the way to doing.
I think it’s fairly obvious Obama got the two documents mixed up. A great many people do this, of course.
I had an extended conversation with a guy who claimed the Constitution referenced God, which, unlike the DOI, it does not.
He finally came up with date at the bottom, which refers to the year of our Lord.
Which I thought was really stretching things.
The DOI and Constitution have very different roles. DOI is aspirational. The Constitution is an operating manual for a gvernment which is capable of implementing those aspirations, if we don’t screw it up, which we’re well on the way to doing.
Wasn’t he a law professor or something?
yes he mixed them up - and my points are:
1) it’s the SOTU address, not some off-the-cuff chat.... so the standards should be a lot higher for accuracy
2) related to that, Obambi is not (supposed to be) merely some guy who stumbled up to the lectern -— we was (even if not tenured) paid to teach (supposedly) Con Law at one of the (aupposedly) most elite law schools in the country, U. of Chicago
3) we know that if any R. President ever made such a screw-up about such fundamental American documents the MSM would be “Quayling” away for the next 30 years — yet Obambi ought to be far more “expert” on those docs than almost any other POTUS in history..... yet he’s not. That is significant to say the least.
4) following up on 1) above, this is a major annual address which goes through repeated drafts and revisions, and the (especially with Obozo) gets read off the teleprompter — he can’t use the excuse that it was a momentary brain fart
I don’t think he should be cut one millimeter of slack on this -— he’s not only the POTUS giving a carefully prepared address, the biggest one of the year for a POTUS, but his “mix up” lies right in the heart of what was supposedly his field of expertise.
It’s just another indication that he is a puppet of the people who manage him and put words in his mouth -— every modern pol is that to some extent but with Obama it’s a chronic condition, and he should not be given any slack on his “mix ups” -— sure as heck George W. Bush never was, even when he didn’t make a mistake the MSM would try to turn it into one.....
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