Affairs of State

I have a book called "How the States Got Their Shapes". If you ever have a question about why U.S. states' borders are where they are, I can look it up for you. As each state sought admission to the union, it's proposed border had to be approved by congress. Even in those days, congressmen were vulnerable to the influence peddlers. They usually started out with some kind of plan, and then amended it to suit whoever was peddling the most influence at the time.

The trouble with the English language is that many words have more than one definition, and the definition that is currently in popular usage isn't necessarily the original definition, if there ever was an original definition. For example, take these three words: country, nation, and state. According to my old high school history teacher, here are their "correct" definitions: A country is an area of land. A state is a country that has defined borders and a central government. A nation is a group of people that have a common language and cultural heritage. A state that contains a nation is a nation state. A nation doesn't necessarily need to live in a single state to be a nation. An example of a stateless nation would be the Kurds. The Jews were a stateless nation before 1948 when the modern state of Israel was formed, and all of the Jewish nation doesn't currently live in Israel. Although people commonly refer to the U.S. as a nation, it is actually a conglomeration of nations and fragments of nations living in 50 autonomous states that have surrendered part of their sovereignty to become a federal union of states.

The Native American Indians deserve their own paragraph. In the early years of our federal union, the various Indian tribes were considered to be sovereign nations under the law. I know of at least one treaty, I believe it was the Treaty of 1878, in which the sovereign nation status of the Indians was abolished, the intent being to assimilate them into the general population and make them U.S. citizens. That didn't work out so well, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1932 provided a mechanism for the various tribes to regain their sovereign nation status. I understand it's a tedious process, and some of our local Indians are still trying to make it work for them. Those that already have made it work for them now hold a dual citizenship, they are both U.S. citizens and citizens of their tribe or band. I read somewhere once that the federal government's legal description of them is "sovereign, dependent, internal nations". The "internal nations" part makes sense, but the terms "sovereign" and "dependent" are mutually exclusive. I think it would be more correct to call them "autonomous" than "sovereign", but nobody cares what I think.