Quote:
Originally Posted by craig1120
Elaborate. In your mind has it never existed?
there were some moments in time when during some wars, or in special occasions like the death of jfk and 9 11, there was a shared sense of national identity , Ie something 90%++ of Americans deeply agreed about in the gut about their country, but in normal times that was never the case at all no.
certainly up until the civil war there was no national identity, given the divide between slave states and abolitionist states.
the country started day one profoundly divided on core moral and identitarian issues.
then the Catholic v Protestant divide after mass Irish and Italian immigration, the interventionist v nativist divide and so on and on.
Americans were mostly divided for most of their history on core elements of what elsewhere would have constituted a national identity, basically all the times except when they perceived to be under mortal attack.
a little like Greek polis who could only agree when they had a clear common enemy but mostly fought each others