Why did the Free City State Disappear? Victor Davis Hanson
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- Why did a system of over 1,500 autonomous city-states that had resisted a massive invasion in 480 BC, lose their independent statuses to Macedon 150 years later when they were far richer and more powerful?
Victor Davis Hanson, Professor Emeritus of classics at California State University and Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, delves into the fall of ancient Greece's city-states.
This discussion took place LIVE on Saturday, August 21st as part of Classical Wisdom's Symposium 2021: The End of Empires and the Fall of Nations. If you would like to watch all the recordings please go to:
courses.classicalwisdom.com/p...
or email us at info@classicalwisdom.com.
About our speaker:
Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of the Military History Working Group; Victor is a scholar of ancient and modern warfare and the author of many books. He is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and the annual Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Visiting Fellow in History at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and was a recipient of the Bradley Prize in 2008.
Victor Davis Hanson's newest book, "The Dying Citizen" is set to release on October 5th: www.amazon.com/Dying-Citizen-...
About our Moderators:
Alexandra Hudson is an author and founder of Civic Renaissance - an intellectual community dedicated to beauty, goodness and truth and reviving the wisdom of the past. She's working on her first book on civil discourse for St Martin's Press.
Alexandra O. Hudson
www.civic-renaissance.com
www.alexandraohudson.com
Anya Leonard is the founder and director of Classical Wisdom, a site dedicated to bringing Ancient Wisdom to Modern minds. Her children's book, "The Lost Poetess" will be released later this month.
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I can't really think of too many who would be a better guest than VDH. He rocks!
VDH is an amazing scholar. His wide depth of knowledge and ability to frame arguments based on that knowledge puts him apart from most classical scholars.
It stinks that he's a tool of the Kremlin and a traitor to the United States and freedom. A clear Putin agent of chaos with a wicked tongue.
@@pbar12 Your slightly mad, to come up with a statement like that he works in hoover institute.
@@pbar12 if you have facts to support your claim I would give it credence. If you have read Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle in Attic Greek and if you have read Pliny, Polybius, Pliny Elder and Younger and Tacitus in Latin I would engage you in dialogue. At this point your inane comments are water 💧 dripping into an empty bucket.
@@paulwright8064 I'm not stating facts, I'm sharing my opinion. VDH is a tool of the Kremlin and a traitor to the United States and freedom. A clear Putin agent of chaos with a wicked tongue.
@@pbar12 is a sick pos. That is my opinion and it is based on your own baseless comments.
I wish more people would listen to lecture/q&a like this than the news. Everyone would be far better learning about history and applying it to the present. Rather than catching a 4 minute news clip about current politics.
As a fan of history and reader of VDH's books, I always learn something new when he speaks.
Have been following VDH . It's an insight into humans through history which brings us to present. Thank you
VDH is spectacular, but we need to get him wider exposure on Rogan. A younger generation needs to hear him, pronto, to save the West.
Would love that but wondering if VDH would do it.
Ive thought that for awhile...
@@ldv1452 of course he would
Would Rogan want to hear him? I don’t think so.
@@xDELFYonceagain I dont either, joe is too much a spazz..he was never cool then became kool
VDH is a national treasure.
“...a symphony of arms...” Brilliant
Great host! Thank God someone can speak on VDH's level or thereabouts. Highly intelligent questions.
Victor Davis Hanson is a looking glass. He is a human portal to the past. I would say his imagination is as acute as his mere memory.
Listening to this I was thinking about the motto e pluribus unum, out of the many one is such a great idea and how it has made our experiment so successful.
As we are seeing here in America... when a state becomes too cozy it is destroyed from within.. Everyone needs a purpose, with out it we create one like "wokeness"
Why do I feel like the lone man on an island shouting to the stars " Victor should run for president!!!!!" No one could contend if he put his hat in the race. Side note: my (ex,) girlfriend, voted Democrat her entire life until the last election and she's in love with Dr. Hanson. We bought his book and thought it was genius and watched almost all of his nterviews and appearances. I personally think that ole Vick has some major advantages over Trump and/or DeSantis and I'm crossing all appendages hoping he runs in '24. My best argument would be a lifetime of earned wisdom and the humility that comes along with that. God bless!!!
As much as I love him, he has 0 charisma and would not win anything. Dude is one of the greats, for sure
Intelligence is disadvantage to a president. The dumber the better the darker the better....if Iam the establishment I would prefer a dumb man with skeletons in his closet, than a intelligent morally upright. Easier to control the dumb one with questionable history.Trump bucked the expectation by being dumb but not giving a fucm about his past.
He would NEVER get anything through Congress and the courts would destroy his policies. The American experiment is broken.
@@aadilansari5997 I partly agree with your premise, but here are some of my thoughts. Biden, as we can see is a lifetime politician and somewhat senile - also has a long history of making poor decisions (especially later in his career) and having more than the average number of skeletons in his closet. This makes him easier to manipulate. Trump is Trump - what you see is what you get. He is not easily likable like Biden but more honest than Biden (or Obama - another likeable, handsome politician). Trump did not have a lifetime in Washington so he was not their 'boy'. Trump likes the fights and fighting - which made him a survivor. Trump truly loves the country, relates well with the working classes, and understands how to make a business run and make money - this energized the country which has been on a decline. People responded to the real results he generated for the country. He didn't say the word hope (like Obama did) but he is a man of action who gave us hope! I would argue that neither president is 'dumb' or lacking intelligence but each has different motives and totally different personalities.
He is far to intelligent to take on such a worthless endeavor
Excellent and thought provoking talk. Thanks!
Right in right in. If we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it. Which is just what we do.
Johnny Says .....Time Marches on for all of us. Most is out of our control. I like that I am here and now to lessen to Victor again. Time is short, use it wisely. It is all good or bad....... it is how you possess it for the amount of time we all have!. Time is who we are.
It's amoral to imprint your culture on others for the purposes of taking away their free will.. very powerful statement.
Thank you
Word. Very enlightening!
I doubt that I would understand the mess that we are in as a society in the USA without the insights provided by VDH. I learn every time II listen to him. His description of citizenship and what it means to be a citizen speaks volumes about what we see every day in our fractured society. The typical "global citizen" is rich and has a position of power. He or she does not adapt to their surroundings, to the local culture and way of life. Because of their wealth and position and power, the local economy adapts to them: luxury hotels with all of the amenities, cuisine instead of food, waiters, doormen and porters and housekeepers and personal chefs, limousines, private jets and choppers, walled estates and country clubs with private security, financial "journalists" and political elite fawning over their every word and groveling for their attention. They never experience the local culture as the common man experiences it. They are not just ignorant of the way the local people view life and the world, but they are unaware of that ignorance. Yet, they think they know what is best for all, everywhere. Shades of ancient Rome and the ruling class, who never could understand the mentality of those who lived on the other side of the Danube. This is the hubris of Davos Man generously flavored with Silicon Valley forced replacement of mass algorithmic data analysis as a substitute for understanding evolution-based human need to be part of something that makes a person feel unique and have a sense of belonging, and the security. .The closest Davos Man gets to the common man is the results of the online surveys they commission and whatever the pollster's statistics say is the latest "truth" about the great unwashed.
> the local culture as the common man experiences it.
Theres a difference between being born stupid and choosing it as a lifestyle.
This should be fun!
Good interview
VDH is the wisest man in the world.
I wonder if there's any evidence of evolutionary biology playing a role in the disappearance of successful cultures and civilizations. Conformity, on a massive scale, may create many outputs that are counter to human nature. On the matter, I'd love to see a discussion between Hanson and Bret Weinstein...that would be interesting.
That would be interesting. Social conformity may well run counter to evolutionary improvement
Mans volitional mind is the basic cause of history. Evolution stopped w/volition. You evade your direct, immediate power to focus or evade focusing your mind. This is common human experience.
DIM Hypothesis-Leonard Peikoff
Yes!!!
I wonder if the fall of city states is a natural aspect of life. A type of slow motion migration technique that we are not overtly aware of because it’s a process that takes many generations. We are aware of migratory or pop up entities that occur within a life time or a couple of generations. We are not even prepared emotionally or intellectually to handle the failure of a major city due to industrial changes etc.
Yes VDH is filling in the blank thst governmrnt schools have erased.
Sadly, private schools too.
Dr. Hanson what happened with Stanford? Did he stop having Tenure in that University? I am a follower and believe he is a true believer in Americanism; and nation states in the world; different from the rest of the gross of Professors in the ambiance of California and USA in fact specially Stanford. I hope he can be a beacon of light in these upcoming dark days.
VDH is still at Stanford. He is at the Hoover Institute which is on Stanford campus. Hoover is the largest greatest think tank that has not been completely overrun by lift wing ideology. With a scant few notable exceptions Hoover and Claremont have all the great right leaning thinkers.
VDH never was a full professor at Stanford. He was founder and head of department in classics at Fresno State University. He is a fellow at Hoover at Stanford and also a fellow at Hillsdale College.
@@petefalc as the post above also mentions, Hillsdale is a good patriotic and intellectually vigorous institution.
@@Dude0000 Oh absolutely Hillsdale is phenomenal. I have taken online VDH courses their and I am a donor. It is the ONE and only school in America that doesn't take federal funds.
@@petefalc thanks for doing your part in saving civilisation. You will be rewarded, how, I don’t know. Being happy perhaps?
Edited cos of the spelling.
Ms.Leonard certainly is a beauty.
This symposium, symposium is singular. Those symposia would be the plural form.
The shining city in the hill is our national narrative.
"If you're not prepared to go NUCLEAR, be prepared to ACCEPT BARBARISM..."
Oddly enough the phenomenon of the (to?) heay Hoplite Armor, apeared again with late mideval Knights and recent Tanks 🤔
When you know it all theirs no room to learn
Now we have an army with diversity strength
GO VDH!
This man is more John Malkovich than John Malkovich.
VDH!!! Please run for president!!!! Please!!!!! Your country needs you
At 56:00 forward, VDH succinctly describes why all of our significant overseas armed ventures since WWII have resulted in eventual failure.
Well that's a good chunk of it no doubt but I'd also argue that we don't fight them the right way anyways.
We wring our hands about civilian deaths, torture, distrust of ethnic relatives of the enemy in our own culture, let out media/pop culture be anti war, and of course not denigrating their culture. This has lead to almost every loss we've taken while doing the extract opposite has led to all our victories.
We bombed the living hell out of the Germans and Japanese civilian or otherwise. Sherman marched to the sea burning everything down. The Natives were killed down to the women and children and sometimes even them during the Indian Wars. The enemy was treated as competent and lethal but that was as far as the respect went in any racial or cultural sense. Hirohito had to admit he wasn't a god, Lee's plantation was turned into Arlington National Cemetery, Germans and the Natives were culturally neutered. Torture was used in all the major conflicts if for nothing else than to scare them into not fighting.
We did not leave the kinsmen around and hoped they didn't do anything, we actively sent our government after them, and made them prove to us they were loyal. This was not something that only happened to the Japanese, they did it to Germans and Italians as well.
Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR censored the media, imprisoned any naysayers, and forced pop culture to support the effort.
Winning hearts and minds is far less effective than just killing anyone who disagrees.
@@darthbigred22 Of course you're right. We haven't truly waged war for 75 years.
I think your conclusion is based on selective memory. Was Korea a failed venture? Just look at post WWII history with open mind and avoid propagandists and you will see the truth is more complex.
@@pawelpap9 How can you look at Korea and NOT see a failed venture? Millions upon millions of North Koreans subjected to 70+ years of communist oppression and barbary and you have no problem with that? What planet do you live on?
Love the conversation, but VDH's hat has a Steve Buscemi vibe that I can't get out of my mind.
Hot chicks talking with Victor about classical history? Count me in. 👍
Me toooooo!🐳👽🐳👽5️⃣2️⃣🎬
Sot on VDH. Social & economic development passed the city state by.
VDH philosophy is we were/are blessed by our higher power thru the constitution why would ANYONE course cut??? STATE/CITY where are you?
What is it called?... When the end meets the beginning?...
Oroboros.
@@markmcelroy1872 LUPERCAL
Sorry gang but our unifying theme is "FREEDOM."
@8:28 and @ 10:05 and @18:02 It's not "cal-va-ry", it's ca-val-ry. Calvary is a word but refers to the purported location of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
@40:00 It was interesting to hear VDH admit that the Framers of the American Constitution intended to foster cultural and political evolution. Contrast this with the doctrine of "originalism". The current reaction on the part of the alt-right seems to be an attempt to reverse recent cultural trends and roll back the evolution to a multicultural future.
Hanson evades the 400 year change, from the Renaisance to the Enlightenment., from Christian supernaturalism and faith to naturalist individualism and reason. The Framers were explicit in regarding reason and individualism as absolutes of mans life.
did the allies Target bridges on the German supply lines during world war II
No modern world nation could have a foundation myth that served the way The Iliad, Odyssey or Aeneid did. It would inevitably be seen beneath the air quotes of modernism & deconstructed with the tools of postmodernism -- and that would make all the difference.
Why not? Just look around, nation states are still created in modern times and they are busy inventing (or to be more polite reinterpreting) their national myths. You can study emergence of Ukraine, a huge European nation.
Don't believe that he's stoned. But I bet he's giving this speech to students and audiences so many times but it actually is becoming boring or maybe he's looking down through his bipocles and reading some of it off a piece of paper anyhow I enjoy listening to professor VDH. Keep up the good work thank you
What the what?
V.D.H. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🆗
split
Oh for sure, I would give Alexandra a good seeing-to.
After Pearl Harbor we had at most three and a half years to train armies to fight enemies who had been in combat for years. We were in Afghanistan twenty years, a generation, where were the Afghan marines, the rangers, the Band of Brothers? They lost not US.
Biden lost by the orders of his eastern masters.
IMO -The focus was wrong. The generals and commanders were too intertwined with the contractors and the feedback on the success on the ground in country was false. The "leaders" there and in DC were more interested in funneling our $$ to the mercenaries and holding onto their own power. Why else did they not know how unprepared the Afghan military were. POTUS #45 said something similar about those generals when he was speaking about withdrawing troops. None of the mainstream media has played that speech, too close to the truth about their backers?
Americas grandfather.
So wealth & comfort makes you weak & useless. History suggest that as well. And nuclear war may very well happen. Time for the public to wake up & understand violence is a normal part of the human experience.
Original Sin is a rationalization for willful mindlessness.
Of Course VDH got me here but "here I am" lets see what is "goin onn"
Sadly VDH (although brilliant) rambled on and on and on and on - etc - etc - etc yikes
Short answer: they were too easy to surround.
Nice talk but why is he saying "calvary" instead of "cavalry"?
He is a sophist and getting old, but I think he's worth listening to.
@@jonathanblanchard6480 - In what way is he deceitful? Is that your point? I’ve known many people that enunciate certain words oddly or incorrectly. Age does not necessarily have anything to do with it in some cases.
@@jimferris9447 mathematics
He also says Nuke-u-lar . It detracts a bit
It’s interesting that Hanson uses the term “Greeks” and their struggle against Macedon, which certainly answers one question I’ve always had and that is whether Philip, and Alexander were in some fashion also Greek. They spoke a variety of Greek, but were looked down on as crude by the Athenians and other cities. His grasp on this means he is well aware of the relationship though he doesn’t address it directly. I suspect he has quite an erudite take on how close to “barbarians” the Greeks thought of their northern relations, perhaps I’ll find his view on it one day. I’ve always found it ironic that modern Greeks are so enthusiastic in claiming Alexander as one of their own and deeply resist any notion that there should be an independent “Macedonia” - hence the current state of “Northern Macedonia”.
VDH like most westerners has a civic view of Nationalism which traces its origins to Athens, hence he sees "Greekness" as form of political ideology/lifestyle that eventually found its way from Athens to Rome to London to Washington. The reason modern Greeks are so enthusiastic about Macedon is because we have an ethnic view of Nationalism which was actually created and formulated by Macedon. Macedon is the heart of the Greek Ethnic Nationalism in pretty much the same way Prussia became the heart of German Ethnic Nationalism. As for the Yugoslav state, imagine if Poland renamed itself to Prussia and said that Fredrich the Great and Otto von Bismarck were not Germans but Slavs.
Does it really matter. Clearly your bias is there to read. It’s the insistence of claiming Phillip and it Alexander as one of yours. It’s so deep that it still divides to groups of people , Greeks and Macedonians .
@@grahamhaupt1514 It is not a bias. It's historical facts versus Tito's postmodernist "post-fact" propaganda.
Here's to a world of city states
edit: half joking
8:59 "Mercanery Forced Recruitment Arm(💪€)
9:39 " Expanded •••••••Zone"
10:19 "A Symphony Of Arms"
💪🤳💪🤳💪🤳💪🤳💪
Good lecture! It seems that ancient Greece perished because of too little inclusivity and ancient Rome - because of too much. Either way every country after certain period of time is doomed.
Really? Greece still exists, the last time I checked. Your observation is false, forms of government may change, but countries can exist for a very long time. Some vanish, some don’t.
Greece rejected its discovery of mans mind.
An unmentionable with the types I have around me here in NY but VDH makes a lot of sense to me. I heard he's tight with Satan himself Cheney. In 2021 tho with all that's happened I just go by VDH grasp on history and for being in touch with the issues of the poor farmer class from his family farm roots in California.. Well since I'm almost at the end and I've looked at you both let me congratulate the host for such great discussion.
Is it rude to say easy on the eye too on a comment like this?. Ok I'm rude mea culpa ☺🙏
I beg to disagree. remember sitting at outside restaurant in Mozambique. watch five young women get out of a taxi cab. as they went to their table. before they even spoke. told
a friend at my table I would bet him $100 one was an American. and I was proven right
I'm gonna guess by way of dress. Not by any facial feature.
Though there is definitely something like the stereotypical American face, I wouldn't claim most or even many of Americans have it.
@@jesperburnsthe AMERICAN Face Is ethnically mixed unlike the faces of Europeans
There are still city states, places that have great influence on larger areas of a region. Chicago comes to mind.
Not a city state.
Agreed NOT a City-state
Will America Sion split into conservatives and liberal states?
Athens fell to a 2 bit thug like Alexander because they forgot who they were. The citizens of Athens during the Battle of Marathon were not those same citizens who fought the Battle of Chaeronea.
As Americans, the day that a generation does not "hold these Truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights.." is the day that American vanishes and government of the people perishes from the Earth. We are equal in that way (naturally at liberty). i.e. philosophical descendants of Locke (NOT Rousseau). It is American exceptionalism which is the lockpin of America.
While full of great information and insights, Victor Davis Hansen fails to recognize the inevitability of race and ethnicity determining what civilization will survive. Throughout history, multi-racial, ethnic empires collapse. They collapse because there are limits to how much of anything can be accommodated inside of a civilization. China is winning the struggle for world dominance so far because they are one people - meaning once basic race. For one thing, it is very easy to spot an outsider. In the West, indigenous Europeans are becoming outsiders with no resort or retreat. Mr. Hansen's foundation is in his late Scandinavian, Christian Socialist roots that insist that race and ethnicity are meaningless. But what he tragically misses is that he is asking for - as Progressives, traditional Progressives do, that if everyone gives up their identity, everyone can unite under the concept of being a citizen, even though it is clear that Rome tried this and it did not work. Then, just as now, the result was that citizens bearing hostility toward their host nations brought instability and final collapse, followed by centuries of chaos with religious superstition and violence filling the void left by the absence of a unified people.
The West became dominant because it valued volitional reason, not mindless determinism.
VDH needs to be on Joe Rogan
Awesome take. We took down the Nazis and the Fascists but aided the Bolscheviks. I'm sure that had nothing to do with the American Zionists.
Bolsheviks percecuted the Zionists in Soviet Russia, just like the Bolsheviks did with anyone else.
Check out Jacob Schiff. There is a misunderstanding with the Jews and communism. It was a means to an end. Good intentions but very destructive. That is what you are seeing today in the U.S.
@Mephisto von Döbelstein do your homework. Follow the money.
I am anti nazis and I’m a Gentile
The western Roman Empire fell because of greed, avarice & an unstable society too dependent on slaves & tribute. The East had more developed social & economic systems. It was stronger. There’s a reason why Constantine choose to be in the East.
I don't think you're properly factoring in the loss of North Africa to the Vandals - with it, Western Rome was as viable as the East
Autonomy of all he self is not sustainable. Greed, selfishness & ego self destructs. Culture is always coerced. Otherwise, you have chaos.
This statement didn't make sense. I can't believe he meant this as his explanation of the failure of the city states to unite against non-Greeks:
"...they did not have a concept that a member of the Theban city state community or Sparta or Argos had more in common with other Greeks than they did their own citizens..."
It only makes sense that you don't need to have more in common with other allies than you do with your own community in order to unite against a foreign threat. This slip up by Hanson is reminiscent of the rhetoric of Lewontin's Fallacy. Perhaps the long reach of Lewontin's Fallacy invaded this vital conversation? Disappointing. Very disappointing indeed, given that many are now viewing the return to the city state, in some form, as a remedy to the disintegration of the social capital in the West. We need sense making... not Lewontinesque nonsense.
He's talking with their own notions rather than anachronistic syllogistic notions of citizenship. The Lewontin's Fallacy projection is doggerel here.
City states have passed. Larger polities are wealthier & stronger than city states. As far as Alexander’s time is concerned, different Greek cities had different self interests. Different trade partners. Different alliances.
@@talisikid1618 VDH's assertion lacked _necessary_ nuance, especially in the current context of an overbearing Federal leviathan, in conjunction with an emergent N^2 scaling law private sector capture of positive network externalities (ordinarily captured by the government in the commons as the "strength" of "larger polities"). That VDH's own Hoover Institution is colocated with this private sector bypass of the 1st Amendment to enforce uniformity of thought, and results in this particular failure regarding scaling laws of civilization is quite peculiar. It is quite obvious that people are seeing a return to city states as desirable as people are fleeing California, with mass immigration hot on their heels to make a "uniform polity" everywhere within the territory.
I find it fascinating how people can just want something to be true and blithely overlook the problems of whatever it happens that they want.
City-states virtually only existed in a particular part of the world ie the mediterranean world and in a particular time in history. As soon as the Macedonians and Romans figured out how to consolidate power individual city-states were relic of history. Or to put it another way as soon as a population of a given area becomes sufficiently numerous then Cit-states can no longer compete effectively. This is because Empires and Countries can effectively be agents of unity and unified power, whereas city-states find that very difficult, almost to the point of impossibility, especially over the long term. And that my friend is why you don't see any TRUELY autonomous City-states nowadays, because Empires and Countries have subsumed them all.
@@stevefisher6746 And it doesn't help matters when critiques of the city state are couched in Lewontinesque fallacies. Polity scaling laws more rational than "more centralization is more stable" are needed now more than ever.
Girl back off the camera, this ain't about you.
Still, kidding yourself over the reality of our civil war? It was about economics, tariffs, and the North's reliance and need to use the South as a wealth source unconstitutionally. Even Lincoln did not make slavery an issue until 1863. He was The TARIFF candidate and he said so. Southern states began to secede once the Morrill Tariff passed and Lincoln was elected. Before he invaded Charleston Harbor, Lincoln offered the Confederacy that they could keep their slaves if they rejoined and paid the tariff. They refused, so Lincoln sent a resupply flotilla to Fort Sumter while other troops landed in Florida. That was an act of war. The war itself violated all previous rules of conduct toward civilian populations as well as the rules later set down by successive Geneva Conventions. The North did not fight the war with the idea of any reconciliation, but of total displacement and takeover, which is why the Carpetbaggers, etc., rushed down immediately, not relief supplies, forcing the South into desperation and radicalism.
didn't Carolina open fire on Sumpter first
Well said.
He’s totally baked, and the presenters are totally hot.
He holds his weed good. I couldn't tell he was high at all. Typical drugged out professor lifestyle. Would have never guessed it.
@@American-Dragon was just a guess. But it looks like. I’m surprised..but it looks like he’s just decided to spend his Friday night online with some hot chicks while baked, talking whatever. Just get that impression and it’s true he holds it together well if this is the case 😂
@@nilsbrownmusic4507 switch it up to stimulants and ask the same questions
About American civic nationalism: I disagree. This is an evolutionary blind alley and the reason for the US decline. The myth, that you can ignore the ethnocentric nature of the human species is what undermines America-that you can include whatever people in whatever numbers and their heritage doesn't matter. The illusion that this is "doable" in America was caused by the incorrect reading of immigration history. The US was created by settlers, who transplanted their entire culture from the British Isles, and then demographically grew. This core demographic was then assimilating newcomers in an ethnocentric manner: by pointing out similarities of racial type-which under normal circumstances are the weakest of all bases for identity building and normally do not amount to anything of value. The racial identification of individuals was changed into ethnic one. This is the only country where this was done, under other circumstances this would be viewed as absurd. In short, Americans were assimilating Europeans by pointing out to them that they are europeans, while maintaining demographical edge and constant growth, so that there was mathematical possibility of overgrowing newcomers - always. Therefore newcomers had the capacity to become assimilated because virtually the entire culture was American and the number of interactions they had with American culture was bigger than they had with their own. Only then did the egalitarianism that the professor mentions did its job. However, the myth of e pluribus unum has caused Americans to design an unrealistic national ethos that allows today to claim nonsenses of multicultural type. In short, the belief that America is based on values, not ethnicity, is costing you your country. The fact that it requires constant care and fight is testimony to its weakness-other societies change constantly, can abandon their religion, shift culture, get decimated in wars and they survive. America with each crisis becomes weaker, because in crisis ethnocentric tendencies reappear, weakening bonds between groups and leaving a permanent scar in memory. For instance, afro-americans are basically their own nation but they are denied sovereignty and control over their destiny in the name of the American ethos. the same with Indians. The South is also a victim of this mentality-they were on the path to becomee their own nation, but this was brutally stopped and they were forced to live in shadows.