我们是谁

• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  A nation, as Benedict Anderson said, is an imagined community, but it is more specifically a remembered community, a community with an imagined history, and it is defined by its historical memory of itself.
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  The mingling of religion and patriotism is evident in America’s civil religion. … Civil religion enables Americans to bring together their secular politics and their religious society, to marry God and country, so as to give religious sanctity to their patriotism and nationalist legitimacy to their religious beliefs, and thus to merge what could be conflicting loyalties into loyalty to a religiously endowed country.…The American civil religion encompasses four major elements.First, central to it is the proposition that the American system of government rests on a religious base. … To deny God is to challenge the fundamental principle underlying American society and government.…A second core element of the civil religion is the belief that Americans are God’s “chosen,” or, in Lincoln’s...
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  For more than two hundred years Americans defined their identity in opposition to Catholicism. The Catholic other was first fought and excluded and then opposed and discriminated against. Eventually, however, American Catholicism assimilated many of the features of its Protestant environment and was, in turn, assimilated into the American mainstream. These processes changed America from a Protestant country into a Christian country with Protestant values.
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  America was founded in large part for religious reasons, and religious movements have shaped its evolution for almost four centuries.
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  In the following decades, America’s core Anglo-Protestant culture and its political Creed of liberty and democracy faced four challenges.First, the dissolution of the Soviet Union eliminated one major and obvious threat to American security and hence reduced the salience of national identity compared to subnational, transnational, binational, and other-national identities.…Second, the ideologies of multiculturalism and diversity eroded the legitimacy of the remaining central elements of American identity, the cultural core and the American Creed.…Third, America’s third major wave of immigration that began in the 1960s brought to America people primarily from Latin America and Asia rather than Europe as the previous waves did.…Fourth, never before in American history has close to a ...
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-12
  War is now more often the breaker of states than the maker of states. More generally, the erosion of the national security function reduced the authority of states and the reason for people to identify with their state, and instead promoted identification with subnational and transnational groups.
• 汐时月冷

  2020-06-08
  持异议的新教的精神不仅表现于美国国内政治，而且也表现于美国对外政策。大多数国家在对外政策中优先考虑的都是“现实”问题，例如实力、安全和财富。在迫不得已时，美国也是这样做的。然而，美国人也认为有必要在自己与其他社会的关系中以及在那些社会内部倡导他们在美国国内所追求的道德主义目标。建国之初，在1815年以前，开国先辈们经过辦论，主要是从现实情况出发推行美国的对外关系。他们当时领导的国家是一个极小的共和国，周围全是英国、法国和西班牙这三大强国的领地，但这三大国当时大部分岁月里都是在欧洲彼此征战不休。美国当时与英法两国分别进行过几次未決胜负的战争，对西班牙的领地进行过军事干，又从拿破仑手里购买了路易斯安那而使美国面积扩大了一倍，在这些行动过程中，美国领导人证明他们自己能熟练地运用欧洲式的强权政治。拿破仑时代结東时，美国已经能够减轻自己对实力和安全的现实关切，在对外关系中主要追求经济目标，同时集中精力扩大和开发自己的领土。在这一阶段，正如沃尔特・麦克杜格尔所说，美国人的目的是要把自己的国家变成希望的乐土。可是，到19世纪末，美国已成为一个全球性大国，这样就出现了两个彼此相冲突的局势。一方面，作为一个大国，美国已无法忽视强权政治的现实。为了保持自己的地位和安全，美国不得不在世界上与其他大国进行紧张的竞争，而在此之前，在19世纪大部分时期内，它并不需要这样做，也没有能力这样做。另一方面，美国成为大国，就有可能在国外倡导它在自己国内所树立的道德价值观和原则，而在这之前，它由于力量薄弱和处境孤立，是无法在国外这样做的。一头是现实主义，一头是道德主义，如何摆好这二者的关系，成了美国20世纪对外政策中的核心问题。用麦克杜格尔的话来说，美国人将自己的国家由“希望的乐土”重新定位为“十字军之国”。
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  参与跨国的机构、网络和各种活动、不但是全球精英人士的必备条件，而且对于人们在国内获取精英地位也是至关紧要的。忠诚、身份和活动范围仅限于本国的人，要想升到商界、学术界、传媒界等专业方面的高层，其机会就不如那些超出国界之外的人。除了政界以外，几乎都是停留在国内的人落在后面。冒尖的人都得从国际的角度考虑问题和采取行动。社会学教授曼纽尔·卡斯特尔就说过，“精英是世界的，老百姓是本地的。”可是，加入这个超国家世界的机会却仅限于工业化国家中很少量的人以及发展中国家中一小撮人。
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  华盛顿表示了同样的看法：“理智和经验都告诉我们，若无宗教原则，是无法保持国民道德的。”
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  “新教教义、共和主义和个人主义全是一回事。”
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-18
  The makings of serious white nativist movements and of intensified racial conflict exist in America. Carol Swain probably overdramatizes the possibility, but her eloquent warning deserves serious thought. We are witnessing, she says, “the simultaneous convergence of a host of powerful social forces.” These include “changing demographics, the continued existence of racial preference policies, the rising expectations of ethnic minorities, the continued existence of liberal immigration policies, growing concerns about job losses associated with globalization, the demands for multiculturalism, and the Internet’s ability to enable like-minded individuals to identify with each other and to share mutual concerns and strategies for impacting the political system.” These factors can only serve “to ...
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-18
  White nativist movements are likely to include people with differing priorities concerning racial balance, “white” culture, immigration, racial preferences, language, and other issues. Underlying these specific concerns, however, is the fundamental question of the racial balance in America, most importantly, the declining proportion of non-Hispanic whites.
• 目送飞鸿

  2021-08-18
  One very plausible reaction would be the emergence of exclusivist sociopolitical movements composed largely but not only of white males, primarily working-class and middle-class, protesting and attempting to stop or reverse these changes and what they believe, accurately or not, to be the diminution of their social and economic status, their loss of jobs to immigrants and foreign countries, the perversion of their culture, the displacement of their language, and the erosion or even evaporation of the historical identity of their country. Such movements would be both racially and culturally inspired and could be anti-Hispanic, anti-black, and anti-immigration. They would be the heir to the many comparable exclusivist racial and anti-foreign movements that helped define American identity in ...
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  通过这些战争，美利坚殖民者学会了成功作战的本领，掌握了组建民兵的能力，在军事上树立了自信心，还学会了将自己的行动与英军的行动以及敌人的行动加一对比，汲取经验。正如S.M.格兰特所说，“战争时美利坚民族经历之中的核心”。
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  “信念”的核心有五条原则：自由，平等主义（机会平等和人人受尊重，而不是贫富地位平等），个人主义，民粹主义，以及经济自由放任。
• 锦端

  2017-06-14
  “公民“对”种族“的二分法将文化与归属性因素混同起来，可是这二者是大不一样的。霍雷斯卡伦在提出美国种族理论时指出，不论移居美国的人怎样改变他自己，”他仍然改变不了他的祖父“，因此种族身份是相对固定不变的。种族之间通婚能使情况改变，但更加重要的是血统与文化之间的区别。一个人改变不了自己的祖先和皮肤颜色，但能够改变自己的文化。人们能从一种宗教皈依另一宗教，学习新的语言，接受新的价值观和信念，认同新的标志符号，让自己适应新的生活方式。新的一代人的文化往往在许多方面不同于前辈。有时整个社会的文化都会明显改变。在第二次世界大战之前和之后，德国人和日本人都主要根据种族和归属性因素界定其国民身份/国家特性。然而战争的失败引起了他们文化的一个中心因素的变化。在20世纪30年代，德国和日本是世界上最富于军国主义精神的国家，战后却变成了富于和平主义精神的国家。种族身份/特性变不了，文化身份/特性却是可变的。因此，这二者必须明确加以区分。
• 如林

  2018-07-13
  克林顿总统的一句话清楚表明了“美国之梦”这一主旨。他说：我们人人都是做着美国之梦而成长，这个梦既简单又有力——只要你努力奋斗，按规则比赛，你就有机会比赛，你就有机会前进，上帝赋予你的能力能让你走多远，你就可以走多远。
• 锦端

  2017-06-14
  因此，”美国信念“从美国独立战争以来一直是美国特性的一个组成部分。但恰如罗杰斯史密斯所说，那种声称美国特性仅界定于”美国信念“的说法”充其量也只有一半的真理“。 美国人曾长期奴役黑人，后来又对黑人实行隔离；曾屠杀印第安人，让印第安人处于社会边缘，曾排挤亚洲人并歧视天主教徒，还对西北欧以外地区来的移民设置障碍。用迈克尔林德的话来说，早期的美国是一个”民族国家，立足于英美新教的民族主义，既是政治的，同样也是种族的和宗教的“。可见，美国特性有几部分组成。但从历史上看，疆域不是组成部分之一。
• [已注销]

  2014-06-30
  It assumes, however, that a nation can be based on only a political contract among individuals lacking any other commonality. This is the classic Enlightenment-based, civic concept of a nation.
• 汐时月冷

  2020-05-31
  没有任何一个社会是永恒的。正如卢梭所言，“既然斯巴达和罗马都灭亡了，还有什么国家能希望永世长存呢？”即使是最成功的社会，也会在某个时候遇到内部分解和衰落的威胁，或是受到更加激烈和无情的外部“野蛮”势力的威胁。最终，美利坚合众国也会遭受斯巴达、罗马等国家的命运。从历史上看，美国的特性涉及四个主要组成部分：人种，民族属性，文化(最突出的是语言和宗教)以及意识形态。人种和民族单一的美国不复存在。美国的文化受到围攻。苏联的遭遇表明，在缺乏人种、民族和文化共性的情况下，意识形态的黏合力是弱的。像罗伯特·卡普兰所注意到的那样，可能有理由怀疑为什么“美国会比别的国家更可能走完由生到死的历程”。然而有的社会当生存受到严重挑战时，也能够推迟其衰亡，遏制其解体，办法就是重新振作国民特性意识，振奋国家的目标感以及国民共有的文化价值观。