The United States of America (1776-)

The United States of America (1776-) is a democratic capitalistic nation-state in North America.

• Context:
  • It can (typically) have a U.S. Population, of American Citizens (likely in a U.S. household).
  • It can (typically) have a U.S. Political System (with a U.S. government).
  • It can (typically) have a U.S. Legal System.
  • It can (typically) have a U.S. Economy (with U.S. businesses and U.S. labor market).
  • It can be composed of U.S. States (with U.S. counties and U.S. municipalities).
  • It can range from (often) being a Warring Nation to being a Peaceful Nation.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • USA, 1776.
  • USA, 1830.
  • USA, 1880.
  • USA, 1930.
  • …
  • USA, 1950.
  • USA, 1960.
  • USA, 1970.
  • USA, 1980.
  • USA, 1990.
  • USA, 2000.
  • USA, 2010.
  • USA, 2020, which can be a flawed democracy, with political gridlock, gun violence, opioid epidemic, ...
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Colonial North America.
  • Canada (1867-).
  • European Country, such as: The United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain.
  • The People's Republic of China (1950-).
  • The European Union.
  • The Soviet Union, (1922-1991).
• See: U.S. Civil War, U.S. Revolution, The Star-Spangled Banner, The Stars And Stripes Forever, Contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Territories of The United States.

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References

2020

• https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/
  • QUOTE: ... The United States, virtually a demilitarized nation on the eve of the Second World War, never stood down in the wake of victory. To this day, American troops are deployed in 150 countries. Since the 1970s, China has not once gone to war; the U.S. has not spent a day at peace. President Jimmy Carter recently noted that in its 242-year history, America has enjoyed only 16 years of peace, making it, as he wrote, “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $6 trillion on military operations and war, money that might have been invested in the infrastructure of home. China, meanwhile, built its nation, pouring more cement every three years than America did in the entire 20th century. ...

2019

• https://foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-02-05/new-americanism-nationalism-jill-lepore
  • QUOTE: The United States is different from other nations — every nation is different from every other — and its nationalism is different, too. To review: a nation is a people with common origins, and a state is a political community governed by laws. A nation-state is a political community governed by laws that unites a people with a supposedly common ancestry. When nation-states arose out of city-states and kingdoms and empires, they explained themselves by telling stories about their origins — stories meant to suggest that everyone in, say, “the French nation” had common ancestors, when they of course did not. As I wrote in my book These Truths, “Very often, histories of nation-states are little more than myths that hide the seams that stitch the nation to the state.”

    But in the American case, the origins of the nation can be found in those seams. When the United States declared its independence, in 1776, it became a state, but what made it a nation? The fiction that its people shared a common ancestry was absurd on its face; they came from all over, and, after having waged a war against Great Britain, just about the last thing they wanted to celebrate was their Britishness. Long after independence, most Americans saw the United States not as a nation but, true to the name, as a confederation of states. That’s what made arguing for ratification of the Constitution an uphill battle; it’s also why the Constitution’s advocates called themselves “Federalists,” when they were in fact nationalists, in the sense that they were proposing to replace a federal system, under the Articles of Confederation, with a national system. When John Jay insisted, in The Federalist Papers, no. 2, “that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs,” he was whistling in the dark.

2018

• (Wikipedia, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States Retrieved:2018-4-7.
  • The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²) and with over 325 million people, the United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total areaand the third-most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

     Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago.European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. Though its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 33.4% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. The United States ranks among the highest nations in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person. The U.S. is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.

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