Kohn's concentration on America

Although he doesn't state it outright, the focus of Kohn's Chapter VI in The Idea of Nationalism is to study a nation as it is made into such. The focus of this study? None other than those United States.

One of the things that Kohn notes is the fundamental nature of the U.S.'s Constitution. Interestingly, he writes that because it is so essential to U.S. nationalism, the Constitution could never be changed (289). He doesn't say anything about amending it, but changing it, at least in Kohn's mind, would be on par with altering a law of nature. Were time travel available, it would be interesting, though potentially catastrophic, to see what changes in the original would cause to happen in the present.

What Kohn's point comes down to, though, is that the U.S. didn't benefit as a nation from its Revolution. After the dust had settled each state was still parochial and different enough from the rest to be distrustful of them. The sense that I'm left with in the middle of this chapter is that two things nonetheless brought those colonists together.

One was their mutual hatred of Europe and the styles of government for which it stood: aristocracy, hierarchy, monarchical tyranny. The other was that they could all agree that they distrusted Europe more than each other and were able to band together to one-up the old country.

The road to this inference was littered with notable quotes. Like this one from English economist Josiah Tucker (on the impossibility of a union): "...[the Americans] will have no centre of union and no common interests. They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever; a disunited people till the end of time" (283).

Or from Thomas Jefferson (on the corruption of Europe): "I think we shall be virtuous as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case, while there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe and go to eating one another as they do there" (300).