美国不是一个国家。它只是一个地方。我将在这篇博客文章中讨论这个问题。我认为，这个事实对于理解我们曾经梦想的共和国的潜在消亡具有重要意义。

Why do I say that? Well, there's a short answer and a slightly longer answer. The short answer is that too many Americans hate, or at least really dislike other Americans for us to count as a nation. The longer answer is similar in spirit, but will take some work to spell out in detail. Spelling out the longer answer requires me to say a bit more about what I mean by a nation. There are, I think, two different conceptions of nationhood. In one of these senses of ‘nation’ America is as much a nation as any other. But that, I shall argue, is hardly a sense of ‘nation’ worth caring much about.

On the one hand, you have a nation wherever you have an intact state, held together by some means or other, under the unified jurisdiction of some central government, with the power and authority to make laws, defend itself, etc. In this sense, American is clearly a nation and a pretty powerful one at that. But in this sense, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a nation. So too were the former Soviet Union under the Communist Party and the former Yugoslavia under Tito. And I hope these examples will help you see where I am headed.

问题的关键是，尽管将各国团结在一起的粘合剂具有强大的力量，但这种意义上的国家实际上可能是相当脆弱和不稳定的东西，尤其是当他们团结在一起的时候，不是由公民身份或共同项目和价值观的共同纽带，而是仅靠武力和恐惧。把这个旧苏联国家团结在一起的强力粘合剂，一部分是共产党，一部分是克格勃，还有一部分是红军。但是，随着这种粘合剂的强制性力量开始削弱它对苏联各民族的控制，它很快就不复存在了，即使是作为一个被认为是国家的国家。这是因为，事实上，苏联从来就不是一个更深层次、更重要意义上的国家，就像我下面概述的那样。它最终也只是一个地方。

To grasp the deeper sense of nationhood I have in mind, think of a nation not as defined by the potentially coercive instruments of statehood, but by mutual bonds of sympathy, respect, and tolerance among citizens. Such bonds may serve to gather people into a single or at least unified collectivity. They may serve as the basis of a shared national identity, grounded in a set of mutually endorsed commitments, projects, and values. To participate in the life of a nation in this sense -- call it nation-as-shared-project -- is not merely to be subject to the coercive power of this or that state. It is to participate willingly in set of shared commitment and projects. And it is for one’s participation in those shared projects and commitments to form an important component of one’s identity as a being in a world. When I am a citizen of a nation so understood, I identify with my fellow citizens as partners in a set of joint national projects and they, in turn, identify with me.

I do not mean to say that we can never have it both ways. It is surely possible for a stretch of land to be occupied by a people whose common nationhood encompasses bothnation-as-stateandnation-as-shared-project. Perhaps many of the current nations of the world do precisely that. But since I know only America from the inside, I will reserve judgement on this score.On the flip side, there are also stateless nations, as we might call them. A stateless nation is constituted by a people bound together by a system of shared projects, values and commitments, but without access to the instruments of statehood. Think here of the Palestinian nation or the Kurdish nation.

AndI certainly do not mean to suggest that nations are necessarily forces for good in the world. Some nations, with their defining national projects, are loci of pure evil. Arguably, Nazi Germany was more than a mere place. It was, however briefly, a genuine nation-as-shared-project. Its people were united by a grand, powerful, and dark project. And its attempt to carry out that project was enormously destructive for humanity at large. All things considered, It would surely be better for a stretch of land to be a mere place, than a nation-as-project of this sort.

So I hope it is clear that when I say that America is not a nation, but merely a place, I certainly do not mean to deny the existence of the Americastate. As I have already conceded, the American state definitely exists. Again, it is a highly consequential and powerful state. What there is not is an American nation-as-shared-project, defined by a set of mutually endorsed values, projects and commitments that serve to unite the inhabitants of the place that is America into a single people of a single nation-as-shared-project.

To some extent, this means that America is somewhat akin to the now defunct Soviet Union. It too was merely a place, as I have already argued.当然，将美国团结在一起的粘合剂与曾经将苏联团结在一起的粘合剂在性质上有很大不同。这里的国家权力工具比苏联的国家权力工具更加民主。但是，我们不应该让这种不同蒙蔽了我们的双眼，让我们看不到这样一种可能性:就像苏联国家的粘合剂解体并被削弱到失效的程度一样，美国国家的粘合剂也可能会如此。如果那一天真的到来，美国不仅将不再是一个民族国家，甚至可能不再作为一个地方存在——至少在某种意义上是这样。当然，曾经被美国占领的土地仍然会存在。但是，就像“苏联”不再作为一大片土地的地理名称一样，如果美国民族国家不再存在，“美国”也可能不再作为一大片土地的地理名称。

Now it应该说，无论是在前苏联，还是在受其影响的东欧集团国家，人们都知道如何喊出国家地位的口号。事实上，苏联人非常坚定地要创造他们所谓的“苏联人”，他们对苏联国家共享计划的认同将会深入人心。而那些在苏联统治下苦苦挣扎的人民，至少从表面上看，确实表现得很顺从。他们从小就学会了辩证唯物主义的来龙去脉。他们学会了唱歌和唱圣歌。但在他们的内心深处，很少有人是真正的信徒。Perhaps it is the same with us Americans. To test this thought, i想象你是一个外星文化人类学家，被派去研究美国。你们想知道，在他们的内心深处，什么样的承诺真正定义了美国这个国家，作为一个集体。你决心无视统治精英的官方声明、文件和声明。你决心深入了解普通美国人的日常生活和意识。你会发现什么?你会找到一个深深致力于民主、平等、宽容和合理的多元主义的民族吗?我不确定。我有点怀疑不是。我怀疑你会发现，尽管许多人在社会上已经习惯于口口声喊出美国国家地位的口号，但我们对这种理想的真正承诺水平相当浅薄。

Once upon a time,perhapsAmerica hadmore of a claim of being a nation-as-shared-project than it now has. This is a tempting thought, but I doubt that it is true. I suspect America has never been a nation-as-shared-project -- at least not for very many of the inhabitants of the place that is America. Or perhaps I should say that if America ever was a nation in the sense that concerns me here, it was a nation that excluded very many of the inhabitants of the land mass that housed the people of that nation. Or to put it differently, it may have been a nation-as-project for the few, but it was a mere place for the many. This is evidenced by the fact that America has seldom welcomed into its bosom the full range of peoples who have from time to time dwelled in this place. Think of how many of the inhabitants of this land mass were brutalized, exploited, enslaved, even exterminated in the name of one after another of America’s putatively defining "shared" projects.

This is not to deny that at various singular moments in the troubled history of the place that is America, we have experienced at least temporary stirrings of a deeper sort of nationhood. One thinks here of the very revolution with which America began, or of the westward expansion of the American state, or of the two World Wars, or the Great Depression, or even the Cold War. To be sure, even at such moments of apparent deep national unity, there have always been alternative voices, with competing, even irreconcilable ideas about what the project of America should be. The complete cynic will even say that such moments of apparent national unity and joint commitment were always merely apparent. They have been overly mythologized in our imaginations, the cynic will say, and bear little or no relation to concrete historical reality. We Americans have always been a people divided and at odds, with little sense of shared purpose, engaged in constant and bitter struggle. We hardly even know how to conduct the sort of civic conversation that might serve to bind the disparate people that we are into a united nation.

Perhaps the cynic is right. Perhaps America has never experienced even a faint glimmer of true nationhood-as-shared-project. Perhaps it has always been on the sham and illusion of nationhood. I will grant that there is a case to be made for that point of view. But arguing over history is not really my concern here. The more biting question for me and for the present moment in our history is whether we can become a nation, if not once again, then perhaps for the first time. I confess to not being optimistic. For one thing, we are now nearly as deeply at odds over the potential identity of an American nation as we have ever been. To take one small thing, think of how obsessed some Americans are over the very concept of an American. Some inhabitants of this place that is America think of themselves as the only "real" Americans and by implication dismiss others as not "real Americans." People often talk of "the American Heartland" as if primarily the people who live in those places are the "real" Americans, or at least the most authentically American of Americans.此外，“非美国”这个概念一直很流行，它总是被一些美国人当作武器，用来攻击其他美国人及其信仰、活动和价值观。

I sometimes wonder if there is any place on earth as obsessed with the concept of a real (national) as at least some Americans are. This obsession would be sort of, barely understandable if the distinction between "real" Americans and what—”faux"(?)—Americans was applied only to recent interlopers into the American polity. After all, throughout our history, waves and waves of immigrants, from all over the world, were not considered "real Americans" by those already here. But it's not just recent immigrants who get tagged by some as less than fully authentic real Americans. Even people with deep roots in this land are often dismissed as merely faux Americans. And the deeply troubling thing is that the “real” Americans seem to want, with all their hearts, to "take America back" from the “faux” Americans.

这表明美国，以及我们世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区作为美国人的身份，是完全有争议的。我们的分歧不仅仅是分歧的表现。它们更像是某种不可通约的世界观的标志。我们正越来越接近一种不可通约性的政治。纯粹分歧的政治和不可通约性的政治之间的区别是相当深刻的。在仅有分歧的情况下，富有成效的对话仍然是可能的。但是真正的不可通约性使得对话几乎不可能。因此，真正的不可通约性很可能只带来破裂、革命、内战和解体。

Part of what is driving us toward a politics of incommensurability is the almost complete breakdown of mediating structures within our total civic life that might help shape and guide civic conversations among citizens, considered as partners in joint national endeavors. There are many reasons for this collapse. They include the rise of the internet, the proliferation of confirmation bias as a business model, the demise of unions, the atomizing effects of globalization, the ideological hardening of our parties, combined with extreme gerrymandering, the rising influence of ungodly sums of money in politics, the fracturing of the media landscape and on and on and on. These developments have conspired to make civic conversations, which are asine qua non而打造共享的国家项目，就难得多了。因此，“美国”已经成为一个人们斗争和斗争的地方，几乎没有任何基础可以让我们形成共同的身份认同或对共同的项目和价值观作出共同的承诺。

我们该何去何从?我们是否下定决心要分享其他国家的命运，这些国家仅仅是被一个正在瓦解的国家所粘合在一起的地方?或者，我们能否最终建立一个统一的国家，而这个国家现在只有一个被不同的、分裂的民族占据的地方?这很难说。我所说的国家地位从来都不是一件容易实现的事情。想想那些伟大而持久的欧洲国家和他们动荡的历史。想想英格兰的国王们，他们的兰开斯特家族和约克家族，他们的内战，他们的宗教分裂!或者是建立在君主制、革命、帝国、战败、占领和一连串失败的共和国的历史上的法国!相比之下，我们美国人在国家建设方面相对较新。我们还没有得到正确的答案，这并不完全令人惊讶。

我们需要的是一个全新的开始。我们必须建立一个新的美利坚共和国，一个有着完全不同的宪法和完全不同的公民精神的共和国。现在的共和国不是真正的共和国。这是一个最好的伪共和国。它正在迅速坍塌。即使有可能拯救它，它也不值得拯救，至少以目前的形式不值得。最好把这个伪共和国扔进我们动荡历史的垃圾箱，重新启动，重新开始。前面提到的法国人，毕竟是在他们的第五个共和国。我承认，我们不能完全确定我们能以非暴力的方式，在相互合作而不是相互敌对的精神下实现新共和国。但对于美国这个有着四分五裂的居民的地方来说，这是一个危险的时刻。 Heavy burdens must be shouldered. Perhaps persons of great vision, integrity, and practical wisdom will emerge to help lead the way. A Lincoln or Mandela or Gandhi for this age!

在组建一个新的美利坚共和国的过程中，我们有很多需要重新谈判的地方。但至少我们可以从摆脱我们古老而分裂的诅咒的残余开始——比如写进我们宪法的关于奴隶制罪恶的肮脏妥协。事实上，正是这些妥协及其持久的后果，几乎一手造成了我们当前伪共和国的许多最糟糕的特征。