Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Uhhh... this article is really out of touch with the world and I'm pretty sure they totally didn't understand at a minimum half of what they're talking about.

I'd really like to point out something that's just a fact, that was told to me, while I was abroad, by non-US citizens:

The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't move to Germany and be German, no more than I can ever move to Japan and call myself Japanese. One can however, move to the United States, and call themselves American.

There is something binding to America, much greater than religion, and it's the idea of freedom. Not even real freedom, just the god damn idea of it.

> As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

ROFLCOPTR. Next you're going to try and sell me a tool to predict stock prices based on the weather (and I did read more after laughing my ass off at the sub heading).

To assume that religion is what held together America is itself fucking stupid. I could accept greed, war mongering, or pretty much anything except the bullshit veil of religion. This was obviously written by someone who has no lens without religion and so applies it everywhere they can. It'd be more accurate to title this article "let's blame the problems of the world on the decline of religion, because I'm to stupid and willfully ignorant to accept the complex dynamics of modern society."

> The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from.

North of the border there's a vast, mythical place called Canada - about 20% of Canadians were not born there [1].

Yes, this feeling of "acquired origin" is not true of every country, but the US and Canada are seldom the only place.

In my experience, the same would happen in many South American countries if one is successful in integration - there's no snobbery about not being born there.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-foreign-born-populat...

Huh? Maybe France is a bit special, but I'd wager you could move to Germany, the Netherlands or Scandinavia and call yourself [insert local identity] just as quickly as you could in the US. At least in the cities (but then again, try being a Syrian refugee in rural Alabama).

Sure, it doesn't happen on day one, but it doesn't in the US either.

> The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't move to Germany and be German, no more than I can ever move to Japan and call myself Japanese. One can however, move to the United States, and call themselves American.

Not the only country, the same is true of Australia. I mentioned in another comment the Australian politician Kristina Keneally, who was born in Nevada, grew up in Ohio, didn't move to Australia until her 20s. To me, she's an Australian. I think most Australians would probably say the same thing.

The United States has the world's largest Christian population, and its founding was directly influenced by religion; the Church of England and the Puritans.[1][2][3][4]

To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore not only history, but the present.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Establ...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay#...

This isn't really the whole story. Many of the founders were Deist and/or practically irreligious.

The other important distinction is that the Church of England is essentially a state church. In many ways the U.S. Constitution, on which Nonconformists had far more influence, is its antithesis. [1] Puritanism/Nonconformism views religion as a personal or at most a local matter.

One of the references you shared has an interesting quote to this effect stating that when England tried to impose it's unelected colonial official rule, Puritan officials "were of opinion that God would never suffer me to land again in this country, and thereupon began in a most arbitrary manner to assert their power higher than at any time before." [2]

A much more accurate picture of what the U.S. started out as and has become today would be a mosaic or a patchwork of various religions and/or philosophies where one always has a choice whether to participate (or abstain).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonconformist_(Protestantism)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Dudley...

That's so far from the truth, that it's a fraudulent historical claim. They were almost all religious, and the early population of both the proto-United States, and the then-declared independent states were predominantly Protestant.

I think it's a contestable claim, sure, but fraudulent is a bit doth protest too much in this case. Out of curiosity, what does being religious actually mean in the way that you used the term above?

Besides the purely superficial, "I believe in such and such" (and not backed up by any inner conviction) sort. Because a purely nominal religiosity is hardly evidence of any substantive cultural or political influence. It takes more than that to count as influence IMO.

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