Re: Should the United States of America change its name to the American Federal Repub
Oh good, we get to be a unified country for a couple more decades. Thanks for giving us the benefit of the doubt.
I never said it was likely, it just merely said it was possible. Most people in early 19th century Europe couldn't have predicted that Germany (Deutschland) or Italy (Italia) would be unified within a few decades. Politics, especially geopolitics, are mostly impossible to predict.
In addition as time goes on, human society has shown a tendency to for lack of a better word, "destabilize" (which could be used in a negative or positive connotation) or accelerate further and further in its change. A very, very rough mathematical sketch would be one where the function is the change or the "displacement", the first derivative is the rate of change or the "velocity", and the second derivative the "acceleration". The acceleration would be a positive constant, the velocity a positive linear line, and the displacement a geometric "sequence".
This graph would show human progress not just in technology (which is what we principally define as "progress") but also knowledge, numbers, production, basically everything in human civilization. There would be spans in which the graph does not follow exactly its prescribed path (such as the majority of the European Middle Ages) but in the whole, it would be a geometric sequence, until (and if) humanity dies out (if it is a sudden event) or near the end of humanity (if it is a prolonged event).
I blabbered on about an irrelevant off-topic theory but my point is that the rate of change in human society gets faster and faster. Things we could not have foreseen will happen in a few decades if not years. I was merely pointing out a possibility. Do I think it is likely? No. Do I think it is inevitable in the short run? No. Do I see it as a desirable outcome? No. Yet we cannot dismiss its possibility as only fools dismiss possibilities.
Addendum: Historically, multicultural and multi-ethnic countries had a long, terrible fate. The Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire were all destroyed in the century of nationalism and were rendered useless shadows of their former selves in the first tide of nationalism (the 19th century). Countries that had a large ethnic minority (Prussia, the former Second German Empire, and the Russian Empire with their Polish population, the list goes on and on) also faced difficulty although in cases where they had an overwhelming, strong majority, they did not fall to those nationalistic pressures.
Some racist, xenophobic idiots will see this as further proof that their own countries must maintain a homogeneous population. However, modern countries differ drastically from their autocratic predecessors in that they are (relatively) free, liberal, democracies. Minorities and different groups rebelled against oppression of a majority, however, when they are treated equally, racial and ethnic tensions drastically decrease.
That was a rather long rant. My posting (and writing) style is rather like a stream of consciousness which is something I must fix. Someday.
