Nations do not have borders, states do. The most gruesome thing that can happen to a nation is for it to be confined to a single state. But I just may be biased.
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It seems that one of the driving forces behind 1400-1945 European history is the fact that nations were not associated to a particular state and thus that constant warfare over lands did not menace nations in their integrity and thence create total war.
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Not sure about the rest of Europe but, the Ottomans surely did not give an iota of a fuckhttps://twitter.com/byzantinepower/status/974297570557259778 …
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This is the most Roman thing about the Ottomans imohttps://twitter.com/byzantinepower/status/974295011746598913 …
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But at the same time the Romans had some sort of an obsession over borders, especially when declaring war (is it not interesting that a declaration of war entailed an opening of the temple of Janus' gates?), with complex, archaic rituals recounted by Livy.
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I think, and I haven't fully searched this out, this how the Latins were able to incorporate the Hellenic soul. The latter was birthed behind the walls of ancient cities, but found its genius at the limits where heroes would tame the wild and return its spoils to the city.
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The city-states were nodes on a vast web that was ever-ensnaring morsels of the wild a-political world. Pothos-driven Alexander was the pinnacle of this spirit. In a generation he alone expanded the web, but caught more than it could handle, so it frayed.
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The Romans worked in the same model, but the City gave them a grounding for expansion. Every new province was a new world to be tamed, that demanded that the borders of the City itself be reassessed. Triumphal arches represented a sanctified breach in the wall, hence the ritual.
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Conservitism is just provincialism and slave morality trying to act tough. Pass it on.
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I think the idea is that one will not always have this option.
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