This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Archive 18

Archive 19

Archive 20

→

Archive 25

The article for Pensacola, Florida and St. Augustine, Florida both claim that Pensacola is in fact the oldest and first colony established in the United States but it was abandoned due to a hurricane two years later (making St. Augustine the oldest continually inhabited colony). Should this article mention those or is it not important enough to warrant inclusion? Waqcku 04:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"Foreign relations and military - even if most of Turkey is in Asia, Turkey is still also in Europe, which means Turkey is in Europe (in addition to Asia), which makes it right to say ALL." (edit summary by User:Preslethe)

Can anyone supply a cite for Turkey being 'in Europe'? It seems to be nonsensical but I'll wait before reverting. -- Guinnog 19:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure.

•Quotes from Wikipedia's article on Turkey:

• "a Eurasian country" (first paragraph)

• "located in the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe" (first paragraph)

• "member of [...] the Council of Europe" (second paragraph)

• "straddling Europe and Asia" (second paragraph)

• "intersection of Asia and Europe" (first paragraph of History section)

• "located in Europe" (first paragraph of Geography section)

• "Many geographers consider Turkey politically in Europe" (first paragraph of Geography section)

• "a transcontinental country between Asia and Europe" (first paragraph of Geography section)

• "Turkey forms a bridge between Europe and Asia" (third paragraph of Geography section)

• It's been trying for years to join the European Union.

• Edit summary that said "Turkey mostly in Asia!", not "completely".

I'm sure there are plenty of other sources, too.

Not entirely in Europe, sure. But also not entirely not in Europe.

So the question is "Is Turkey a country in Europe?" The answer is Yes. The second question is "Is there any NATO country that is not in Europe or North America?" The answer is No.

President Lethe 19:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Some non-Wikipedia sources:

• Turkey's embassy to the U.S.: First paragraph of "Geographical Profile" says "The lands of Turkey are located at a point where Asia, Africa and Europe are closest to each other, and straddle the point where Europe and Asia meet." First sentence under "Area" ends in "in Europe."

• Infoplease: First sentence includes "in southeast Europe"

• CIA World Factbook: First point: "In 1964, Turkey became an associate member of the European Community". First two words of "Location" subsection of "Geography" section: "Southeastern Europe"

• 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of World Book Encyclopedia: First sentence of Turkey article: "Turkey is a Middle Eastern nation that lies both in Europe and in Asia."

• Encarta: First sentence ends in "a nation in western Asia and southeastern Europe".

President Lethe 19:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I see what you mean. Still seems inaccurate to me, as most of Turkey does still lie in Asia, but I'll try and come up with a compromise we can both live with. -- Guinnog 19:44, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't say that all of Turkey is in Europe or North America. It says that all the countries are. This means every country has part of its land in Europe or North America. I do understand that there's a chance that someone could read it as "all the land of every NATO country is in Europe or North America". But, if we start going down this "Turkey is also in Asia" path, then why not the "Hawaii isn't in North America" path, too? President Lethe 19:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Heh. I think I'll leave that to you! No, I get your point and know these things are pretty arbitrary when it comes down to it. You in turn should be aware that stating or implying that Turkey is a European country (we can agree that it isn't part of North America!) is controversial; Turkish accession to the EU is a very contentious topic for example. Historically, Turkey had an empire that included large parts of Balkan Europe; nowadays they are left with a mere vestige and are largely seen either as Near-East, Asian, or (as some of your refs put it) a special case bridging Europe and Asia. See if you can think of a tweak that will eliminate the contentious ambiguity; I will too. -- Guinnog 19:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I know what you mean about Turkey (though I still stand by my idea about this sentence). When I ask myself "What is Turkey? Where is it? What about its culture and history?", it's a blurry mixture of Europe and the Middle East and Asia.

Still, I'll mull this over today. (Should pull away from Wikipedia for now, though. There are Father's Day things to do.)

"In its effort to contain communism during the Cold War, the U.S. founded NATO, which compels the country to defend, against foreign invasion, any NATO state, all of which are in North America and Europe."

That's the original. Maybe we should have something like

"In 1949, in their effort to contain communism during the Cold War, the U.S., Canada, and ten Western European nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a mutual-defense alliance in which they have since been joined by 14 other European states—including Turkey, which straddles the Eurasian border, and some former Soviet states."

It's not hugely longer; but it gives the founding year, makes clear the inclusion of Canada and exclusion of Mexico, points out the 'Westernness' of the founding European states, allows an almost accurate count of the present total number (it doesn't mention the French and Greek withdrawals), gives the full name (generally, it's better not to use an abbreviation at the first mention of something), mentions the Turkish stretch into Asia, and points out that even countries originally considered the enemies of NATO have now joined it.

Back later. President Lethe 20:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Currently at the beginning of the introduction, the "Americas" abbreviation has with it a note pointing to Americas (terminology). This page is merely a list of regions in the Western Hemisphere and places whose names include "America". Whereas the relevant section in this article, found right below the introduction actually explains the terminology, this footnote simply leads the reader to somewhere else inexplicably, when the reason why the note might be reasonable is in fact satisfied right below. This note should be removed. — Centrx→ talk 06:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

In several places, the combined editors seem to force a politically-correct balance, almost an apology for US history. The examples cited below are unique to American history and can't be found in articles about the UK, Japan, China, Mexico or Canada. It's not that such notations and asides are incorrect, they smack of forced-comparison, an exaggeration of mistakes and a watering-down of accomplishments (moon landing, winning the Cold War, sending troops to Europe and Pacific region in 1917 and 1942, etc.). It's a unique, so-what attitude found only in this piece and absent from other countries:

Sprinkling of Native Americans (the Mexico article calls pre-Columbian "humans" and "inhabitants" and Canada says "First Peoples")

The Sole Superpower link quickly mentions China and India

The only outcome of WWII was to "pull the economy out of depression", without mention of whether or not US assistance helped win the War.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq has is quickly followed by "...an anti-war movement that has grown over time"

The event "the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991" is downplayed. No mention of Reagan or that no shots were fired.

The last sentence under "Government and politics" has as much text on the Republican and Democratic parties as the Green an Reform parties.

The sport "soccer" must be parenthetically called "football" and how it's not popular here as it is in other countries.

The point is, like the US itself, this article's an easy target for non-American agendas. Perhaps it comes with the territory? I'm going to a small NPOV edit to test my hypothesis. Details to follow. -- Robertkeller 17:43, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Robertkeller.

On "Native Americans", see other parts of this Talk page. (I happened to write something here on the same issue just several hours ago.)

If you have a problem with the superpower article, change that article. The introduction to this article doesn't mention China and India; it says the U.S. is the sole superpower (end of story).

I fully support mentioning that the U.S. played a huge role in the outcome of WWII.

I sympathize with you about forcing of balance. I'm also glad that you say that it's not that the things are incorrect. But, really, how does saying that there's sentiment against the Iraq war dilute the presentation of the fact that the war happened and is happening? If we say a criminal was executed, how is it dilution to say that some opposed the execution? I think a much better example of dilution would be something like "The criminal was executed—but not really ... they just sort of didn't rescue him when they saw him cutting his wrists" (which, of course, would be absurd and indeed a twisting of the facts).

If you're talking about the fall of the Soviet Union in the opening of the article, the reason for the absence of more detail is that it's the opening of the article. No mention of Reagan—but also no mention of any other president (Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, &c.). There's a link to the Cold War's own article.

There are links to the political parties' articles. Think of this mention of the parties as a bit like state representation in the Senate: the most prominent players all get a mention, regardless of their prominence relative to one another. If we're going to mention the notable increase in 'non-Democrat, non-Republican' persons and parties, and give example parties, then we have to name some examples. (Truism.)

I think it would be fine to take out the "football" parenthesis next to "soccer": any reader who doesn't know what "soccer" means can click on the link and instantly find out. Not mentioning that it's less popular in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world could easily lead the uninformed reader to think (1) that it's as popular in the U.S. as, say, baseball is, and (2) that it's as popular in the U.S. as it is elsewhere.

President Lethe 18:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

To an extent, I agree that this article has fallen victim to an anti-American agenda at times, I think it's mostly the obnoxious apologetic anti-American agenda of much of the American left. On Native Americans, however, in Canada they are called "First Nations" and in the US, we generally refer to them as Native Americans. I think that's just a matter of custom from country to country. MikeNM 22:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Except that, as I wrote above, the U.S. Census, which certainly has been making strides in inclusiveness, does say "American Indian"—and most members of the tribes in the U.S., except when talking about a specific tribe by name, actually use "Indian" more than they use "Amerindian", "American Indian", or "Native American". (This is similar to the fact that the plurality of black Americans call themselves "black", rather than "Negro", "colored", "Afro-American", or "African-American".) — President Lethe 23:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Re. "natives" - In Canada the term "first nations" is used as is "Indian" and "aboriginal". For example, the federal government department that has the primary legal mandate for Canadian aboriginal peoples is called the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND). In the province of BC, where 1/3 of Canada's aboriginal bands are locted, the government term is "aboriginal". Hu Gadarn 22:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

It just occurred to me that we're back to relative monotony in the illustrations. We have (1) western mountains with blue sky and a foreground of vegetation and (2) western mountains with blue sky and a foreground of vegetation and water. See this in the talk archive. President Lethe 01:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The entire article on geography largely just describes the landforms encountered driving from Denver to Puget Sound. Pictures are fairly routine as well. Poorly balanced. Is there even a description of Texas landforms? What about the Corn belt? What about the Cumberlands, Ridge and Valley in the Appalachians Discussion of Bays, esturaries,passes such as the Mohawk Valley, Cumberland Gap, South Pass etc. Mark —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.133.124.200 ( talk • contribs) . on 2006-08-04 01:33:10

Looking at the rest of the article, we have Time Square, a Pennsylvania farm, a North Carolina church, the University of Virginia, the capitol, a farm (in South Dakota) form the Great Drepression, Ellis Island (1902), Iwo Jima (how'd that happen?), the Battle of Gettysburg, ..., and several maps. Looks like the plains and the west are under-represented. Jaxad0127 01:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the article has nice illustrations. But Times Square isn't the landscape; a farm is a farm on the landscape (or what man has done to the landscape); a church isn't the landscape; the U. of Va. isn't the landscape; the Capitol isn't the landscape; the Dakota farm is an abandoned farm in the middle of a landscape that doesn't look that way today; Iwo Jima isn't the U.S. landscape (neither is the Moon); and a painting crowded by soldiers and smoke isn't the landscape.

It just dawned on me that maybe you overlooked the name of the section that I started with this post: "Photos in Geography section".

I stand by what I said in April: "What about deserts, glaciers, prairies, old mountains topped with trees, new mountains topped with snow, tropical beaches, rocky coasts, volcanic islands, Pacific northwest rain forest, &c.? I'm not saying that there is no variety in the present pictures, or that the pictures should show all the features I just mentioned; but we can do better."

Maybe we could have some two- or more-image collages, kind of like this.

President Lethe 02:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Right, it isn;t fair to show just two Western mountains in the geography section, but the rest of the article isn't fair either. Nearly everything in the entire article from the east coast. Jaxad0127 02:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you're grasping the point. This isn't anti-Westernness, and it's not about 'fairness': this is pro-variety-ness. We used to have more variety; I'm sure others will agree to restoring it. And the existence of shortcomings in one part of life is never, on its own, a justification for not trying to eliminate shortcomings in another part of life. President Lethe 04:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, pictures of U.S. glaciers wouldn't be representing the East coast; and the East coast wouldn't necessarily be represented by pictures of tropical beaches, rocky coasts, volcanic islands, deserts, prairies, or rain forest, either. In fact, several of those things would necessarily be represented by photos showing western areas of the country—as far west as Alaska and Hawaii, even. (Seems I wrote this while you were posting a reply. I wrote this paragraph after your note immediately below was posted, but before I'd read it.) President Lethe 04:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to interject a bit, but what you're saying needs to be applied to the rest of the article as well. Just looking at the images, it looks like all the habitation and history is in the east, the desolation in the plains, the mountains in the west, and the military on the Moon and Iwo Jima. Jaxad0127 04:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Right, thats what I'm saying as well. I agree that the geography section is too heavy on picturesque mountains, but the rest of the article needs work aswell. Jaxad0127 04:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Righty. Then let's get to work—or convince others to. President Lethe 04:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

How about spreading the geography pictures throughout the article? Jaxad0127 04:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. Sorry I was misunderstanding you earlier. While I was thinking that you weren't getting my point, I wasn't getting your point. You're right that we should strive for even more variety in the illustrations throughout the article, and that perhaps a photo in one section could simultaneously illustrate several different points (history, culture, geography, &c.).

Anyway, I had an idea. I got out the "U–V" volume of the 1983 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia and looked up the United States. Now, yes, the World Book article is longer than, it seems, people want this Wikipedia article to be—and so we probably wouldn't use as many photos as World Book does. And, yes, this book is 23 years old. Still, maybe we can get some good ideas. I'll just transcribe the captions from (or otherwise describe) the photos in the article, in order:

• The article starts with a group of three photos. The first one includes the WTC towers. The caption: "The United States is a land of great beauty and natural wealth. Its many famous and interesting sights include the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, above left; quaint cable cars on hilly San Francisco streets, top right; and areas of rich farmland in the fertile Midwest, bottom right."

• Also near the introduction, a bison grazing in front of mountains that have grass, trees, and melting snow: "Breathtaking Scenery makes Yellowstone National Park one of America's favorite vacationlands. The park, located chiefly in Wyoming, is home to buffaloes and other wild animals."

• In a section called "The Nation", three photos:

• "Giant Cactuses in Arizona are symbols of the 'wide open spaces' of the Southwest. A warm, dry climate has made the Southwest one of the nation's fastest-growing areas."

• "A Snow-Covered Village nestles among low hills in Vermont. Such tiny, picturesque settlements are common in much of the far Northeastern part of the United States."

• An exterior shot: "A Southern Mansion in Alabama dates from 1853. Originally a private home, it is now a government-owned museum and a reminder of the life style and architecture of the pre–Civil War South."

• In a section called "Way of Life":

• "Urban and Rural Life in the United States constrast sharply. Motor vehicles move slowly along a street lined by big buildings in downtown San Antonio, above left. At a county fair, right, farm people show their sheep in a livestock competition."

• An aerial shot: "Sprawling Suburbs surround many American cities. Rows of comfortable houses line the streets of most of them. Highways connect the suburbs with their central cities, where large numbers of suburban dwellers work."

• "Central Cities of most U.S. urban areas have neighborhoods where most people belong to the same racial or ethnic group. In New York City's Harlem area, above left, most people are blacks. A Chicago neighborhood, right has many Spanish-speaking people and some signs in Spanish."

• "The Educational System of the United States includes many learning opportunities outside formal classrooms. An adult education class, above left, offers woodworking lessons. At a museum, right, people study exhibits dealing with space travel."

• "Religion plays an important role in the lives of millions of Americans. The country's churches provide people with moral guidance and places for worship. Many churches are also centers for social gatherings, such as the church picnic shown at the left."

• "Recreational Activities provide the people of the United States with leisure-time enjoyment. Baseball fans thrill to the excitement of the duel between a major-league pitcher and batter, above left. A large group of runners compete—and get exercise—in a marathon race, right."

• In a section called "The Arts":

• "Early Painting and Sculpture emphasized American themes. Most colonial painters concentrated on portraits. John Singleton Copley painted a famous portrait of soldier and politician Thomas Mifflin and his wife, above. The portrait shows Copley's ability to capture the human character of colonial leaders. In the 1800's and early 1900's, many painters turned to the West for subjects. Charles Marion Russell's The Bolter, pictured at the upper right, is typical of this artist's scenes of cowboy life. For generations, the Hopi Indians of Arizona have carved wooden figures called Kachina dolls, right. The Hopi used the statues in religious ceremonies."

• "Modern Painting and Sculpture have produced both abstract and realistic styles. Jackson Pollock gained fame for such paintings as Number 13, 1949, shown above. These paintings consist of rhythmic patterns dribbled onto the painting surface. George Segal placed plaster figures among actual subjects, as in The Butcher Shop, shown at the right.

• "Architecture in the United States developed the skyscraper as one of the most characteristic types of modern building. The Sears Tower, lower left, dominates the Chicago skyline. Frank Lloyd Wright ranks as America's most important architect. Wright's Falling Water house, lower right, shows his ability to blend a structure with its natural setting."

• "Popular Music has taken many forms in the United States. Jazz relies on spontaneous playing by musicians. Trumpeter Louis Armstrong, standing in the center of the group shown at the upper left, was the first great jazz soloist. Country music, left, began as the folk music of Southern whites but soon gained widespread acceptance. Singer Elvis Presley, above, helped make rock music the country's leading type of popular music in the mid- and late 1900's." The country illustration shows older people playing a banjo, guitars, and drums at the Grand Ole Opry. The photo of Elvis shows his '70s style.

• "Motion Pictures have been one of the most popular and influential art forms in the United States since the early 1900's. The animated films of Walt Disney, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, shown at the left, have charmed moviegoers throughout the world. Woody Allen became a leading actor, director, and writer with the success of Annie Hall, shown at the right, and other comedies."

• "Dancing in the United States often explores American subjects. The famous dancer and dance composer Martha Graham created Appalachian Spring, shown above, a ballet that celebrates the courage and dignity of American pioneers during the early 1800's."

• "Theater has produced many masterpieces of serious drama and musical comedy. Arthur Miller's drama Death of a Salesman, shown at the left, deals with a salesman who discovers that his search for success has brought him only disappointment and failure. Frank Loesser wrote the music and words for Guys and Dolls, shown at the right, a musical about colorful characters who live in New York City."

• In a section called "The Land":

• "Rolling Hills dotted by farm buildings stretch across the Appalachian Highlands, which extend from Maine to Alabama. The scene shown above is in West Virginia."

• "A Swamp that includes bald cypress trees lies in Florida's Everglades National Park in the southernmost part of the Coastal Lowlands. The Coastal Lowlands extend from New England to Texas."

• An aerial shot: "Fields of Wheat grown near a rural Montana community on the Interior Plains. The plains, America's vast heartland, stretch from the Appalachian Highlands to the Rocky Mountains."

• "Rugged Hills border a valley in northwestern Arkansas, which is part of the Ozark-Ouachita Highlands. The region also includes parts of Missouri and Oklahoma."

• "The Rocky Mountains, west of the Interior Plains, soar to heights of more than 14,000 feet (4,270 meters) above sea level. The majestic scene above is in Colorado."

• "Desert Areas cover much of the Western Plateaus, Basins, and Ranges land region, west of the Rockies. The land shown above is in the Nevada portion of the Great Basin, a part of the land region."

• "The Pacific Coast forms the western border of the Pacific Ranges and Lowlands region, which extends from Canada to Mexico. Rugged rock formations line parts of the coast, including the California area shown at the left."

• In a section called "Climate":

• "Death Valley, California, the country's driest place, receives less than 2 inches (5 centimeters) of precipitation yearly. It recorded the highest U.S. temperature ever, 134° F. (57° C)."

• "Waimea Canyon, Hawaii, was formed by water flowing from Mount Waialeale. The mountain, the wettest place in the U.s., receives about 460 inches (1,170 centimeters) of precipitation a year."

• "Prospect Creek, Alaska, recorded the lowest U.S. temperature ever, –79.8° F. (–62.1° C). The nearby town of Barrow has the country's lowest annual temperature, 9° F. (–13° C).

• In a section called "Economy":

• "America's Economy produces a greater value of agricultural, manufactured, and mined products than any other country. A huge warehouse, left, stores grain before it is shipped to distant markets. Barges, railroad cars, trucks, and other transportation facilities are used to transport products."

• "Forests are one of the many natural resources that contribute to the U.S. economy. Logs from forests are used for lumber and in making other valuable products."

• "Manufacturing ranks as the single most important economic activity in the United States. The steps in the manufacture of an airplane include building a full-sized model, above."

• "Agriculture includes the raising of both crops and livestock. A mechanized system for fattening cattle for market, above, is one example of the efficient methods used by American farmers."

• "Mining provides vital raw materials for American industry. For example, a strip mine, left, yields coal. Coal, in turn, is used to fuel electric power plants to make steel for many manufactured products."

• "The Construction Industry provides jobs for many Americans. Construction workers help put up a high-rise building in the center of a city, above."

• "Service Industries are those economic activities that provide services rather than products. Data processing, above, is one of the many service industries. Others include government services and the operation of hotels and restaurants."

• "A Network of Highways crisscrosses the United States. Highways form a key part of the nation's excellent transportation system. The construction and repair of highways provides jobs for people through the country."

There are also 10 maps, showing the United States' location on the globe, its political divisions (along with National Parks, railroads, and major highways), its divisions into regions, its population density and centers of population, the shift of its geographic center over time, its terrain, its average January temperatures, its average July temperatures, its average yearly precipitation, and the use of its land. And there are several tables, charts, and graphs.

I won't take the time to write about the illustrations in the separate articles on U.S. Government and U.S. History. Also, obviously, some things that the World Book puts entirely within the U.S. article are things that Wikipedia has separate articles for. Still, as I said, this might give us some ideas for illustrations.

President Lethe 18:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Good place to start. Most of those would be best in their separate articles. Are collages acceptable? Jaxad0127 20:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

"Maybe we could have some two- or more-image collages, kind of like this." :-) President Lethe 20:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

We'd be able to fit more images in with them. Jaxad0127 21:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Centrx, I see that you removed my additional words in the info box, the ones saying that E Pluribus Unum is/was the de facto motto and that In God We Trust is the official motto.

I am not necessarily saying you were wrong to do this—but can you, or someone, please, show me a source that says the motto of the United States ever was officially E Pluribus Unum? What law or act says it?

I am not denying that this is possible. It's just that—although I have seen the legal stuff creating the Great Seal of the United States in the 18th century, and making In God We Trust the official motto of the United States in 1956—I have never found a reputable source saying that E Pluribus Unum was an official motto of the United States and saying what part of the government decided this on what date.

The only official status I've ever seen for E Pluribus Unum is that it is what officially appears on the Great Seal of the United States. In other words: it's the official motto of the seal; it's not the official motto of the country itself.

I've brought this up repeatedly at the Talk page, and don't remember ever seeing a refuting reply.

As I understand it, in the 18th century, they came up with a motto to put on a seal (not a motto for the country itself)—and, over time, people eventually adopted this motto (E Pluribus Unum) as a de facto motto for the country itself—and, then, in 1956, Congress made an offical motto for the country (In God We Trust).

Please, anyone with sources of different information, bring them forward. This isn't sarcasm or rhetoric; it's just that I would like to get this clarified, because I so far have never seen a reputable source saying that the government ever, ever said something to the effect of "The official motto of the United States itself is E Pluribus Unum". Thanks to anyone who can help.

President Lethe 01:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that sounds about right. I'm editing the motto section to say that E Pluribus Unum is the de facto motto and In God We Trust is the de jure motto. R'son-W 20:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

That part of the box has been edited at least twice since I posted here.

First of all, whatever we determine the facts to be, there is, I believe, no great reason not to influde a few small words in the box to make it even clearer. Those words could be de facto, on the one hand, and official or de jure on the other. I think by law is silly; it may be a translation of de jure. But nobody asks "What is the by-law language of country x?" The question is "What is the official language of country x?" In fact, the word by-law, close in spelling to the phrase by law, already exists, with quite a different meaning.

Second, I intend to gather and quote from some sources. We'll then have to judge which one is, or ones are, right, if that's possible.

• The "United States" article of the 1983 The World Book Encyclopedia says, without citing a source,

Motto: In God We Trust, adopted July 30, 1956.

• The "e pluribus unum" entry of the 1983 The World Book Dictionary says, without citing a source,

It is the motto inscribed on the official seal of the United States. It was once the official motto of the United States, but since 1956 the official motto has been "In God We Trust."

• The "In God We Trust" entry of the 1983 The World Book Dictionary says, without citing a source,

the official motto of the United States since 1956.

• The "e pluribus unum" entry of the 1969 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says, without citing a source,

The motto of the United States.

• http://www.answers.com/topic/e-pluribus-unum, seemingly quoting Houghton Mifflin Company, says

E pluribus unum was adopted as a national motto in 1776 and is now found on the Great Seal of the United States and on United States currency.

• http://www.answers.com/topic/e-pluribus-unum, seemingly quoting Answers.com, says

motto of the United states, found on coins

• http://www.answers.com/topic/e-pluribus-unum, seemingly quoting Columbia University press, says

motto on the Great Seal of the United States and on many U.S. coins. Although selected in 1776 by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson for the Continental Congress, it was not officially adopted as a national motto until six years later.

• http://www.greatseal.com/ says that the design of the Great Seal of the United States began in 1776 and was finalized in 1782. As far as I've been able to tell, it says nothing about e pluribus unum as a motto of the United States. It includes a transcript of the original paperwork.

• Wikipedia's own E pluribus unum article, says

E pluribus unum was the first national motto of the United States of America.

It also says

The motto was selected by the first Great Seal committee in 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution.

And it says

In 1956, "In God We Trust" replaced E pluribus unum as the national motto according to United States Code, Title 36, Section 302. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the resolution into law on 30 July 1956.

After that last quote comes a citation link to http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_mott.htm.

• http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_mott.htm says that e pluribus unum was "the original motto of the United States". But, although it describes the process of designing the Great Seal of the United States, it fails to give any clear evidence that e pluribus unum was selected as a motto of the United States itself.

• http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/faq/index.htm, a page at the website of the U.S. Department of State, mentions e pluribus unum in describing the Great Seal of the United States, but not as an official motto for the country itself. This page seems to be the only relevant of the four results of using the website's search feature to find, in quotation marks, "e pluribus unum".

• The State Department page directs the reader to a pamphlet at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/27807.pdf. This 18-page pamphlet, an official publication of the United States government, mentions e pluribus unum and other mottoes many times, but never once says that e pluribus unum was anything more than a motto on (1) the title page of the London Gentlemen's Magazine and (2) the Great Seal of the United States.

• The "E Pluribus Unum" article on the 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of The World Book Encyclopedia says, without citing a source,

is the Latin motto on the face of the Great Seal of the United States (see GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES).

It also says

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, members of the first committee for the selection of the seal, suggested the motto in 1776.

And it says

Since 1873, the law requires that this motto appear on one side of every United States coin that is minted.

• The "Great Seal of the United States" article on the 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of The World Book Encyclopedia says, without citing a source,

In its beak is a scroll inscribed E pluribus unum, or One (nation) out of many (states). Above its head is the 13-star "new constellation" of the 1777 flag, enclosed in a glory, or golden radiance, breaking through a cloud. See E PLURIBUS UNUM.

• The "National Motto, United States" article on the 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of The World Book Encyclopedia says, in its entirety, without citing a source,

National Motto, United States, is In God We Trust. Congress made this phrase the official motto of the United States in 1956. It has appeared on coins since 1864, and probably originated from verse 4 of "The Star-Spangled Banner": "And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'" See also E PLURIBUS UNUM.

• The "United States" article on the 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of The World Book Encyclopedia says, without citing a source,

Motto: In God We Trust, adopted on July 30, 1956.

• A picture caption on the 2001 Standard CD-ROM of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia says, without citing a source,

E pluribus unum is the United States motto, appearing on the nation's coins and paper money, and on many of its public monuments.

The same sentence appears as the opening of a section of the "United States (Overview)" article, without a cited source; that section is called "E Pluribus Unum: The American Experience".

• The same Encarta’s article on the Great Seal of the United States also mentions e pluribus unum, but says nothing about it as a motto of the country itself; no source is cited.

• The same Encarta’s article called "In God We Trust" says, in its entirety, without citing a source,

In God We Trust, national motto of the United States. The phrase derives from the line "And this be our motto, 'In God is our trust,'" in the battle song that later became the U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." The phrase first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864 and became obligatory on all U.S. currency in 1955. In 1956 it was made the national motto by act of Congress.

Interestingly, I don't find Encarta listing "In God We Trust" as a motto of the U.S. unless I specifically look up "In God We Trust". If you're just reading through an article on, say, the United States, the only motto it mentions is E pluribus unum, which it declares the motto of the U.S. Such an omission makes me suspicious.

I'd like to quote more resources; but almost all of my books are inaccessible at the moment.

So, we have

• some webpages (including one at Wikipedia) saying various things, some of which don't cite their sources, and some of which misrepresent their sources

• some reference works saying various things and not citing sources

• a government pamphlet repeatedly mentioning e pluribus unum but failing ever to call it a motto of the U.S.

• a government action from 1782 specifically mentioning e pluribus unum but failing ever to call it a motto of the U.S.

• a law passed in 1956 that explicitly says what the motto of the U.S. is (and it doesn't say e pluribus unum)

• and the Great Seal of the United States—the Seal itself—, which continues (half a century after the 1956 law) to read E PLURIBUS UNUM, which could be taken as evidence that the Seal motto is independent of the national motto.

When we disregard the various contradictory, and often citationless, sources in reference works and at private websites, and stick to actions of the government, we get (or at least this is what we get in my research so far)

• E pluribus unum as the Seal motto, proposed in 1776 and confirmed in 1782

• In God We Trust as the national motto since 1956

And, of course, as we know, many persons and groups have adopted e pluribus unum as a de facto U.S. motto in the 18th–21st centuries.

So, yet again, I say that the infobox should describe E Pluribus Unum as a de facto motto since whenever and on into the present, and In God We Trust as the official motto since 1956. The term de facto should appear; and the term de jure or official (but not by law) should appear.

President Lethe 00:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've already edited the article. I also removed the meaning of e pluribus unum since theres alreaday a link to it's article. I also added a note directing would-be editors to the talk page. Jaxad0127 01:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how good our sources are for the de facto motto, but there only one official national motto, "In God We Trust", per U.S. Code. [1]. - Will Beback 02:18, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

As a historical reference to the previous motto, see the 1911 EB. - Will Beback 02:21, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I just checked the United States Code and Code of Federal Regulations online at GPOAccess (www.gpoaccess.gov). "In God We Trust" isn't mentioned at all in the CFR, and the only mention of "E Pluribus Unum" is in the description of the seal of the NTSB. As for the USC, 36 U.S.C. § 302 has only one line, as follows: "In God we trust" is the national motto. There is one mention of "E Pluribus Unum" at 31 U.S.C. § 5112, which simply describes the design of coins and specifies that "E Pluribus Unum" should be on the reverse side of each U.S. coin. There is only one mention of the Great Seal of the United States in the U.S.C., at 18 U.S.C. § 713, which makes it a crime to knowingly use the Great Seal without proper authorization for a variety of purposes.

So the point is that "In God We Trust" is the official national motto under federal law, and E Pluribus Unum just happens to appear on the coins and the seal. I hope this resolves the debate. -- Coolcaesar 02:26, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for the research help.

• Coolcaesar, I, too, hope it solves things; your conclusion is the same one I've occasionally been trying to convince people of for months here. :-)

• Jaxad0127, thanks for changing the article. Good point about link as translator of Latin.

• Will Beback, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica seems to fit with what we're saying here: (1) it doesn't say E pluribus unum is the official national motto; and (2), though it does describe it as a national motto, this description makes sense in that it was decades before In God We Trust became the official national motto and was at a time when the de facto national motto was the Seal’s official motto.

I do have one concern, though. "De facto" and "official" can sometimes be opposites—kind of like "Official is what's on the books, but de facto is what everyone actually uses/does/says". In the infobox, some readers might get an impression like "IGWT is on the books, but everyone just uses EPU"—which, of course, is not quite true, because both mottos are used today, in 2006, by various groups at various times, even though only IGWT is the official national one.

Does anyone have any ideas about avoiding this? I thought of maybe making the the parenthesis for IGWT say "de facto and official". Thoughts?

President Lethe 03:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on all this are two fold: One, "In God We Trust" is by law the "official motto" so it should include "official" and "E Pluribus Unum" is the "historic" motto. Just put "historic" as a disclaimer and "official" with "In God We Trust". We can't put an end date on "E Pluribus Unum" as that never ended as a national motto, it just never was an official motto. Thus one is historic the other official - both national. Just my two cents - hope it helps. -- Northmeister 07:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds alright to me. Will change article. The thing about no end date on EPU is what I meant by "since whenever and on into the present". :-) — President Lethe 15:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I should think that if "E pluribus unum" was considered the national motto and was put on the U.S. currency, the only reason it wasn't voted as the "official motto" in Congress is that the legislators at the time were not so silly. The problem with "de facto" specifically was that the status of "E pluribus unum" would have changed at a point in the time interval given. The problem with both, as I can see, is that "de facto" and "de jure" are more used in terms of property or sovereignty over lands and unless specified otherwise can imply contradiction. — Centrx→ talk • 05:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the term "historic" is appropriate. "Historic" would imply that EPU is no longer used. Everyone I know assumes that EPU is our motto, and doesn't know that IGWT is the real motto. That's why I suggested "de facto" for EPU. Although "traditional" would work well, too. R'son-W 10:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I see the possible problems with "historic". I also see them for "traditional"—as if there is no tradition of using "In God We Trust", when, in fact, it's been traditionally on coins for more than a century.

Perhaps we should just say something like

Motto

• E Pluribus Unum

• In God We Trust (official, 1956–present)

Thoughts?

President Lethe 17:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Part of the article says

The country is also noteworthy for its relatively high level of religiosity among developed nations. About 46 percent of American adults say that they attend religious services at least once a week, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain, 8 percent in France, and 7 percent in Sweden. Moreover, 58 percent of Americans say they often think about the meaning and purpose of life, compared with 25 percent of the British, 26 percent of the Japanese, and 31 percent of West Germans. ^[1]

I understand that this may originate in the cited souce—but why the U.K., France, and Sweden? And why the U.K., Japan, and West Germany (only part of a country since 1990).

Forgetting, for the moment, the matter of possibly large differences in the polling techniques in various countries, I have a proposal: Can't we make a comparison to the average of the rest of such countries, choosing a specific group (such as G8, or the E.U., or everything on one side of a certain line in Europe—plus Australia and New Zealand and possibly Japan and South Africa)?

There are way more Western countries than just France, part of Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the U.K. Add up those four and a fraction countries' populations and what portion of the total Western population (minus the U.S. population) do you get?

It just seems a highly selective use of statistics.

I know some may object to counting Russia or some of the Eastern European members of the E.U. as Western. But we must be able to come up with something better than France, part of Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the U.K.

I know there's dispute about what countries fit in the categories Western, democratic, modern, developed, first world, free, industrialized, &c., and how those categories overlap. But, because we might get much different results moving from Italy or Spain or Ireland to Finland, I think we should have some kind of average.

Counting most, if not all, of the countries, from the groups I suggested above gives Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany (the whole thing), Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the U.K. (separate statistics for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales?), the U.S., and the Vatican.

I know some of those are very small states and some are in Eastern Europe. But what makes France, part of Germany, Sweden, and the U.K. special?

Also, until I changed it several minutes ago, it said "church" instead of "religious services". Is this accurate or not? Some restrict "church" to Christianity, while others use it to mean other religions' gatherings, too.

President Lethe 16:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Good points. Can someone find more stats on this? Jaxad0127 17:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

This subject should get divided into two, in order to get to the point of what's a westernized society or country like the United States. Religion and secularism aside, this isn't the only definition of how developed a country is and not only religious adherence in higher numbers than that of Europe. In recent years, the notion of a western world includes South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, despite these nations are located outside of Europe. What about countries historically linked with Europe in the 20th century like Turkey, Israel and India? The definition of a western country is one that experiences complete development and now in some degree includes those in a trend for democraticization, economic reform, technology, affordability and progressive action. The U.S. is foremost the leader in the western world, but countries of northwestern Europe, Canada, Japan in Asia, and Australia indeed are not far behind. Other developing countries like Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia might one day share the title as developed, but in the phase of development with the obstacles alike the United States in the 19th century. -- Mike D 26 05:10, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

the US is an inspiration to the world known for prosperity & capitalism. more countries are allies of the US (i name malaysia, singapore, thailand & philippines in SE Asia) inherit most structure of democratic principle to a small extent. i do not call a country a western one, be cause we entered a globalisation era & the centre for world economy is becoming asia except are american based companys provide jobs where are needed. american companys do create jobs in less industrial lands to cut labour costs benefit both asians & americans. i know some of you disagre here but tats how i feel.- pisayan

The United States is the second largest Christian-majority nation in the world (behind Brazil at 89%) [...]

I've never liked the ambiguity of this sentence, regardless of whether it says first or second and mentions Brazil or not. Does it mean "no other country has MORE PERSONS who call themselves Christian" or "no other country has A BIGGER PORTION OF ITS POPULATION calling themselves Christian"?

89% of Brazil's 186,405,000 persons would be 165,900,450.

78% of the United States' 298,217,215 persons would be 232,609,428—which is 40% more persons than the Christians in Brazil.

If 74% of Austrians are Roman Catholic, and another 5% are Protestant, and you throw in 180,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians (in a country of 8 million), you get at least 79% of the population being Christian—higher than the 78% figure for the U.S.

What about Italy, which is about 90% Roman Catholic? Add some Protestants, who are also Christians.

Plenty of countries have larger PORTIONS of their populations claiming Christianity than the U.S. has.

The point is that no country has more ACTUAL PERSONS who claim Christianity. The REAL NUMBER of persons, not their PORTION of the population.

I'm getting rid of the Brazil bit—and rewording the sentence to make it clear that it's about the actual number, not the percentage.

President Lethe 16:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Is mentioning such trivia even necessary? — Centrx→ talk • 05:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for using CAPS so we could read easier. Anyway, I think the phrase "largest Christian majority" is pretty self-explanitory. It means it has the second largest percentage. And some people don't consider it trivia. But thanks for the helpful 2 cents. 69.153.5.43 20:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

If it "means it has the second largest percentage", then it's wrong. The edit history of the article, and my post that started this section of the talk page, demonstrate that.

And I think Centrx is right that it's not so necessary to mention. That the U.S. has more Christians than any other nation is just about to be expected—because only two other countries (China and India) have more persons, and neither of those countries is mostly Christian.

Anyway, that bit has been out of the article for at least a day now.

President Lethe 22:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on United States-religion makes my country look abit aloof, because Europe and other developed countries don't have a strong bond to religious belief. Americans have so much freedom of religion, as the article pinpoints out, no wonder why nearly half the population takes their religious belief seriously, if not fundamentalists. Then again, America isn't only a Christian country, we certainly have a variety: Jews (2%), Muslims (also 2%) and every faith known to mankind. The article fails to mention the cause and effect of religious feelings has in America, the impact on its' politics, culture wars and morality. For a secular progressive democracy like the U.S. to survive, an emphasis of the separation of church and state must be protected. A major thing the U.S. government forbids other than a state church or outlawing any religion, the U.S. Census bureau are forewarned not to collect religious data. This is very true, because of personal privacy issues and the concerns of potential dangers that this data can be used in persecution. But American demographers in amateur or survey fields continue to measure the percentage of Americans in a religion or if they practice it at all. Religion is a deeply sensitive subject, but more vulnerable in the U.S. due to the traditions of religious freedom and political correctness, when it comes to protection of religious minorities in controversial ways. -- Mike D 26 05:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

It is important to realize that the "melting pot" idea has been a core concept of American culture for most of its history. The idea of trying not to assimilate and trying to maintain one's own culture was generally perceived as "unAmerican".

When I was in high school (in Connecticut) in the early 1970s, I learned of two models of American culture - assimilationism (melting pot) and multiculturalism (salad bowl). At the time, I rejected the "salad bowl" model in favor of the "melting pot" model. However, over the last few decades, it has become apparent that their are significant pockets of people in the U.S. who prefer to maintain their culture (e.g. Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, Africans, etc.)

It's not that these people don't learn English and American ways. Of course, they do. However, they also keep many aspects of their culture (e.g. religion, language, etc.).

This is a major and continuing challenge to American culture. There is a dominant culture which is a "melting pot" but still primarily Anglo in nature. There are pockets of immigrant culture and the challenge is how to support and respect these pockets of immigrant culture.

This topic should be treated somewhere in Wikipedia but what I've written is about much detail as is appropriate in this article.

Where should the topic be treated in greater detail?

-- Richard 15:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

See melting pot and salad bowl. Cheers. -- Yuje 15:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I had only looked at salad bowl this morning but now that I look at melting pot, I see that it does a good job of treating the contrast. -- Richard 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

What if we mix them together and get "soup"? Jaxad0127 15:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)]

Nah, you're more likely to get soggy greens in cheese fondue.  ;^) -- Richard 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey, everyone. Don't forget what melting pot means in this context. If you pour some liquid zinc into some liquid copper, you don't get "zinc that has assimilated itself and become copper just like everything else around it": you get brass. The point about melting pot has never been that newcomers just adopt the culture that's already there: it's that they adopt it while it simultaneously adopts them. Think about it: Italian immigrants, for example didn't "assimilate" into eating sort of British-based American food; instead, they came along, adopted some stuff, contributed some stuff—so that, nowadays, most Americans have some kind of Italian-based food in their cultural diet.

The melting pot is indeed different from the salad bowl. But it's multidirectional adoption/assimilation: it's not that the newcomers just end up copying the old. If it were that way, then blacks, for example, would have just adopted European music—end of story—, and we wouldn't have ragtime, blues, jazz, rock'n'roll, rap, &c.

President Lethe 16:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Very well said, couldn't have said it better myself. -- Northmeister 16:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. But that zinc/copper metaphor only applies to the U.S. if you allow for pools of zinc and copper to float around the melting pot in an unalloyed state.

If you ask "Well, which is it? melting pot or salad bowl?", the answer must be Both and Neither. We are not all becoming one culture as was expected and advocated in the 1950's. And yet there are no immigrant groups that create real enclaves in which the culture remains "pure" and unAmericanized.

The point is: The melting pot emphasizes the mixing of cultures and the formation of a new one from the inputs. The salad bowl emphasizes the intermingling of cultures without substantive change. Neither is quite the right metaphor but the two taken together describe what has been going on here for 200+ years.

The difference is that we are shifting from a predominantly "melting pot" model to more of a mixed "melting pot/salad bowl" metaphor. Few descendants of German, Italian and Polish immigrants speak the language of their forebears. Many Asian and Islamic second- and third- generation kids are being sent to schools that teach the language of their parents and grandparents. Spanish, Chinese and Arabic are spoken at home not just because grandparents and parents aren't comfortable in English but as a mark of cultural identity and pride.

I (born in Chicago) don't speak Chinese but my wife (born in Hong Kong, came here at 6yrs old) does. My children (9 and 7 yrs old) speak better Chinese than I do.

It is far more likely that children and grandchildren will visit the native countries of their parents and grandparents while they are still children and on a frequent (as often as annual) basis. We haven't visited China but many of my children's friends do.

To assert that America is a "melting pot" is not inaccurate but it smacks of the assimilationism of the first part of the 20th century. Taken as a strict analogy, I dislike the "salad bowl" metaphor. However, the fact remains that multiculturalism is here to stay.

-- Richard 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I wasn't getting in on the argument of whether it's a melting pot or a salad bowl (I agree that it's both); I was just reminding people of what melting pot means (that it does not mean immigrants just throw away their old culture and replace it with the new one, but that instead the 'old country' and 'new country' cultures influence each other and create something new, a hybrid).

Also, most children and grandchildren of immigrants do speak English (many as a first language), even if they also end up taking classes to help them remember, or learn for the first time, their recent ancestors' language. (I'm not expressing this as argument against anything you said, Richard. My motivation, besides plain old information, is my annoyance at the pundits who rave about immigrants' supposedly coming along to destroy English in America; just letting off steam.)

President Lethe 18:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This talk of alloys reminds me of making orange Play-Doh when I was little, from red and yellow. In the process of kneading it together, before I was done, I would end up with some bits being very well mixed, while others were still at other points on the red–orange and yellow–orange spectra. I think that's what we've always had and still have in the U.S., though the amount of this differentiation rises and falls at various times and in various areas. We do have some bits where the red and yellow are still almost pure, and bits where they're slightly mixed, and bits where they're more mixed, and bits where we have just about the closest we're going to get to a perfectly medial orange. — President Lethe 18:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

If someone told me this morning that come nighttime, I'd believe that the best metaphor for American culture is Play-Doh, I would laugh at them. But, here I am! R'son-W 09:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

America (the U.S.) was founded, settled and rebuilt over and over by each wave of immigrants, and how the country's tremendous ethnic diversity seems to contradict the depiction of the U.S. has a homogenous uniform culture based on Anglo-European (English or British) background. Right now, more and more Americans are irritated with the recent influx of immigration, esp. the illegal kind, aren't completely assimilated and our current social mores of "catering to their culture" does angers some Americans. Older generations recall a time when most did oppose multicultural pluralism, our government refused to allow documents printed in other languages, businesses can easily discriminate ethnic groups and how the majority accepted deragatory ethnic stereotypes, jokes or slurs to dehumanize those different must conform or get out of America. How come the country is afraid to advise the newcomers to adjust and adapt to a new culture? It's not the same as telling them to give up their language, customs, heritage or even their religion. This was the way American society functioned as recently as the 1950s, before the civil rights movement and ethnic pride in the 1960's and 70s as a result of liberal and political correct activism. To encourage assimilation of immigrants today is considered a form of racism, nationalism and intolerance against a race or culture as "un-American" and smacks of dreaded memories (teasing, violence and officialized segregation of those "different" who refuse to "conform" with what was then a mostly White Anglo Protestant Christian country.) If a social movement to encourage immigrants to learn the language, respect our customs and become an American citizen worked then, but is now called wrong beats me. We need to be tolerant, accept others who are different and allow each individual or community to celebrate their heritage. Ethnic bigotry and racism (esp. against African Americans) is a major problem in U.S. history, but we must focus on becoming more than a "melting pot" or "salad bowl" with mismatch ingriedents. Might as well become a "sandwich" stacked together and the condiments will taste right...notably diverse but very united. -- Mike D 26 05:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Didn't congress say that English was the common and unifying language? And isn't that political lingo for "official language"? Seriously. And I know some people will say "no, it's not political lingo for 'official language'", but I think it's obvious that it is, seeing as congress introduced it in the middle of the immigrant debate, and what other purpose would a federal legislature have to call a language "common and unifying" if they aren't making it official? 69.153.5.43 21:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

"Didn't congress say that English was the common and unifying language?" No, I don't think they did. And if they did, the senate didn't. And if they did, it doesn't matter til the president signs it, which he hasn't. -- Golbez 21:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Legislation that did not pass, and which had a specific issue over whether to say "national language" or "official language", certainly doesn't make for an official language of the U.S. In terms of common, prevalent use, English is the de facto official ("official" in the sense of "used in government business") language of the U.S.; but it's not the de jure official language (no law says it is; and efforts in this vein have so far failed). Some of the individual states have one or more de jure official languages, as English, Spanish (in at least one of the Southwestern states, and in at least one town in Texas), French (Louisiana), &c. If I remember right, German was an official language of Pennsylvania until the 1950s. — President Lethe 22:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe the Senate actually has passed that amendment, but the House and Senate still need to hammer out the differences. And Golbez is right, until it passes by the President, it's not law. Matt Yeager ♫ ( Talk?) 22:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

(Just to clarify: When I said "pass", I meant House and Senate agreeing on exactly the same thing and sending it on to the president. — President Lethe 03:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC))

This is actually quite simple to answer. As of right now there is no official language in the United States. Period. English is, as it has always been on the federal level, the de-facto main language of this country. Please do not add speculations here, an encyclopedia is to feature facutal content only. Thank you. Regards, Signature ^brendel 19:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The whole thing is pretty silly. The United States officially has no official language. As far as I can tell, though, English functions in the US in exactly the same manner as official languages do in countries that have official languages. All road signs and street signs are in English (in some places they are also in other languages, but I don't know of any places where they are only in other languages); all debate in the United States Congress and in every state legislature takes place in English; all laws and other government documents are written and printed in English. English is the language in use in all government offices. With a few exceptions, one must demonstrate proficiency in English to become a naturalized citizen. More or less all public education is in English (certainly the vast majority is). Besides the fact that English isn't called the official language, is there any way it does not meet the standards of "official language" held by other countries that do have official languages? john k 19:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is no law. What you described above is true and that's why English is the de-facto official language of the US. Regards, Signature ^brendel 19:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the portal would be even better with broader participation. Perhaps people that have worked on this article would be interested? One way to broaden participation is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If you would like to nominate or weigh in on what should be featured, please visit the portal. Or if you would like to help in any other way (update news, improve the topics box, etc.) please also stop by. I think the portal is close to featured portal status, and added participation would get it there. Thanks. - Aude ( talk contribs) 21:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The demographics part of this page leaves alot to be desired. It says how many "white" people there are. It breaks down the "types of white" people and gives their percentage. It does not give a percentage for African Americans or Native Americans, or Latinos. It just gives facts about them (which I am not disputing). Rivka 15:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is trying to avoid controversy in an odd manner, like some white Americans will get frightened over this statistical fact. But my advice is simply go to the U.S. Census website on the net to find out on the percentage of racial groups in the U.S. I thought of collecting the data to send as an edit to the United States article-demographics. Then again, someone could delete it or report me for "vandalism" or the edits are inflammatory to any racial group. Don't you think it's ridiculous in a free country like the U.S. and no matter how someone get educated enough on dealing with people, can't handle the issue of race? Well...the percentage of racial groups isn't the same violation, like if an anon IP leaves a racially charged message. -- Mike D 26 05:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Is the United States the longest surviving republic? The tiny Republic of San Marino is an independent nation and has been so from the middle ages. It's current constitution was written in 1600. -- 58.105.130.75 20:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

But has it been a republic since then? Signature ^brendel 20:44, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:United States/Frequently asked questions. Looks like you obviously missed the link at the top of this page! -- Coolcaesar 21:45, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

This table may be useful for this article and/or other Wikipedia articles about religions and nonreligion in the United States. It is based on the table on page 58 [2] of the 2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States [3], by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The original table in the Abstract just lists the religion or other group, the number of U.S. adults giving that answer to an open-ended question in 1990, and the number of U.S. adults giving that answer to an open-ended question in 2001.

I have computed some additional details, based on those figures: the percentage of the whole population that each group took up in 1990 and in 2001; the percentage of change in actual number over that span of years; the percentage of change in the portion of the adult population that each group made up over that span of years; and the change in percentage points of the portion of the adult population that each group made up over that span of years.

For example, if the adult population in 1990 was 100 persons, and it was 200 persons in 2001, and if a certain group had 50 persons in 1990 (column 2) and had grown to 150 persons in 2001 (column 7), then

(1) the percentage (portion) of the population in 1990 was 50 (50 is 50% of 100) (column 3)

(2) the percentage (portion) of the population in 2001 was 75 (150 is 75% of 200) (column 8)

(3) the percentage of change in the actual number was 300 (150 is 300% of 50) (column 4)

(4) the percentage of increase in the percentage (portion) of the population was 50% (75% is 50% bigger than 50%) (column 5)

(5) the increase in percentage points was 25 (75% has 25 more percentage points than 50% has) (column 6).

The Abstract calls the table "Self-Described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 and 2001". The original table is expressed in thousands ("175,440" represents 175,440,000); but I've added the extra three zeros to each number of persons.

Unlike some Western countries, the U.S. doesn't have an official government roll listing each person and his/her religious status. The U.S. Census Bureau got this information from non-government sources.

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2001 was based on a random digit[–]dialed telelphone survey of 50,281 American residential households in the continental U.S.A. (48 states). Respondents were asked to describe themselves in terms of religion with an open-ended question. Interviewers did not prompt or offer a suggested list of potential answers. Moreover, the self-description of respondents was not based on whether established bodies, institutions, churches, mosques or synagogues considered them to be members. Quite the contrary, the survey sought to determine whether the respondents themselves regarded themselves as adherents of a religious community. Subjective rather than objective standards of religious identification were tapped by the surveys.

The Abstract lists the source of the 1990 data as Barry A. Kosmin's and Seymour P. Lachman's One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (1993); and the source of the 2001 data as Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar, of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (New York, New York), specifically their American Religious Identification Survey (2001).

Sorry about the alignment. It seems that, no matter what I do, I haven't figured out how to make Wiki tables have some right-aligned columns.

Footnotes are from the original table (i.e., they're not my creation).

Religion, &c.	1990 Number	1990 Percentage of Population	Percentage of Change in Actual Number, 1990–2001	Percentage of Change in Percentage- of- Population	Change in Percentage Points of Population	2001 Number	2001 Percentage of Population
Adult population, total¹	175,440,000	100.00	+18.5	—	—	207,980,000	100.00
Total Christian	151,496,000	86.35	+5.3	–11.19	–9.66	159,506,000	76.69
Catholic	46,004,000	26.22	+10.6	–6.72	–1.76	50,873,000	24.46
Baptist	33,964,000	19.36	–0.4	–15.98	–3.09	33,830,000	16.27
Protestant—no denomination supplied	17,214,000	9.81	–73.0	–77.23	–7.58	4,647,000	2.23
Methodist/Wesleyan	14,174,000	8.08	–0.2	–15.79	–1.28	14,150,000	6.80
Lutheran	9,110,000	5.19	+5.2	–11.29	–0.59	9,580,000	4.61
Christian—no denomination supplied	8,073,000	4.60	+75.3	+47.85	+2.20	14,150,000	6.80
Presbyterian	4,985,000	2.84	+12.3	–5.31	–0.15	5,596,000	2.69
Pentecostal/Charismatic	3,191,000	1.82	+38.1	+16.50	+0.30	4,407,000	2.12
Episcopalian/Anglican	3,042,000	1.73	+13.4	–4.30	–0.07	3,451,000	1.66
Mormon / Latter-Day Saints	2,487,000	1.42	+12.1	–5.47	–0.08	2,787,000	1.34
Churches of Christ	1,769,000	1.01	+46.6	+23.65	+0.24	2,593,000	1.25
Jehovah’s Witness	1,381,000	0.79	–3.6	–18.70	–0.15	1,331,000	0.64
Seventh-Day Adventist	668,000	0.38	+8.4	–8.57	–0.03	724,000	0.35
Assemblies of God	660,000	0.38	+67.6	+41.36	+0.16	1,106,000	0.53
Holiness/Holy	610,000	0.35	–6.7	–21.32	–0.07	569,000	0.27
Congregational / United Church of Christ	599,000	0.34	+130.1	+94.06	+0.32	1,378,000	0.66
Church of the Nazarene	549,000	0.31	–0.9	–16.41	–0.05	544,000	0.26
Church of God	531,000	0.30	+77.8	+49.96	+0.15	944,000	0.45
Orthodox (Eastern)	502,000	0.29	+28.5	+8.38	+0.02	645,000	0.31
Evangelical²	242,000	0.14	+326.4	+259.73	+0.36	1,032,000	0.50
Mennonite	235,000	0.13	+47.2	+24.20	+0.03	346,000	0.17
Christian Science	214,000	0.12	–0.4	–23.53	–0.03	194,000	0.09
Church of the Brethren	206,000	0.12	+73.8	+46.60	+0.05	358,000	0.17
Born Again²	204,000	0.12	–72.5	–76.84	–0.09	56,000	0.03
Nondenominational²	195,000	0.11	+1,176.4	+976.71	+1.09	2,489,000	1.20
Disciples of Christ	144,000	0.08	+241.7	+188.21	+0.15	492,000	0.24
Reformed / Dutch Reform	161,000	0.09	+79.5	+51.42	+0.05	289,000	0.14
Apostolic / New Apostolic	117,000	0.07	+117.1	+83.13	+0.06	254,000	0.12
Quaker	67,000	0.04	+223.9	+173.21	+0.07	217,000	0.10
Full Gospel	51,000	0.03	+229.4	+177.87	+0.05	168,000	0.08
Christian Reform	40,000	0.03	+97.5	+66.60	+0.02	79,000	0.04
Foursquare Gospel	28,000	0.02	+150.0	+110.89	+0.02	70,000	0.03
Fundamentalist	27,000	0.02	+125.9	+90.58	+0.01	61,000	0.03
Salvation Army	27,000	0.02	+7.4	–21.89	–0.00	25,000	0.01
Independent Christian Church	25,000	0.01	+184.0	+139.57	+0.02	71,000	0.03
Total other religions	5,853,000	3.34	+32.2	+11.55	+0.39	7,740,000	3.72
Jewish	3,137,000	1.79	–9.8	–23.87	–0.43	2,831,000	1.36
Muslim/Islamic	527,000	0.30	+109.5	+76.71	0.23	1,104,000	0.53
Buddhist	401,000	0.29	+169.8	+127.61	+0.29	1,082,000	0.52
Unitarian/Universalist	502,000	0.29	+25.3	+5.69	+0.02	629,000	0.30
Hindu	227,000	0.13	+237.4	+184.65	+0.24	766,000	0.37
Native American	47,000	0.03	+119.1	+84.86	+0.02	103,000	0.05
Scientologist	45,000	0.03	+22.2	+3.10	+0.00	55,000	0.03
Baha’i	28,000	0.02	+200.0	+153.06	+0.02	84,000	0.04
Taoist	23,000	0.01	+73.9	+46.70	+0.01	40,000	0.02
New Age	20,000	0.01	+240.0	+186.80	+0.02	68,000	0.03
Echankar	18,000	0.01	+44.4	+21.85	+0.00	26,000	0.01
Rastafarian	14,000	0.01	–21.4	–33.72	–0.00	11,000	0.01
Sikh	13,000	0.01	+338.5	+269.86	+0.02	57,000	0.03
Wiccan	8,000	0.005	+1,575.0	+1,312.93	+0.06	134,000	0.06
Deity	6,000	0.003	+716.7	+588.89	+0.02	49,000	0.02
Druid	—	—	—	—	—	33,000	0.02
Santeria	—	—	—	—	—	22,000	0.01
Pagan	—	—	—	—	—	140,000	0.07
Spiritualist	—	—	—	—	—	116,000	0.06
Ethical Culture	—	—	—	—	—	4,000	0.002
Other unclassified	837,000	0.48	–53.9	–61.10	–0.29	386,000	0.19
No religion specified, total	14,331,000	8.17	+105.7	+73.53	+6.01	29,481,000	14.17
Atheist	—	—	—	—	—	902,000	0.43
Agnostic	1,186,000	0.68	–16.4	–29.51	–0.20	991,000	0.48
Humanist	29,000	0.02	+69.0	+42.53	+0.01	49,000	0.02
Secular	—	—	—	—	—	53,000	0.03
No religion	13,116,000	7.48	+109.6	+76.77	+5.74	27,486,000	13.22
Refused to reply to question	4,031,000	2.30	+179.0	+135.34	+3.11	11,246,000	5.41

¹ Refers to the total number of adults in all 50 states. All other figures are based on projections from surveys conducted in the continental [sic] United States (48 states).

² Because of the subjective nature of replies to open-ended question[s], these categories are the most unstable as they do not refer to clearly identifiable denominations as much as underlying feelings about religion. Thus they may be the most subject to fluctuation over time.

I think it's interesting to note the changes that occurred over eleven years. I wonder how things have changed in the five years since 2001.

I'm glad the government has to rely on outside sources for this information.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that we put this table into the article. I just provide it here for reference, because I think the source is highly reputable (it's what the Census Bureau itself relies on for the Abstract) and because there's been some recent fiddling with the figures in the Religion part of the article.

If anyone catches an error, please, mention it: I may have mistranscribed a digit here or there.

President Lethe 22:27, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• A month or 2 ago, I e-mailed the private agency that did the survey asking why they assumed non-denominational was Xn - given there are already non-denom Protestants & non-denom-Xns listed. No reply yet. -- JimWae 01:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
• look here for right-alignment -- JimWae 01:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you mean you emailed them about? I can think of at least three different answers that respondents might give to that open-ended question, each of which could result in a different item on that list of survey results: "I'm religious, but I don't have a denomination" (keeps person out of "no religion" category, but nothing more), "I'm Christian, but I don't have a denomination" (puts person into Christian category, but nothing more), and "I'm Protestant, but I don't have a denomination" (puts person into Protestant Christian category, but nothing more).

Thanks for the advice about aligning; I hope to have the time for it soon (that table already took me a long time today, even though I'd done some of the work last year).

President Lethe 04:40, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• Notice they have 3 categories of non-denoms. They decided ALL non-denoms were Xn. This can only be a mistake, I believe. I should hope they fix this for of the next survey. Btw, the summary data should probably NOT come between the years. Somebody also insisted on adjusting the figures for non-responses -- JimWae 04:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Just now noticed your reply here. Yes, I see the three "nondenominational" categories all under the Christian heading. It makes sense to me for two of them: people can give such answers as "I'm Christian but without a denomination", "I'm Protestant but without a denomination". But you're right: "Christian—no denomination supplied" and "Nondenominational", both under the "Christian" heading—one should be a duplicate of the other, one would think.

I agree with you that perhaps the two years shouldn't be so far apart. My idea was "the earlier year, the information about the changes during the transition, and then the later year". It might be easier if some of the columns were shaded. Unfortunately, without one of those utilities (non of which I've tried yet), making big tables at Wikipedia is very tedious—and shifting columns around is even more so.

Important point: Please, clarify "Somebody also insisted on adjusting the figures for non-responses". Do you mean the original researches made odd odjustments? Do you mean the Census Bureau didn't accurately report the results of the researchers' work? Do you mean that I made an error in creating my table?

President Lethe 18:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there any information on how many many percent of Muslims in the US are Shiites or Sunnis? -Wikipedia-fan

brendel left this message at my Talk page:

US native speaker percentage

Hi, it just occured to me that difference in our percentages (79% vs. 82%) could be as we are using differently dated info. What year is the 214.8 mil figure? Signature ^brendel 03:40, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

There is only one source for all my figures on language. It is the source mentioned in two non-footnote links in the paragraph itself (the Language paragraph in the U.S. article): http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/pop.pdf. (I failed to get the normal reference encoding to work right for me; that's why I just put it in as a link in brackets, which gets shortened to a numbered link in brackets, but in a sequence separate from the article's reference footnotes.) I mentioned the same source in what became Archive 15 of this Talk page:

The U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States includes a table of languages spoken at home by members of the U.S. population aged 5 years and up; it's on page 47 of this PDF. "The American Community Survey universe is limited to the household population and excludes the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters." The table is "Based on a sample and subject to sampling variability". The numbers are rounded to the thousands. The table is dated 2003. The table says the total population aged five years and up was 263,230,000. (The 214,809,000 persons aged 5 and up who speak only English at home are indeed about 81.61% of the total population of persons aged 5 and up.) Here are the contents of that table, reordered by rank.

Rank	Language	Speakers
1	English only	214,809,000
2	Spanish or Spanish Creole	29,698,000
3	Chinese	2,193,000
4	French (including Patois, Cajun)	1,379,000
5	Tagalog	1,262,000
6	Vietnamese	1,104,000
7	German	1,094,000
8	Korean	967,000
9	Italian	782,000
10	Russian	705,000
11	Polish	601,000
12	Portuguese or Portuguese Creole	560,000
13	Arabic	558,000
14	Other Asian languages	525,000
15	Other Indic languages	524,000
16	African languages	503,000
17	French Creole	483,000
18	Japanese	475,000
19	Hindi	396,000
20	Other Indo-European languages	376,000
21	Persian	360,000
22	Urdu	335,000
23	Greek	333,000
24	Other West Germanic languages	311,000
25	Other Pacific Island languages	300,000
26	Other Slavic languages	284,000
27	Gujarathi	280,000
28	Serbo-Croatian	234,000
29	Armenian	195,000
30	Miao, Hmong	175,000
31	Laotian	174,000
32	Hebrew	168,000
33	Other Native North American language[s]	166,000
34	Mon-Khmer, Cambodian	163,000
35	Yiddish	142,000
36	Other and unspecified languages	142,000
37	Scandinavian languages	136,000
38	Navajo	136,000
39	Thai	112,000
40	Hungarian	90,000

I hope that helps clarify things. Indeed, we should try not to mix figures of different years, especially when coming up with percentages—and we should mention in the article text what years we're talking about.

President Lethe 04:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Rounded to the thousands:

Total U.S. population in 2003: 291,082,000.

Total U.S. population aged 5 and up in 2003: 263,230,000.

Total U.S. population aged 5 and up and speaking only English at home in 2003: 214,809,000.

214,809,000 ÷ 263,230,000 = 81.6%.

214,809,000 ÷ 291,082,000 = 73.8%—but this is irrelevant for what we're talking about. The figures for all the languages are restricted to those persons aged 5 years and older—so we have to consider the English-speakers as a portion of those aged five and up, not as a portion of the whole population including people 3 years old and 2 days old.

President Lethe 05:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this helps. I had 276,256,000 above the age of six, this came from infobox. The number makes sense, now and for a while we were indeed using differently dated states. Thanks for clearing things up and going through the trouble to post all this data right here. Best Regards, Signature ^brendel 06:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be moved to United States of America? It's the full name of the country. It's odd that it's at "United States." -- Howdybob 11:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

DUDE! ARE YOU BLIND OR DYSLEXIC OR SOMETHING? Read the top of this page! There's a humongous link RIGHT THERE to Talk:United States/Frequently asked questions. That's the sixth or seventh time that question has been asked this year! -- Coolcaesar 16:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Calm down. It's easy to miss that notice. -- tomf688 ( talk - email) 18:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

My goodness, please be civil. -- WGee 03:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Take a valium or something, man. -- R'son-W (speak to me/ breathe) 05:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, looking at it, it's not that big. Quite easy to miss. -- R'son-W (speak to me/ breathe) 05:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is. Jaxad0127 06:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have fairly high resolution on my display, and I had to scroll around and look and look to find that 'warning', even though I knew it was there. It's not really highlighted or anything, and the wording doesn't really shout "Before you bring up issues that we've settled repeatedly, please, see this other page first." (And "simmah down now" edit summary: great laugh.) — President Lethe 13:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's easy to miss the FAQ link. Perhaps it should be moved to the very top of this talk page. JonathanFreed 04:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

With 70pt font, mid-red color, bold and a large warning image. Jaxad0127 04:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

And <blink>. -- Golbez 04:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe not that big or colorful, but making that link larger and bold would help. Okay, I got carried away but newbies keep bringing up what is already a closed issue.-- Coolcaesar 21:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, the issue is not closed. The importance of consensus is ongoing; the need for consensus did not end with the May 2006 vote. Also, please avoid even using the term "newbies". JonathanFreed 03:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, if we go differently than all the other big encyclopedias on this issue (and they all use a common name policy which means they use the "United States" title), then we'll give those Britannica clowns yet another reason to compare Wikipedia to a public toilet (there is a notorious essay by the former editor of Britannica lying around on the Web somewhere). Basically, any change would have to involve a massive grass-roots movement to push the other big encyclopedias towards an "official name" policy (or else Wikipedia will just look like the weird outlier) and I don't see that happening. Most Wikipedians support matching other encyclopedias on editorial policies to improve WP's legitimacy. Or else it will be the Rodney Dangerfield of encyclopedias — it just can't get no respect. -- Coolcaesar 05:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The 2005 print edition of Britannica uses "United States of America", not "United States". Using common names is presently a guideline, not a policy, and exceptions are allowed to both. JonathanFreed 14:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was looking at Britannica two weeks ago in the public library and I'll concede that Britannica Macropaedia uses "United States of America," but the online version of Britannica as well as Britannica Micropaedia both use "United States." Also, there are other well-known encyclopedias out there, like MSN Encarta, World Book, Americana, Columbia, Grolier, etc. All of them use "United States." I suspect that Encarta and World Book are actually better known to most non-intellectuals since their structure is less confusing than Britannica's weird Micropaedia/Macromedia/Propaedia mess — and they're much cheaper so most middle-class families can afford one or the other. Plus there's the huge Microsoft marketing machine, of course). As I have said many times, there is no need for Wikipedia to be the odd man out. And I reiterate all the other good reasons given previously for the status quo at Talk:United States/Name.-- Coolcaesar 21:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

1. The issue can be temporarily 'closed' and then 'reopened'.

2. Whatever is decided, it should be stuck with for a long while. Moving back and forth is a waste of time and effort and computer resources. Either way, redirect pages automatically take care of it.

3. Are we going to start naming the U.K. article "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"? Will France's be renamed "French Republic"? Will Mexico's be renamed "United Mexican States"? Will Germany's be renamed "Federal Republic of Germany"? Will South Africa's become "Republic of South Africa"? Will Austria's become "Republic of Austria"? On and on and on. Let's go ahead and rename Virginia's ("Commonwealth of Virginia"), Massachusetts's ("Commonwealth of Massachusetts"), California's ("Republic of California"), Rhode Island's ("State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations"), &c., &c., &c., while we're at it. And New York City's should become "City of New York". (Sarcasm is intended not rudely but just to support a point.)

President Lethe 14:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Howdybob appears to have suggested an exception to the guideline, and not a change to the guideline itself. As such, we need not consider the consequences of changing the guideline, which might include the renamings mentioned by Preslethe. JonathanFreed 20:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The off-putting examples above are devoid of all logic. Using the name US for USA is like using only "republic" for "French (Austrian) republic" or the ""Federal Republic" for "Federal Republic of Germany". Not the way around as suggested above. The other halves of the name France(Austria) and Germany are clear enough. Unfortunately that does not go for America, which is just too ambiguous as name for the country. A point could be made that UK is similar to US though. − Woodstone 20:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Right. We use 'United States' becuase no other courty has that exact phrase in it's name. The closest is Mexico (United mexican States). Jaxad0127 21:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not whether the shorthand is inherently logical that is the point here. It's what people actually use to refer to the object. All American journalists routinely use "United States" on air and in writing. They might use "United States of America" once or twice a month to make an editorial point (for example, to show a serious tone of voice) but insisting on saying the full name every single time would get them fired (which is why no one does that). Similarly, most Americans simply say "United States" or "U.S." most of the time. And that's what Wikipedia should follow.

Like more established encyclopedias, Wikipedia follows an empirical system of naming---what do people actually use to refer to something?---not an inherently logical one. We're descriptive, not prescriptive; we follow, not lead. This conclusion follows logically from Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (specifically, not a soapbox) and the non-negotiable core policy WP:NPOV. This is like the difference between sociologists and philosophers. Sociologists merely describe what people do, while philosophers talk about what they should do. -- Coolcaesar 21:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Exceptions to guidelines can breed changes to guidelines.

2. My point numbered 3 above could be construed as support for naming the article just "America" (in line with "France", "Massachusetts", &c.)—but the real point was 'short versus long', not which part of the long form is absent from the short. Although others here have helped clarify this since my last post, I also wanted to do it myself.

3. I also support the 'Let's mimic most other reputable encyclopedias in article naming' sentiment.

President Lethe 00:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The majority of Wikipedias in other languages use their translations of our full name "The United States of America". For example french, italian, kurdish, norweigian (bokmål), russian, turkish, et cetera. Few use the translation of "United States". More use the transcription of USA then "United States". Since it's the full name, we should follow suit. -- R'son-W (speak to me/ breathe) 00:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

And thats probably the standard in their language, but its not in ours. Jaxad0127 01:19, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Each Wikipedia evolves to respond to the needs of its audience. As for the English language, all other well-known English language encyclopedias aimed at a general audience use "United States," with the exception of Britannica Macropaedia. -- Coolcaesar 01:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

(In this kind of argument, I'm always serious and I'm always playing devil's advocate.)

These are other languages, other Wikipedias, not the English-language one. Some (but not I) might say doing it just because other languages do it is on the slippery slope to adopting French quotation marks and Greek question marks and Ugandan spelling.

Anyway, the point is to entitle the article in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Because this is an English encyclopedia, we want to use the term most likely to be entered by someone using English words to search for the article. There is a good handful of different terms that someone might type—but simple "United States" is probably the most likely.

Let's also not forget that the federal government satisfies itself with the short form very often, even when being quite formal. "Great Seal of the United States" (on the back of the $1 bill; the seal itself doesn't name the country at all), "United States Air Force", "Seal of the President of the United States", "Treasurer of the United States", "United States Postal Service" (I know it's not part of the government), seal of "U.S. Department of the Interior", seal of "U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development", seal of "U.S. Department of Homeland Security", "United States Army", "United States Navy", "United States Marine Corps", "United States Coast Guard", "United States Capitol", "Supreme Court of the United States", "Seal of the Supreme Court of the United States", &c.

"of America" is included, however, on the seals of the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, State, Labor, Energy, Education, Defense, and Commerce. The seal of the Department of Health and Human Services uses "USA". Yet, despite what's on these seals, all these departments are called United States Department of x—and that's what their Wikipedia articles are called, too.

I think following the custom of most other common, reputable, general encyclopedias published in English is a better argument than following the custom of non-English Wikipedias.

Also, if the article is renamed, then, if we wanted to avoid redirection, thousands and thousands of Wikipedia articles that include the text [[United States]] would have to be edited to read [[United States of America]] or, to keep the sentence flow, [[United States of America|United States]] ("So-and-so is a United States author" or "So-and-so is a United States of America author"?)—which some might call a big waste of time, effort, and resources.

President Lethe 01:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Please help summarize the two sides on the FAQ page. I have started a summary, though it needs some serious help. I would like to see points for both sides with counterpoints. Also, somebody must have a better idea than me regarding the visual formatting, please. JonathanFreed 02:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Arguably, mature people admit when they're wrong. Arguably, I am not a mature person. :) I admit that I have not found any justification for the statement that "United States of America" is the official name. It does not appear to have been explicitly defined as such in either the Constitution or the law, and so I have updated the FAQ accordingly. Can anybody find such a official definition? JonathanFreed 21:45, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey there, Jonathan.

"United States of America" is the official name. It's just that this Wikipedia article is called by the common name.

The Declaration of Independence, at its very top, says "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America". One of the concluding paragraphs begins "We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America". (Emphasis in original.)

The very first Article of Confederation says "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'"

The preamble to the Constitution says "We the People of the United States [* * *] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".

The CIA World Factbook gives the "conventional long form" as "United States of America".

President Lethe 22:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, I think "United States" is as official as "United States of America". The difference is simply that one is shorter than the other. — President Lethe 22:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I know this topic is warned as closed, but just a quick note. The previous comment is correct, I think. A good and classic source on placenames of the United States, including the nation's name itself, is George R. Stewart's book "Names on the Land". In it, he describes how the issue of what to call the new nation came up during the revolutionary era but was never officially resolved. The first recorded use of "United States of America" was by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, a variant on the commonly used "United Colonies" or "United Colonies of America" or "United Colonies of North America". Commissions in the continental army were given with one of these "colony" names. The 1778 alliance treaty with France uses "United States of North America" in the very first sentence. The name was debated in the years before the 1787 constitutional convention, with the strongest rival suggestion being Columbia, which was popular enough to be used in many smaller ways (South Carolina used it for their new capital in 1786, for example). But the topic was not debated at the constitutional convention. During the convention, some people used "United States" and others used "United States of America", and in the end, both terms were used in the Constitution. Yes, the longer name occurs in the first sentence, but the shorter one is used more often. There are some funny conflicts of usage too. The chief executive is called the "President of the United States of America", but is required to take an oath of office given as "I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States." The Constituion, and other founding documents, are careless about the nation's name. Stewart's discussion on the topic ends with: "The makeshift establishment of the national name was the worst misfortune in our whole naming-history. Its too great length has consumed paper, ink, time, and energy. Its vagueness and inaccuracy have caused incalculable misunderstanding, and bad feeling. Yet the trouble has never been acute enough to occassion an amendment to the Constitution." Pfly 07:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Pretty interesting. Thanks, Pfly. — President Lethe 14:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

None of the things mentioned-- the Declaration, the Articles, and the Factbook-- are controlling law. Is there a source of controlling law that states that "of America" is anything more than just a descriptive prepositional phrase? JonathanFreed 22:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The Articles of Confederation were controlling law—and the very first point they made in setting up a unifying government for the new country was to spell out the name of the country. (The Articles even put the name in quotation marks: "of America" is part of the name, not just an add-on to avoid ambiguity about which country called "United States" was being talked about.) The Constitutional Convention ostensibly began as a meeting about how to improve the Articles—and the result was the Constitution, which immediately followed and superseded the articles, and is the Supreme Law of the Land (I consider that controlling), and said "United States of America" in its very first sentence.

I don't know of any specific law—say, something in United States Code—that more explicitly says "The full official English name of this country is United States of America"; but my lack of knowledge doesn't mean such a thing doesn't exist.

Anyway, I think the flow from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution is enough.

And, even if that's not enough, there are often matters of unwritten law that are considered controlling anyway. This is true of a large part of the 'constitution' in the U.K., for example. Things become 'official for all intents and purposes' by being used often over a long period. "United States" and "United States of America" have been in government use every day for 230 years, which, in some sense, makes them official in a de facto way, if not by some even more explicit decree—and the difference between them is that one is simply shorter than the other.

President Lethe 23:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

In some statements above, arguments are drawn from how journalists and encyclopedias from the USA name their country. Obviously these are highly biased sources. Of course for internal use in the country a much abbreviated term makes sense. In an international encyclopedia, a more explicitly descriptive name is appropriate. Compare how within the USA people talk about "the national league" which would be meaningless in an international setting. − Woodstone 08:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is an argument for using U.S. language in articles about U.S. subjects—just as there's one for Australian language in articles about Australian topics.

Second, again, the short-form, common-name standard of Wikipedia.

But, third, let's get extranational for a moment. Let's turn on the news in any non-U.S. country, whether it's an English-speaking country or not. How many times will "the United States of America" be mentioned in relation to "the U.S.", "the U.S.A.", "the United States", and plain "America" (or their local-language equivalents)?

Fourth, as to the "bias" of American reference books: at Wikipedia, we're to try to match reputable, third-party sources—and, whenever possible, we're to find sources written in English—and we're to give due weight. So, a majority of general encyclopedias published in English and using "United States" should push us toward the same.

But, fifth, remember that there's something about Wikipedia unlike a hardcopy encyclopedia. The article title in terms of what appears in the URL can be different from the opening words of the article. As mentioned above, this has to do with the most frequently searched term. For now, this article is called "United States" and the opening words are "The United States of America".

President Lethe 15:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I've done a search. I thought of websites to check—and, once I had information, recorded it, regardless of what the information was. Results:

"USA" and "U.S.A."

• The postage rates listed at the website of Royal Mail (postal service in the U.K.) mention "USA".

• The postage rates listed at the website of the postal service in Canada mention "USA" and "U.S.A.".

• The website of the postal service in France mentions "USA".

• The website of the postal service in Germany mentions "USA".

• The website of the postal service in India mentions "USA".

• The website of the postal service in Pakistan mentions "U.S.A." (and lists the U.K. as "Great Britain").

• The dropdown list of country profiles at the website of BBC News has "USA".

• The first page of internal search results at the website of the Austrian postal service has several instances of "USA" (and one of "Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika")

"UNITED STATES" and "United States"

• The postage rates listed at the website of the postal service in Australia mention "UNITED STATES".

• The postage rates listed at the website of the United States Postal service mention "United States".

• The website of NATO mentions "United States".

• Press releases at the website of the African Union mention "United States".

• The website of the Austrian embassy to the U.S. has the ambassador's welcome message mentioning "United States".

• The website of the Russian embassy to the U.S. mentions "United States".

• The homepage of http://www.austrianinformation.org/ has multiple instances of "United States"

"US" and "U.S."

• At news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/default.stm when I checked, there were 7 instances of "US" and nothing else.

• The website of the Russian embassy to the U.S. mentions "US" and "U.S.".

• The homepage of http://www.austrianinformation.org/ has multiple instances of "U.S."

"United States of America" or local equivalent

• The website of the postal service in New Zealand mentions "United States of America".

• The website of the postal service in France mentions "États-Unis d'Amérique"

• The website of the postal service in Germany mentions "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika".

• The website of the postal service in Ireland mentions "United States of America".

• The website of the United Nations, in listing the member states, uses "United States of America" and "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

• The website of the postal service in Hong Kong mentions "United States of America" (but "United Kingdom").

• The title of the website of the Chinese embassy to the U.S. uses "United States of America".

• The first page of internal search results at the website of the Austrian postal service has one instance of "Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika" (and several of "USA")

• The website of South Africa's postal service wouldn't behave enough to give me an answer on this matter.

I've already expressed my view against following the non-English Wikipedias. But here are the complete results:

• Wikipedias with more than 100,000 articles:

• Very short form:

1. The Swedish-language Wikipedia article is "USA" and begins "USA, the United States of America, Amerikas förenta stater eller Förenta staterna".

• Short form:

1. The Dutch-language Wikipedia article is "Verenigde Staten" and begins "De Verenigde Staten van Amerika, afgekort VS ( Engels: United States of America, afgekort USA of US)".

2. The English-language Wikipedia article is "United States" and begins "The United States of America, also known as the United States, the U.S., U.S.A., the U.S. of A, the States, and America".

3. The German-language Wikipedia article is "Vereinigte Staaten" and begins "Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (engl. United States of America, kurz USA) oder in der amtlichen Kurzform Vereinigte Staaten (engl. United States, kurz US)".

4. The Polish-language Wikipedia article is "Stany Zjednoczone" and begins "Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki ( ang. United States of America, United States, w skrócie: USA, US) – państwo położone w Ameryce Północnej".

• Long form:

1. The French-language Wikipedia article is "États-Unis d'Amérique" and begins "Les États-Unis (les États-Unis d'Amérique en forme longue)".

2. The Italian-language Wikipedia article is "Stati Uniti d'America" and begins "Gli Stati Uniti d'America (U.S.A. United States of America)".

3. The Portuguese-language Wikipedia article is "Estados Unidos da América" and begins "Os Estados Unidos da América (em inglês: United States of America, USA ou US; abreviado freqüentemente em português como EUA)".

4. The Spanish-language Wikipedia article is "Estados Unidos de América" and begins "Estados Unidos de América".

• Unknown by me:

1. The Japanese-language Wikipedia article is "アメリカ合衆国" and begins "北アメリカ大陸中央部の 大西洋と太平洋に挟まれた本土以外に、大陸北部の アラスカ、太平洋の ハワイ諸島、 アリューシャン列島を国土とする。さらに本国の他に、 プエルトリコや グアム島などを領有する" (maybe we're lucky enough to have some here who read Japanese).

The rest of this is based on just the tags at the end of the English " United States" article:

• Wikipedias with 10,001–100,000 articles:

• Very short form:

1. Danish: USA

2. Esperanto: Usono

3. Ido: Usa

4. Lithuanian: JAV

5. Norwegian (2): USA

• Short form:

1. Finnish: Yhdysvallat

2. Icelandic: Bandaríkin

3. Slovak: Spojené štáty

• Long form:

1. Basque: Amerikako Estatu Batuak

2. Bulgarian: Съединени американски щати

3. Catalan: Estats Units d'Amèrica

4. Croatian: Sjedinjene Američke Države

5. Czech: Spojené státy americké

6. Greek: Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής

7. Estonian: Ameerika Ühendriigid

8. Galician: Estados Unidos de América - United States of America

9. Hungarian: Amerikai Egyesült Államok

10. Indonesian: Amerika Serikat

11. Malay: Amerika Syarikat

12. Norwegian (1): Amerikas forente stater

13. Romanian: Statele Unite ale Americii

14. Russian: Соединённые Штаты Америки

15. Serbian: Сједињене Америчке Државе

16. Slovenian: Združene države Amerike

17. Turkish: Amerika Birleşik Devletleri

18. Ukrainian: Сполучені Штати Америки

[19. Thai: สหรัฐอเมริกา (According to User:Woodstone, this is "United state(s) (of) Amerika".) — President Lethe 22:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)]

• Unknown by me:

1. Arabic :الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية

2. Chinese: 美國

3. Hebrew: ארצות הברית

4. Korean: 미국

5. Persian: ایالات متحده‌ امریکا

6. Thai: สหรัฐอเมริกา [According to User:Woodstone, this is "United state(s) (of) Amerika". — President Lethe 22:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)]

• Wikipedias with 1,001–10,000 articles:

• Very short form:

1. Alemmanic: USA

2. Faroese: USA

3. Low Saxon: USA

• Short form:

1. Afrikaans: Verenigde State

2. Aragonese: Estatos Unitos

3. Cornish: Statys Unys

4. Haitian Creole: Etazini

5. Scots: Unitit States

6. Sicilian: Stati Uniti

7. Simple English: United States

8. Tagalog: Estados Unidos

9. Walloon: Estats Unis

• Long form:

1. Asturian: Estaos Xuníos d'América

2. Azerbaijani: Amerika Birləşmiş Ştatları

3. Belarusian: Злучаныя Штаты Амэрыкі

4. Bosnian: Sjedinjene Američke Države

5. Breton: Stadoù-Unanet Amerika

6. Chuvash: Америкăри Пĕрлешӳллĕ Штатсем

7. Franco-Provençal: Ètats-Unis d’Amèrica

8. Ilokano: Estados Unidos iti America

10. Interlingua: Statos Unite de America

11. Irish Gaelic: Stáit Aontaithe Mheiriceá

12. Kurdish: Dewletên Yekbûyî yên Amerîkayê

13. Latin: Civitates Foederatae Americae

14. Latvian: Amerikas Savienotās Valstis

15. Limburgish: Vereinegde State van Amerika

16. Luxembourgish: Vereenegt Staate vun Amerika

17. Macedonian: Соединети Американски Држави

18. Northern Sami: Amerihká ovttastuvvan stáhtat

19. Occitan: Estats Units d'America

20. Ossetic: Америкæйы Иугонд Штаттæ

21. Serbo-Croation: Sjedinjene Američke Države

22. Uzbeck: Amerika Qo`shma Shtatlari

23. Welsh: Unol Daleithiau America

24. Western Frisian: Feriene Steaten fan Amearika

• Unknown by me:

1. Albanian: Shtetet e Bashkuara

2. Bengali: মার্কিন যুক্তরাষ্ট্র

3. Georgian: ამერიკის შეერთებული შტატები

4. Hindi: संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका

5. Min Nan: Bí-kok

6. Tamil: ஐக்கிய அமெரிக்க நாடுகள்

7. Vietnamese: Hoa Kỳ

8. Yiddish: פאראייניקטע שטאטן פון אמעריקע

The Corsican Wikipedia seems to have no article about the U.S.

• Wikipedias whose numbers of articles I don't know:

• Short form:

1. Lojban: mergu'e [equivalent to just "America"]

2. Maltese: Stati Uniti

3. Tok Pisin: Yunaitet Stets

4. Language code pdc: Amerikaa

• Long form:

1. Kinyarwanda: Leta Zunze Ubumwe z’Amerika

2. Moldavian: Стателе Уните але Америчий

3. Nahuatl: Altépetl Osehsepanoaseh Americac

4. Old English: Geānlǣht Rīcu American

5. Scottish Gaelic: Na Stàitean Aonaichte

6. Tajik: Иёлоти Муттаҳидаи Амрико

7. Yoruba: Orílẹ̀-Èdè Amẹ́ríkà

8. Language code nrm: Êtats Unnis d'Améthique

9. Language code vec: Stati Unìi d'Amèrica

• Unknown by me:

1. Amharic: አሜሪካ

2. Burmese: အမေရိကန္‌ပ္ရည္‌ေထာင္‌စု

3. Cherokee: ᎠᎺᎢ

4. Divehi: އެމެރިކާ

5. Gujarati: સંયુક્ત રાજ્ય અમેરિકા

6. Inuktitut: ᐊᒥᐊᓕᑲ

7. Kashmiri: संयुक्त राज्‍य अमेरिका

8. Khmer: សហរដ្ឋ

9. Malayalam: യു.എസ്‌.എ.

10. Marathi: अमेरिकेची संयुक्त संस्थाने

11. Navaho: Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí

12. Pushto: د امريکا متحده ايالات

13. Sanskrit: संयुक्त राज्‍य अमेरिका

14. Uighur: ئامېرىكا قوشما شتاتلىرى

15. Urdu: ریاستہائے متحدہ امریکہ

16. Zhuang: Meijgoz

17. Language code zh-yue: 美國

If, for some reason, we assign one point to each item in the Wikipedias with unknown numbers of articles, 10 points to those with 1,001–10,000 articles, 100 points to those with 10,001–100,000 articles, and 1,000 to those with 100,001+ articles, then

Very short form has 1,530 points

Short form has 4,394 points

Long form has 6,049 points

Unknown has 1,697 points

Anyway, in the largest Wikipedias, when we exclude Japanese, which I can't read, and exclude Swedish, which calls its article "USA", there are four each for "United States" and "United States of America".

Lack of strong consensus = keep the status quo.

I also remind about what will happen with redirection if we change the name to "United States of America". The large majority of links to this article from other English-language Wikipedia articles is written [[United States]]. If we change the name of the article, then those links will have to pass through a redirection page or some editors and bots will end up spending a lot of time, effort, and resources to rewrite the links—and, often, the rewrite won't be simply [[United States of America]], but will be [[United States of America|United States]] to preserve the style of the sentences.

President Lethe 18:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Preslethe. I also wish to add: Woodstone's argument completely ignores what is the common name in English. American English speakers are more than 2/3rds of native English speakers and therefore the American English usage of "United States," statistically, is the most common usage. Each Wikipedia project evolves separately to respond to the needs of its users; what the other language Wikipedias are doing is interesting but ultimately irrelevant. I have said this before and I'll say it again: we should not adopt a position that inconveniences, confuses and annoys the majority of English Wikipedia users (Americans) for the benefit of a small minority. I also concur with Preslethe that the so-called "bias" towards the American view is the logical result of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy and the fact that most verifiable sources in English are drafted in American English (in order to serve the largest English-speaking population). -- Coolcaesar 18:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The third paragraph in the article lead states the US is the fifth largest country by area, while the sidebar (box) says the 3rd. And the article List of countries and outlying territories by area ranks it a disputed 3rd or 4th. Which is it? And can this article be consistent? -- Dmeranda 17:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

If it says "fifth", it's vandalism. And I'm unvandalising it right now. Brazil is fifth.

As to third or fourth: it seems to have become the agreement to say third in most places and, in just one place, point out the third/fourth dispute with China over Taiwain.

President Lethe 17:44, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

An error of information in Wikipedia articles don't constitute vandalism, but needs to get corrected when you find or proven it is wrong. The United States' land mass is larger than Europe and the contiguous 48 states might demonstrate the enormous length and distance of the U.S. as a big country. Actually, 48 plus two outlying states and one federal district are measured without territories and sometimes included is the total square mile coverage of inland water. The honor for the largest country in size is Russia, extends over 6,000 miles east to west and consists 3/4th of the former Soviet Union. Our northern neighbor, Canada is second largest as it's north-south distance is longer than the mainland U.S. On one hand, the U.S. was fortunate to have a large amount of landmass to support the population of 300 million. Perhaps the uneven areas of high population density of the Northeast states could as well spread out to the lowest population density areas without problems. -- Mike D 26 05:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it is very funny neither this article nor Science and technology in the United States mention which country funded the development of the ARPANET and the Internet! Kind of ironic when people read Wikipedia over the Internet. Ha ha. -- 153.18.156.242 18:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I concur. What's going on? I remember seeing the Internet mentioned in an earlier version several years ago, but it looks like one of those America-haters took it out. If no one objects, I'm putting a reference to the Internet back in. -- Coolcaesar 21:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I just check the relavent History of the United States articles, and none mention ARPANET or that the US invented the Internet. Jaxad0127 23:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Al Gore mentions it. -- Golbez 23:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Lol. Thats just a joke. Jaxad0127 23:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Just stepping in to say that the "I invented the Internet" quote is a serious misquote of something he really did say. Back in 2000 or 2001, Rolling Stone had a good piece chronicling the media's coverage of that quote and lots of things that ended up revolving around it. And, actually, " Al Gore" does mention it: for example, in the " The Internet and the Webbys" section. The guy did play a significant role in what developed into the Internet, and he didn't claim to have invented it. I'm not saying that everyone believes the false stuff about him—but I'm just having my little spurt here to try to clarify this for those who do misunderstand it, in case any are around to see this. — President Lethe 00:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay. It's done. I added the Internet to the Economy section for the U.S. article and Science and technology. -- Coolcaesar 00:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I was gonna say "Yea!"—but the American role in Internet development was and has been much more than just funding. — President Lethe 01:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Could someone explain this passage in section "History" ?

'Scientific discovery has kept the USA at the cutting edge of international deplomacy. Starting with the fission nuclear bomb in 1945 the USA has developed faster than any other nation when it comes to science. Nuclear weapons have been converted into electricity that keeps the internet up and running. Intellegence and design have played a major part in the United States of America's history.'

it seems a bit malformed, as a paragraph... it's not cohesive, and I do think there are some spelling errors... - ironywrit 17:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't write it. But I did remove it an hour ago. My edit summary said "remove new paragraph about science. this information seems worthy of inclusion in this article, but doesn't exactly fit here. could be better written, too." — President Lethe 16:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

RodneyYoung left me a message about my removal of his addition. I responded at my Talk page. It's not superimportant for everyone to read; I mention it just for cross-referencing. — President Lethe 14:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Even among scientists, the starting and ending points of the influx of what would eventually be called Native Americans are quite contentious. Before we get into an edit war, perhaps we can compile the years given by various reputable sources and then come up with an acceptable range to mention in the History section of the article. I'll be posting some here in a few minutes. — President Lethe 01:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• Philip Kopper's The Smithsonian Book of North American Indians: Before the Coming of the Europeans (Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C., 1986): page 23:

Why did fluted stone lanceheads—"Clovic points"—appear throughout the Americas some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, then vanish from the stratigraphic record?

Page 33:

"Unmistakable signs" of ancient human occupation have been found near the tip of South America; people used Fell's Cave near the Strait of Magellan in Chile about 11,000 years ago. How much earlier must their first ancestors in the Americas have begun their unplanned trek down from Beringia? Although fierce controversies have raged for years over the date of the first human arrivals in the New World, archaeologists have reached no consensus. Their estimates range from 12,000 to 40,000 years ago, with most experts suggesting dates between 12,000 and 20,000 years ago. (In 1986, charcoal from a pit fire at a rock shelter site in Brazil was radiocarbon dated at 32,160 B.C. However, such early dates have proved to be in error before, and only further research will conclusively establish the age of this exciting find.)

• 2001 Standard Edition CD-ROM of The World Book Encyclopedia: "Indian, American":

Most scientists think the first Indians came to the Americas from Asia at least 15,000 years ago. Other scientists believe the Indians may have arrived as early as 35,000 years ago. [* * *] By 12,500 years ago, Indians had spread throughout the New World and were living from the Arctic in the north all the way to southern South America.

May gather more later. — President Lethe 01:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I heard somewhere that a bill that just passed has a thing attached saying the oddicial language of the us is now english -- 24.239.174.223 12:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

You heard imprecisely, at least. Go to the top of this page and click on item 9 in the table of contents. — President Lethe 13:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

just before the disambiguation notice is a very inappropriate line of text... "george bush is a terrorist." very clever, and funny yes, thank you whoever it was that did this. I tried to edit it out, but was unable to find it, and I've concluded that it wasn't done through the usual submission template... I have no idea how to fix it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.101.117.246 ( talk • contribs) .

This article is vandalised and reverted very frequently. You were there at just the wrong time - it was already reverted before you could click 'edit' -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Reply to above: That's just wrong. I think "george bush is a terrorist" is NOT funny. It sounds like a goth kid sent by either Jeff Hardy or Bam Margera wrote this (I really need to stop talking like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit detective Elliot Stabler and editing like a cop). It's sad to see United States become vandalized like this. Shouldn't there be a block on this page already? The block was my suggestion if this page continues to be vandalized.

--D.F. Williams 14:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

There was protection on this page for a short time. There was a discussion ( here) when it was lifted about the amount of vandalism that occurs. However, to my knowledge, the protection was never re-instated. Although, that type of protection would not help stop vandalism by established users—such as the ones above—it would stop the IP only vandals. Protection is worth discussing again anyway. — MJCdetroit 17:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I hope I don't jinx it by saying this, but it's my impression that the vandalism is a lot less frequent now than it was some weeks or months ago. I remember a time when there were multiple incidents of vandalism every hour—and now the article sometimes goes multiple hours without anyone editing it at all, vandalism or otherwise.

Unless there's suddenly a huge surge, I think the article should remain open at least to registered, logged-in users if not to all users.

At the same time, I have a hard view about vandals: I think that, the moment someone commits clear vandalism and fails to undo it within 5 minutes (there are some new users who make nonsense edits as an experiment but undo them within a few minutes), the person should be banned from editing anything at all at Wikipedia for a week.

President Lethe 17:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I should have clarified what I meant by protection. That is to protect the page from unregistered editors. Although, Pres is probably correct by saying that lately the vandalism is not as heavy as it was or can be. Some of the vandals are quite clever and their vandalism may not be picked up right away (due the high volume of edits made to this article). My feeling is that this article has more of a target on it than say Fuji and should have a slightly higher level of protection. — MJCdetroit 18:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

My post wasn't in response to any specific posts in this section. But, yes, I was guilty of lazy reading and took your 'protection' to mean 'locking against all editing'. — President Lethe 19:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify what I meant by 'frequent vandalism', it probably appears frequent to someone who was surprised to see the type of comment that started this thread, and even more surprised to see it gone. The vandalism on this page is actually (currently) quite lame by Wikipedia standards. It needs to be remembered that anons also make a lot of good edits, and while vandalism can always be reverted, lost edits by anons cannot be recovered. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Just random thoughts:

• Good point, zzuuzz.

• I personally don't see why some users are so reluctant to register. They don't have to give up any personal info.

• I read in a recent issue of Discover that half of all vandalism at Wikipedia is undone within 5 minutes of being committed, by the many editors keeping an eye on things. I think that's pretty cool.

President Lethe 20:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Preslethe: I did not know that. Whenever I attempt to remove vandalism by another user, I always say "rv Jeff Hardy & Bam Margera-type errors (vandalism)" in the comment box. Though many Wikipedians may have no idea who Jeff Hardy or Bam Margera is, the bad things the users put in pages like these make me think of them. This also explains the word "vandalism" in the parenthesis to translate.

In fact, One of the userboxes on my page actually says that I'm patrolling for vandalism, and to keep it OFF Wikipedia for GOOD. Sometimes I make wacky references to Jill Hennessy from Crossing Jordan, because I don't know if the user that vandalizes pages like this dresses in a punk or gothic fashion, either. It's pretty hard to tell these days. Oh, and I agree with the not giving up any information. My method of removing vandalism is to say in a comment box: "rv "least-favorite celebrity #1" & "least-favorite celebrity #2"-type errors" and translate in parenthesis to (vandalism). Then place your warning. Though I'd never put Jeff Hardy or Bam Margera in those quotes myself, I just try to get everyone to play along, though I like to get creative with edit summaries. Sorry if I annoyed anyone with this long explanation, but I'm just voicing my input on giving vandalism the whammy, that's all. --D.F. Williams 01:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, anyone who criticizes the US is a punk kid or a goth kid. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is so punk rock... Seriously though, where do you guys come up with this stuff?-- momo 22:51, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The United States Page needs to be locked for editing b/c of continuous vandalism. -- Bearly541 09:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there any value in mentioning the USA's, or US cities, comparative rankings (education, life expectancy, crime, pollution, poverty, ) vs. other nations? I'm thinking of the Mercer World-wide quality of living survey, WHO estimates Healthy Life Expectancy, ... Thanks, Hu Gadarn 22:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a difference. If other nations have the same information, then we should keep it consistent with this article. Oyo321 23:44, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone has added a gallery of pictures of large metro areas. I was under the impression that it was decided to leave out a table (text or pictures) of information. Thoughts? — President Lethe 16:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I was under the same impression. The table that was removed was better looking and more informative than this latest incarnation. Good jester but it's just too big. I say remove it. Sorry...— MJCdetroit 16:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The only mention of the U.S. indigenous population in the History section of this article is the first sentence:

"Before the European colonization of the Americas, a process that began at the end of the 15th century, the present-day continental U.S. was inhabited exclusively by Native Americans and Alaska Natives, who arrived on the continent over a period that may have begun 35,000 years ago and may have ended as recently as 11,000 years ago."

No mention is made of what happened to these native populations... Morganfitzp 04:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Many died of diseases brought by Europeans to which the Native Americans did not have any anti-bodies. There was some genocide and then the reservation/boarding school/urbanization policy of the 20th century. Regards, Signature ^brendel 05:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that this deserves some mention in this article. In articles about other nations where "some genocide" has occured ( Germany, for example), there is at least a paragraph or two about it having happened. The article on the United States makes no mention of native populations beyond circa 9,000 B.C., more than one hundred centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Morganfitzp 20:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Morganfitzp. The Native Americans are such an important part of United States history (seeing as they've been there since before the US even formed)they surely deserve a bit more space than they've got right now. Even if just a stub section, such as States and Territories, was added with a link to Native Americans in the United States, it would much improve the article. Th ε Halo ^Θ 20:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes they do. I didnt mean "Some genocide" to sound derogatory and Morganfitzp is right we do have such a section on the Germany article, as there should be. Unfortunately I am not an expert on the issue so go ahead and add the section. Signature ^brendel 00:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert either (living in the UK), but I'll take a swing at it in the morning if someone else hasn't :) Don't worry btw, I didn't think you were being derogatry. Th ε Halo ^Θ 00:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so I put up the best stuff I could find, and then edited like a demon to cut the size down (the article is pretty big already). I borrowed heavily from the main article, and I think that I got all the infomation that really needed to be said. However, there might be some stuff I missed, so I'm going to ask a friend how knows about the subject. Th ε Halo ^Θ 10:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Good start, Halo.

I think having a separate section just for Indians could have two effects (among others) on readers:

• Readers could think that Indians are somehow so special that, while no other cultural group in the U.S. gets a whole section devoted to it in this article, Indians do. Some might see this as POV.

• Readers could think that Indians are somehow so unimportant that they just get one little section devoted to them, one mention in the article intro, one mention at the start of the History section, and nothing more. Some might see this as POV.

I think a possibly better approach is to integrate Indian matters more into the History section (and other sections, such as Culture, Language, Religion, Demographics, &c.).

In U.S. History in high school, we got brandnew textbooks. At the time, I found it overly P.C. and somehow sort of divisive (rather than multicultural) that, every few pages, the normal flow of the book would be interrupted by a block or a spread about the plight and/or achievements of some specific group—women, Indians, blacks, Italians, Poles, Jews, Quakers, &c. It's probably true that this book was more inclusive and fairly representative than any previous U.S.-history textbook I'd had in school—but its way of sharing the information seemed to me to be taking a big highlighter to differences, and it seemed to show O.T.T. P.C., &c.

But, in my multiple viewings of The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color (a great documentary put together entirely from color films shot in about 1919–1946), I had a different feeling. This documentary regularly jumps around—as any good work about something as huge and sweeping as World War II should—, covering the poor, the rich, the middle class, the black, the white, the Indian, the Japanese (I mean Americans of Japanese ancestry), the city people, the country people, the government, the military, the civilians, the women, the men, the children, the aged, on and on. I think why this strikes me as fascinating and inclusive, rather than bothersome, is that it's all done within the flow of the narrative, rather than a seeming "Now, let's take a moment out from the real story so we can have our obligatory mention of the black man."

The truth is that all these groups are wrapped up so tightly together in American history. I think the best way to present this truth is to try to organize things mostly chronologically (and, occasionally, in terms of percentage or even simple alphabetical order), rather than to set aside separate sections for different groups.

The division into separate sections almost seems to be a perpetuation of racial segregation in the South and the creation of reservations for Indians.

I'm not at all accusing anyone here of harboring those sentiments. I'm just talking about how, I think, some readers may consciously view such a style of article, and many more may subconsciously take things in.

Obviously, in the brief History section of this article, we can't go very far in this inclusive coverage of many groups. But I think that just a few words stuck into sentences here and there can have two effects:

• satisfying some of the P.C. desires of some readers who may otherwise complain of a lack of fair representation for one group or another

• actually telling a much fuller and more interesting picture of the U.S. and its history.

Thoughts, anyone?

President Lethe 15:42, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to my ears, Mr. President ;) I do think though, that we have to keep the infomation short, as the article, truth be told, is already very long (too long in the opinion of many), which is why the section I started was so short. Therefore, I think that the real question now should be what to put in/what to leave out so that we get a balanced view of Native American history in the US. Th ε Halo ^Θ 15:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Hm. Two weeks and the Indians are still in their own little reserved part of the article. I wish I could, with good conscience, spend the time making changes. Anyone else want to? — President Lethe 20:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Please do not edit or delete the paragraph on Native Americans, because it gives the explanation on who were the first peoples in the U.S. before there was even a country or republic. Wikipedia has an article entirely devoted to Native Americans and every ethnic group (i.e. German Americans, Irish Americans and Italian Americans for further study there). I read what some posters complained about American history books published in the last 40 years became more focused on the contribution of women, gays and lesbians, and minorities (African Americans, Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans) in U.S. historical events. I like the inclusiveness and expansion of knowledge in what other people -- as Americans and great historic figures -- has positively contributed, but not because he or she is Black, Jewish, Chinese, Polish, Mormon or Muslim. The Wikipedia article on the United States has created links for those who want more on United States history. American history shown great strides in creating a country out of many peoples. I really don't like the gripes of American history books should leave these individuals out of the picture, something Wikipedia wants to avoid is bias and ignorance. -- Mike D 26 05:56, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

"Please do not edit"? This is Wikipedia. — President Lethe 14:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Mike D, can you explain what point you are trying to make here? I don't understand you. From reading the discussion above it seems that Pres Lethe is proposing to integrate information about the Indians into the article rather than keeping them segregated in the linguistic equivalent of a reservation, something that it seems it would be hard to quarrel with. PL, I've removed your emphasis and indented for you, I hope you don't mind. -- Guinnog 16:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I apologize to go off, because PL and others complained the article is a bunch of P.C. propaganda (to carry a section of historical contributions of every hyphen-American group). His idea was rejected and I wasn't comfortable on the huge reaction against PL, with name-calling and opinions about he's an agent of the P.C. media. I'm fine with the idea on integrating parts of the Native Americans in the article, but I told him there are articles devoted to minorities and cultures in the United States. I said "please don't edit" as in erasing sufficient data, but you many edit when you're done to reorganize the data on Native Americans, so I horribly misspoke. -- 207.200.116.138 06:27, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

207.200.116.138, I think you may have misunderstood. I have never complained that this article is a bunch of P.C. propaganda. — President Lethe 15:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Here are some random thoughts and references, somewhat in connection with the section immediately above (which is about how much mention to make of Amerindians in the History section of this article).

I find the single initial mention too little, because treaties, conflicts, and coöperation with various groups are integral parts of the history of this country. I won't say that every single bit of the Amerindian part of this history is the most important part of the history; but, at the same time, the present wouldn't be what the present is if anything in the past had been different from what it was. So the Indian stuff is inextricable from the rest of the history, and deserves mention.

Some days ago, I happened to be reading in an 86-year-old book, called Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language | Based on the International Dictionary of 1890 and 1900. Now Completely Revised in All Departments Including Also a Dictionary of Geography and of Biography, Being the Latest Authentic Quarto Edition of the Merriam Series | with a Reference History of the World (published by G. & C. Merriam Company, Springfield, Mass., U.S.A., 1920; Copyright 1909 and 1913). At the back of the book is a long section called A Reference History of the World | Including a Chronological History from 6000 B. C. to the Present Time | A Historical Gazetteer of All Existing Nations and Their Dependencies | Being Especially Full in the Treatment of the British Empire and the United States | with Maps, Tables, Charts, and an Exhaustive Index, by John Clark Ridpath and Horace E. Scudder, thoroughly reëdited and greatly enlarged by Edwin A. Grosvenor, LL. D., of Amherst College. And page 99 of that section is the start of the U.S. history section; this is its interesting opening:

The country and its aboriginal inhabitants. The beginning of the history of the United States must be looked for in Europe. There had been indeed from a remote antiquity a race of men scattered over the country now included in the Union, but they had scarcely changed the character of the country more than the wild beasts which they hunted; here and there they had filled the ground a little; they had built light boats in which they traveled on the rivers or pushed out a little way into the ocean; they had baked a few rude utensils, and constructed houses for shelter which could be taken down and carried away whenever the roving home was changed; they had sharpened those senses which they had in common with animals, and the eye and the ear were trained to exceeding cunning; in their contest with nature they had learned endurance; in the loneliness of the wilderness they had learned silence; and the ties of blood had effected a rude tribal relation, and a dim sense of justice and right mingled with the easily understood claim of a strong arm and a resolute will. The men who reached the highest point of animal courage and cunning became the chiefs, and took their names from the beasts which they overcame; the women were scarcely more to them than the nurses of their children and the drudges of the wigwam. They spoke a language, with various dialects, which was pictorial whenever it ventured beyond the expression of the simplest idea, and they drew from the operations of nature the outward form of a meager mythology which, it may be, embodied the faint revelations of an eternal life. There are some signs of races in the country, especially in the southwestern portion, antedating the red men, and possessed of a higher order of mind, but science has not yet reduced these signs to a clear and positive system. There was nothing in the life of the roving tribes which answered to the command to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it.”

I found rather insulting the belittling as well as the repeated likening to animals. (What? Only animals use the senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste? &c.) (Not that I think animals are bad; I love them. But I think the comparisons in that paragraph reek of something derogatory.) But I find some kind of truth in that one opening sentence: "The beginning of the history of the United States must be looked for in Europe."

The people who came and explored and settled were European; they did this stuff because of what was happening in Europe. The effects they had on the Amerindians, good and bad, were as much because they and their ancestors came from Europe as because the Indians did not.

Anyway, I won't get into long commentary on this. As I say, the two are so intertwined that you can't pull them apart. Same for what was going on in parts of Africa. All this stuff is stuck together in U.S. history.

I'm not the one to judge how much to put in other articles and how much to put in this article—partly because I personally wouldn't mind if this article were twice as long, but other editors (and that warning every time I go to make an edit) wish it were shorter than it already is.

I just found that one passage interesting both in terms of the view from that time of the Indians and in terms of the point that sort of does explain why texts on U.S. history so often have so little to say about the pre-European peoples.

Other reasons, of course, include the large percentage of them wiped out by disease and war, the percentage of artefacts that didn't last long because of what they were made of, and the lack of written texts among many of the peoples.

Just two other points:

Alistair Cooke, in his 13-part America: A Personal History of the United States documentary TV miniseries from the early '70s, and in the accompanying book (Alistair Cooke's America), specifically devotes the first whole section to the French and the Spanish in what became the U.S., because, although it ended up being the English and their descendants who took over large parts of what the French and Spanish had claimed, the two other European cultures deserved significant mention. What I mean by significant is ... well, imagine having a documentary of U.S. history in which, for the first whole hour or more, you don't even hear about the English.

And it's the non-English, pre-1776 European history in what became the United States that is the subject of " Immigration — and the Curse of the Black Legend", an op-ed contribution by Tony Horwitz to Sunday's The New York Times, which I'm still reading and which shows just a few of the points about which so many of us are unaware, in terms of French and Spanish doings in what became the U.S. Really, even though not all of us will agree with all the conclusions in the piece, or like The New York Times in general, I recommend it for the facts (as opposed to opinion) about non-English European stuff in what would become the U.S.

Anyway, my thoughts on this have too many details for the relatively few words I've written here to give anything close to an accurate picture of my own view. And, of course, my view is only mine, and there are zillions of other views. But I thought I'd share the one paragraph, mention Cooke, and link to the opinion piece, just as maybe a spark of some discussion and some improvement of this and other Wikipedia articles.

President Lethe 23:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

A brief portion of the United States article on the subject of the "first Americans" and "previous colonial rule" is worthy. The Native Americans are truly indigenous to North America for at least 20,000 years (or more depends on the experts in anthropology). The first colonies other than French and Spanish ones in what became the U.S. is 1. New Sweden in Delaware, 2. New Netherlands to become the New York area, and 3. Russian-American Company of Alaska. But that's not my point, the necessity to discuss any French and Spanish contributions to U.S. settlement deserves it's articles to explain further more on the subject. Wikipedia articles of New France, New Spain and the articles of state histories: Maine, Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico and California cover the subjects without any scarcity of sources and anecdotes. Other republics became states much later have their own articles: Republic of Texas, Vermont and the brief period of the Southeast U.S. as the Confederate States of America during the civil war. There's always more you need to know in history courses and actually I have Alistair Cooke's America in my house bookshelf. -- Mike D 26 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Something that I haven't been able to find on the wiki is a comprehensive list of the religious organizations and groups that have been founded in America. Should we create one? The Fading Light 19:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Such a list would defenitely be justified considering the many, many religous groups in the United States. The problem is whether or not such a list would ever be complete. But as there are other lists of similar nature such as List of automobile manufacturers which may or may never be fully complete, I'd say go ahead. Unfortunately I am not an expert on the issue but such a list sounds like a good idea. Best Regars, Signature ^brendel 20:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it has much place in this article except as a mention and a link to the list. This article is big enough as it it. But I do agree a list is appropriate. Jaxad0127 20:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. Good separate list-type article. Also good in main article on religion in the U.S. Probably not to include in the regular U.S. article. — President Lethe 20:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

There should be something about the United States appalling human rights record. I know it's going to be difficult without american nationalists trying to revert it and make the US look like the promised land, but I'm sure it can be done Pure inuyasha 02:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

What else would you like added? Slavery and Native Americans already have several mentions. Jaxad0127 03:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to out on a limb and say he want Gitmo mentioned. Or maybe he was referring to the Japanese Internment...but I sincerely doubt it’s the latter. Then again, I'd like to see the human rights record of another nation and lets see how they stack up comparatively. Lets talk about the appalling human rights record of the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, China, or Mali. Squiggyfm 04:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm talking about guatanamo bay and their terrible war crimes record. I'm not talking about 100+ years ago I mean recently. Pure inuyasha 05:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how something prior to 1906 would not fit in to a nation's appallinghuman rights record? Why only include the recent stuff. And does this mean that in 2106, people shouldn't care about Gitmo? -- Squiggyfm 17:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Most historic stuff is already on the article. Jaxad0127 17:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Guantanamo, while certainly conteoversial, is too small of a deltail to be mentioned in this article. The bottom line is that in an article that gives of a brief overview of something as complex as a country, especially the US, certain things need to be omitted, only the most important and inconic characteristics of a country should be mentioned here. Such topics do not include current news events and other characteristics that are not absolutely essential. Guantanamo Bay is simply not an integral part of understanding the US. For example the "Middle class squeeze" is a very important current phenomenon in the US, yet it is too specific for a section or sub-section here. There is an article called Human rights in the United States in which a mention of Guanatamo Bay belongs. Signature ^brendel 05:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

And yet things like that seem important in the understanding of places the US doesn't like. oh yes, thet's VERY neutral. *sarcasm* ANd yes, The 100 years comment was stupid after thinking hard about what I said. please ignore that. Pure inuyasha 20:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to suggest your edit on references in Guanatamano Bay's prisons for suspected terrorists is informative, but does not belong in the article. The economics section has discussed the income disparities of the rich, poor and middle class in America, which is relevant to the status of capitalism and economic freedom has triggered an effect in the U.S. standard of living. Human rights in the U.S. are traditionally among the best records, although every country has made its' mistakes on the treatment of prisoners. -- Mike D 26 06:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, I am here to inform you that the largest city in the USA is Los Angeles, CA

Excuse yourself, (whomever you are...you didn't sign your entry). In terms of population, no, it is not. I beleive you are referring to area (sq mi). Arx Fortis 21:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Jacksonville, Florida, has the largest area, with 1,962.4 square miles of land. Anchorage, Alaska, is the very close second, with 1,961.1 square miles of land. I have a vague recollection that, in Hawaii, all land that doesn't belong to some other division counts toward Honolulu and that, although this doesn't make Honolulu have the most land area, it does mean it's the U.S. city with the greatest spans of east–west and north–south; but I could be wrong about that. — President Lethe 22:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It's simply that all of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are part of Honolulu County, which is a combined city-county, which means that the city of Honolulu extends over a thousand miles. It's the longest city in the world, not just the USA. A similar issue is with Tokyo; the island of Iwo Jima, among others, is politically part of Tokyo-to, which means the city of Tokyo extends nearly as far. -- Golbez 23:08, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the largest city in the United States by area is Sitka, Alaska, with an astounding 2,874 sq. mi. of land (!!!!). Sixtus LXVI 05:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but that's a little unfair, since it, Juneau, and Honolulu are all unified city-counties (or city-boroughs). Jacksonville seems to be the largest pure city. -- Golbez 05:15, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe so, but althat's the way they do things in Alaska. Sixtus LXVI 05:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

" List of United States cities by area" says Sitka, Alaska, has 4,812 square miles, of which 2,874 are land; Juneau, Alaska, has 3,255 square miles, of which 2,717 are land; Anchorage, Alaska, has 1,961 square miles, of which 1,697 are land; and Jacksonville, Florida, has 874 square miles, of which 758 are land.

" List of cities by surface area" matches that, except that it mentions "Juneau City and Borough".

The pages about those four individual cities today have figures that match, too. Yet, when I posted in this section several days ago, the article on Jacksonville said 1,962.4 square miles.

Jacksonville's own government website says it has 841 square miles, not 874 or 758.

I'm not sure whether some people or governments are rightly or wrongly putting all of a county's land into the city's listed area. I can say that, in the case of Jacksonville, although the governments of the (a) City of Jacksonville and (b) Duval County are unified, there is (or ought to be) separate reckoning of the city's and county's area, because Duval County also contains three other cities (Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, and Neptune Beach), which are not part of the City of Jacksonville (they have their own, separate police departments, for example—even though the Jacksonville Public Library is county-wide).

The government website of the City and Borough of Juneau says it has 2,593.6 square miles of land and 487.6 square miles of water, for a total of 3,081.2 square miles. Neither the total nor the land area there matches what Wikipedia gives.

At the government website of the City and Borough of Sitka, I haven't found the area.

Same for the government website of Anchorage. But it does link to anchorage.net, which says the city has 1,955 square miles—which, like the government figures for Jacksonville and Juneau, doesn't match Wikipedia's figure.

President Lethe 15:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

In the history section, the picture of the Battle at Gettysburg has the caption dubbing it "the bloodiest battle". Wasn't this title explicitly given to Antheim?

Antietam is the bloodiest single day in American history, while Gettysburg, lasting more than one day, is the bloodiest battle. Jaxad0127 16:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

In the 19th century a lot of German Russian-Mennonites immigrated to America. Some of them heard about the Adventmessage and they were Seventh-Day-Adventists. Are there (in America) German Adventist-Churches? Simon Mayer.

Yes there are. Signature ^brendel 17:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The United States extends from the Caribbean Sea to the far western Pacific Ocean, not from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Tell me why I'm wrong before you change this.

Yes, the US has commonwealths in the Caribbean and the western pacific, but saying the US "extends from the Caribbean Sea to the far western Pacific Ocean," is like saying that Denmark extends from Eruope to Canada, becuase Greenland is Danish territory- hperbolye. Also, Maine is further east than Florida or Puerto Rico, when saying the country extends from A to B, you want to state that the points of the country that are the greatest distance apart. Alaska is the western most state, while Maine is the eastern most state; thus the US extend from the Atlantic Ocean in Maine to the Pacific Ocean in Alaska (or Hawai'i or Washington). This can apply to all 50 states or the 48 continental US states. Regards, Signature ^brendel 18:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

But both Guam and Puerto Rico are more integrated into the American economy than Greenland is integrated into Denmark's economy. There are real cities on Guam and Puerto Rico, as opposed to the scattered villages on Greenland. For example, Macy's has stores in both Puerto Rico and Guam and many, many states in between. I suspect that probably no other department store chain in the world can match Macy's for geographic reach, unless one counts Wal-Mart as a department store (it's technically a discount department store).

And another thing that holds the U.S. and its far-flung possessions together is that even the most remote islands are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has seen a few cases over the years which were appealed out of the federal district court in Puerto Rico. -- Coolcaesar 05:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but Maine is still further East than Puerto Rico, making it the eastern most point of the US. As I said we need to look at the Eastern and Western most points of the US, that's Maine to the East. Stating the Caribbean as the eastern most point in the US would be simply false. Signature ^brendel 05:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

1. I think we should be considering only the 50 states and D.C. (This also happens to be in line with not counting Greenland when describing the geographic extent of Denmark.)

2. Make the border with Canada your upper limit, and the border with Mexico your lower limit, and start drawing great-circle routes from every point in the Caribbean Sea to every point in the far western Pacific Ocean, and see how much of the Lower 48 is not covered by the lines. Try it again with the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Caribbean: now how much of the Lower 48 do you cover? Making the Caribbean the eastern limit will always exclude the northeastern U.S. when you use great-circle routes. The Caribbean is just too western and southern for this.

3. In light of point 1, "far western Pacific Ocean" is way off, unless we consider that, near the Bering Strait, the western edge of the Pacific is at Russia, quite near the International Date Line. Normally, though, at least in my mind, to be in the "far western" Pacific, you have to go well beyond the I.D.L., to the coasts of Japan, China, the Philippines, &c., which puts you thousands and thousands of miles away from Hawaii and Alaska.

President Lethe 14:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I Agree, even though Alaska techincally touches the western Pacific, only the Marshall islands are in what most poeple consider the western Pacific. Also, yes using the Caribbean as the eastern most point would exclude much of the East coast. Signature ^brendel 16:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about this carefully, I concur with President Lethe that with regard to geographical extent, it is most logical to base that on the extent of the 50 states and D.C. -- Coolcaesar 06:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the easternmost and westernmost points of the US are in Alaska, because one little part of an island (I forget which one) juts onto the other side of the international date line/180 degrees, making it in the other hemisphere. cheers Skhatri2005 08:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Skhatri2005.

I was about to say that I agree with you, because, as a child, I used to try to impress people by saying "Alaska's islands stick so far out that they bent the International Date Line to accomodate them."

But there's the rub. The I.D.L. is bent to keep all of Alaska in the west. Well, the meridians of longitude may be straight, and may put some of Alaska in the east; yet, the I.D.L., which is supposed to follow the 180° meridian is bent. So one might say it is in the east or it isn't—and, of course, all this measurement is based on the human decision to start at Greenwich (which the French refused to do into the early 20th century; by the old French idea, even more of Alaska was in the east).

Anyway, at least in terms of straight meridians, you are indeed right. But, if we tried to keep things concise by not getting into details, and kept that technicality, we'd end up with the odd statement that the U.S. extended from the Pacific, in the east, to the Pacific, in the west.

Hmmm.

President Lethe 14:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The best way to deal with the east-west thing is to look at the two Points Udall, one of which is on Guam, the other of which is in the USVI. They represent the two points where the quickest way to get there from any other part of the country is always east or west. That is to say, there is no point in the United States where it is easier to get to Guam than by going west, and no quicker way to get to St. Croix than by going east. Which does mean Caribbean to the Pacific, but for the US itself (these are territories) it would be Maine to Hawaii, Alaska to Florida. North America with some pacific islands. -- Golbez 14:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"the US itself (these are territories) it would be Maine to Hawaii" - Exactely, the US extends from Maine in the east to Hawai'i or Alaska in the west. Stating that the US extends from the Pacific in east and west would most likely only confuse readers and is also quite false as the IDL is bent. Signature ^brendel 17:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with the current wording. I'm not advocating any changes that would entail saying "Caribbean Sea" or "far western Pacific", and I don't want the stuff about Alaska stretching into the east. The point about the Points Udall is good. But, no, the bending of the I.D.L. doesn't make it false: the I.D.L. is a timezone border, not a meridian of longitude; meridians of longitude are always straight, and Alaska does cross over the 180° meridian and into the eastern hemisphere. But the 'easternness' of Alaska is negligible for the intro of this article. (It could, however, do with an interesting brief mention in the Geography section.) — President Lethe 20:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, "false" was the wrong word. I meant it would not be useful to our readers and would open the door for future conflicts. Yes Alaska does extend over the 180th but is not commonly seen as being in both hemispheres- a section or mention in the Geo section is fine, but lets not confuse our readers by mention such further. Signature ^brendel 05:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The U.S. article mentioned the Philippines was administered as an U.S. territory 1898-1946, except the period of Japanese military occupation in WWII. The original intention of the archipalego country wasn't a colony, yet Filipinos are divided over to support or rise up against American troops, which led to a 5-year war for Filipino independence ended in defeat by 1903. But the U.S. once had Okinawa and the Ryukyu islands of Japan for 26 years after Japan granted the U.S. authority over the islands in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco. After public pressure from Okinawans and the Japanese in the 1960's, the U.S. agreed the return of Okinawa to Japan had took place on May 15, 1972. The allied occupation of post-war Japan from 1945 to 1951 and Korea south of the 38th parallel were not under American rule, but was authorized by the United Nations including Soviet (Russian) troops, which was a precursor of the Korean War. The era of American military power has resulted in new territorial acquisitions beyond our continent. -- Mike D 26 06:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this image needs to go for copyright reasons: please consult the image information page and the talk page Image talk:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg for more detailed information. No fair use rationale has been specified for the image's use on this article and AP specifically denies that fair use is available for this image. Hence, we need to be very, very careful when making fair use claims for it. As per Wikipedia copyright policy, "by permission" usage of an unfree image (even one only unfree for commercial purposes) is unacceptable unless it is merely in addition to a good fair use claim. This picture, though iconic, does not seem to have a valid fair use claim in this article. In articles about the photograph itself it seems plausible, but there is no critical commentary on the photograph here - there shouldn't be, this article is about far broader themes - and it is basically decorative. For that reason it needs to go. If anybody disagrees and wishes to reinsert it, please be aware that a full fair use rationale for the particular usage in this article needs to be written on the image description page. TheGrappler 06:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I concur. -- Coolcaesar 09:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think you may be splitting hairs on this one. This is one of the most reproduced images of the 20th century. You can bicker about this one but I can upload another [ version] of it from the National Archives and Records Administration that would really make this argument null and void. Just my thoughts anyway.....-- Looper5920 10:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Not fair use. Get rid of it. -- Guinnog 10:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, in response to Looper5920, does NARA have a license that gives them the right to re-license ad infinitum to downstream users? Or is the photo licensed by AP for viewing on NARA's Web site only? NARA doesn't have the right to just unilaterally put a photo into the public domain; that would be an unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation. It's really important to make sure that we get our fair use justifications right, because if we stretch it too far for too many images, then AP will get pissed off (they are very big and wealthy and can pay for some very expensive and nasty lawyers) and then they might get an injunction barring Wikipedia from using any AP-owned images altogether. -- Coolcaesar 10:24, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

"Most reproduced", unfortunately, does not mean "copyright expired". Coolcaesar is quite correct. Copyright is a bind unfortunately - but that's what it is meant to be :-) But there as a massive abundance of free images for the United States - I only wish that other countries had copyright laws as liberal! Federal gvt images copyright free, all pre-1923 publications copyright free... there is no need at all to rely on fair use! I have some lovely European images dating back to the 1890s I can't upload for copyright reasons (yep, even taking into account the 1923 thing... and even taking into account the 1909 thing for those really hot on their WP:PD!). If we are building a genuinely free encyclopedia then we need to be hot on this stuff - especially in a flagship article like this one, and especially if we are sinking in an abundance of free images for it anyway. TheGrappler 16:24, 23 July 2006 (UTC) (And a note that may take some people by surprise - not everything on US federal gvt websites is copyright-free, unless it was a work of federal gvt! They do license - or even make fair use of - copyrighted materials too. TheGrappler 16:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC))

On the FAQ page, there is an explanation of the reasoning for the "oldest presidential republic" claim. See 'Is the United States really the oldest constitutional republic in the world?' on that FAQ page.

This statement is false. It can be made true by the addition of the words "still in existance" or similar. Other presidential republics have been founded before the USA, however they have since demised. For example, the Republic of Ragusa. Also see list of republics. The debating point here is, I suppose, the issue of "presidential republic", meaning a republic where there is one person who is head of the government (as well as head of state - so, for example, one could not describe todays Germany as a presidential republic). However, the title of "president" aside (others, such as Oliver Cromwell could be described as having been a president, even though he did not have this title) the term 'president' would certainly have been todays title for the head of many republics in the the aforesaid list were those republics still extant today. I suggest adding the clarification I first mentioned above, so as to avoid this debate over what is and is not a presidential republic. The more the tightly defined that the definition of what sort of republic the US is, and to be the oldest of that definition; then the less meaningfull the claim to be the oldest of the said definition.-- 219.77.83.187 02:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi there.

I used to have the word extant (= 'still existing') in that sentence. Someone took it out.

Part of the problem here may be different interpretations of the word oldest. Let's say that we're in 2006; let's say a spaceship was built in the year 1129 but ceased to exist in 1131; let's say another spaceship was built in 1932 and continues to exist in 2006. Some would say the spaceship from 1129 is the oldest, because it was built 877 years ago; others would say it is not, because it existed for only three years while another ship hwas existed for 74 years. Some would say the spaceship from 1932 is the oldest, because, still existing in 2006, it's 74 years old; others would say it is not, because it was built only 74 years ago while another ship was built 877 years ago.

Ragusa was a republic for longer than the U.S. has been, and began longer ago than the U.S. began; but it's not an extrant republic.

Anyway, everyone, shall we get a bit of concensus here and then make the sentence even more precise and accurate?

President Lethe 14:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

This statement is taken from the first paragraph: "On 4 July 1776, at war with Britain over fair governance". I dispute this description of the war - i.e. the inference that it was only over fair governance. Whilst the issue of governance was clearly one of substance, there were many other issues which underlay the support of the population for the war against British suzerienty. For example, one of the Intolerable Acts that raised much objection was the Royal Proclamation of 1763 ( assuming that certain Wikipedia articles are held to be correct - see western theater of the American Revolutionary War).

The inference of "fair governance" raises images of the 'good guys' fighting for their freedom from the bad guys. I suggest working into the 'what the war was about' description that a lot of it was pure self interest, absent any high ideals that today people can look back at with pride. Wars are always fought for self-interest, and have been throughout history - so the war with Britain was less about fair governance than about serving the settlers self-interests better in terms of taxes, the ability to influence their own government, and the constant quest for new land acquisitions. After all, if one is to say that the war was all about 'fair governance' then one could equally and in the same breath say that the war did not obtain fair governance, merely different governance - I refer of course to the majority of poor white settlers, the black people there and American native peoples....i.e. most peoples actually residing in the Americas.

I vote for a removal for the "over fair governance" phrase and merely leave the statement as one of fact - i.e. "On 4 July 1776, at war with Britain" and leave it at that.-- Phillip Fung 04:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Phillip Fung.

It may be that you're reading too much into the wording. The sentence doesn't say that the winners of the war were fighting for fairness while the losers were fighting for unfairness. The point is that the dispute was about the fair (or appropriate or legal or best or whatever you want to call it) way to govern in those colonies. Local or transatlantic rule, representation in the British parliament or not, how to tax, how to regulate international commerce, &c., &c., &c. The previous wording said "over who would govern in the colonies"; I changed this to "over fair governance" because of the idea that, if the colonists had been more satisfied by the governance from Britain, they may not have made independence from Britain their goal. The war began not to achieve independence but to 'right' 'wrongs'; then, after fourteeen and a half months, there was the decision to sever the political ties with Britain.

I think your second word in your second paragraph is the key: "inference". So often at Wikipedia, I remind readers and editors that there is a difference between readers' inferences and articles' implications. That a reader infers something does not mean that the text implies it.

Also, the word "fair" in this sentence leaves out the question of "fair to whom", which keeps it less POV than getting into the matter of fairness to the colonists (their self-interest), fairness to those in Britain (their self-interest), fairness to the slaves in what became the U.S. (slavery was abolished in Britain decades before it was in the U.S.; on the other hand, blatant and bold-faced legal racial discrimination remained in at least one Commonwealth country, South Africa, for decades after it was abolished in the U.S.), &c., &c., &c. It simply leaves it up to "these people were fighting over what (they (each group) thought) was fair".

If you have other ideas about how to say in about as few words what the war was about (after all, it seems inadvisable just to say suddenly, in the article intro, that the colonies were at war with Britain and not to give any inkling of why they were at war), share them, please.

President Lethe 14:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

What about "percieved injustices" instead of "fair governance"? Jaxad0127 08:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I keep making that correction, but you guys keep reverting it. Please let me keep it as "Taliban regime", NOT "Taliban government".

Why? A regime is just a POV word for a government or an administration. Government is better here. Check out WP:NPOV if you doubt me. Cheers -- Guinnog 20:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

America's current administration and politicians, all refer to the Taliban as a "regime". President Bush refers to the Taliban as a "regime". Professors and scholars refer to the Taliban as a "regime". All American media refers to them as a "regime". So those are other reasons why I think Wikipedia should also refer to the Taliban as a regime.

regime comes from the latin word for kingdom, kingdom implies governance. it's one thing to assert that they are a regime(they had no specific dicatator so that's debatable) but another to say that they weren't a government. i kan reed 21:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The issue at play here is that very few countries recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. If you asked someone in Washington who was the government of Afghanistan, they would say "The Northern Alliance", not the Taliban. Therefore, this could actually be a relevant discussion. -- Golbez 21:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia should refer to the Taliban as a regime- they were! One can argue that a regime is a type of government. Castro's admin is also called a regime and a government. As regime is the most commonly used term in regards to the Taliban, WP should use it. Regards, Signature ^brendel 21:48, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello, all. If you'll indulge me, I'll venture to stick my nose in here momentarily. As a political scientist, I can assure you that the Taliban was the de facto government of Afghanistan. They exercised soveriegn control over all areas of economic, social and legislative policy within the country and were responsible for foreign relations, affairs of state and managing (or mismanaging) taxes -- all of which, by definition, made the Taliban the government. Not being "democratically" elected or "recognized" by other countries does not equate to "not a government"-- WilliamThweatt 22:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. It's really very simple. "Government" is NPOV, "regime" is POV. We are an encyclopedia, and we are not bound to follow President Bush's usage, but rather our own policies. -- Guinnog 22:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I really doubt that, during Taliban rule, most human beings, asked who the government of Afghanistan was, would've said the Northern Alliance. The government is usually who is in control. The Taliban were in control. During World War II, occupied France was under Nazi control; German government was effectively the government of France, even if there was also a French 'government' in exile. And I agree that the word regime is a more POV version of government. — President Lethe 22:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Lethe. "Taliban Government" is comparable to "Nazi Government" here. However, regime isn't incorrect either. Whether or not the Taliban was a legitimate government or not, it was the de facto government. Can we not use both words? Take a look at Vichy France. It states "Vichy France, or the Vichy regime was the de facto French government of 1940-1944...." Why must we excluse either? Arx Fortis 22:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Because I see "regime" as more POV, I wouldn't condone using both. — President Lethe 23:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree the Tabliaban was Afgahnistan's government- international recognition does not define government. The term regime is more POV than government but intially describes the same thing- the Nazi regime was the government of the Third Reich and Castro's regime is the government of Cuba. Nonetheless, the word regime is still, despite its POV, suitable for WP. The Taliban is commonly described by the media as a regime and usually WP follows the common usage of words- but as stated the two terms are interchangable here- making the usage of both terms acceptable IMHO. Signature ^brendel 23:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Ditto, brendel; I do not see "regime" as POV. Arx Fortis 23:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the Taliban government was not widely recognized in the international community. "Regime" seems the better word choice compared to "government". Johntex\ ^talk 01:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

If everybody would look up the definitions of regime and govenment, you would understand that this is all just an exercise in semantics. From Wordreference.com and thefreedictionary.com, respectively:

• regime: the organization that is the governing authority of a political unit
• regime: A government in power; administration

We speak of the "government of a country", not the "regime of a country". Regime, as a noun, is equivilent (in denotation) to administration and describes the organization that is the government, only with a slightly different connotation. So, the Taliban regime was the government of Afghanistan.-- WilliamThweatt 02:26, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

" Taliban Movement" has a section called "Life under Taliban government", which uses "government" and similar words in more than just the section heading. The article's intro also talks about the Taliban's recognition by the unrecognized government (government, not regime) of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The article mentions the Taliban government more often than it mentions the Taliban regime; in fact, the word regime occurs only once in the whole article.

At just this very moment, I searched www.nytimes.com for the word taliban. The first page of ten results has, as its second item, a Reuters report filed today, which mentions "Taliban government" once and never uses the word regime. The third result is a similar but longer Reuters article, which also has "Taliban government" once and "regime" never. I skip the first result because it just leads to an index of articles on the Taliban. I skip results 4–6 because they are about the Taliban since its fall from power: "insurgency", "guerillas", "militants". The 7th result mentions Afghanistan under Taliban rule, but only by that group's name, not saying "government" or "regime"; the 8th–10th results do the same thing, never using the word "regime" or "government".

Google.com says it has about 19,800,000 results for "taliban government". It says it has about 6,740,000 results for "taliban regime".

I think "government" "wins".

As to the POV:

When www.dictionary.com defines "regime", quoting from the 2000 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, it gives these definitions, in this order:

1. a. A form of government: a fascist regime.

b. A government in power; administration: suffered under the new regime.

2. A prevailing social system or pattern.

3. The period during which a particular administration or system prevails.

4. A regulated system, as of diet and exercise; a regimen.

Quoting from the same source, it gives this for "government":

1. The act or process of governing, especially the control and administration of public policy in a political unit.

2. The office, function, or authority of a governing individual or body.

3. Exercise of authority in a political unit; rule.

4. The agency or apparatus through which a governing individual or body functions and exercises authority.

5. A governing body or organization, as:

a. The ruling political party or coalition of political parties in a parliamentary system.

b. The cabinet in a parliamentary system.

c. The persons who make up a governing body.

6. A system or policy by which a political unit is governed.

7. Administration or management of an organization, business, or institution.

8. Political science.

9. Grammar. The influence of a word over the morphological inflection of another word in a phrase or sentence.

(I include the irrelevant denotations lest anyone accuse me of quoting selectively.)

Notice that the first two definitions of regime have negative examples given (or at least many would say that "fascist" is negative; and surely "suffered" is); yet no similar negative examples occur with government.

Also, a search of news.bbc.co.uk just now yields 70 pages of results for "taliban government" versus 27 pages for "taliban regime".

It seems that "government" "wins" in terms of at least one other Wikipedia article's usage, Reuters's usage (at least in the top results of a search tonight at nytimes.com), Google search results, BBC News search results, and (in terms of the POV issue) at least one dictionary.

We could just say "the Taliban" instead of trying to decide between "the Taliban government" and "the Taliban regime". This seems the trend among Reuters, the Associated Press, and The New York Times, both for when it was a government and for the period since then. But the problem there is that talking about "overthrow of the Taliban" seems even less precise and accurate than "overthrow of the Taliban government": the Taliban isn't the national government of Afghanistan anymore, but it certainly hasn't been entirely overthrown in all of Afghanistan.

I advocate going back to "the Taliban government".

President Lethe 02:54, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I second the motion. All in favor say, "aye"!-- 69.110.78.13 03:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Nay - I support the word "regime" - Johntex\ ^talk 03:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Nay - I support government, regime or just "Taliban" where appropriate. Arx Fortis 04:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I certainly don't think the word "regime" is appropriate as the word of choice for an encyclopedia article. "Taliban government" is the one. WP:NPOV and all that. Good work on the research, Pres. -- Guinnog 04:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

...but the word "regime" appears in many articles such as Nazi, Vichy France, Japan, Khmer Rouge/ Pol Pot, Alexander Lukashenko, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao Zedong...the list goes on. There is quite a precedent for using regime in Wikipedia. There's even a regime article! Arx Fortis 04:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yet the topic at hand is the Taliban. And Wikipedia's own Taliban article says "regime" only once and "government" more often. Of course, to that statement and to Arx Fortis's latest one, I would point out that some see merit in the idea that the encyclopedia that quotes itself, or relies on itself as a source, is a poor encyclopedia.

Regime isn't a horrible word to use here. But we all agree that a regime is a form of government, and we even have a reputable mainstream dictionary giving POV examples for regime that it doesn't give for government—so we should be in favor of a word that is as accurate but less POV. Also, "government" sat for weeks without objection in this heavily edited and scrutinized article.

Finally, although other editors have made statements about regime usage in the Bush administration and the press, I've provided the results of an actual search, showing 100% usage of government, not regime, in two Reuters articles, an absence of regime in articles from the Associated Press and The New York Times, and a much greater occurrence of search results for "taliban government" than for "taliban regime" at Google (almost 20 million vs. almost 7 million) and at the website of BBC News (70 pages vs. 27 pages).

Actually, a bit more:

The website of the White House has 36 results for "taliban government" and 210 for "taliban regime"; but we probably all know that the White House, while it does present facts, also likes to present them with certain words that will have certain emotional effects—which Wikipedia is in the business of avoiding.

The 9/11 Commission's report has "Taliban government" twice and "Taliban regime" eight times. (Either way, I find those numbers surprisingly small for almost 600 pages about 9/11.)

... Well, time for me to go to bed.

President Lethe 05:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

What if the sentence was rewritten to say: ...the War on Terror, beginning in October 2001 with the overthrow of Afghanistan's de facto government—the Taliban regime.

Would that satisfy everyone? -- MJCdetroit 16:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

How about "...the War on Terror, beginning in October 2001 with the overthrow of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan." ? Jaxad0127 17:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, "regime" here is just a more specific (and arguably more POV) version of "government". In such cases, I go for the 'least common denominator'. If one person wants to give you a dollar, and another person wants to give you two dollars, the two of them can at least agree to give you one dollar. It seems that we can agree that the Taliban should be called some kind of government in the article; but we're not all agreeing that it should be called a regime. — President Lethe 17:36, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

If that's the case (no to using regime),then in my opinion, the phase de facto needs to be in front of government. Or we just go with Jaxad0127 idea and don't use either term. -- MJCdetroit 18:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I think getting into "de facto" would look like getting into the matter of, say, Israel as a de facto state. (I'm always amused by the idea that people are trying to destroy a state whose existence they don't acknowledge. It's like when Pan-Am 103 exploded over an island that, on the maps in the background of Libyan TV news sets, didn't even exist.) I think "de facto" is both unnecessary and somewhat POV. The many nations that never "recognized" the Taliban as the government Afghanistan still griped about the fact that it was ... governing Afghanistan. If it hadn't been the government of Afghanistan, there wouldn't have been an effort to knock it out of the position of ... governing Afghanistan. I myself think the Taliban was a nasty regime; but I still think Wikipedia would do better just to call it a government in this sentence. This also reminds me of the scene in The Madness of King George when, well after the Treaty of Paris, George III is looking at a globe and speaking contemptibly of "the Colonies" and an advisor says something like "they are called the United States". Whether we like it or not, the Taliban was the only group governing Afghanistan when it was in power. Groups that govern for several years are usually called "governments", regardless of how people feel about them, not "de facto governments". In fact, in talk of the Taliban, "de facto government" seems even less supported by other reference works and the media and general popular usage than "regime". — President Lethe 19:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

With no edit summary, Supersexyspacemonkey changed

The United States has maintained a liberal democratic political system since it adopted its constitution on September 17, 1787.

to

The United States has maintained a liberal democratic political system since it adopted its Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781, and the constitution on September 17, 1787.

With edit summary "rv - clearly the articles of confed weren't stable. also too much detail for intro", Golbez reverted the change.

With edit summary "rv Golbez - Not stable? Meaningless, Irrelevant. 1781 & AOC are objective founding of USA. Constitution is successor Gov, NOT new Country. Not too much info, necessary. Alternative misleading & false.", Supersexyspacemonkey reverted the reversion.

With edit summary "say 'since 2 diff. things' & we'll get '& since the civil war', &c. i doubt stability of a govt whose own ppl agree to scrap it for a new const. supsxyspcmnky's edit summary shows questionable logic.", I've changed it to

The United States has maintained a liberal democratic political system since the adoption of its constitution on September 17, 1787.

No, my logic is far from "questionable," it is rather clear, simple, and factual. You are attempting to insert a highly complex and debatable POV value judgement in a paragraph that should discus the political origin of the United States.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Part of the issue about "stable" may stem from the fact that the sentence used to mention "a stable liberal democratic political system". Not sure why this was removed, and not sure whether the removal was good. Golbez (like me) may not have noticed that "stable" was no longer in the sentence, which might explain part of Golbez's edit summary. If "stable" had been still in the sentence, the issue of stability would not have been "Meaningless, Irrelevant".

I did not see the word "stable" during either edits, and it is better not to include it, as it is far too prosaic, subjective, and complex an issue to discuss in the introduction. At issue should be the simple fact that the sovereign political entity named the United States of America was founded in 1781, and the regime has operated continuously. If the government peacefully, legally, and willingly reorganizes itself, that does not constitute an interruption of government. To argue that it does is quite a stretch.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:51, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Why does Supersexyspacemonkey say "1781 & AOC are objective founding of USA"? Wasn't founding in summer of 1776? Articles were adopted in 1777, but ratified in 1781. Document that declares existence of a state seems to be more a founding document than a later written, later ratified, document that describes its form of government.

The 13 colonies mention the name "United States" but do so in a completely different context that does not declare, nor intends to declare, a single, sovereign, unified Republic. The Declaration of Independence constitutes the founding of 13 sovereign and independent nation-states united in a political, military, and economic war-time alliance against Britain. The "United States of America" spoken of in the Declaration is no more a single unified regime or country than is the "United Nations against the Axis Powers." These 13 independent states later organized themselves into a perpetual union and thus a new country in 1781, a successor country different from the 13 countries that won independence. It can be argued, I will admit, that tradition holds the founding at 1776, but the real significance of 1776 is that it is the date of independence from Britain, not of the creation of a sovereign country called the USA.

The date when the governing document was written is irrelevant. The founding date should be when said documents came into full legal force and the government began operating, which for the AoC is 1781, not 1777.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:51, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Anyway "objective founding" isn't the issue. The issue is when the maintenance of the "(stable) liberal democratic political system" began.

The issue needs to be the objective founding. The discussion of what constitutes this notion of "stability" can be discussed elsewhere in the article, and should include multiple perspectives and definitions of "democratic stability." It is not appropriate for an intro-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Nobody here has said the Constitution created a new country. The Articles of Confederation also didn't create a new country. The Declaration of Independence created the new country. But, again, the issue is the point at which the maintenance of the "(stable) liberal democratic political system" began.

See above, the AoC did create a new country, because 13 countries merged into one.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

As to the amount of detail: with Supersexyspacemonkey's change, we went from one document and one date to two documents and two dates—and entirely needlessly, for, even if we did decide that the starting point was the Articles of Confederation, rather than the Constitution, there would be no need to mention that latter document and date (if today is Tuesday and I've been here since Saturday, I say just "I've been here since Saturday", not "I've been here since Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and earlier today").

To call going from one to two references a needless complication is ludicrous, compared with going from two references to an over-arching subjective assertion based on one person's interpretation of what constitutes "stability" in one narrow context, thus complicating the issue implicitely even if the references are reduced explicitely (by one), and needlessly so. If we mention both documents, the amount of "detail" is quite fine, succinct, and clear.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Supersexyspacemonkey called the version that mentioned only the Constitution "misleading & false". If it is false to say that such a political system has been maintained since the Constitution came along, then why did Supersexyspacemonkey's sexy version say "since it adopted [* * *] the constitution on September 17, 1787"?

Ideally, we pick the earliest date at which whatever we're talking about is true, and we don't start mentioning second or third or fourth or later dates.

The phrasing does not absolutely requite one date, but is flexible enough, in the context of explaining a "continous liberal democracy" (i.e., 18th century Representative Republic), to mention both. In principle, yes, it is true that it is technically unnecessary to mention the later Constitution if we assert a founding date based on the AoC. But, mention of the Constitution alongside the AoC is better for clarity, and it is hardly out of place to mention and reference the two documents that, in all of this nation's history, have served as the governing political structure. Mentioning only the AoC or the Constitution is needlessly pedantic and makes for an article of poor quality. Both documents are important enough and relevant enough to be included in the intro, because they are the two documents that have formed the basis for our Republican constitution, the first document being important because it is first, and the second being important because it is the current one and the one longest in operation in this country.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 22:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

While the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was relatively peaceful, the fact that the political system set up by the Articles was scrapped and replaced with something new doesn't exactly speak well for the idea that the "(stable) liberal democratic system" set up by the Articles has been maintained ever since.

Nothing could be more false. That is the definition of democratic stability, to change and to transition by peaceful and democratic means. This transition from the AoC to the Constitution is a monument to stability. Perhaps some people are offended by the notion that the AoC could have had any positive legacy. Yes, they were insufficient, but they were the basis of our more refined Constitution, and for our country as a unified political entity. And yes, their legacy is an uninterrupted liberal democracy, never suspended, never usurped, only transformed. We had no Napoleon I or Napoleon III, but a Republican regime that has never been toppled even if the structure has changed. But, as I said before, this is POV and can be argued in many ways, and people are welcome to it, but it is a very bad idea to take such a complex and subjective argument and insert it in the intro. And yes, it is needlessly complex, even compared with increasing the number of references to documents from one to two, when they are documents of such massive importance and relevance to any introductory description of United States political nature and history.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 23:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, whatever date you others agree on, only one document and one date should be used.

As I argue above, we should use both, because they are equally relevant:

1. The AoC is the document that founds the USA as a political reality.

2. The Constitution is the document that has been in operation for practically all of the nation's history including the present.

--Mentioning only the AoC makes it seem that they are still in operation.

--Mentioning only the Constitution insinuates that there was no "liberal democracy," i.e., no representative republic, or no USA government before that, or that before the Constitution it was a monarchy, or that there was some interruption in government, or that the USA did not exist before that.

Both omissions are misleading.

The reader should understand, from the article, that the USA was in continous operation from 1781, but that there was a major reorganization of government, the Constitution, that is worth mentioning. These are the two seminal events in the formation of the nation's political structure and identity (even if other events are equally important in their impact on our Constitutional history), and are worth a brief referencing in the introduction.

The object here is neither minimalization nor including every superfluous detail, but clarity, the minimum info needed for clarity, and I feel that both documents must be mentioned to make it an acceptable article, imo-- Supersexyspacemonkey 23:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

President Lethe 04:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Neither - democracy came quite a bit later as the franchise was expanded, and was not entrenched until after the Civil War, with amendments -- JimWae 05:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Um... over a third of the admendments were added in the first few years and several more before the war. Jaxad0127 05:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I certainly grasp that point. But I also grasp that the seed of the expanding franchise was franchise in the first place: a democratic republic rather than a monarchy or anything else. The vote may well have been limited to less than half the population in the beginning: but the actual big founding documents don't lay down as many restrictions as existed because of other laws, and (and this is the important thing) they do lay down something based on obedience to the voters' will. — President Lethe 05:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It was a (rather libral) democracy before the Articles, durring them and after the Constitution. Jaxad0127 05:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Less than 0.5% of the free population voted in the 1792 election - to call that democracy is stretching the term considerably -- JimWae 06:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

You cannot measure that percentage by modern day standards of equality. Stating that America's first election is stretching the term "demcracy" is taking the election out of its chronological context. Yes by modern standards the first American admins were an Aristocaracy, but please consider the changing times and try to abstain from appling modern standards to historical evetns- it causes quite a bit of confusion. Signature ^brendel

Right. And you need to remember that a larger percentage of the free population could vote, but didn't. Look at the most recent nat'l elections: disapointing turnouts. Also consider other modern "democracies" where every body votes (by force) and theres only one candidate. When the Articles, and later the Constitution, were ratified, the government was quite liberal, even by somne of today's standards. The level of political libralism has not gone down since then, its gone up. Jaxad0127 15:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• My objection is not to liberal, but to democracy. I'd say calling it a democracy from 1787 (before the bill of rights) is applying present day term (democracy was then considered something specifically to be avoided) to a situation quite unlike present day. Glossing over the differences hides a major trend that took place during the first 30-40 years of US history. The only federal office that was voted for directly was the House - and only by men who owned land & were white (mostly). -- JimWae 02:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

And, even now, only two federal offices are by direct election: Representative and Senator. Representative democracy (e.g., elected legislators make the laws, rather than all the people themselves getting together to vote; electoral college selects president; state senates elect the persons to send to the national senate; &c.) is still a kind of democracy, even if it's not direct. Democracy with restricted franchise (e.g., excluding women, slaves, children, felons, non-citizens, mental incompetents, illiterates, those who haven't paid poll taxes, those who don't own land, those who aren't white, adults under 21, &c.) is still a kind of democracy, albeit an uglier kind. The Roman Republic was a far cry from the kind of democracy of the 21st-century U.S.: but it was still rule by elected officials. — President Lethe 03:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

"The Roman Republic was a far cry from the kind of democracy of the 21st-century U.S."- yes! As society had evolved so have its concepts including democracy. Calling the US in the late 18th century a democracy is not glossing over things it is simply taking the historical context into account. Modern day democracy only exsits in the modern day and obviously wasn't around in 1787; thus comparing democracy then to democracy now is a useless endavour. At the time, it was democracy. Signature ^brendel 04:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Democracy means rule by the people, which the US has always had. Anyone (with previous restrictions mentioned by President Lethe that were later removed) could vote and hold office. Democracy. Jaxad0127 04:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

• To call the years before 1828 a democracy, rather than an aristocracy is arguably POV, & to say the US maintained a democracy from those years is to ignore a major trend. I do not see the point of including the sentence except for a kind of boosterism. The system from that time was NOT maintained -- JimWae 05:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Election year	total vote	states with pop vote for Pres	states voting	States w/o pop vote	States not voting	tot pop previous Census	free pop (Census)	votes as % of total	votes as % of free	winner	notes
1789	38,818	6	10	4	1/3	3,929,214 *	3,231,533	1.0%	1.2%	Washington
1792	13,332	6	15	9		3,929,214	3,231,533	0.3%	0.4%	Washington
1796	66,841	9	16	7		3,929,214	3,231,533	1.7%	2.1%	Adams
1800	67,282	6	16	10		5,308,483	4,414,881	1.3%	1.5%	Jefferson	decided by House
1804	143,029	11	17	6		5,308,483	4,414,881	2.7%	3.2%	Jefferson
1808	192,691	10	17	7		5,308,483	4,414,881	3.6%	4.4%	Madison
1812	278,786	9	18	9		7,239,881	6,048,519	3.9%	4.6%	Madison
1816	112,370	10	19	9		7,239,881	6,048,519	1.6%	1.9%	Monroe
1820	108,359	15	24	9		9,638,453	8,100,431	1.1%	1.3%	Monroe
1824	365,833	18	24	6		9,638,453	8,100,431	3.8%	4.5%	Adams	decided by House
1828	1,148,018	22	24	2		9,638,453	8,100,431	11.9%	14.2%	Jackson
1832	1,293,973	23	24	1		12,860,702	10,851,659	10.1%	11.9%	Jackson
1836	1,503,534	25	26	1		12,860,702	10,851,659	11.7%	13.9%	Van Buren
1840	2,411,808	25	26	1		17,063,353	14,575,998	14.1%	16.5%	Harrison
1844	2,703,659	25	26	1		17,063,353	14,575,998	15.8%	18.5%	Polk
1848	2,879,184	26	27	1		17,063,353	14,575,998	16.9%	19.8%	Taylor
1852	3,161,830	30	31	1		23,191,876	19,987,563	13.6%	15.8%	Pierce
1856	4,058,657	30	31	1		23,191,876	19,987,563	17.5%	20.3%	Buchanan
1860	4,685,561	31	32	1		31,443,321	27,489,561	14.9%	17.0%	Lincoln
1864	4,031,887	25	25	0	11	31,443,321		12.8%		Lincoln
1868	5,722,440	33	34	1	3	31,443,321	31,443,321	18.2%	18.2%	Grant
1872	6,467,679	37	37	0	0	38,558,371	38,558,371	16.8%	16.8%	Grant
1876	8,413,101	37	37	0		38,558,371	38,558,371	21.8%	21.8%	Hayes	decided by Electoral Commission
Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements. -- JimWae 2006-Jul-27

Also see: http://www.whitehousehistory.org/04/subs/1828_f.html -- JimWae 2006-Jul-27

(Chart above is part of JimWae's post.) I think at least part of the point of the original, "stable" wording was to draw a contrast to those countries that have undergone revolutions since their first attempt at republicanism (e.g., France). I remember broadcasts from the days of and immediately after President Kennedy's assassination in which it was pointed out that the United States' continuity of government even under trying circumstances made it unusual in the world and unusual even in the recent history of many Western, democratic, modern, first-world, industrialized, civilized nations. Even in the Civil War, the United States continued—the Congress and presidency and federal judiciary continued—; after the war, there wasn't the formation of a new country, but rather the reädmission of areas of the country that had withdrawn. And the liberalization of the franchise, for example, has been achieved by peaceful actions of the legislature, rather than revolutionary overthrow of the people and systems of the less liberal previous ways. — President Lethe 05:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Right. Democracy has been maintained (not always the same democracy, but still a democracy) since before the declaration (the conventions were democratic, just like the modern House/Senate). And, except for changes in the style of democracy (which, from the point of view of the populous were mostly unnoticeable), no major changes were made. Jaxad0127 06:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

In response to the last bunch of posts: the issue is not what constitutes a "true" democracy, which is POV. The issue is the factual political organization of the United States government, on paper, which has been a liberal democracy since 1781, the date that it came into existence as a unified government, and longer still if we count the republican constitutions of the original 13 independent states, and before their independence, the original 13 colonies.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 23:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

True. But the union was started in 1776 and was cemented (if you will) with the articles. Jaxad0127 23:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Independence was started, union was not. It was an international alliance of 13 independent nation-states under the Continental Congress, until they came into perpetual union under the Articles. See more in-depth argument above. The Constitution cemented what was first formed in 1781, not before.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 23:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict. I'll stick this on the end.)

On the basis of geography, the E.U., G8, and maybe some other criteria, a list of candidates for 'Westernness' (&c.): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., and the Vatican.

If we look at those countries' histories since the 1770s, we find that few of them have the 'relative stability of the political system' that the U.S. has enjoyed over the same period, and many of them started off with and/or had major setbacks to conditions of much less 'liberal democracy' (in comparison to the mostly one-way / progressive expansion of democracy in the U.S.).

And extremely few of those countries can claim to have been monarchy-free for all of the last 230 years. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. are all still connected to the British monarch. Italy still has a titular royal family. Under their various former and present names, Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, and Slovenia had monarchies into the 20th century. Also into the 20th century, Malta was connected with the British monarch. Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the Vatican still have monarchs. France bounced around between republic and monarchy until the 1870s. Of the listed countries, only Switzerland has been without a monarchy as long as the U.S. has.)

President Lethe 06:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, looking at it's article, Switzerland has been without a monarch for much longer than the US (independance declared 1 August 1291, recognised 24 October 1648), but didn't have a federal state until 1848. But the main argument about the US is not about stability, but when it started. Jaxad0127 23:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I hope I don't misunderstand your bit about Switzerland, but I just wish to clarify that "as long as" was intended to include "longer than" for Switzerland.

And I thought the argument was not when the U.S. was 'created', but when the liberal democratic political system began.

There is not much to argue there. The democratic liberal political system began when the US was created, they are one in the same. This is not because of any value judgement, but because, quite simply, the terminology is based on the US-French revolutionary models. The creation of the US is, by definition, the beginning of a liberal democratic political system, and this is a universally recognized historical consensus. And, yes, it is a liberal democratic political syatem that has undergone many changes. Liberal democray, i.e., the "modern" democracy, or the "modern" Republic, is defined as that system of government created by the American and French Revolutions. It is impossible to state that the USA was not created as such because it would be a contradiction in terms. One can argue POV about whether this is a "true" democracy as we understand it today, but that is a completely different topic. The only real question here is whether the USA was properly founded in its continuous character with the AoC or the Constitution. I say that the country was founded in 1781 with the AoC, and then reorganized itself, freely and democratically, without revolution or usurpation, into a second Republic with the present Constitution. But, the liberal democracy has existed without interruption while encompassing the two government structures.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 00:13, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

President Lethe 23:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I brought up the "stability" issue because it used to be part of the sentence and its former presence was behind part of one of my edit summaries the other day and may also have been behind Golbez's.

And, now, although Supersexyspacemonkey has twice called the stability matter "irrelevant", (s)he has made some good points, today, in support of the idea that liberal democratic system has been stable, at least in the sense that it wasn't interrupted by non-liberal, non-democratic systems. So, although Supersexyspacemonkey is saying we shouldn't reïnclude "stable", (s)he's making arguments that could be used to support reïnserting it.

Thank you, but I would say that whatever argument can be made for the notion of "stability," that does not mean that it should be reinserted where it was. My main point is that the intro is not the proper place for discussing something that is so subjective and so complex, because to represent it accurately the article must present multiple viewpoints, and that is simply inappropriate for that section. What the section should contain is useful data on the key facts of US history and political structure.-- Supersexyspacemonkey 00:13, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, it still may be worth using the stability point, perhaps in different words, in the sense of the comparison I mentioned (the rarity in this world of a government that continues as I described in the paragraphs beginning just under the chart).

President Lethe 00:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Supersexyspacemonkey is making an interesting argument about when the steady liberal democratic government in the U.S. began, as well as about when the U.S. came into existence. The argument is that the U.S. didn't exist until the Articles of Confederation were adopted, in 1781. This idea isn't entirely bad, but it is foreign to the orthodoxy. This is a matter of human consideration, and human beings have reached a majority agreement that the U.S. began in 1776, long before they won the war with Great Britain, months before they began work on the Articles of Confederation, and years before the the Constitution was written and put into effect. While we start numbering the presidents at the first one under the Constitution, rather than those under the Articles of Confederation or any of the presidents of the Continental Congresses, the fact is that, every year, the federal government asserts that the birth of the U.S. was in 1776—not just that the separate (though thrice declared "united" in the Declaration, twice as "states" and once as "Colonies") states began their independence from Great Britain in 1776, but that they also began their coëxistence as a single nation in that year. For example, when, in 2005, the president signs a proclamation saying that he has set his hand "in the year of our Lord two thousand five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-ninth", there's more going on than "When did British rule over several separate, independent, sovereign nation-states cease?" (if that were the question, the U.S. would arguably be some years younger, as it would if we counted from the adoption of the Articles of Confederation): the question is "When was the present nation born?" And the answer given since the 18th century has been 1776.

But, again, the argument, at least in terms of the sentence in the article's introduction, isn't about when the U.S. was born. It's about when the liberal democratic political system began. The two issues aren't eternally tied together.

President Lethe 00:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I looked up other countries' per capitas on Wikipedia and found that no other counry had a higher one than America. Funnily enough, Norway was listed as higher than the US, but the figure given was lower (US: $43555, Norway: $42---). I looked at smaller countries like Monaco, Vatican City, and Switzerland. So, what countries have higher per capitas than America? Jlujan69 23:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I found it. The only country that I know of with a higher per capita than the US is Luxembourg. $72---, wow!

Allowing for margin of error, both Norway and U.A.E. could also have higher per capita figures.User:Jlujan69|Jlujan69]] 23:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

From http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762380.html:

HIGHEST GDP PER CAPITA (PPP in U.S. dollars): 2004

1. Luxembourg 55,600

2. Equatorial Guinea 50,200

3. United Arab Emirates 43,400

4. Norway 42,300

5. United States 41,800

6. Ireland 41,000

7. Iceland 35,600

8. Denmark 34,600; San Marino 34,600

10. Canada 34,000

That's by purchasing-power parity.

President Lethe 00:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I say its pretty obvious- the US is #5 by PPP. Signature ^brendel 01:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

They use different methods. Jaxad0127 02:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The source for InfoPlease.com's chart is the CIA World Factbook. — President Lethe 02:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The CIA Factbook is an authorative enough source and the World Bank confirms these numbers if I recall correctly. Signature ^brendel 04:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting info. you've posted. It's true that there are different ways to measure standards of living and quality of life amongst nations. I wonder if PPP principles can be used to compare purchasing power within a nation over a certain period of its history. For example, did one dollar really afford someone a better standard of living in 1956 than say in 2006? I believe I've also seen this at work while traveling to less developed countries. While my dollar may have been able to purchase more goods in that country, my overall expenditures was still greater than that of a local. My money left my pocket faster with not a whole lot to show for it. That experience is one of the primary reasons why I believe that it's too easy to make a whole lot of the fact that the dollar is more "valuable" than many countries' currencies. You may find yourself spending twice as much in, say, Bangledesh in two weeks than you would back home in Kansas in 30 days--and that's just on essentials with a few souvenirs thrown in. I'm not certain if this is a PPP principle being applied here, but it really isn't all that cut and dry when comparing standards of living. While I certainly wouldn't want to trade places with a poor person in a poor country, it isn't necessarily proper to say that I'm richer than him. A lot of it is relative. Jlujan69 05:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is indeed. Than there is also the HDI to measure quality of life- the issue of non-monetary benefits received by the residents of well-fare states such as Sweden and the measures of calculating the per capita being skewed by an uneven income distribution. America's per capita GDP is higher than that of Sweden but considering that people in Sweden do not need to pay for the children's braces, prescription medication, and college education are they on average really not as "wealthy" as Americans- As you said It's all relative. Thus GDP per capita should only be used in regards to measuring economic output and productivity, not to measure the quality of life of private citizens- it is a vague indicator. Otherwise I would say PPP is good enough but you can look at the Work Bank Web-Site where both GDP per capita and GDP PPP per capita rankings are available. Signature ^brendel 05:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly better to go with PPP than without in comparing GDPs. Good example from Wikipedia's PPP article:

Using market exchange rates to compare countries' standard of living or per capita Gross Domestic Product can give a very misleading picture. The PPP method is used as an alternative.

For example, if the value of the Mexican peso falls by half compared to the US dollar, the Gross Domestic Product measured in dollars will also halve. However, this exchange rate results from international trade and financial markets. It does not necessarily mean that Mexicans are any poorer; if incomes and prices measured in pesos stay the same, they will be no worse off assuming that imported goods are not essential to the quality of life of individuals. Measuring income in different countries using PPP exchange rates helps to avoid this problem.

Yes, there are many measures of the quality of life. And, yes, much of this topic is relative.

At some point, we'll come up with a much better measure of an economy's success than GDP; GDP measures the transfer of money but not much else, nothing of the good or bad: when someone wastefully procures raw materials and sells them to a manufacturer, it adds to GDP; when a consumer buys a wasteful product, it raises the GDP; when the consumer tires of the product and throws it on the ground, requiring a clean-up service to be hired to get rid of the mess, the GDP rises; the GDP also rises for the production, transport, and sale of the fuel in the truck that brought the workers to clean up the mess, and for the medical care for those suffering breathing problems from the pollution caused by the burning of the truck's fuel. And one can make an equal example for the other end of the spectrum.

Also, even if the mean GDP per capita in the U.S. is $40,000, it doesn't actually mean that the mode for a four-person household is to take in $160,000 (= $40,000 × 4) every year.

The point about Sweden reminds me of a piece I read a few years ago about Norway's GDP per capita, which was (and is) higher than the United States': it talked about how the Norwegians had a higher GDP per capita and had such benefits as those mentioned by Gerdbrendel about Sweden—but the Norwegians were also subject to such high out-of-pocket prices for certain goods and services that the average Norwegian actually had a much harder time affording such purchases than the average American. (One of the examples was the sluggishness of the restaurant business in Norway: economic circumstances led restaurants to charge such high prices that the average Norwegian could afford to go out to eat a lot less often than the average American.)

... Anyway, just my babbling comments.

President Lethe 05:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well the thing w/ being able to afford goods is that you also have to take price flactuations in the US into account as well. For example in Monterey County, California a 1,000 sq ft condo will cost as much as 2,500+ sq ft suburban home in a desirable Seattle suburb or a 3,300 sq ft home in a desirable Houston suburb. Even in the US you have hughe differences in price. You're comment about Norway is very true, but the same also goes for some US residents. Salaries in CA are above national average, but prices are even further above national average. (A California resident making $100k might be able to afford "less" than a Texas resident making $60k a year) I think we have to remeber that GDP per capita isn't a very good measure for personal wealth but rather a measure of the economic output and productivity of a country- and wastefulness. Nevertheless we should use the PPP. Regards, Signature ^brendel 18:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I understood that (about variation within a country). And, yes, we are stuck with GDP PPP for now. It'll just be nice when economists have come up with another simple number that does an even better job at measuring an economy's function and the quality of that function. I was just babbling. — President Lethe 19:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

You really sure Equatorial Guinea is wealthy compared to the 10 poorest U.S. states? Wikipedia failed to consider the fact those "poor" states of Arkansas, Mississippi, South Dakota and West Virginia have a higher GDP per capita than the 5 poorest European countries: Albania, Cyprus, Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria (not in order). The small African country has enjoyed a boom in oil revenues, however the majority of Equatorial Guineans are below the poverty gap. Americans are quite the opposite, but the average weekly paycheck is truly below that of Western Europe as the article-economics section said. Only four small republics exceed the U.S., still a positive rank for Americans to truly enjoy a relative wealthy standard of living. -- Mike D 26 06:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The GPD per capita of France is roughly that of Arkansas, yet the quality of life is, on average, still higher in France than in Arkansas as the benfits the French dirive from their well-fare state arn't counted in GDP per capita but still have a significant imapct on their lifes. A significant portion of Arkansas' population is underinsured, versus none in France where state of the art health care if free. GDP per capita just isn't a good measure for the well-fare and quality of life of a country's residents. As you said "The majority of Equatorial Guineans are below the poverty gap," yet it has a higher GDP than the US. The HDI is better, but still far from perfect. FYI: Those poor Euro countries are sometimes also considered third world countries by Western Europeans. Regards, Signature ^brendel 07:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Could someone else correct this please? I've left a message at User talk:24.118.153.134 asking the user to stop inserting it unless they can reference it, but I'm nervous about 3rr here. Thanks. -- Guinnog 23:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:3RR doesn't count reverting (obvious, simple) vandalism. I think that might count as such.

I just checked the Census's poplulation clock and it's still over 600,000 till we get there (last update 23:54 GMT (EST+5) Jul 29, 2006).

Jaxad0127 23:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

With the above subject, B ojikutu left this message at my Talk page:

As to your propositions re: what portions of America's mid-nineteenth century social order marshalled political tensions in the run-up to the Civil War, who dominated the contentious debate prior secession and combat . . . and what sovereign entities failed to viably address the socio-economic schism between North and South and thereby potentially avoid duly armed engagement between a muddled mass, I say only this,

Believe what you will, serve whom you must. But recognize in the midst of your service, that you are amongst a minion that aims to propagate tom-foolery on behalf of the very forces whose agency you seek to edit from history. Godspeed . . . you know, the One in whom you trust.

Finally, as the heritage of the referenced slave labor was surely --and exclusively -- African, and their nationality was certainly not American (as property has no nation), the place of their birth is wholly irrelevant . . . and any reference to this human chattel as African slave labor was/is wholly and historically appropriate.

Peace.

This was about an edit I made yesterday. With the edit summary "rv. failure of more than the fed govt. more than elites & aristocracy opposed & supported slavery. slavery in u.s., mostly w/ people born in u.s.—not in africa. mas–dix line not ideological barrier", I undid B ojikutu's recent changes to this article's History section. B ojikutu's version, with changes here in bold, was

As new territories were being incorporated, the nation was divided over the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and, by the 1820s, the expansion of slavery. The manufacturing and transport elites in the North, who controlled the U.S. states situated above the Mason Dixon line, were generally opposed to the expansion of slavery; whereas the large landowning Southern aristiocracy, who controlled the cotton-, tobacco- and indigo- producing Southern states below the Mason-Dixon line, perceived of their opposition as an attack on the Southern plantocracy, given its dependency on African slave labor. The federal government's failure to permanently resolve these issues led to the American Civil War, following the secession of many slave states in the South to form the Confederate States of America after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. ^[2] The 1865 Union victory in the Civil War effectively ended slavery, as well as settling the question of whether a state had the right to secede. The event was a major turning point in American history, with an increase in federal power. ^[3]

The old version, to which I reverted, was

As new territories were being incorporated, the nation was divided over the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and, by the 1820s, the expansion of slavery. The Northern states were opposed to the expansion of slavery whereas the Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on slave labor. The failure to permanently resolve these issues led to the American Civil War, following the secession of many slave states in the South to form the Confederate States of America after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. ^[4] The 1865 Union victory in the Civil War effectively ended slavery, as well as settling the question of whether a state had the right to secede. The event was a major turning point in American history, with an increase in federal power. ^[5]

My edit summary addressed a good number of my reasons for this reversion.

The failure is essentially the fault of everything and everyone in the universe, because no power that might have stopped it did stop it. Even if we limit ourselves to the people in the U.S. at the time, there's plenty of blame to spread around on more than just the federal government. It's misrepresentative to restrict this brief description of the causes in this way.

While it may be true that "the manufacturing and transport elites in the North [* * *] were generally opposed to the expansion of slavery", it's unfair to omit mention of all the other Americans who opposed slavery's expansion.

B ojikutu also unlinked the mention of the North.

B ojikutu's wording calls the Southern aristocracy large; their numbers were quite small in comparison to the poor white population of the South and the enslaved black population of the south, and maybe in comparison to the mentioned Northern élites as well.

(There are also punctuation changes to be made in B ojikutu's edit: semicolon to comma, and removal of space after hyphen. I'd change dependency to dependence.)

In talk of the Civil War, it's usually mentioned that the Northern economy depended more on manufacturing and other such industries, while the Southern economy depended more on agriculture. But this wording only mentions that some states below the Mason–Dixon line produced cotton, tobacco, and indigo, and that some élites in the North were involved in manufacturing and transportation. Because this doesn't even clearly present the differences in the two economies, it should, I say, be left out. The old version, however, clearly says that the economy of the Southern states, rather than simply an undelineated plantocracy in those states, depended on slave labor.

And the reason for which I removed "African" from the description of the "slave labor" is very simple: rather than a denial of the facts, it's simply an effort to avoid ambiguity. When Belgium made big use of African slave labor, the African slaves were people of African genes who were born in Africa, who were enslaved in Africa, and who were laboring in Africa. We can lessen the chances that a reader will even temporarily infer that the U.S. was into colonizing bits of Africa and enslaving the local populations to work there by dropping this "African".

I don't share the belief that the place in which someone—and his/her parents—were born, and in which the person has spent all his life, is "irrelevant" in determining the best demonym to describe that person. On the bases of when legal importation of slaves ended in the U.S. and the average lifespan of a slave in the U.S., we can deduce that most slaves living in the U.S. at the time of the Civil War were born in the U.S., had probably spent their entire lives in the U.S., and had a big bit of English in their first language. Also, where someone is working is often a good starting-point for a description of the worker: if you were born in California and you spent 90% of your life in California, but you're now working for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia, it makes more sense for me to call you "a Coca-Cola employee", "an Atlanta worker", and "a Georgia worker", than "a Californian worker"—whether you ended up in Atlanta and working for Coke by choice or not.

President Lethe 21:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

(For the sake of accuracy and currency: Since my post above, B ojikutu has updated his/her post at my talk page. The new versions of the changed sentences are, with changed areas in bold here,

• But recognize in the midst of your service, that you are counting yourself amongst a minion that aims to propagate ambiguous imprecision on behalf of the very forces whose agency you seek to edit from history.
• Finally, as the heritage of the referenced slave labor was surely --and exclusively -- African, and their nationality was certainly not American (as chattel has no nation), the place of their literal birth is wholly irrelevant . . . and any reference to this human property as African slave labor was/is wholly and historically appropriate.

That's all. — President Lethe 22:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC))

(Now I'm counting myself "amongst a minion that aims to propagate the agency of ambiguous imprecision on behalf of the very forces whose hegemonic complicity [I] seek to edit from history." — President Lethe 02:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC))

B ojikutu has continued to revise the post at my Talk page (the armed conflict is no longer duly armed, and a colon has lost its tail and gained a superior); but I won't keep posting updates here.

I will, however, use more words here to explain the point I've been trying to get across in my edit summaries.

Yesterday, with the edit summary "labor has ancestry? this is not deletism—but the issue here was about economic dependence on SLAVERY (which also was all black), not about depending on BLACK SLAVERY. & it's LINKED.", I removed "of African ancestry" (previously "of African descent") from "the Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on slave labor of African ancestry."

Today, with the edit summary "issue was economic dependence on SLAVERY (which also was all black), not about depending on BLACK SLAVERY. it's LINKED. north, e.g., opposed SLAVERY (regardless of race).", I removed "Black" from "the Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on Black slave labor."

I have no interest in denying that slavery in the 19th-century U.S. was restricted to people who were counted as black.

But this is a simple case of the sentence making faulty propositions. If we had asked a pro-slavery person at the time why (s)he saw northern opposition to slavery as a threat, the answer would've been "Our economy depends on slavery". The fact that all the slaves were black or partly black wasn't the point: the point was that they were slaves. The economy depended on slavery. If the slaves had been white or red or green, they still would've been slaves, and the economic dependence still would've been on slavery.

Putting race into the sentences in this way also may come across as a statement that abolitionists were opposed only to black slavery and would've accepted slavery if the slaves had been more racially balanced or had been of another race instead. Their abolitionism wasn't based on race: it was based on opposition to slavery, regardless of race.

If we want to say, earlier in the paragraph, that slavery in the U.S. was all black, that may be somewhat fine (though it denies other parts of the racial heritage of people who had white genes, or Indian genes, mixed with their black genes)—but we should not make it seem that the reason for which the South liked slavery was that the slaves were black (the reason for liking it was that they were slaves (human beings whom they didn't have to pay and whom they could buy and sell and keep and force to work)) and that the reason for which the abolitionists disliked slavery was that the slaves were black (the reason for disliking it was that they were slaves).

President Lethe 16:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. In fact, on a scientific basis, there are no "black genes", and then as now, most "black" people had ancestry from all over. On an economic level the important thing was that there were slaves, not what colour their skin was. -- Guinnog 17:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

To keep the discussion at the Talk page of the article in question, I duplicate the latest message that B ojikutu left at my Talk page:

In a nineteenth century U.S. context, what exactly does the phrase "slavery (regardless race)" mean? That's a rhetorical question.

Your reduction of the U.S. Civil War to this base, regionally polarized dilectic between those who endorsed slavery and those who opposed the institution is hollow, incomplete and inaccurate. And your attempt to revise slavery itself as some raceless American phenomena is tragically ahistorical and ideologically rather vapid.

--User:B ojikutu 17:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it is that I reduced the war to regional polarization, how B ojikutu has tried to undo that, or how I did anything else along the lines of B ojikutu's suggestion (because (1) I didn't write the stuff in the first place and (2) I'm simply trying to keep strange propositions about why people liked or disliked slavery out of the discussion of the causes of the war). Also, when the two opponents in a war come from two separate geographical regions, how could those two regional bases not become polar opposites? — President Lethe 18:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

President Lethe 18:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

There are three primary rhetorical issues at work within this discourse regarding my original edits, your redactions thereof, my critical response to those changes, and your belabored defense. Perhaps there are further (and from my end, purely hypothetical) issues under-girding your positions. But I will address only that which is germane to the matters covered in my edits:

a) The run-up to the U.S. Civil War.

b) The exigency of U.S. federal government inaction, and its seminal contribution to the War's outbreak, particularly in the immediate antebellum decade (1850-1860).

c) The entwinement of race, ancestry and slavery in American 19th Century history (and, of course, long prior that).

A.

War is, at its root, dynamic, usually violent conflict between economic and political elites whose vested interests (interests usually left unspecified in accessible public realms, such that the masses of those expected to engage in actual combat, or otherwise sentimentally, energetically and materially support the war effort, are left critically disengaged from an exclusionary discourse) are situated in unmitigated contradiction. The history of any land touched by European imperialism and its commensurate ideologies chronicles no war of which I am aware waged outside of the above definition. In the U.S. Civil War, the elite constituents "at work" were the Northern capital and commercial classes and their clients, the urban manufacturers and burgeoning railroad interests -- housed under the tent of the U.S. Republican Party as of the late 1850s -- on the one hand, and the large scale landowning (the obvious meaning of the "large land-owning" reference in my original edits), cotton-, tobacco-, and indigo- producing, slave-owning, Southern plantation aristocracy (or, as I prefer, the plantocracy), who along with the Middle Atlantic merchant/trader class and the military establishment, controlled the U.S. Democratic Party and through it, the balance of the South. Further, this plantocracy-merchant-militarist-postJacksonian coalition dominated each branch of the U.S. federal government for thirty plus-years prior the outbreak of the Civil War, winning six of eight presidential elections, appointing the vast majority of the Supreme Court jurists (including the Chief Justice for much of the period, Roger Taney), and controlling both chambers of Congress for all but two years during that critical decade prior secession. Hence, as federal governmental power wrested squarely in the hands of one of the contending factions, the U.S. federal government was willfully stymied from wielding its exigency as the sole entity with the capacity to productively negotiate this increasingly combustible debate between elite coalitions and thereby (to paraphrase the eventual U.S. President Lincoln) preserve and protect the "sacred" Union. More on the federal government's role later.

Yet slavery was one of a slew of issues galvanizing this discord between the Northern industrialist and the Southern plantation classes. To reduce the war to the simple Northern pro-slavery/Southern anti-slavery virgule, in my estimation, is to subvert the honest, comprehensive transmission of a substantive history. In the mid-19th Century, Black chattel slavery was certainly the issue (accurately) thought most provocative in mobilizing and manipulating mass emotion and thereby marshaling the aforementioned sentiment, energies and blood-lust requisite for the waging of any war. The church-based moralists, women-centered activist groups, humanist ideologues, the economically threatened, low-skilled, often illiterate Southern agrarian workers and the dogmatists of white racial superiority (throughout the U.S.) were far more likely to take up arms to defend or destroy slavery, than they would to decide whether the Southern agrarian planter class or the Northern factory owners controlled the settlement of the Western territories (and thereby availed themselves of the vast Western resources -- primarily the gold -- to be had by the territories' land-charter granting forces); who would take dominion over the construction of a transcontinental railroad to carry those resources, along with the still vast East Asian imports, from California back east to New York, for barter on the world markets; or who dictated the terms of the permanent re-chartering of a national bank responsible for regulating and distributing a currency bound to debt, and to the gold reserves. For the southern "plantoicrat", the preservation of the mass enslavement of human beings of African descent was the manner in which he kept cotton "king", his pockets full of crop profit, and the U.S. Congress stocked full of pliant, ambitious supplicants willing to propagate governmental gridlock and inaction on behalf of a preserved plantocracy. For the Northern capitalist, ending slavery meant denying the Southern planter his leverage in dictating the economic future of the Union, and shifting the apex of economic and political power in the United States back to New England and the Middle Atlantic . . . where it had not exclusively resided since the end of Hamiltonian Federalism. For the masses, slavery was the carrot at the flagpole's end that lead the people to slaughter on the fields of Shiloh, Bull Run and Antietam.

Further, and finally, debunking your reductive contention that the U.S. Civil War was a matter of a North of anti-slavery advocates polarized against a South of pro-slavery profiteers, is the simple and obvious fact that, in 1861, the Northern Union itself (this realm of anti-slavery sentiments as per your contentions) included four slave states: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, along with Washington D.C., the Union's political hub. This isn't even to begin to speak to the vast economic profit realized by the New York, Boston and Philadelphia commodities traders who depended on king cotton and tobacco for the preservation of their brokerage transactions with the moneyed Old World consummer clientele.

The slavery vs. anti-slavery argument works in sixth grade history class (perhaps it works all the way on through the freshman Introduction to History course in the contemporary U.S.), but in the real world -- a real world of realpolitik (sorry to use a postbellum term in discussing this matter, but it resonates so, in this case) -- that simple reduction seems senseless. It is my presumption that wikipedia is intended to exist in, and serve this "real" world.

B.

It is my understanding that the very purpose of centralized government is to contain competing, contradictory and sometimes uncompromising human and institutional forces within the literal and figurative parameters of a nation-state, forging legalistic bonds within which those forces embrace civility, comity, communality, cooperation and some level of social conformity over corruption and conflict, less they find themselves at the mercy of governmental might. Sounds totalitarian, perhaps . . . but given the very nature of the social contracts upon which all governments are forged, is this not the reality of the relationship between humanity and its ruling bodies? The individual entity foregoes liberty and some modicum of the unfettered pursuit of self-interests to a controlling body operated by designated elites who thereby regulate socio-economic and cultural interactions? Did not those who wrote the U.S.'s social contract fail to endow its central government with the seminal force to reconcile the matters which would lead to the bloody schism that was the Civil War; was this failure not indicative of the victory of the "Republican" slave-owning Fathers and other commercial interests concerned with unimpeded expansionism and leery of granting power to competitors whose interests might one day subvert their own? Were not the various compromises, illusory lines, and short-sighted compacts and treaties of the antebellum period regarding expansion, commerce, tariffs and slavery, all failed means of containing conflict between various well-heeled parties (foreign and domestic) with designs on dictating the future of the land upon which the United States would come to manifest? Were not these often short-sighted treaties and endeavors (the Louisiana Purchase, Missouri Compromise, the Olmstead Act, the Mexican Conquest, Kansas-Nebraska, Dred Scott, the various land-grabbing war-born compacts with the thusly disenfranchised indigenous tribes, etc.) all eventual contributing factors to what came to be the U.S. Civil War? Did not the federal government, under the domain of the slave-owning, crop-trading Party, purposefully aim to stave off any permanent treatment of what Lincoln would come to call America's peculiar institution? With what power were the people vested such that they might have profoundly engaged social and economic circumstance and thereby "resolved" the problem of these competing economic interests? Mass Revolution? Even given your own understanding of the War's contributing factors, why would the masses of U.S. citizens have revolted to subvert the standing social order in the 19th Century?

It seems to me that the common people of the day engaged all efforts that were within their given capacities: Black slaves rebelled, Black slaves ran North, Black slaves worked the fields, some insurgent whites took up arms and invaded territories, abolitionists lobbied and rallied and wrote, elites invested and plotted, the faithful turned to God. All in vain, for the one force with the power to reconcile -- federal government, not God -- was hell-bent, for seventy-plus years on the static containment (under duress) of varied economic interests, rather than on the resolution of conflict-fomenting socioeconomic ills.

C.

Regardless Guinnog's irrelevant, just-inane-enough-to-be-slightly-distracting commentary re: race and genetics ( digression: for your information, Guinnog, all of this world's "black" population is of original African descent. They may claim ancestry or nationality to another continent -- but their inclination to do so is a direct by-product of the African Diaspora created by Transatlantic or Tran Saharan slavery), regardless your ill-thought (or un-thought) analogy to workers moving from state-to-state, the historic fact of the matter remains that the slaves in those fifteen States and the District of Columbia in 1861 were exclusively Blacks of predominant African descent. Referring to them as such does not confuse, does not muddle, does not rebuke nor debunk, it merely begins to enlighten and edify one to the history of these United States and its steeping in racial polemics. Race is never immaterial in the discussion of slavery and its economic ramifications -- particularly given that the ideology of Euro-Caucusian racial superiority over the African Negroid (far more readily than the notion of Southern economic dependency on free labor) was the most oft repeated and embraced defense offered up for slavery's continuance in the South.

Further, the doctrine of white racial superiority was just as readily embraced in the mostly free North -- where the Southern owner perceived of himself/herself as master/mistress of a distressed, infantilized dark horde, the Northern emancipator/abolitionist often perceived of himself/herself as the Black slave child's savior. Lincoln spoke of the superiority of whites to blacks and to the need to preserve America as a white man's land: which under-girded his own embrace of the idea of expanding Liberia or colonizing new lands back in the slaves' biological home, Africa, for relocation and repatriation. This, in the "Emancipator's" view, was the most logical resolution to the peculiar institution.

A far more cogent and direct contemporary comparison when considering the centrality and relevance of ancestry, race and socioeconomic status than the one you propose is this: let's say that the U.S. was without its current naturalization laws. Let's say migrant workers traveled to the U.S. from various global regions (the Caribbean islands, Central America, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, etc.) gave birth to children in these United States, children who grew up to be migrant workers like their forbearers and progenitors. Without a naturalization clause (there was no citizenship-granting qualification afforded chattel slaves in the 18th or 19th Century peculiar institution), how would you refer to these migrant workers as a group of human beings, with a place of genealogical origin and a cultural heritage? If they were born in El Salvador or Honduras, would you not correctly refer to them as Latin American migrants; in Cambodia or Laos, could you not refer to them as Southeast Asian migrant workers; in Jamaica or Haiti, would you not refer to them as Caribbean migrant workers? Or would you avoid such references in an attempt to bleach away these migrants' pre-laboring history? Even with the standing naturalization codes, does not the migrant laborer have a meaningful, relevant ancestry pre-his/her engagement with U.S. economic forces? Would you find yourself just as perturbed -- or somehow distracted from "viable" economic contexts -- were one to refer to the landed gentry of what came to be these United States as people of Northern European ancestry? Or is that ancestry irrelevant as well? May your God -- whatever its lineage -- bless you.

b_ojikutu 07:16, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

With an edit summary drawing attention to concision, I recently changed a paragraph in the article so that it read

The United States Congress is a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states according to population every tenth year. Every state has at least one Representative: currently, seven states have one Representative each; California, the most populous state, has 53. Each state has exactly two Senators, elected at large to six-year terms; one third of the 100 Senators are elected every second year.

With the edit summary "not as good...i really think the earlier version was perfect", 2nd Piston Honda has changed the paragraph so that it reads

The United States Congress is a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states according to population every tenth year, with each state guaranteed at least one. States with one representative apportioned elect their Congressman "at-large", from the entire state rather than a numbered district. Seven of the least-populous states have only one representative; the most populous state, California, has 53. Each state has two Senators, regardless of population, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of the 100 Senators are elected every second year.

First of all, in my version, I would change the "Every" at the beginning of one sentence to "Each".

2nd Piston Honda's version uses more words to convey the same information along with some obviated truisms.

Actually, maybe it is useful to say that the Constitution requires that every state have at least one Representative, rather than simply that each state has one Representative; and maybe guaranteed is an alright word for this.

But I see several things as making 2nd Piston Honda's version imperfect:

• There is a grammatical-number problem in "States with one representative apportioned elect their Congressman".

• Not only may some see Congressman as sexist: it's ambiguous: men in the Senate are just as much in Congress as those in the House are.

• My version avoids quotation marks around at large / at-large, links to the article that explains its meaning, and follows the logic that it should have a hyphen when it's used adjectivally but not when it's used adverbially.

• That a Representative from a state that gets only one Representative is elected by the entire state is obvious, unless we expect that some part of such a state is ridiculously excluded from voting. To point out that there's no need to apply a number to the Congressional district in a state that has only one district is also going too far.

• Saying that each state has two Senators without saying that the number is exactly two is less precise.

• When it's precisely stated that each state has exactly two Senators, it obviates saying that this is regardless of population.

I will change the paragraph again, this time changing my "Every" to "Each" and putting in something about the guarantee of at least one Representative. My edit summary will suggest seeing this Talk page.

President Lethe 15:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Your version doesn't flow as well, particularly the sentence starting with "Every state". I felt the little room that your version saved wasn't worth the tradeoff. 2nd Piston Honda 17:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, 2nd Piston Honda.

After my last post here, my latest version was

The United States Congress is a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states according to population every tenth year. Each state is guaranteed at least one Representative: currently, seven states have only one each; California, the most populous state, has 53. Each state has exactly two Senators, elected at large to six-year terms; one third of the 100 Senators are elected every second year.

Your latest version is

The United States Congress is a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states according to population every tenth year, with each state guaranteed at least one. Currently, seven of the least-populous states have only one representative; the most populous state, California, has 53. Each state has two Senators, regardless of population, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of the 100 Senators are elected every second year.

It seems that your criticism is somewhat limited to your idea of "as good", "as well", and "perfect".

There is only one least populous state. When we get to multiple ones, they are less populous. Also, the hyphen is unnecessary. It's also unnecessary to say that the states that have one each are less populous, because (1) we already say that it's done according to population, and (2) the point about California makes it clear that the number of Representatives is in direct proportion to the population (there's no chance for the reader to get the idea that it's in inverse proportion).

You also have capital Representatives in the name of the chamber, lowercase representatives in the "Currently" sentence, and capital Senators.

You repeat the inexactness about Senators, as well as the truisms about "regardless of population" and their being elected at large (in which you repeat the unnecessary hyphen). And you delink " at large".

By the way, perhaps we should also mention the non-voting Congressional representation of the District of Columbia and other non-state U.S. territories.

Your change to "[* * *], with each state guaranteed at least one" is O.K. with me.

President Lethe 17:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

You may not have caught my latest version while you were writing that. Also, i didn't claim that the whole paragraph was grammatically and otherwise correct, my concern was only over which version of the disputed texts was better. 2nd Piston Honda 17:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I think President Lethe's version flows better than 2nd Piston Honda's version. Especially around the part about seven states only having one representative. Jaxad0127 17:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

2nd Piston Honda, yes, it's possible that I was looking at a slightly old version when I wrote my post. — The very latest version as of this post now also has which as a defining relative pronoun; it's often better to keep that for the defining and which for the nondefining. — We aren't tied between the version I've written and what you've written. But, while you've come up with general dislikes for my version, I've listed specific problems with yours. I don't think mine's perfect; if you see problems in the flow of mine, perhaps you can eliminate those problems without simultaneously introducing the specific problems that I've mentioned about your version. — President Lethe 18:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i was debating whether to use "which" or "that". By the way, no one will object to you fixing grammatical errors right now without commenting about them here.

But now that there's a new version up, would you like to explain what you think is wrong with it, other than grammatical errors? 2nd Piston Honda 19:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I prefer the flow of PL's version so I restored it, losing the (I thought) unnecessary word "exactly". In a case like this where the meaning is nopt in question, I go on brevity and aesthetic flow. I think this version scores on both. -- Guinnog 20:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

A user named Rotten [4] removed the health section with the reason being "Mexico doesn't have a heatlh section." As if that's a reason for removing it??? I tried to add it back but somehow duplicated an entire section at the end. Could someone add the Health section back? Arx Fortis 06:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree and brought the section back. Rergards, Signature ^brendel 06:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I’d like to point out that pedantically and officially the U.S.A. dose not “now consists of 50 states, one federal district, and a number of overseas territories”. It in fact consists of 46 states, one federal district, and a number of overseas territories, because Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are officially commonwealths.

Zippokovich 22:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

From the view of the Federal Government, they are considered States. Jaxad0127 00:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

You have 5 fingers, right? But, isn't one of them a thumb? So, you really only have 4 fingers, right? — Ksn 00:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? - I like the comeback left by Ksn though, lol. Signature ^brendel 01:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Zippokovich is definitely wrong. All major encyclopedias and all legal and political science textbooks that speak to this issue have always stated that the the United States has 50 states. Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are states in all but name. -- Coolcaesar 01:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not totally wrong and it's not totally right. Virginia's own government website, for example, simultaneously says Virginia is a state and isn't really a state. Anyway, I say the article should continue to say there are 50 states. The rules about the design of the U.S. flag, for example, have stars for states, and there are 50 stars; and the Constitution talks about each state’s representation in Congress—and the representation of those four commonwealths is definitely exactly the same kind of representation as that of the other 46 states. — President Lethe 02:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

One of the definitions of state (lower case) is "A political division of a federation retaining a degree of autonomy, for example one of the fifty United States. See also Province." ( Wiktionary article on state, number two). Jaxad0127 02:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I never said the article should be changed and I agree that for all intents and purposes the four are states. I was just pointing out that pedantically they are commonwealths. And in reply to the reply above, you cannot backup a point on Wikipedia with another Wikipedia or Wiki page, it would defeat the point of citing articles. And I do have evidence to back up my claim, put Massachusetts in to Google and the first hit is [Mass.gov – Commonwealth Homepage”, similarly Virginia’s government homepage is “Virginia.gov – The Official Commonwealth of Virginia Home Page”, the same is true for Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Zippokovich 17:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Uh, what? Wiktionary is a Wikimedia project, like Wikipedia ais. Its a wiki dictionary. Jaxad0127 17:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I know, I was just saying you can't source information for one Wiki project form another.

Zippokovich 18:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

There's plenty of precedent for using other Wikimedia as sources in other Wikimedia projects. Deal with it. Besides, I was just giving a definition for "state", not adding info to the article. 22:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

And what stops the other Wiki form being wrong as well. FYI, I wasn’t adding information to the article ether.

Zippokovich 17:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Would you like me to get another dictionary? Also, you need to add colons (:) before each line on a talk page. Jaxad0127 17:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

When Wiki quotes Wiki, it's a closed loop of information, circular sourcing. The point is to cite external, reputable sources. Even though other Wikis may well use reputable external sources (as Wikipedia does), the Wiki itself doesn't become a reputable external source. It's still part of the Wikimedia project. If Wikimedia just quoted itself, we'd get stuck into having the "A" article say "A = B" and, when people would ask how we knew A equalled B, we'd just say "Because the 'B' article says 'B = A'." And how do we know the "B" article is right? Because the "A" article says "A = B". And round and round we go. ... — President Lethe 19:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I concur. Plus pulling information from sources to avoid wiki circularity is really not that hard. There's Google and then there's always the old-fashioned sources (called books) at the public library. And then there's the huge private databases like LexisNexis and ProQuest. See Wikipedia:How to write a great article for more information. -- Coolcaesar 21:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I was just pointing out a definition of "state" that includes the four commonwealths. I could've gotten it from any source, I just chose Wiktionary. Jaxad0127 21:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

It appears that there is no Wikiproject whose scope covers the United States. If this is true, then I propose a Wikiproject called Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. One example of why such a project would be useful can be found at Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)#Question on state templates. There seems to be a lack of standards for the infoboxes used in various city articles. To understand what I mean, consider the infoboxes being used in the following articles: Chicago, San Francisco, Tulsa, Miami, Stamford.

-- Richard 22:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree there definitely should be a US Wikiproject. I have just written four full-size articles on life in the US and posted them in the two "main" templates: Template:Life in the United States and Template:United States topics. Of course there are some article covering subjects in the US that are on neither template. The sheer number of US related articles and the lack of standards is plenty of reason for a US wiki project. Regards, Signature ^brendel 22:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A WikiProject is an excellent idea. I've been working on Portal:United States (because no one else was updating it). But, I definitely could use assistance, and eventually would like to take a back seat on that. The portal could be maintained like the main page, where one person takes care of the featured article, others work on the featured picture, and different people update the "Did you know" and the news. That would be ideal, but I would be happy with any assistance. WikiProjects are often a good way to coordinate portal maintainance, among other tasks and coordination for the WikiProject. -- Aude ( talk contribs) 23:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I have left a post on the Wikiproject:Wikiprojects talk page. There has been one request on a Wikiproject:US places-but that is a bit to specific IMHO. There are dozens of articles w/ "in the United States" in the title, thus I have proposed the project and if you support it you can sign here: [5]
also feel free to tweak the description a bit. Also here's the temporary project page (feel free to add to it): User:Gerdbrendel/Wikiproject United States Signature ^brendel 23:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

About 3 more sigs needed

Okay, including me, four have signed up as being interested in the Wikiproject:United States. We need about three signatures more, so if your fond of the idea sign your name here: [6]
Regards, Signature ^brendel 03:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)