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FIRE's new lawsuit challenging the Trump admin's deportation policies over speech is pretty interesting. The press release is pretty convincing too IMO. It's not the government's job to be deciding what is and isn't "acceptable" speech outside of the obvious dangers like the true threat limitations we already have.
One thing that also concerns me when it comes to censorship efforts from the government is the chilling effect it places on speech and voiced opinions. People here legally can agree with the Government Approved Viewpoint all they want, but you're screwed if you dissent.
This is especially concerning when American politics can shift so much. Government Approved Viewpoints in the Trump admin might not be the same Government Approved Viewpoints from the next president. Criticize Israel today? Bad speech. But maybe the next administration says praising Israel is the bad speech instead. At this point you might as well be saying that you simply don't get to have or voice an opinion of any kind in the country, even if you're a lawful resident who doesn't commit any crimes.
And there are lots of great people who are lawful residents/vistors to the US. Even many celebrities! People like Keanu Reeves, Celine Dion, Ryan Gosling, Hugh Jackman all essentially told to not have any opinion on anything ever in case a future admin decides their opinion was a bad opinion.
Also FIRE so far has also been an interesting insight into what principled beliefs look like. Often on the internet I'll see from both left and right wingers an excuse that it's ok to violate their claimed principles because "the other side did it first" (even though interestingly enough they often can't seem to agree which side did it first, reminds me of something else), but at that point it's hard to say it's a principle if it's abandoned so readily.
Meanwhile FIRE has been pretty consistent in criticizing both the left and right, and even defending their opponents right to speech. It's like the early ACLU protecting the rights of KKK. There are times where I think they overreach on their criticism, I believe that strong free association rights of private individuals and groups are just as fundamental to free speech as the speech itself and restrict more to government actions but even then I still respect that they're consistent.
My take on this is that the US is somewhat unique in being a nation founded on a proposition rather than blood, soil, or some historical what-have-you. To that end, i believe it is in the US's interest as a nation to vet those it let's in on the basis of whether or not the are "on board" with that proposition.
Free speech is a human right, residence in the United States is a privilege.
This depends on whether you consider the UK and USSR to be nation-states, or whether you think they are multinational proposition-states. The process of creating a "British" identity on top of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Protestant Irish national identities (all of which are conventional land-ethnicity-and-culture national identities) in the 18th century was deeply propositional, with anti-Catholicism being the most normie-friendly part of the proposition at the time. Likewise the only thing that makes Lithuanians, Khazaks, Russians etc. "Soviets" is a (mostly fake) shared commitment to Communism.
My experience is that most normie Brits call England, Scotland and Wales "nations" and "countries" and call the UK a "country" but not a "nation". "National" normally implies UK-wide though. We are confused about the issue. The question "Are you an English ethno-nationalist, a British ethno-nationalist, or a British civic nationalist?" is mild kryptonite to nationalists in England. (British nationalists in Wales and Scotland are either unassimilated English migrants or uncomplicatedly civic nationalists)
The unusual thing about the US is that there isn't a set of subordinate ethnic-national identities that the civic identity is built on top of - the only state that is plausibly a nation is Texas. So civic nationalism is the only American nationalism that makes sense.
Another corner case is France - at the point it became necessary to turn Bretons, Gascons, Provencals etc. into Frenchmen quickly in order to get them to fight together, some but not all of the way Napoleon did it was propositional - France isn't just the land of baguettes and Moliere, it is also the land of liberte, egalite and fraternite.
Not really. Well, this is historically wrong... obviously in the present day this is pretty clearly correct. Besides Texas of course, and for a while Utah to some degree (and maybe also Vermont? It never joined the Articles of Confederation and took a few years to join the United States too, although a lot of this was New York's stubbornness denying them. I don't think my native Oregon Territory makes the cut though), you only have to look at the Civil War and the decisions made by many individuals there to discover that some people did in fact consider other identities as not even necessarily subordinate but even superceding that of full nationality. Robert E Lee as a classic example notably considered allegiance to Virginia as supreme to that of America. However, it's worth noting that this really only applied to the original 13 colonies and weakened substantially over time. And of course every war in particular was a major impetus towards nationalism.
Still, I get what you're saying. There was a sort of "purpose" and consciousness behind the creation of the US that many other [Western] nations lack, at least so quickly. It's nonetheless difficult to say what exactly generalizes and what does not, because historians well know that nationalization somewhat paralleled technologies that facilitated internal movement (e.g. the railroad), internal mixing (e.g. educational and literacy trends), and led to increasing national mobilization in the military realm (post-Napoleonic warfare). The US is also a bit of an aberration in the sense that it has limited history (in a Eurocentric sense, and thus fewer pre-existing loyalties) so it's not an easily extensible template.
I agree that the Confederacy could have been a nation-state if it had successfully seceded, but it didn't, and I don't see a separate nation there in 2025 - the whole point of the "Red Tribe" meme is that the White South now sees its own grievances against the DamnYankees as a part of a broader small-town vs big-city and periphery vs core rebellion against a corrupt establishment. To its supporters, that rebellion speaks for, and deserves the support of, all patriotic Americans. It doesn't want a separate country, it wants to fix the one that exists.
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