Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryzorian
Ronin. Don't be claiming things about the US so aribitrarily. Texas is sovereign..they can still seceed from the union by law..It's written into thier state constitution and was a pre requisite to even consider joining the union..In fact, every State is technically "Sovereign". It's why it's called the United States. England signed peace treaties after the revolution with 13 independant Sovereign nations.
Now yes, we have had a civil war to try and figure this relationship between the states and the feds, and some think that settled the issue, but it never did. The issue is still unresolved and many states still do what the hell they want. Case in point, Arizona and Immigration. Virginia outlawing Obamacare.
Think of the US as 50 nation states with a kinda giant referee overseeing how they interact with each other and the world. My state of Iowa for instance, has several trade deals with other countries that are independant of the national trade deals.
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That was in no way relevant to the point I made.
The definition that most people have in mind when they think of country is "fully sovereign nation state". It doesn't matter how independent it is.. if it's not fully sovereign then by that definition it doesn't qualify as a country. Therefore the states that consist of the USA don't qualify as countries
under that commonly held definition.
Now you can still define it as a country if you like (in fact the academic definition of country is just "area of land") but then you have to be consistent about it.
My point wasn't that the states of the USA are not countries. My point was that if you consider Scotland a country then you have to consider Texas, California, Quebec etc. countries also (and vice versa.. which means that you have to consider Scotland, Tibet, Quebec as countries because you consider Texas, Arizona and Iowa.)
As for Iowa's trade deals with foreign states... I doubt that they didn't have to go through some sort of approval by the federal government. Either directly or indirectly (via federal legislative measures for example). So stop talking bullsh*t.