Nation, Country, and State

These are words that confuse a lot of speakers of present-day English, especially in the United States, and since they not only have some bearing on discussions of anarchy but are also used with some frequency in the Scriptures, I though it might be helpful to talk more about them.

Many people use all three of these words interchangeably. They call the United States of America a nation; they call it a country; they call it a state. Of the three of these words, the one that best fits the entity in question — state — is probably the one that citizens of the United States are least likely to think of as a word that can describe the United States. That has to do with the problems introduced by the federal structure of the United States. Furthermore, the one word least suited to describing the United States of America — nation — is probably the one that most citizens of the United States think is the best match for the United States. It is, after all, "one nation under God," they would say. All of this shows the problems that these words cause for present-day English speakers.

The search engine at scriptures.lds.org shows that the word "nation" or its variants occurs 338 times in the Scriptures (Bible: 253, Triple Combination: 85), that the word "country" or its variants occurs 205 times (Bible: 161, TC: 44), and that the word "state" or its variants occurs 64 times (Bible: 14, TC: 50). These are pretty important words, then, and people reading the scriptures today are likely to link them all, in some way, to governments. But we shouldn't do that with any of the words but "state", and there only in certain contexts. A look at each of these words will show why.

Nation
The word "nation" does not need to involve any kind of government.

It refers to a group of people who all share some important similarities. They usually have the same race and speak the same language. They usually share many cultural similarities: they have similar cuisine, similar sports and games, similar family structures, and so forth. They often have a single religion. They usually have a remarkably uniform body of customary laws (see my earlier post on law for what that means). Furthermore, members of a nation can usually be distinguished from members of other nations by the fact that there are significant differences along most of these lines between two people who are each members of different nations.

The word nation is descended from a Latin word for birth. It is related to such English words as "pre-natal" and "natural". A person's nationality is something that is a function of his birth. The ancient Greek word for nation is "ethnos", and it gives us our modern English word "ethnicity". A person's ethnicity and a person's nationality are the same thing, and neither one has to do with what government has power over the land of one's birth or residence.

There are nations that have no sovereign government, such as the Kurdish nation or the Basque nation. There are nations that have multiple sovereign governments, such as the Arab nation or the Korean nation. There are governments that control multiple nations, such as Indonesia or the United States of America. Government and nations are completely different concepts and are totally independent of one another.

Now for those who say I'm wrong and point to things like passports that say "nationality" and then proceed to talk of the government whose jurisdiction is under, or things like the United Nations that brings together governments from around the world, let me say that the word "nation" has definitely begun to acquire a meaning related to government. I recognize that. Most uses of the word nation these days are references to something related to government.

But there are two problems that this shift in meaning has brought about.

The first is that we now lack a government-neutral word to talk about the concept. We do have the word "ethnicity", but it doesn't seem to carry the same sense of unity that the word "nation" used to carry. One reason for that is that "ethnicity" is used most frequently as a description for people who are in areas where there are representatives of many ethnicities. Ethnicity might be an important characteristic to discuss in New York City, but not in small-town Utah. Nation, on the other hand, before it began involving governments, was a word that felt important to people in the most rural, homogeneous communities — it united them with their kind across many miles, and even borders. The word "nation" still has this uniting effect: people in small-town Utah are often immensely proud of their nation. But ethnicity doesn't have the effect. So now we have no word to refer to the natural unity shared among people of a single ethnic group (particularly when they live in a contiguous territory), without referring to governments.

The second problem with the shift in meaning that "nation" has undergone is that now people reading the scriptures today misunderstand them. The English in use when the Scriptures were translated (in the case of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and most of the Pearl of Great Price) or written (in the case of the Doctrine and Covenants and some of the Pearl of Great Price) did not have the current, government-oriented sense for the word "nation". In Webster's 1828 dictionary, which tells us the meanings words in the Triple Combination would have had for Joseph Smith and his contemporaries, the word nation is defined thus:

A body of people inhabiting the same country, or united under the same sovereign government; as the English nation; the French nation. It often happens that many nations are subject to one government; in which case, the word nation usually denotes a body of people speaking the same language, or a body that has formerly been under a distinct government, but has been conquered, or incorporated within a larger nation. Thus the empire of Russia comprehends many nations, as did formerly the Roman and Persian empires. Nation, as its etymology imports, originally denoted a family or race of men descended from a common progenitor, like tribe, but by emigration, conquest and intermixture of men of different families, this distinction is in most countries lost.

Notice that, although the governmental sense was beginning to creep into the word, it still had meaning in a non-governmental sense. Few people today would talk of the many nations of Russia, for example. In 1828, however, such a usage of nation was perfectly acceptable, and indeed demonstrated the fact that the word didn't have to refer to governments. So when the word is found in the Doctrine and Covenants or the Book of Mormon, it should be understood as something that can refer to a group of people that are united culturally but not governmentally.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives an older meaning of the word and some discussion of its development over time:

A large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people. Now also: such a people forming a political state; a political state. In early examples notions of race and common descent predominate. In later use notions of territory, political unity, and independence are more prominent, although some writers still make a pointed distinction between nation and state.

The non-governmental use of the term would have been its only use in 1611, when the Bible (the King James Version, that is) was translated into English. So when you see the word in the Bible, you have to understand it in a way that doesn't involve governments at all. So when you read things like "God hath made all nations and determined the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26), you can't interpret that as saying that the God ordained the governments and laid down their jurisdictional borders. That's not what the word nation meant in 1611 when that translation was made. It meant that God made the ethnicities and set up the proper natural habitats for each ethnicity. It didn't have anything to do with governments.

I'll be using the word "nation" in this blog in its older, scriptural sense. So when you see "nation" in this blog, don't think that I'm talking about governments. A nation in the older sense can exist and even prosper without having any national government.

Country
Country is word that refers to a spot of land or territory. Originally, it referred to the area of land immediately surrounding a city. This sense survives in some fashion when we talk about people who live "in the country" as opposed to living "in the city". Already by 1611, however, this sense of the word had begun to be replaced by the sense of simply "A tract or expanse of land of undefined extent; a region, district" — the definition the Oxford English Dictionary gives for it. You'll still hear this sense of the word sometimes, as when people say things like, "this sure is pretty country."

However, this word, like nation, has come to acquire a more governmental meaning. We speak of the Philippines, for example, as being a country, even though it is actually a group of over 7,000 islands. In other words, it is actually over 7,000 tracts or expanses of land, and therefore over 7,000 countries in the older sense of the word.

By 1828, the governmental sense of the word had mostly taken over the land-based sense of the word. Consequently, when the word shows up in the Triple Combination, it could be referring to governments along with the lands and people those governments control. However, since some older senses of the word still show up in our language today, those older senses could be present in the modern Scriptures as well.

In 1611, when the Bible was translated, the word did not have its governmental overtones. So when Paul talks about those with faith and says "now they desire a heavenly country" (Hebrews 11:16), he's not saying the faithful want to improve their current government so that it follows God's commandments or that they want to switch allegiance to some existing government seen as more godly than their current one. He's saying that they want to dwell in the land where God dwells — they want to occupy the same general region of space in which God physically dwells. Government isn't part of the passage at all.

In this blog, I will try to use the older, Biblical sense of the word "country" — that is, I'll try to use it to refer just to expanses of land. I will try to never use it in the newer, governmental sense of the word. If I slip here or there and it gets confusing, please feel free to ask for clarification.

State
This word refers to governments.

Of course, it also refers to very many other things — we talk about solid, liquid, and gas as "states of matter"; we say that rundown buildings are "in a sorry state"; we speak of dignitaries being "buried in state"; we even think of people as being in a particular "state of mind". Most of the uses of "state" in the Scriptures are uses like these that have nothing whatsoever to do with governments.

But of all these three words — nation, country, and state — "state" is the only one that properly refers to governments.

Dictionaries usually give all the definitions of "state", so they can be confusing sources to go to for a definition of the governmental sense of "state". Encyclopedias often give better definitions for the governmental sense. That is because the governmental sense of the word is the primary sense about which a great deal of theorizing has been done. People don't theorize about what "state" really means in a phrase like "state of matter" or "state of mind" — they just use the word and move on. But when we talk about what governments are and how they operate and should operate, we tend, as a species, to start generating a lot of theory about the meaning of "state".

Going to the cheapest — and I mean cheapest — encyclopedia I know of (Wikipedia), you can find (today, at least) the following definitions of state: "a political association with effective sovereignty over a geographic area; that organization that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory" (Wikipedia, "State", 26 Mar 2008).

So when we talk about states, we are talking about sovereignty and force. We are talking about government. We are talking about what anarchism opposes.

The scriptures use this sense only once to refer to something other than specific states (the State of Vermont, the State of Missouri, the State of Illinois, the United States, &c.). That use is found in D&C 134:7: "We believe that rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief; but we do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive citizens of this privilege, or proscribe them in their opinions, so long as a regard and reverence are shown to the laws and such religious opinions do not justify sedition nor conspiracy." Note that this is not a revelation, but a statement of beliefs that was put in the Scriptures to quiet the fears of those enemies of the Church who believed that Mormons were advocating rebellion and sedition.

Some confusion comes into play for people in the United States, because these people often think of "state" as referring to a minor government (or the territory it governs) operating under the control of a larger, sovereign government. This confusion had already entered American English by 1860, and the Civil War (also called the War Between the States) was fought primarily over the definition of the word "state" — the North wanted to bring in the new definition; the South wanted to keep the older, traditional definition that is still predominant outside the United States.

I will use this word to refer to governments (and sometimes their territories and even citizens) in this blog. I will use it in its older, traditional sense — the sense it still has in the rest of the world.

I will refer to entities such as Utah, Nevada, and Arizona as states as well — even though in practice they are more like Canadian provinces than real states — because everyone else calls them states and because I think that, if governments are going to exist, they should operate the way they are officially constituted (so at least the people know exactly how they are going to be exploited) and the United States are officially constituted in a far more federal fashion than they currently operate in.

So don't be confused if I say that anarchy is good for nations or that a particular country is especially well-suited to anarchy. I'm not saying such contradictory things as anarchy is good for governments or a particular government is well-suited to anarchy. That's not what those words mean. Anarchy is bad for states, and no state is well-suited to anarchy. No, what I'm saying when I say those other things is that anarchy is good for ethnicities and that a particular tract of land is well-suited to anarchy.