“Liberty belongs in the scenery one attributes themselves to. Did one grow up in America, or did one grow up in Kansas? Did one grow up in America, or did one grow up in New York? Would one call America their home, or would one call Michigan their home? To belong, is to identify where one can be naturally situated, while still being a citizen towards the same nation.”
– Modern Romanticism
Belonging. It’s a word that resembles acceptance. Though, upon its opposite, of something related to oppression, there is rejection. Perhaps the more abstract idea behind composing a nation of 50 states, was in the aspect of that “belonging”. To know where one stands, to become one where one feels most supreme, or to simply feel welcomed, must be to the liberty for which an American understands their actual origin. It is their origin, with the secondary reminder, still necessary, that they are unified with the rest. Split into 50 states, it is still America, though there to offer belonging not merely in one country, though in the diverse realm of acceptances that make the 50.
How can it be that a system would, in such a nation where “belonging” is a factor we find most precious, be universal, without erasing such a notion of acceptance? If each state possesses individual faults within either its show of standards or lack thereof, or of its show of culture, there could not be more of a fitting realm of competition given to us, even of the good sense. If we erase acceptance, then we erase the 50 states to perhaps become the New America. Though, that erases belonging. That erases liberty. Must liberty be what we call a sense of where we fall back to, being our home? Of the American soldier who yearns to steer back to such warmth of their home, and not to the dictator’s realm, there can be things better attributed to a state, of that belonging, rather than simply for the entirety. Though, it would still be America, as it will always be such, even with where its citizens belong.
Could a system, so universal, erase the belonging, the acceptance, the liberty for which we find such previous factors enjoyable? We can only be a dictator, enough to erase liberty. Even in the dream of perpetual and qualitative momentum, within progress, within enlightenment, within change pertaining to each voice coming forth, there can be sheer darkness. Nothing would be universal, except for what we understand, deep within. That, beyond the competition of sports, the competition of ethics or perceptions of morality, the value of something according to the monetary standard, all citizens of each state are still Americans. They comprehend each other, unified, as the United States.
Would any idea of a universal system ever come to pass in that idea-maker’s mind, that anything of such an origin as a workaround, does not place in closest regard what an American should remind themselves of? As in, could such a person with that idea ever comprehend why liberty has been embedded into an American’s mindset, that something deemed as “universal” of a system, would not work, due to that it allows them to forget themselves? Americans would forget themselves, as Americans, due to any system reaching itself as universal, would erase the liberty for which one citizen, of any state, would no longer feel their sense of belonging.
Belonging must be understood, of an American, as where they originated, though still with the remembrance that they are from one country. The reminder comes after the notion of that origin.
Modern Romanticism 