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You responded to a post I wrote about Obama and some of the rumors about him in common circulation. You wrote rather critically about the want of paragraph separation and run-on sentences, and you took strong exception to my proposition that the correct form when speaking of our nation is, "the United States are...," rather than, "the United States is..."

First, I am comparatively new in this forum, and unfamiliar with the mechanics of posting on it. Perhaps you've noticed that, after posting a comment, there are some seconds (270 of them, or 2.5 minutes, if I recall) before the post is final, and during which the author may make last minute changes. I availed myself of that opportunity in the instant case, deleting a few words that seemed to me unnecessary, but with the consequence of a change I did not intend to make: all of the paragraphs I had written were consolidated into a single block of type. I don't recall having been given another 2.5 minutes in which to choose to edit this unintended alteration, and my post appeared otherwise than as I wrote it.

As for run-on sentences, you are mistaken. Granted, the modern convention in American grammar is to follow the practice of Madison Avenue, writing declaratory ejaculations of a sixth-grade level. It is a convention in which I do not choose to participate. Read Hawthorne, Poe or Melville, and you will find sentences (structurally, at least) as lengthy and complex as my own. If I don't write as well as these paragons of American literature, it bears no influence upon my preference for their style.

Finally, and, alone, substantively, there is your objection to the form, "the United States are..." One might deduce the correctness of that construction by the name of our nation, alone; but, in fact, history prefers that construction, as well.

Born so long after the ratification of the Constitution, few natural US citizens ever stop to consider the definition of, "state," as it was in the late, 18th century: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government" (the Compact, on-line Oxford Dictionary). Each of the 13 colonies, and every, subsequent addition to the Union, was such a state in itself. At first, these states joined in confederation, under the Articles of Confederation, but without satisfactory result. Having tried and abandoned common cause under the title, "confederated," the Founding Fathers meant to improve the cooperation among the several states ("toward a more perfect union") by more closely uniting, hence, the "United" States, which was to say, states, united. In this regard, please recall that the Constitution was not ratified by the people of the 13, former colonies, but by, and in the name of, each state that was to join the Union, each delegate to his state's convention voting "for" (on behalf of) that state he represented.

The notion of the United States as a single entity, rather than as an aggregation of entities strongly bound together, lay at the heart of the dispute between the northern and southern states in the mid-19th century: the northern states wished for more completely hegemony, while the southern states insisted upon the preservation of those terms upon which they joined the Union, in the first place, specifically, the near-sovreignty of each constituent state thereof. In this, the southern states had every precedent, and all the reason, on their side. Regrettably, they did not have as much money and industry as they did justice.

Identity is a stubbornly unforgiving notion. Would it be Melville's, "Moby Dick," if it were republished in Ebonics? Granted, the same story might be told in any language; but, in any words or language other than those of Melville, it would not be, strictly speaking, the book Melville wrote, and, "Moby Dick," is a book written by Melville, and by none other. Similarly, the United States were defined and instituted by those men who wrote its Constitution: it is what they created, and nothing else. Though the label by which its corrupted form might persist, as a book in Italian might be called under the title, "Moby Dick," it is not what that title properly refers to if it is not what its creators meant it to be. The Framers of the Constitution of our Union meant that the several states should be sovereign in all things except as explicitly excepted in that Constitution, and any construction of the Union contrary to that intent is not what they created, just as an Ebonics, "Moby Dick," is not, in fact, "Moby Dick," at all.

I am a sixth-generation, direct descendant of one of those Founding Fathers, and a fifth-generation descendant of his son, a Lt. Col. in the Continental Army, who gave his life for our independence at the Battle of Minisink. There may be some who would be content to see a Spanish, "Moby Dick," accepted as a genuine product of Herman Melville, but I strongly doubt that any of Mr. Melville's heirs would number among them. I am equally adamant that the United States is what our Founding Father wrought, and not the collectivist, homogenized abortion it has become.

— Enoch Wisner

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