Name: 美國是一個國家嗎？ (Is the United States a Country?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:41:45.000Z
Duration: 8 min 33 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

This is a video by RealLifeLore done in a collaboration with Wendover Productions.

The traditional definition is a state with sovereignty over a geographic area

with a permanent population, defined territory, one government,

and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.

So does the United States perfectly match this description?

And, perhaps even more importantly, what exactly is the United States?

When you say the words "United States of America",

You sort of assume the country is in America.

America means the continents of North and South America

But only 99.5 percent of the United States of America is actually located here

and 1.6 percent of all Americans live outside of America

Most of this non American, yet still American land is located on islands in both the Caribbean and Pacific.

In the Pacific, we have Hawaii, which is the only state out of 50 to be located outside of America

And a bunch of other islands that together make up something called US Territory

Territories are part of the US and are divided between Incorporated and Unincorporated territory

But they are all directly governed by Congress,

which means that they are essentially ruled by what the 50 states decide.

All without any representation for themselves and without the ability to even vote for president

The furthest away of these territories is Guam, which is a little chunk of America 3,633 miles away from the nearest state, Hawaii

And 7,912 miles away from the US Capital building, where the laws governing the island are decided

There are 160,000 people who live on Guam and there are 4 other island territories with people on them

The Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, The US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico

There are 8 other islands scattered around there too, but nobody lives on those, so they're not really that important

The US Constitution only partially applies in all of these territories which is getting more and more awkward all the time

In a place like Puerto Rico which has a higher population than these 21 actual states

Puerto Rico may very well someday in the future actually become the 51st state

But a place that likely won't anytime soon is this tiny island in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific

This is Palmyra Atoll, home of nobody, but the only incorporated territory of the United States, meaning that the US Constitution fully applies here

And anybody born here for whatever reason automatically becomes a US citizen

Weirdly, the person who is given the right to administer this island

is the U.S. President, which I am sure is probably very  high on the list of Presidential things to be doing.

The President also has to worry about some U.S. land that is contested with other countries.

like these two uninhabited islands covered in bird poop that are claimed by Colombia

or these islands off the coast of Maine that are claimed by both the U.S. and Canada

which strangely means if you were to give birth on either of them your child would automatically gain both american and canadian citizenship

this piece of land in Cuba called Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay is larger than five UN recognized sovereign states

and it is about the same size as the island of Jersey

Cuba has laid claim to the territory ever since 1959

but the United States has so far decided to keep it instead.

Now that's all of America that isn't actually located in America

but what about the other 99.5% of the country that we have been neglecting so far

Well..   that would be the 49 states then make up the  rest of the United States along with Hawaii

The states have the power to elect representatives  that are sent to congress which creates laws for the entire union

the individual states are granted a considerable amount of power on their own by congress

and they share this power with the federal or the national goverenment

the state and federal government are both allowed to pass their own separate laws which has

caused a huge amount of trouble in the nation's past over which laws are more valid

the civil war answered the question once and for all though however

the civil war also decided that states never have the right to leave the union

so a state could actually vote to leave the union but it would not ever be recognized by the federal government

states also cannot ever declare a federal law to be invalid

but they can kind of get around that by legalizing  things that the federal government has declared illegal

The most famous instance of this is Marijuana

which continues to be illegal everywhere in the United States on the federal level.

but has been fully legalized for all uses in the states of

Since federal law always wins over state law

The federal government could in theory, at any time, enter any of these states with federal law enforcement

and arrest the hundreds of thousands of people participating in legal state laws but illegal federal laws

The only reason why they haven't yet is just because they've decided that it isn't worth their time

But if states can ignore federal law or even legalize things that are technically illegal

Then what does it say about our definition of a country particularly the sovereignty part

Further how many people in states identify more with their own individual state

over the actual country of the United States?

Despite how we just discussed earlier the illegality of secession

the states that continued to have active separatist movement regardless of that are

Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, New Hampshire

The only remotely significant ones however are: Texas, Hawaii, and probably biggest of all, Alaska.

where the Alaska Independence Party is currently polling at around 6% of the population

and even got their candidate elected governor of the state back in 1990

And finally, there is one more significant way that you can challenge the definition of a country

The defined territory part that we went over in the beginning

This map leaves out the numerous American Indian reservations located within the U.S. of which there are 326

Many of them are very small but 12 reservations are actually larger than the state of Rhode Island

And the biggest one, the Navajo Nation reservation, is about the same size as West Virginia

or Latvia for the Europeans watching this video

and has a population of nearly 200,000 people

Together, this reservations have a population of over 1 million people

and take up a space the size of Idaho or a little larger than Belarus

These reservations are granted something called Tribal Sovereignty

which gives them the rights to govern themselves within the territory of the United States

The federal government recognizes these reservations sort of like independent countries