Posts from — November 2008

What exactly is nationality? Is it more a matter of culture or of genetics, or a complex interplay of both? It is surely true that most nationalities in the world can be identified genetically. But is an Englishman an Englishman or a German a German merely by virtue of their genes, however identifiable they may be? If that is the case, then we would have to make a massive exception for the obvious case of the United States, a nation which was in many respects founded upon cultural and genetic diversity, and maintains that diversity to this day. [Read more →]