'sides, that thing Doug sent from R. Bork the other day opened with a wildly erronieous understanding of the "origins" of u.s. culture -- one people, one religion, shared values, blah blah blah. wild originary myth there, still believed to this day -- by great minds an' all. </tongue-in-cheekily>
Group identification
>
> I know it's almost trivially true, but if a group of
> people socially identify themselves as members of
> group X, and they are treated by others as members
> of
> that distinct group, the group for all practical,
> social purposes is "real. . . . ."
The "Aryan race"?
Doesn't there have to bne some further condition that the beliefs that are core to the identification can't be based on manifestly and provably false assumptions for the group to be "real"?