Identity

Footnotes

1

Many centuries before Martin Luther, Augustine went through a similar tortured exploration of his inner self in his Confessions. Unlike Luther, however, his writings did not devalue established social institutions or trigger massive upheavals in the politics and society of his time.

2

Strictly speaking, Luther believed that faith was a gift from God, the result of God’s grace, and was not something that could simply be willed by individuals. The Calvinists carried this doctrine further, believing that individuals were predestined either to be saved or not; they had no agency in the outcome. Nonetheless, under both doctrines faith was a characteristic of the inner self and still enjoined obedience to God’s law, the content of which was not subject to human choice.

3

In the United States there is a great deal of confusion over the term middle class, since a large majority of Americans like to categorize themselves as middle class, even when they are well-to-do elites or people who in Europe would be characterized as working-class or even poor. The most politically relevant group would be those in the third or fourth quintiles of the national income distribution, who are the most vulnerable to stagnation or downward mobility.

4

The Schengen zone overlaps with but does not completely correspond to either the EU or the eurozone; some EU countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom opted out, while non-EU states such as Iceland and Norway are de facto parts of the zone.

5

As Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.”

6

The English language remains an important integrative characteristic of American identity, which is why bi- and multilingual programs in public schools have been controversial.