ties of blood

Nor can a civic-republican social compact be rooted ultimately in ties of “blood and soil,” the infamous German shorthand for ethno-racial, quasi-familial bonds that sustain a sense of intimacy among people who share what historian Benedict Anderson called “imagined community.”

Such a social compact cannot be rooted ultimately in ties of “blood and soil.”

For two millennia, Christians have intoned, “My kingdom is not of this world” and “Baptized in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek,” while sitting on golden thrones over armed states whose national identities are rooted even more deeply in ties of "blood and soil" than Jewish “tribal” identity has ever been.

The kanaka of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians who inhabit the islands, value ’ohana, which extends beyond the familial ties of blood.

He feared “the introduction of a large body of French troops into Canada, and putting them in possession of the capital of that Province, attached to them by all the ties of blood, habits, manners, religion and former connexions of government.”