A Little Mystic Nationalism

Hey, nice pic Will. As a veteran, I need to tell you, thanks for pissing on my love of country as a bad or invalid motivator of the free choices I made. It reminds me that the First Amendment protects not only the members of my "tribe" who have bought into our national collaborative project of creating liberty and self-rule, and the costs that come with it, but that the Amendment also protects the bismotered little chap who runs around the village insists that those of us who protect him from various Huns, Vandals and Visigoths are just misguided fools. I feel a sense of luxury and success, knowing we've created a country, a national project, that can afford you a right to exist and do your thing. I thank you.

"The really perverse thing is that many people will do for their country what they would never do for their own mother."

If you think this, then you really are clueless. Next time, stick to a subject you know something about. And next time you get in a self righteous mood, photograph the coffin of someone in your own family.

The men (and possibly women) in those coffins volunteered to fight for reasons you'll never understand.

What a shame that you can't respect their sacrifice.

Isn't it a bit of a stretch to link dead soldiers to "a little bit of mystic nationalism"? Aren't dead soldiers more likely to be caused by an excess of mystic nationalism?

And it fits that Goldberg gets the distinction, and then doesn't.

He is, after all, the person who thinks liberal Democrats are some sort of fascist.

Nationalism = politicised attachment to one’s ethnic identity.

Patriotism = emotional attachment to one’s polity.

Seriously folks, they are not the same thing. Pat Buchanan is a nationalist: he apparently conceives the US as some ethnically defined thing which is losing it way as it loses its ethnic identity. David Duke is absolutely a nationalist.

Goldberg is a patriot. Thomas Sowell is a patriot. Many very patriotic Americans admire Condi, for example.

The distinction between patriotism and nationalism may not be so obvious from an American perspective, but it is very clear if you look at European history. Part of what is going on in the UK, for example, is that Celtic nationalism is wearing away at a common British identity.

I regard nationalism as noxious. Patriotism can be a great strength in a society.

I don't think you get the distinction quite right. Both nationalists and patriots could define their nation/patria as ethnic or not. The difference is that nationalism is an ideology and patriotism is a sentiment.

Nationalism = politicised attachment to one’s ethnic identity.

Patriotism = emotional attachment to one’s polity.

Seriously folks, they are not the same thing. Pat Buchanan is a nationalist: he apparently conceives the US as some ethnically defined thing which is losing it way as it loses its ethnic identity. David Duke is absolutely a nationalist.

Goldberg is a patriot. Thomas Sowell is a patriot. Many very patriotic Americans admire Condi, for example.

The distinction between patriotism and nationalism may not be so obvious from an American perspective, but it is very clear if you look at European history. Part of what is going on in the UK, for example, is that Celtic nationalism is wearing away at a common British identity.

I regard nationalism as noxious. Patriotism can be a great strength in a society.

As Himmler said at Nuremberg:

"Of course the people don't want to go to war. But they can be brought to their leader's bidding by labeling those who oppose war as being unpatriotic."

2003 was a very patriotic year, wouldn't you agree? And in hindsight probably the darkest and most disastrous year for America in at least a generation.

Patriotism is a relative "virtue" - you use it to compare person A to person B, usually to silence and browbeat person B so person A can go bomb the crap out of some civilians.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Sowells and Rices and Goldbergs are happy enough with results like this. Collateral damage. "Unfortunate", they might say:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/03/...

Whoa, that is an amazing and depressing graphic.

It grabs you...I wish it were more celebrated, I think it's brilliant in terms of what it conveys, and in its effect.

You're reacting to what post-Liberal-Fascism Goldberg throws out to the crowd who made him rich. It's all a weird bubble world, I don't think statements made on the inside are ever intended to be taken seriously by outsiders.

I consider myself a patriot in the sense that I would rather live in the United States than any other country on Earth and I consider the United States to be the greatest country in the history of humanity. But I believe that not out of any sense sense of mysticism, but through an appreciation of the values of individual rights and capitalism. Patriotism is living in a country because you value it. Nationalism is valuing a country because you to happen to live there.

Despite Thanksgiving's mystical origins, it's truly one of my favorite holidays. It's a celebration and appreciation of all the wonderful things we have, the kind of abundance made possible through America's kind of economic system.

What does "greatest country in the history of humanity" mean? By what standards are you judging greatness? Standard of living? Levels of violence? Total contributions to human innovation (which would itself raise lots of definitional issues)? Some one or many of the other nearly infinite possible points of comparison? How are you defining "country" for historical periods prior to the emergence of the modern nation-state?

I have trouble understanding how a statement like that can be anything other than mystic nationalism.

Will,

Thanks for responding. I didn't mean to attribute beliefs you didn't hold! On reflection, I was probably extrapolating from previous comments I had read which seemed to imply suspicion of the utility/morality of classical "nation-state-defining actions" (establishing borders, deciding how many non-citizens one wanted resident in the country, etc).

I agree that there's an obvious downside to an affection to one's own. Any ideology capable of inspiring someone to fight and die has huge downsides. I'm less certain about how to do a historical tally of the damages wrought by abuse of state power in the interest of 'one's own.' Abuse of state power has been a human constant. If we were to look at (e.g.) 15th century, how would we know what abuse of state power came from too much love of one's own defined as "my City" vs. too much love of one's own defined as "my family" or "me." Merely asking the question reinforces for me how hard it is to answer some questions to anyone's satisfaction...

Freddie,

in the vast majority of cases, one's relationship to his particular nation state is entirely a product of chance, and represents neither an accomplishment nor a choice.

Sure. This would hold true of many 'local' relationships. We don't choose our parents or uncles. We (may) choose to have children, but we don't get to choose them on the basis of their character. But sometimes these unelected affinities prove instrumentally useful, right?

It would be great if this became an opportunity for Will to express more explicitly his reasons for being not just anti-nationalist, but (if I read him correctly) anti-nation state.

1. It would be good to get beyond burden-of-proof shifting. Anti-nationalists can say "I am aware of no correlation between nationalism and social trust" and pro-nationalists can say "isn't it transparently obvious that people can and are motivated by the type of 'fellow feeling' described by Republican political theorists." What we want is some way to understand what would count as evidence. Do we think that communities with shared ideologies tend to have more trust? Do we think a shared 'nationalistic' ideology will be different from shared religious or ethnic ideologies in terms of generating fellow-feeling, etc?

2. Love of one's own because it is one's own. Is Will's idea here that there's something unjustified about this? Certainly it seems to be the case that many people do love one's own simply because it is theirs. Is the idea that this is prima facie unjustified? Or prima facie vicious? Is the idea that love of one's own is prima facie unjustified absent some instrumental justification. (and so we're back to #1 above).

Ben, I wouldn't say I'm anti-nation-state. I think liberal democratic capitalist nation states are pretty great. Indeed, I like them so much that I like ALL the really good ones, not just the one I live in. And I don't think things are better in in the best nation states when the people who do live there are more rather than less nationalistic.

1. I would like to know the answers to the questions you ask.

2. That they are one's own is a terrific reason to love kids, or friends, or dogs. Maybe even one's congregation or town. But your local nation-state isn't like your dog or your parsonage. States are states because of their relationship to violence. And states tend to abuse their violent power. Abuse of state power is easiest when that abuse is easily cast as a defense of one's beloved own. I think the historical case that this is so is extremely strong.

States are also states because they use violence to help solve collective action problems. I have often read speculations in print that the emotional bases of in-group loyalty evolved precisely because human social units faced collective action problems, and groups with greater amounts of in-group loyalty could much more easily handle those problems.

Whatever the truth of that hypothesis maybe, it seems that such sentiments are long standing feature of human existence, and that they do help to solve some collective action problems.

And, indeed, in the vast majority of cases, one's relationship to his particular nation state is entirely a product of chance, and represents neither an accomplishment nor a choice.

So you should only love something when your relationship to it represents accomplishment or choice? In other words, you shouldn't love your parents or siblings?

What a soul-destroying ideology you have.

I don't think anyone is denying the profound importance of loving parents or siblings. The question is precisely whether is makes sense to feel toward the nation-state into which one is born what one feels toward one's family.

Even then, suppose you found out that your mother was a serial killer. Would love of one's own justify conspiring to hide her crimes or justify complicity in future killings. It would not. The really perverse thing is that many people will do for their country what they would never do for their own mother.

Freddie is denying that we should love what is not a product of accomplishment or choice. Parents and siblings are not a product of accomplishment or choice. Therefore, he is either denying the profound importance of loving parents or siblings or the profound importance of modus ponens.

Granting love, including love of country, does not justify complicity in horrible crimes, I thought you and Freddie were making a bigger cliam than that.

I guess my position was that, if there is a switch we can flip to make people go from "totally nationalist" to "not nationalist at all," it's not obvious to me that we should flip it, because we don't quite know what would happen. It may be that some level of Nationalism is necessary and serves a good purpose.

Since we don't actually have such a switch, though, I think that Will's evidence (the Nationmaster chart) is relevant. The relevant question is whether we should push on the margin away from nationalism, and this chart indicates that we could do so with little loss, at least on the one specific measure that I had named (Social Trust).

I may have just picked a losing line with Trust, I don't know. For example, the first chart Will found might show that Nationalism can be a deterrent. Seeing that, I'd be more likely to invade, say, Italy, rather than Vietnam.

Anyway, I was just trying to suggest that we get beyond the somewhat well-poisoning argument that Nationalism = Dead Soldiers and that's that.

But by all means, let's stop having kids pledge allegiance to the flag.

Is Nationalism = Dead Soldiers a well-poisoning argument if nationalism is, in fact, one of the main causes of dead soldiers? Because that's my claim.

That's like saying Enforcing the Law = Dead Policemen. It may be true, but says nothing about the value of law. I will agree that a political order that sacrifices it's patriots to protect it's liberals is catastrophically ass-backwards. Is there some way of reversing that outcome?

Does anybody know of a credible international index of nationalistic sentiment? All I seem to be able to find is this chart, which isn't quite it.

So - no sympathy with Habermasian "Constitutional Patriotism"? (Genuinely curious.)

If that means one admires communities governed by good constitutions, then sure. But that could be a good reason to admire one's own community, or a reason to admire other communities more, which to my mind loses the essence of patriotism, which is love of one's own because it is one's own.

You read that whole post and the only thing to complain about was ' a little mystic nationalism'?

I wonder if Parisians know the saying about kicking the Bulgarian?

Oh, there was lots to complain about. I thought I'd stick to my hobbyhorse.

I agree with you, WW, but you're not being very fair to the case for nationalism.

Here's your good and healthy:

Social Trust Stops Crime

The idea of the Noble Lie isn't new, but you can't just ignore it by assuming that everyone practices rational global utility-maximization.

I am aware of no correlation, positive or negative, between levels of nationalism and social trust.

Me neither, but surely you can see the logical connection. If I view someone as being "on my team" simply by virtue of his or her being an American, I am less likely to cheat that person. And when Americans cheat each other less, we're all better off.

I don't think I grok the alleged logical connection. Just look at winners on the Pew chart. Sweden, Canada, China. Nationalistic? No, No, Yes, very. My educated intuition actually pushes in the opposite direction. If I remember, higher levels of trust predict both higher levels of redistribution and stronger pro-globalization attitudes. I'd imagine strongly pro-globalization places would be less nationalistic.

I don't know about that, have you spent any time in Canada. Canadians spend an awful lot of time talking about how great it is to be Canadian. I would argue there is more obsession on being Canadian in Canada than in the US in loving the US. Just think about the really crazed nationalism of Canadian content rules on Canadian radio.

Being Swedish I have to say Swedes are very particular about Sweden too, they are much more obsessive about being Swedish than you would believe.

An interesting point is both of these are very small countries in population that are realy over shadowed by other countries. They almost have to constantly think about what makes them unique as nations in order to survive.

The Chinese however pay a lot of lip service to the "Glory of China", but when it comes to their attachment to the country itself, I think they are such a self contained universe that they basically define the normative as being Chinese and in day to day life don't really think about being something else. Which is what Swedes and Canadians constantly do.

Canadian not nationalistic. You're kidding, right? I would have thought that your new "citizenship" might have led to you acquiring a rudimentary knowledge of the place.

As for your photo - what is it supposed to tell us? Nothing, I would say, unless we know what they died for? Or are libertarian isolationists now against all wars, even those which remove brutal dictators from power?

One doesn't have to be a libertarian or an isolationist to be against going to war against brutal dictators which pose no threat to the U.S., nor to oppose going to war under false pretenses. One only has to understand what war is well enough to believe that it should be an act of last resort.

If you think the U.S. should go to war to remove brutal dictators, then where do you propose we invade next? Cuba? Saudi Arabia? North Korea? Sudan? We could do it alphabetically. However we do, you can be sure such a philosophy guarantees the nightmare of perpetual war.

As my column narrows, I'll try to outline how I think a nationalist might approach this argument. We're involved in a lot of game-theoretic type situations where people choose to defect when we'd rather they cooperate. One way to get people to cooperate is to appeal to their emotions; in effect, increasing the personal payoff to cooperating.

Religion, family ties, patriotism, nationalism, etc. are messy ways to achieve cooperation, and create a lot of problems, but they are better than the alternative, which is everyone defecting all the time.

Anyway, that's what I think a good argument for nationalism would look like. But maybe you're right and it's still not very good. In a way, I disagree with the whole framework that says religion or nationalism are good/bad things, since they are such a fundamental part of human nature. As Ivan Karamazov said, if the Devil didn't exist, man must have created him in his own image. Anyway my column is too narrow for such tangents.

I think that's a good statement of the argument.

Well, here's a simple graph from Nationmaster plotting trust against pride in nationality, rendering a big fat nothing.

How do you account then for the paleocon who explicitly hates nationalism and extols patriotism?

I ask as a tepid, anti-nationalist patriot who is certainly no kind of paleocon.

(flag covered coffin photo) = sacrifice. Honor it, do not wish for it to not exist.
Without it there would be no America.

(flag covered coffin photo) = sacrifice. Honor it, do not wish for it to not exist.
Without it there would be no America.

hates nationalism and extols patriotism?

No difference. And no value to either.

Daniel Larison, as rabid a non-interventionist as you'll find, speaks out constantly against the evils of nationalism and the violence it breeds. He also speaks out in favor of the necessity of love for one's country, with country defined not as state or government but as tradition, culture, and people. Certainly Americans are terrible at differentiating state from country, but that doesn't make them indifferentiable.

Does loving and celebrating the good aspects of one's political and cultural heritage, while recognizing them as contingent and refusing to force them on others AND while acknowledging and working to eliminate the bad aspects, not quality as some nuanced form of patriotism? And if it does qualify, is it of no value?

Valuing something because it has good-making attributes is a great idea. Valuing something because it is yours is a different idea.

What if valuing something because it is yours has good-making attributes?

I'd think it depends on what that something is. (It's my genocide!)

Fine, but that would only get you to "love of one's own is sometimes bad", which no one's going to argue with.

Why not disconnect those specific virtues from some larger construction of "the nation" entirely? Celebrating those good aspects should be exactly that, celebrating the aspects and not the ill-sewn quilt of "national identity". If we're supporting some weak form of patriotism that says to the effect, "I love my country's ideals of/history of Virtue X," I don't have any particular truck with that, but it seems to me that this is precisely not the kind of patriotism Goldberg would profess.

We certainly agree about Goldberg's patriotism. I was speaking about the general concept of patriotism because that's what I took Will to be referring to by the end of the post.

And you certainly have a point about celebrating good American virtues as good virtues rather than American ones; if your point stands, then yes, patriotism loses its value. But I feel the need to complicate the idea nonetheless, even though I'm not sure why. Could it be that, as I mentioned, virtues are to some extent contingent? Might a virtue in America become a virus in France, China, or Iraq? Certainly in the short run this is true, as our attempts to democratize other nations by force, and the violence and corruption they've spawned, demonstrate. In the long run, I can't really come up with a reason why all contingent virtues shouldn't converge and evolve into universal ones. But maybe that's just because my American mindset prevents me from understanding how intrinsically and inescapably American our virtues are (a brief list of which would include our personal, political, and economic freedom; our aversion to concentrated power; and our drive to improve, although all of these things are only fitfully adhered to and sometimes dangerously misapplied). Or maybe I'm just making an argument for why universal virtues espoused by Americans and others should prudently be allowed to spread naturally rather than force-fed to the world.