Good Nationalism-- Oh yes, it's real

[rtwngAvngr]

http://www.azi.md/news?ID=37071

President Calls to Differentiate Between Bad and Good Nationalism and Urges Writers to Reconciliation

(snip)
Moldova's biggest living poet, and said, "In the early 1990s, you wrote a verse saying you were a nationalist. I trust such nationalists, because your nationalism is natural and necessary nowadays when our country is being subjected to erosion by aggressive separatism".

In that context, Voronin confessed he was a nationalist as well. "For me, to be a nationalist means to love my land, people, my nation - all what makes up the notion of 'Motherland'. Love for Motherland is not an abstract feeling. This feeling makes a person undertake energetic actions, be driven by national interests, protect the country from interests that are alien to our striving for independence, protect it from the mercenary interests of some of our citizens in whose mind everything in the world can be bought and sold, including Motherland", stated the President.
(snip)

 

[rtwngAvngr]

What happened to nationalism?

http://www.ozconservative.com/whathappenedtonation.html
What happened to nationalism?

by Mark Richardson 15/4/04


One of the first questions a conservative needs to ask is why the Western elites refuse to uphold traditional nationalism.

The answer, I believe, is that the Western political and intellectual classes adopted liberalism as their orthodox belief some hundreds of years ago.

Liberalism is the idea that we are human because we can use our own individual reason and will to shape who we are. The idea, in other words, is that to be fully human we must be free to define ourselves according to our own will and reason.

Liberals have therefore sought to increase individual "freedom" by removing any impediments to the self-defining individual. And, unfortunately, traditional nationalism is one of these impediments.

Why? Because traditional nationalism is based on ethnicity. What binds a people together as a nation, in the traditional understanding, is some kind of common heritage, whether it be a shared ancestry, culture, language, religion or history.

Belonging to such a national tradition is an important part of our self-identity: of our sense of who we are. But it's something that is inherited, and not chosen. So it offends the first principle of liberalism: that we must be self-created by our own reason and will.

Michael Ignatieff

For people who are not liberal intellectuals, this might all sound a little unfamiliar. But listen to intellectuals themselves, and you quickly discover the importance of such concepts.

For instance, one of the most influential intellectuals on the issue of nationalism is Michael Ignatieff. He is a Canadian born writer and a Harvard professor, who made a BBC TV series and wrote a book on nationalism in the 1990s.

You can see the influence of liberal theory even in the way Michael Ignatieff chooses to define nationalism. He distinguishes between a "good" nationalism, which he calls civic nationalism, and a "bad" nationalism, which he calls ethnic nationalism (which is effectively traditional nationalism).

In defining the "bad" form of nationalism, Professor Ignatieff writes that "Ethnic nationalism claims ... that an individual's deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen. It is the national community that defines the individual, not the individuals who define the national community."

Why define ethnic nationalism in this way? Because it highlights what is wrong with ethnic nationalism, when liberal first principles are considered.

That's why ethnic nationalism is here defined negatively as something "inherited, not chosen" and as something which "defines the individual" rather than being defined by the individual. These features of ethnic nationalism are unacceptable to the liberal ideal of the self-defining individual, and so are emphasised in Professor Ignatieff's definition.

It's much the same when Professor Ignatieff defines the "good" form of nationalism, namely civic nationalism. He writes that,

"According to the civic nationalist creed, what holds a society together is not common roots but law. By subscribing to a set of democratic procedures and values, individuals can reconcile their right to shape their own lives with their need to belong to a community."

In this quote, civic nationalism is defined positively, in terms of liberal first principles. Civic nationalism is good, by definition, because individuals aren't connected by (unchosen) "common roots", but merely by an agreement to live within a democratic system. So, rather than being shaped by something inherited, they are free to "shape their own lives".

Cosmopolitanism

Michael Ignatieff is therefore acting consistently with liberal first principles when he rejects traditional ethnic nationalism in favour of civic nationalism.

And what can we say about civic nationalism? Can a common commitment to democratic politics give people an adequate sense of national community?

Most conservatives would probably find such a form of connection to be superficial compared to traditional ethnic nationalism. And, in fact, Michael Ignatieff concedes this. He admits that traditional nationalism's "psychology of belonging" has "greater depth than civic nationalism's".

This is not such a problem for Professor Ignatieff, as he is not interested in national belonging anyway. He confesses that he is not really a nationalist of any kind but a cosmopolitan, and that the point of civic nationalism is merely to help maintain social order.

He describes his overall outlook as follows:

"It is only too apparent that cosmopolitanism is the privilege of those who can take a secure nation-state for granted ... The cosmopolitanism of the great cities - London, Los Angeles, New York, London - depends critically on the rule-enforcing capacities of the nation state ...

"In this sense, therefore, cosmopolitans like myself are not beyond the nation; and a cosmopolitan, post-nationalist spirit will always depend, in the end, on the capacity of nation-states to provide security and civility for their citizens.

"I am a civic nationalist, someone who believes in the necessity of nations and in the duty of citizens to defend the capacity of nations to provide the security and rights we all need in order to live cosmopolitan lives."

This could hardly be more clear. Civic nationalism is not supposed to provide a form of national belonging. It's real purpose is to uphold the nation state, so that we have the order and security "to live cosmopolitan lives".

Provincial confines

So the logic of the situation goes something like this. Conservatives like traditional ethnic nationalism because it's an important part of our self-identity and helps us to feel rooted within a particular tradition.

Liberals, though, are ultimately led to reject such nationalism, because they want to be self-defined through their own reason and will, rather than through an unchosen form of nationalism.

That's why liberals talk about traditional nationalism negatively as something limiting to the individual, as when Michael Ignatieff reminisces of the 1980s that,

"With blithe lightness of mind, we assumed that the world was moving irrevocably beyond nationalism, beyond tribalism, beyond the provincial confines of the identities inscribed in our passports, towards a global culture that was to be our new home."

It is no accident, that Professor Ignatieff dismisses traditional nationalism here because it "confines" our identity to something "provincial". Anything which impedes our own self-creation will be regarded as something small or limiting or constraining by a liberal.

So what is the task for conservatives? Obviously, it's not enough to complain to liberals that they are creating individual rootlessness. For liberals, this is not necessarily a bad thing - Michael Ignatieff, for instance, is happy to defend the existence of what he unselfconsciously calls "rootless cosmopolitans".

The Canadian columnist Mark Steyn made a similar point recently when he observed that,

"As an idea, the multicultural welfare state is too weak to have any purchase on us; that, indeed, is its principal virtue in the eyes of its few fanatical zealots ... politically speaking, it's an allegiance for those who disdain allegiance."

It is, to put it the Steyn way, no use complaining about weak forms of national allegiance to people who view national allegiance negatively as a constraint.

What we have to do is challenge the philosophy which leads people to think of nationalism as something limiting to the individual, rather than as a fulfulling part of our self-identity.

And this means challenging liberalism as an orthodox belief among Western intellectuals.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

This page is really good.

http://www.gongol.com/research/nation/nationalism/

(snip)
For simplicity, "nationalism" here will be taken to be the same thing as "national identity." Not racial, ethnic, or religious identity, but rather one's degree of attachment to one's state or nation for its own sake, rather than to its government.
(snip)

 

[Said1]

Why couldn't you do this yesterday? Much better points of discussion. You're still a dweeb though.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Why couldn't you do this yesterday? Much better points of discussion. You're still a dweeb though.

I was making all these points on my own. Anyway. Feeling better, baby? Macro's more like it, btw!

 

[Said1]

I was making all these point on my own. Anyway. Feeling better, baby? Macro's more like it, btw!

Not really.

So, how does it feel to be the new board lib? Any self-respecting neo-con would spit on your use of the dictionary, knowing full well there is a difference between theory and applied theory. Kind of like the way you guys like to praise communism, in theory or by dictionary definiition of course. Is a little bit of communism ok?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Not really.

So, how does it feel to be the new board lib? Any self-respecting neo-con would spit on your use of the dictionary, knowing full well there is a difference between theory and applied theory. Kind of like the way you guys like to praise communism, in theory or by dictionary definiition of course. Is a little bit of communism ok?

A little bit of collectivism is. We naturally cooperate on certain things and do things like defense and basic infrasctructure as a group. And I'm actually for the minimum wage.

re: theory vs. applied theory. Let's just deal with reality and traditional word usage.

 

[dmp]

are you guys gonna piss and pant all day? Just go find a room, make out, and get it over with.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

are you guys gonna piss and pant all day? Just go find a room, make out, and get it over with.

this is a good topic worthy of discussion. Said1, will be better soon. She's being purified in the fire of my glory.

 

[Said1]

A little bit of collectivism is. We naturally cooperate on certain things and do things like defense and basic infrasctructure as a group. And I'm actually for the minimum wage.

That didn't require an answer, although I find myself more and more against minimum wage and more in support of certain rent control measures lately. Whereas in the past, I would have said the reverse.

re: theory vs. applied theory. Let's just deal with reality and traditional word usage.

Wrong again. But anyway, if someone corrected you every time you made an error, you'd never say anything close to the thread topic.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

That didn't require an answer, although I find myself more and more against minimum wage and more in support of certain rent control measures lately. Whereas in the past, I would have said the reverse.

I always go above and beyond....

Wrong again. But anyway, if someone corrected you every time you made an error, you'd never say anything close to the thread topic.

I don't feel corrected.

I guess that's just my way of expressing my extreme disinterest in the fine points of theory vs. applied theory. Who peed in your wheaties?

 

[Said1]

I don't feel corrected.

I guess that's just my way of expressing my extreme disinterest in the fine points of theory vs. applied theory. Who peed in your wheaties?

Things always sound so good, in theory. Above and beyond....not.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Things always sound so good, in theory. Above and beyond....not.

I'm a regular Roger Riney, building a castle when a hut would do!

 

[dilloduck]

Great Job RW---I'm glad that one of us actually turned in our homework

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Great Job RW---I'm glad that one of us actually turned in our homework

I was just tired of being villified, like nationalism itself. LOL. :teeth:

 

[dilloduck]

I was just tired of being villified, like nationalism itself. LOL. :teeth:

You know these babes will never let you off the hook no matter how right you are. You got your point across but you better keep that anti-villification armor on.

 

[Said1]

I'm a regular Roger Riney, building a castle when a hut would do!

You seem to be suffering from selective self-monitoring combined with inaccurate reconstruction of enactive experiences. Your perceived self-efficacy has been negatively affected by false interpretations through your own self-monitoring. People such as yourself, who selectively attend to and recall their poorer performances are more likely to misinterpret the experience, tending to justify the failure or blame others instead of learning from it in order to avoid repeated poor performance in the future.

Feel free to correct the terminology.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

You know these babes will never let you off the hook no matter how right you are. You got your point across but you better keep that anti-villification armor on.

I remain hopeful. But I'm still watching my back. Chicks don't really have a feel for things like defending the nation. They just bend over for the winners when it comes to armed conflict. Just kidding!

 

[Said1]

You know these babes will never let you off the hook no matter how right you are. You got your point across but you better keep that anti-villification armor on.

I don't recall disagreeing with you.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

You seem to be suffering from selective self-monitoring combined with inaccurate reconstruction of enactive experiences. Your perceived self-efficacy has been negatively affected by false interpretations through your own self-monitoring. People such as yourself, who selectively attend to and recall their poorer performances are more likely to misinterpret the experience, tending to justify the failure or blame others instead of learning from it in order to avoid repeated poor performance in the future.

Feel free to correct the terminology.

what's an enactive experience?

It seems you're the one who can't face the fact that your notions of nationalism are politically charged. Get a grip, Suzy-q.