A Response to Dan Larison
Although I am second to none in my respect for Dan Larison as a political commentator, his remarks about nationalism and nation states are for the most part historically inaccurate. The Serb blogger who noted that a Serb national consciousness had existed for centuries before a Serb nation state came into existence is absolutely correct about Serbia and about European nation states in general. The Protestant Reformation, the nineteenth-century wars of national unification and national liberation in Europe, and the ominous confrontation precipitating World War One all reflected the force of already existing national sentiments. Without those sentiments and the friend/enemy distinctions they generated, many of the great political turning points in modern European history would have been possible.
What Dan should have said is that state architects from Elizabeth I, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu down to Cavour and Bismarck used already existing national feelings, which was particularly concentrated in the rising bourgeoisie, to achieve their political ends. This is a different from trying to conjure up new collective identities on the basis of “abstract” concepts, which no major European state-builder in previous centuries tried to do. At most they worked to strengthen national bonds that were already present, e.g., by promoting a national literature or by standardizing a national language. And sometimes they encountered insuperable obstacles to their project, e. g., when they came up against a regional culture that would not yield to a national one, as in the cases of the Catalans and Basques who refused to become Castilian Spaniards or of the Welsh who persist in speaking their own Celtic tongue. But for the most part nation states worked to the extent they could build on an already entrenched national consciousness.
Neither Bush nor his neocon puppet-masters are “nationalists” of any kind. And the only “patriotism” his neocon advisors show is for the East Coast fleshpots where they reside and build their pleasure domes-- with the donations of multinational corporations. As many have observed, these “nationalists’ are Israeli patriots, and Israel is indeed a nation state. But Bush’s advisors don’t live there and their hysterical views about launching preemptive wars for democracy don’t seem to enjoy among Israelis anything like the unanimity they do at FOX and among the editors of National Review.
What Bush represents is neither traditional nationalism nor patriotism but something that has been called “propositional nationhood.” This is a variation on what Germany’s conquerors imposed on its prostrate population after World War Two in the form of “constitutional patriotism,” albeit in Germany’s case the postwar constitution we bestowed on it was not nationally specific but was introduced by a statement about the constitution’s signatories being first and foremost committed to the “dignity of humanity.” Although the Germans were left too humiliated and afterwards too steeped in national masochism to ever again be a threat to anyone but themselves, propositional nationhood in the American context is an expansionist ideology. It requires our government to meddle in everyone’s interest in the name of our presumed highest values; and it treats the rest of the world as a target for conversion to whatever is the latest distillation of our “propositional” character. And since we have no ethnic-cultural identity that is worth preserving except for our commitment to fight for “human rights” intergalactically, we let everyone and his cousins come into this country, providing they eventually find jobs and mouth the appropriate phrases about equality. This creates further disunity, but since we are now a nation by virtue of a proposition and a continuing military mission, it makes no difference how much diversity we permit and even subsidize within our porous borders.
Comments
Prof. Gottfreid,
I agree with your constructive comment on Mr. Larison’s discussion of Mr. Sichert’s article on Pope Benedict’s views of...oh yes, nationalism. Historical context helps, then as now. Claes Ryn’s work on the “intergalactic” Rights of Man aspect of American nationalism in America the Virtuous and The New Jacobins emphasizes the revolutionary, global, and imperial character of the current Project for a New American Century.
While some nationalism can reflect pre-existing sentiment as well as class interests, nationalism can be deployed and manipulated as well in the interests of non-nationalistic projects. I think of the post-9/11 Freepers: many of these imbibe at least two flavors of energizing kool-aide: American nationalism and Christian Zionism although it would be hard to detect any material or ideological interest advanced by their intoxication with either. They might even prefer to call themselves patriots.
How about an exoteric nationalism and an esoteric nationalism? I think Orwell was on the mark in 1984 with his distinction of outer and inner party. Like Richard Spencer in his recent discussion, “NeoCon Nation?” I think Robert Kagan’s strong claims for the neocons as national representatives warrant attention and critical examination.
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Let me also start with a disclaimer. I am second to none in my respect for Paul Gottfried, historian (and that’s been true since about 1975 or so). But may I offer another kind of historical context? Nationalism became a subject of historical study thanks mainly to Carlton J.H. Hayes of Columbia back in the 1920s, and nobody has got it substantially better since then. Hayes made a distinction between the PROCESS by which tribes and empires became national states, which of course presupposes various markers of national identity, and the more modern nationalism as what he called BELIEF. Claes Ryn would call it “ideology,” having in mind the definition of that word of which Russell Kirk would approve. Hayes, himself an increasingly self-conscious Catholic historian, also insisted that nationalism had become a form of religion, and that “as a religion represents a reaction against historic Christianity.” While one can be morally neutral about the process, one cannot be morally neutral about the newer forms of ideology and religion. It was precisely Hayes’s Catholicism that framed his insights; later on nationalism as a field of study slipped into the hands of “social scientists” and other theoretical types who, as usual, promoted only obfuscation. In Hayes’s terms, what has been going on in the foreign policy of the “Shining City on a Hill” since about 1898 is indeed a form of ideological nationalism--more or less virulent from time to time, “liberal” and “conservative” from time to time, but rooted firmly in what Hayes called “a proud and boastful habit of mind about one’s own nation, accompanied by a supercilious or hostile attitude toward other nations,” and suffused with such hubris that every kind of aggression can be justified.
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“But Bush’s advisors don’t live there and their hysterical views about launching preemptive wars for democracy don’t seem to enjoy among Israelis anything like the unanimity they do at FOX and among the editors of National Review.”
Do you mean that most Israelis disapprove of these neocon wars (i.e., Gulf War, Iraq War, coming Iran War) which were launched for Israel’s benefit? If that’s true, it’s only because the wars have, so far, failed in their aims. In fact, Iraq could, in a few years, be run by a Muslim tyrant. Not good for Israel…
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Mr. Wilson,
Thanks for the reference to Hayes’ important distinction which serves to return us to the original context of George Bush and Benedict XVI listening to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
“While one can be morally neutral about the process, one cannot be morally neutral about the newer forms of ideology and religion”
Indeed not! And it’s a pity Mr. Bush missed the opportunity to reiterate, “Those who are
not with us are against us.”
Hayes’ seems to support Voegelin’s idea of modern gnostic politics as well as the egotism and aggressive will Santayana describes in The German Mind
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Amen to Mr. Wilson, who’s done his homework and read Hayes.
1. Nationalism is a 19th C invention, and an invention of the Jacobins, it not existing in the time of Elizabeth I and Richelieu.
2. Nationalism is also a “proposition”, not a reality (Richard Sennett’s “retribalization"), and thus is also very much an ideology.
Nationalism cause two world wars, the mess in Ireland, the mess in Palestine, the mess in the Balkans, La Raza, Aryan Nation, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the lynching of Italians in New Orleans, racialism, Judeophobia, and Rev. Wright. Reason enough to despise it.
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As a proud Yankee Catholic, I fail to see how nation states (or love of patria) are intrinsically evil. Or at least how naive universalistic regimes are any better (would you rather live in the USA or the EU?) Certainly Pope Benedict has no problem praising a nation state like my own, and even celebrating church-state separation.
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/197841?eng=y
I know this may be too much for the site’s traditionalists, but there are many Catholics who don’t want to restore the Confederacy, return to the ancien regime, or recreate feudalism.
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Some remedial “homework”:
Carlton Hayes in Nationalism: A Religion: “we may affirm that modern nationalism, as we know it today, had its original seat in England.” Get in line Jacobins
“So, Englishmen, at least God-fearing Puritan Englishmen, are God’s ‘chosen people’ in modern times, as the Israelites were of yore.”
Hayes seems to endorse Voegelin’s evaluation the Puritans as emblematic of gnostic politics in the concluding chapter of The New Science of Politics. There are plenty of propositions involved and these entail theological messianic claims which other forms of nationalism do not.
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Marie Claire:
So, what’s your point? I’m also a proud Yankee Catholic, and never said love of country or nation state is “intrinsically” evil, never advocated any of the things you seem to think are terrible. If you think that the Holy Father praised our nation state...well, go back and read his speeches more carefully. Carlton Hayes, by the way, was also a proud Yankee Catholic.
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What’s your point, J Wilson? I was responding to Sid’s attack on nation-states. And as for the Pope, yes, he has been critical of the USA (on the Iraq war, for example) but not because it is a nation-state.
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MC: Sid did not mention nation-states--his point was about nationalism. And please have the courtesy to spell my name correctly. The Holy Father has in many books over the years expressed a very Catholic skepticism about excessive national pride, as every Catholic should.
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To John Willson (with two Ls, pardon my sinful spelling):
You and your good buddy Sid cannot distinguish between love of patria and nationalism, but it’s still ok to lecture others on the localist virtues of the Confederacy. Nothing xenophobic about this, eh?
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