Although I don’t speak for John Lukacs, I’m
100 percent certain that he would agree with me when I say:

This discussion about “race” is a distraction from the most dangerous, most immediate threat to America AND the entire planet Earth:  the destruction of the land.

The more you SO-CALLED “conservatives” mumble about (mostly) abstract bullshit like “race” and “nation”, the more you continue to ignore the greatest dangers to America and to the entire world, the destruction of the land.

Any so-called “patriotism” which does not make defense of the land and the landscape its first priority, is no “patriotism” at all.  You so-called “conservatives” carry on talking about things like “race” while you continue to ignore the destruction of the land and of
the planet. 

If this blog were AUTHENTICALLY “conservative”, then its first concern would be about the poisonining and rape and irreparable devastation of the land and the landscape of America, and of Planet Earth.  But no, you go on and on
“debating” about abstract things like “DNA” which have NO bearing on whether any country, or the Earth, will survive for much longer.

The World is on fire, literally.  The World and all life (as far as we know, all life in the Universe) is poised on the edge of extinction, while you so-called “conservatives” chatter stupidly about superficial and abstract things like “race”, while Planet Earth continues to die beneath your feet.

Most of you so-called “conservatives” both “neocon” AND “paleocon” (never mind the White Nationalists among you who are the agents of Hell) - you chatter on and on about impractical things like “race”, while the Earth, the World is burning to pieces beneath your feet - being burned to death by ALL races.

Well, as I said, I don’t speak for my good and loyal friend John Lukacs.  But I am 100 percent certain that he would agree with what I have written here.

And PS, to Mr Richert,

No, John Lukacs does not “admire” Pat Buchanan.  (I will stake every penny I have on that.) He, and I, acknowledge that Pat Buchanan is right about a lot of things, and that Pat Buchanan deserves considerable respect for some limited reasons.  But “ADMIRE?” No.  Lukacs does not “admire” Buchanan at all. 

And you can ask Lukacs yourself, if you doubt what I say.  Yes he has some respect for Pat Buchanan.  But “ADMIRE?”
No.

Mr. Ball, please calm down.  Take a deep breath, and then go locate a set of back issues of Chronicles.  Once you do, you’ll realize that your anger (which I fear has spilled over from the comment thread on the previous article, where you were absolutely correct to be angry and completely justified in your defense of your lady) is unjustified here.

Not only is Chronicles the only national conservative magazine in this country to devote considerable space to warning about the destruction of the land and suggesting alternatives (not just in particular articles but in entire issues devoted to the topic), I’ve been one of the most outspoken voices at Chronicles in doing so.

You might also, when you read those back issues, discover that I’ve known John Lukacs personally for 15 years; that I’ve reviewed many of his books for Chronicles; and that he has long written for us--and, indeed, he will have another article in the April issue of Chronicles.

As for some of your other concerns, your use of “race” in quotation marks, while discussing John Lukacs, is strange.  Lukacs himself never places the word in quotation marks in his short masterpiece, The Passing of the Modern Age (which, sadly, is long out of print), even though he uses the word quite frequently there, and no differently from how I’ve used it.

Regarding Pat Buchanan, I was present when Buchanan and Lukacs first met, and then I sat next to Lukacs at the dinner that night, when Buchanan gave the after-dinner speech.  From his applause, facial expressions, and our discussion afterward, I can say with some confidence that I have a pretty good idea of what Lukacs thinks of Buchanan.  But I will grant this: “Admire” may have been too strong; and “respect,” as you suggest, is a better word.  Blame it on the haste with which I wrote this piece.

I should also point out that John Lukacs’ strongest criticism of Buchanan in print appeared in the January 2000 issue of Chronicles, when he review Buchanan’s A Republic, Not an Empire.  Not incidentally, I recommended that we have Lukacs review the book.

So lets ditch patriotism and nationalism, and embrace the One-World, which apparently, is on the brink of Armageddon-oops to religious, The Destruction of the Land?

Enough with abstractions, indeed.

John Ball you are completely misguided. The “descruction” of our Earth is in many ways completely connected to race and nation. Organizations such as NumbersUSA have shown that the most devastating thing for a country’s enviroment is immigration because of the increase of people in the country. Also around the world the countries with the worst enviromental hazards and damages are majority non-white countries while majority whit countries have the least and put most money into the enviroment. You did a complete 180 from the article’s topic in order to avoid dealing with its subject. And even then it wasn’t rational or thought out but come off as emotional ranting like a liberal. Once again “conservatives” like this are the reason the Western world (certainly America) has moved so far to the left.

To endorse strongly John Ball’s view that we Tory conservatives have everything to gain from an alliance with ecologists, if not simply adopt the ecological program:  There is a report today that 1/2 of the bees died last year in Italy (I can’t confirm this).  http://ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-01-29_129139222.html
If true, then no bees=no plants=no cattle=no food=mass starvation.

@Sid Cundiff:

There is a report today that 1/2 of the bees died last year in Italy (I can’t confirm this).

The same phenomenon is occurring in the United States, and it has already drastically affected fruit and vegetable crops here in the Midwest.  Greg McNamee is writing an in-depth piece for Chronicles on this very question.

“As Pope John Paul II writes, “[N]ationalism involves recognizing and pursuing the good of one’s own nation alone, without regard for the rights of others.” It is insular, and not in a good sense; it not only assumes the superiority of one’s nation over the nations of others (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself), but it refuses to acknowledge or understand that others might regard their nation in the same way.”

The above is not a description of nationalism; it is a description of chauvinism. Please do not play the socialist’s game of confusing the meaning of words so that rational debate becomes impossible. It makes no sense to love one’s own country (ie be a nationalist) and not allow that others should have the same right.

Once again, Mr. Richert, guided by the wise John Lukacs, makes a safe landing.  I see only two errors, and they are minor.

1. When Wojtyła spoke of “nation”, he meant Patria. I would be happier, just to avoid the confusion in terms, to let “nation” and “national identity” be functions of odious nationalism, and “country” and “patriotism” be a function of patria.

2. Montenegro and Macedonia are patriae.  If Mr. Richert is in fact a Serbian Nationalist, he should so tell us. I pray he is not.

This said, the following assumptions, assumptions that Lukacs and Mr. Richert to their credit are opposing, are false:

i. The Nation is a natural institution Nope, (a) the household, (b)the clan (the extended family, living in a village), (c)the sub-tribe (the curia, a collection of villages), (d) the tribe, and (e) the polis are natural institutions.  Note that c and d are natural because of the incest taboo and are obviated by the coming of the polis.  Aristotle and Hannah Arendt make the case that the polis is natural.  The nation would be an artificial institution, and artificial is still real.  And that leads to:

ii. The nation is a real institution.</i.> No it, like race, is an utter a fiction told by The State to grant itself legitmacy (replacing the divine right of kings) and to bamboozle to warrior to fight (the modern version of Plato’s “noble [sic] lie”).  The warrior will fight for his god, his king, his country, and his mother, and all four. But just as no man will die for the conclusion of a syllogism (Newman), so no man will risk his life on the battlefield for Haliburton, cheap gas prices, the Morrell Tariff, corporate or socialist welfare, the Bank of England, or for providing The State more people to fleece.  So the lie of “The Nation” is told. The Whigs of 1688 first told this lie, their eyes greedy to take over Scotland, Ireland, the Americas, French North America, and to eat the Orange Netherlands’ lunch, and the Orange Netherlands and Flanders ate Venice’s.  The Jacobins give The Nation a 2nd birth.  (note how Tory conservative are opposed to Whigs and Jacobins). In fact, there is NO Nation called France, Britain, Germany, Italy, or America, nor are there nationals ("the people”) called Frenchmen, Britons, Germans, Italians, and Americans.  These are utter fictions told by Richelieu and later the Jacobins, the Whigs, Fichte and Bismarck, Mazzini and Cavour, and Hamilton and Dishonest Abe Lincoln, respectively. There are only centralized artificial States call France, The UK, Germany, Italy, and the USA—all made by arms and blood, not by plebiscite. 

iii. <i>the Nation is a necessary institution: no it is the Alliance of poleis that might be necessary for free trade and mutual defence.

iv. The nation is a good institution. No, The State (the monsters Leviathan and Behemoth), using the lie of “The Nation” has killed more people than any other institution.  Machiavelli and Tommy Hobbes lied be claiming that Leviathan would make for peace.  Nationalism caused two World Wars, and the First is still going on in the Balkans and the Near East. 

v. The Nation is a conservative institution No it is an institution of the “Right”, the “Left” and the Whigs.  Fascism, the logical necessary end of any statism, and and Naziism, the logical necessary end of racialism, are hardly conservative, however much conservatives have been the “useful idiots” of Fascists and Nazis (witness the Clerical Fascists).  On the “Left”, Cultural Marxism, the heir of the Jacobins—doubtless to the horror of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci and the Frankfurters—has also become a neo-nationalist movement.  All the poesy about “multiculturalism” and “diversity” has resulted in Black Nationalism and La Raza. 

This is a useful occasion to define outselves as Tory conservatism.  The Whigs—later called Hamiltonians, and later the “neoconservatives”—are out opponents, and have been so since the Exclusion Bill of 1687.  The racialists, whose ideology by logical necessity leads to Naziism, and the Marxists, the heirs of the jacobins, are our enemies.

Libertarians have their own problems, but on this issue they are correct. Lew Rockwell once wrote me, “Sorry, Sid, but all nationalism, even Southern Nationalism, is bad.” Mr. Rockwell is correct.  Call me a “North Carolina patriot”.

JUST TO REFORMAT AND CORRECT TYPOS

Once again, Mr. Richert, guided by the wise John Lukacs, makes a safe landing.  I see only two errors, and they are minor.

1. When Wojty?a spoke of “nation”, he meant Patria. I would be happier, just to avoid the confusion in terms, to let “nation” and “national identity” be functions of odious nationalism, and “country” and “patriotism” be a function of patria.

2. Montenegro and Macedonia are patriae.  If Mr. Richert is in fact a Serbian Nationalist, he should so tell us. I pray he is not.

This said, the following assumptions, assumptions that Lukacs and Mr. Richert to their credit are opposing, are false:

i. The nation is a natural institution Nope, (a) the household, (b)the clan (the extended family, living in a village), (c)the sub-tribe (the curia, a collection of villages), (d) the tribe, and (e) the polis are natural institutions.  Note that c and d are natural because of the incest taboo.  Aristotle and Hannah Arendt make the case that the polis is natural.  The nation would be an artificial institution, and artificial is still real.  And that leads to:

ii. The nation is a real institution. No it, like race, is an utter a fiction told by The State to grate itself legitimacy (replacing the divine right of kings) and to bamboozle to warrior to fight (the modern version of Plato’s “noble [sic] lie”.  The warrior will fight for his god, his king, his country, and his mother, and all four, but just as no man will die for the conclusion of a syllogism (Newman), so no man will risk his life on the battlefield for Haliburton, cheap gas prices, the Morrell Tariff, the Bank of England, or for providing The State more people to fleece.  So the lie of “The Nation” is needed. The Whigs of 1688 first told this lie, their eyes greedy to take over Scotland, Ireland, the Americas, French North America, and to eat the Orange Netherlands lunch.  The Jacobins give The Nation a 2nd birth.  In fact, there is Nation called France, Britain, Germany, Italy, or American, nor are there nationals (‘the people”) called Frenchmen, Britons, Germans, Italians, and Americans.  These are utter fictions told by Richelieu and later the Jacobins, the Whigs, Fichte and Bismarck, Mazzini and Cavour, and Hamilton and Dishonest Abe Lincoln, respectively, and all enforced by arms and blood, not by plebiscite. 

iii. the Nation is a necessary institution: no the alliance of poleis might be necessary for free trade and mutual defense.

iv. The nation is a good institution. No, the State, using the lie of “The Nation” has killed more people than any other institution.  Tommy Hobbes lied that Leviathan would make for peace.  Nationalism caused two World Wars, and the First is still going on in the Balkans and the Near East. 

v. the nation is a conservative institution No it is an institution of the “Right”, the “Left” and the Whigs.  Fascism, the logical necessity of any statism, and and Naziism, the logical necessary end of racialism, are hardly conservative, however much conservatives have been the “useful idiots” of Fascists and Nazis.  Yet Cultural Marxists, the heir of the Jacobins—doubtless to the horror of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci and the Frankfurters—has also become a neo-nationalist movement.  All the poesy about “multiculturalism” and “diversity” has resulted in Black Nationalism and La Raza. 

This is a useful occasion to define ourselves as Tory conservatism.  The Whigs were later called Hamiltonians, and later the “neoconservatives” are out opponents, and have been so since the Exclusion Bill of 1687.  The racialists, whose ideology by logical necessity leads to Naziism, and the Marxists, the heirs of the Jacobins, are our enemies.

Libertarians have their own problem, but on this issue they are correct. Lew Rockwell once wrote me, “Sorry, Sid, but all nationalism, even Southern Nationalism, is bad.” Mr. Rockwell is correct.  Call me a “North Carolina patriot”.

@ian:

“The above is not a description of nationalism; it is a description of chauvinism. Please do not play the socialist’s game of confusing the meaning of words so that rational debate becomes impossible. It makes no sense to love one’s own country (ie be a nationalist) and not allow that others should have the same right.”

This is why I made sure to define my terms.  You may not agree with the definitions; that’s fine.  But when John Lukacs and JPII (and George Orwell and Lord Acton, for that matter) use the word “nationalism,” they mean it in the way that it is described here.

Your definition of “nationalism"--"to love one’s own country"--is what these men call “patriotism.” I’ve never understood why some people who define nationalism in a way that is more a definition of patriotism so adamantly cling to the former term.  Why not use “patriotism” instead?

Conservatives think John McCain would be a good president. When racialists controlled America, there was no third world immigration, affirmative action, abortion, feminism, gay marriage, civil unions, divorce, pornography, political correctness, or neocon warmongers controlling our foreign policy. I rest my case.

“Chauvinism” and “jingoism” are just synonyms for “Nationalism”.

Lukac’s and Richert’s distinction between “Nationalism” (bad) and “patriotism” (good) is subtle, but deep and significant.

Here are two essays by the late great paleolibertarian Murray N. Rothbard that I think will help with the matter of nations.

Nations by Consent
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/11_1/11_1_1.pdf

The Nationalities Question
http://www.mises.org/story/2437

@Sid Cundiff:

“When Wojty?a spoke of “nation”, he meant Patria.”

Actually, why don’t we let him tell us what he meant?  Here’s the beginning of Chapter 13, “The Concept of Nation,” from Memory and Identity:

“If we examine the two terms carefully, we discover a close link between the meaning of patria (native land) and nation.  In Polish, in fact--but not only in that language--the term na-ród (nation) comes from ród (generation); patria (ojczy-zna), however, has its root in the term father (ojciec).”

So, in fact, he did not, when speaking of nation, mean patria, though he regards the terms as related.

@Sid Cundiff:

“Montenegro and Macedonia are patriae.  If Mr. Richert is in fact a Serbian Nationalist, he should so tell us. I pray he is not.”

Montenegrin patriots, such as the Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro, opposed secession; Montenegrin nationalists, such as the current president, who handed his country over to the E.U. bureaucrats, favored it.

One does not have to be a Serbian nationalist (which, since I’m not Serbian, I could not be anyway) to understand this.

@Sid Cundiff:

“This said, the following assumptions, assumptions that Lukacs and Mr. Richert to their credit are opposing, are false:

i. The nation is a natural institution ”

I’ll speak for myself, thank you.  I’m certainly not opposing the idea that the nation is a natural institution.  On the contrary, I quoted John Paul II’s admonition that it is a point of Catholic social doctrine that the nation, like the family, is a natural society.

@Sid Cundiff:

As for points ii, iii, iv, and v, read JPII and John Lukacs.  You’re wrong; they’re right.

And here’s precisely where you go wrong: You equate, even after I warned about this, nationalism and the nation, as your exchange with Lew makes clear.  The two are not the same; Lukacs and JPII (and I) do not regard them as the same.

@ John Ball

You forgot to mention that people focus too much on race and not enough on the destruction of the land.

The fact is that these two concerns tend to run hand-in-hand for obvious reasons. Free will absolutists like yourself, along with nurturist extremists, logically obsess about non-materialist concerns (i.e., spiritual and cultural). Concerns about biology lead to concerns about ecology.

Mr. Langley,
Please....., to make an assertion that the Great White Fathers orf the Northern Hemisphere are environmentally sophisticated while our dusky friends of the southern hemisphere are the real problem of the environment is the kind of vacuum packed thinking that forever obscures any remote chance of progress.

The consumption rates of the Northern Hemisphere far outstrip those of the southern hemisphere as does the North’s production of hydrocarbons. Sure, there is overpopulation and squalor in the southern hemisphere but that is as much to do with despotism sanctioned by the extractive Industrial Nations as it is to do with race.

The hordes of immigrants fleeing despotic nations use the tentacles of the Industrial north to find their way here.

@ Dirk

Yes, the South is indeed virtuous if you call an inability to produce enough to pollute a virtue.

Those superior folks to the South have managed though to destroy a tremendous amount of rainforest with their highly sophisticated slash-and-burn techniques.

equating nationalism and the nation

The fundamental problem is this, under modern conditions one must control a state to maintain the nation, even a raceless ‘cultural nation’ of Zmirak-esque fantasies. This has been all worked by guys like Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobbsbawm, Anthony Smith, Walker Connor. They disagree on a lot, but they recognize that keeping a cultural nation without a state is next to impossible today. Hence Zionism (I use the term neutrally) , hence diaspora Jews programs such as birthright Israel and J-date and their panic about mixed marriages (see Eliott Abrams). All about trying not to end up homogenized into ‘American’ culture.  The only really successful groups that manage are ones that consciously reject modernity like the Amish and Hassids, or outcasts like gypsies.

So you get Yugoslavia. For Croats to exist and continue, they needed to shuck off Serbo-Croatian and ‘Yugoslavia’. They need to have their own language , taught in schools they run, their own history, by their own authors.(BTW despite the name I have no family or biological connection to the Southern Slav space or peoples).

So some sort of national-ism is necesary, an ideology that justifies a people’s controlling their own territory. Patriotism, without institutional embodiment, is not enough.

@stari_momak:

“Patriotism, without institutional embodiment, is not enough.”

You’re making an unwarranted assumption there.  Who says that patriotism cannot have an institutional embodiment?  John Lukacs, for instance, has written extensively in defense of the nation-state, and has written with some trepidation about what is likely to follow once the nation-state--an essentially modern institution--disappears from the historical scene.

Yet he is not a nationalist.  The answer to this seeming contradiction is that national identity and nationalism are not the same.

Interestingly, I find that few self-identified patriots make the mistake of conflating the two (Sid Cundiff is an obvious exception).  The mistake is made most often by self-identified nationalists and admitted “rootless cosmopolitans” such as yourself.

Thank you, Scott, for making important distinctions where I may have offered conflations in the past.

I obviously skipped a few steps in the argument. Nationalism is an ideology, the belief that ‘the nation and the unit of government should be congruent’. This has been the dominant and explicit principle of political organization in the West since at least 1789, and their were glimmers before (see Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, and if you have academic type access, look for Gorski’s article “The Mosaic Moment”.—I know that references sound a bit pompous, but oh well)

So nationalism is the ideology that ‘the nation’ should control its political destiny. In modern times that means control of the land, control of the educational system (a reason why, for example, bilingual education is such an emotional topic) .  This control should be in the hands of members of the nation—but of course that is a plastic group to some extent. The French tried to make everyone within the hexagon (and some without) feel as they belonged to the cultural group that originally centered on Paris. They did quite well—but they were facing opposition from peoples quite like themselves in manner, religion, language. The English had demographic dominance over their territory, with a few thousand celts skulking on the periphery. The Italians had ancient glories to guide them, and a happy accident of geography. The Hungarians had their bizarre language to mark them off. By the end of the long nineteenth century, all these groups had a political institution which represented the cultural group. And most intellectuals thought that was as it should be—that is nationalism.

Patriotism nowadays tends to be used to describe loyalty to a state structure that lacks a foundation in a nation. George Bush is a patriot—he loves the state he leads, but doesn’t really care much about the remains of the nation that founded it. Patriotism as I use the word (some call it civic nationalism) does indeed need and institution, it is purely institutional. One could be a Singaporean patriot, but not a Singaporean nationalist.

In fact, in the absence of a dominant nation (the culture/racial group) you get a state with a bunch of squabbling ethnicities.

or to be clear, patriotism can only have an institutional embodiment, there is nothing else. but here I might agree with you, the current ‘thin gruel’ of American patriotism is no match of La Raza, Mecha, the NAACP, whatever Sharpton’s running these days, the ADL or AIPAC. One upon a time there was an Americanism based on something more, read Federalist 2. Something about ‘descended from common ancestors’.

Why is Zmirak online while in Rome—madness!

@stari_momak:

“Patriotism nowadays tends to be used to describe loyalty to a state structure that lacks a foundation in a nation.”

By whom?  Certainly not by anyone I’m discussing here.

“George Bush is a patriot—he loves the state he leads, but doesn’t really care much about the remains of the nation that founded it. ”

No, George Bush is very much a nationalist, and I know that the self-identified nationalists in these comments won’t like me saying that.  But in terms of the distinctions that JPII and Lukacs (and I) have made, Bush is clearly a nationalist, not a patriot.

“...and Naziism, the logical necessary end of racialism”

Says who? I won’t speak for racialism, but I can say I am living proof that recognizing the reality of race does not lead one to be a Nazi. Race is one of many things that should be respected when developing policy. There is absolutely no reason why race must be everything like the Stormfronters believe or nothing as many race deniers on this website claim.

This quote reveals the psychology behind the rejection of science with respect to race.

Jurgen Habermas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_patriotism

Walker Connor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Connor

I haven’t read JPII on nationalism, nor Lukac. But there is a literature on the subject and so your terms are inverted. This is of course fine, terms are nominal. But you are missing out on a great deal of thought on the subject, and terminological confusion won’t help.

Even by your terms, I don’t see how Bush could possibly be considered nationalist. Again, the nationalist thinks the nation and the political community should be congruent. George Bush believes in ‘individuals yearning for freedom’.

@John Zmirak:

Thank you for your kind words.  I have a speech that I delivered at a conference on Lake Como almost eight years ago where I discussed these issues at much greater length, and with particular attention to the Habsburg empire and the unification of Italy.  (Unfortunately, I’ve never published the speech.)

One thing I discussed was how patriotism could, indeed, be compatible with a multiethnic or multinational empire, but the nationalist would find living under such an empire intolerable.  With your sympathies, I’m sure you’d find that of interest.

In the end, though, I have to agree with stari_momak: It’s time for cena in Rome.  Shut down the computer, and go eat a little pasta and drink some wine for me.

@stari_momak:

Habermas’s “constitutional patriotism” is not patriotism, as the adjective itself indicates.  It is, instead, what we most often refer to, in the American context, as the “proposition nation” or “credal nation.”

Terms are indeed being inverted, but not by JPII or Lukacs, who both follow the historical understanding of the terms.  The Oxford English Dictionary (the full OED) is quite helpful here.  The words emerge in certain historical contexts, and they signify certain things, and Lukacs and JPII use them in their traditional senses.

@stari_momak:

One additional note on the inversion of terms: John Lukacs was writing about the distinction between patriotism and nationalism a full 30 years before Walker Connor.  When you combine that with the fact that Connor’s definition of patriotism departs from the way that the word and its roots have traditionally been used, it’s clear where the inversion comes in.

The irrationality of Sid Cundiff continues to amuse. FDR’s America and Churchill’s British Empire were more expansive race regimes than Hitler’s Third Reich. The Second World War actually shows that racialism does not lead to Nazism.

Well, I got an early example of patriot from the OED

Under former Kings the Catholiques were good patriots.

This seems to imply that whatever its origin in meaning native land, patriot quite early it had taken on the meaning of political allegiance—surely English Catholics hadn’t stopped loving their land but rather their King.

Nor did Habermas choose ‘Constitutional Nationalism’—presumably because patriotism—in the sense of allegiance to a regime, would make sense, but ‘constitutional nationalism’ didn’t—nationalism incorporating allegiance to a people as well as land. Not only allegiance to, but being a political member of a people, but to explain that would take more than a comment on a blog post.

Connor BTW was writing on these issues by 1969. He quite frankly admits to making up definitions—he calls his term ethnonationalism redundant but necessary—I don’t see that he was so wrong on the patriotism front. Indeed the complex ways these terms have changed in meaning )(see Greenfeld; see Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1789—introducton for a great begriffsgeschichte ) Yeah I know he’s a Marxist, but also a great historian.

are not random, but show deep historical processes.

And Walker was writing on nationalism in 1969—I’m sure Lukacs has him beat by a few years, but not 30.

@stari_momak:

“And Walker was writing on nationalism in 1969—I’m sure Lukacs has him beat by a few years, but not 30.”

Thanks for the correction.  I wasn’t aware of any of Connor’s work on this that predated 1984, so Lukacs has him by 15 years rather than 30.

Alright, I am becoming obsessed with this, but one last one

Google hits on ‘hapsburg patriotism’ three.

None on ‘hapsburg nationalism’. (though anti-hapsburg nationalism shows up.

Finally, here is a book on Hapsburg patriotism

http://www.amazon.com/Pomp-Politics-Patriotism-Celebrations-1848-1916/dp/1557534004

Now obviously “Hapsburg patriotism’ cannot be loyalty to native land in the John Paul sense, it is loyalty to the regime. So again, whatever the old origin and meaning, the common meaning of patriotism, in spite of Lukac and JPII , is focussed on the state.

Anyways, good debate. Caused me to review some stuff and clarify thinking. Nice to seem some civil discussion of nationalism and race for a change. thanks

I can’t seem to post...I wonder why.

@stari_momak:

“Nice to seem some civil discussion of nationalism and race for a change. thanks”

Agreed.  Thanks for participating!

But now it works...must be something in the formatting of my previous post.

Odd.

Oh well.

To the topic at hand: patriotism, nationalism.

I’ll start from the bottom up:

Hapsburg patriotism: Authentic.  Patriotism isn’t tied to “The Land” as a material thing, but to “The Land” as it relates to your patriarch - and in the case of a beloved monarch, he is your patriarch, and his patria is your patria.  Notice that this does not include a democratically elected government, even a single Revolutionary dictator.  A proper monarch has inherited his land, he conserves it.  Where no monarch has a legitimate claim to the land (Appalachia, for example), the land belongs to the families, the patriarch is no longer a monarch (in the traditional sense), but a real, “biological” father (of sorts).  So, Hapsburg patriotism IS tied to the land, in an indirect manner.  The Hapsburg are the personal representation of the land.

<<I don’t see how Bush could possibly be considered nationalist>>

When you realize what kind of anti-conservative, Revolutionary “nation” the USofA truly is, then you can understand what kind of true nationalist GW Bush is.

Is there a racial identity to patriotism?  Of course not.  People are adopted into families, as well as being born into them.

I shake my head when I see a fellow “hillbilly” flying the Confederate Battle Flag.  The Appalachian does have a relationship with the Coastal Southerner, but he has his own patria, his own patriarchs, which are quite seperate from cousins on the Coast.  Southern nationalism is an error in the same way American nationalism is.  Love of the broader culture IS possible when that broader culture is not in opposition to your local, native culture.  Unfortunately, here in America, the broader culture is ALWAYS in opposition to the local culture.  France as well.  Sisters in Revolution, both oppressors of patriotism, supporters of nationalism.

Finally, as for ecological conservation of the land: I absolutely agree.  It is impossible to be both a patriot and destroy your environment.  The destruction of Appalachia, my Land, has been carried out those that hate the Land.  They and their family may have lived in Appalachia for 200 years, but as soon as they start to destroy the Land, it is obvious they hate the Land.

This Land is Home to Me.

1. And when JPII spoke in Mr. Richert citation, was he speaking for the Magisterium in an official document, or just personally?  Just curious. 

2. You equate, even after I warned about this, nationalism and the nation.
Mr. Richert uses his terms, I mine. I wish he would see that what his terms refer to and my refer to are the same. I wish he would then see that I have never been in more agreement with what he has written as with his article above. My disagreements are minor.

My terms: nationalism is the ideology of which “Nation” and “national identity” are corollaries.

Patriotism is the ideology of which “country” (patria) and “patriotic feeling” are the corollaries.  If others use other terms, yet mean the same thing, that’s fine with me.  For today, Peace, Mr. Richert.

@Sid Cundiff:

“And when JPII spoke in Mr. Richert citation, was he speaking for the Magisterium in an official document, or just personally?  Just curious. ”

He was stating this in a book--not an encyclical, certainly, but you wouldn’t have asked the context if he had instead said that opposition to abortion is a point of Catholic social doctrine.  You’ve asked the context only because you want to believe that the nation is an artificial institution.

I don’t have my library here at work with me, but here’s an official document of the Church that echoes JPII’s remark (though, obviously, in a different context).  Paragraph 2281 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

“Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.”

Note that “nation” here is paired with “family” as a human society, just as JPII did in the material I quoted earlier.  Note, too, that the Catechism is replete with positive references to “nation.”

You’re certainly welcome to define these terms any way you wish, but when your definitions run up against points of Catholic social doctrine, you might want to revisit them.  It isn’t necessary to deny that nations are natural human institutions to be against nationalism.

Just to make sure that the point is clear: If, as Sid claims, the nation is not natural, is not real, is not necessary, and is not good, how can the Catechism state unequivocally that we have obligations to it?  And how can suicide offend love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with (among other things) nation, if, as Sid believes, we should not have such ties of solidarity with the nation?

By the way, Pius XI’s Quas primas, his encyclical on the feast of Christ the King, is an excellent exposition of Catholic social doctrine which assumes that nations are indeed natural human societies that are extensions of the family.

A debate about environmental extinction is trying to break out on this thread--see above posts by John Ball and one or two others. I hope it breaks out somewhere, sometime among paleocons--who, because of their land ethic, are well-situated to take environmental catastrophe seriously. The planet does seem to be poised on the verge of a great disaster. If the amount of carbon dioxide and--soon--methane in the atmosphere gets much higher, the Earth may reach a tipping point and move to a new steady state that’s not favorable to homo sapiens or most other spcies. I recently skimmed Bjorn Lomborg’s new book Cool It, and it didn’t take me long to decide that the book’s a joke--it’s not remotely an intelligent discussion of global warming. Don’t listen to global-warming skeptics like him. One of the things that we should do RIGHT NOW--and you’ll never hear this from Al Gore--is build more nuclear reactors. They’re better for the environment than any other currently available energy source, and vastly better at producing energy than anything else.

The nationalists I know and read are opposed to foreign interventions and imperialism in general.Bush is no nationalist - he is internationalist to the core and is part of the East Coast elite who have long admired trans-national institutions and organizations (pay no attention to the Texas twang, folks _ Georgie is Yale/Harvard through and through)!

@Dirk W Sabin

“Sure, there is overpopulation and squalor in the southern hemisphere but that is as much to do with despotism sanctioned by the extractive Industrial Nations as it is to do with race.

The hordes of immigrants fleeing despotic nations use the tentacles of the Industrial north to find their way here.”

Truer words are seldom written!

“The irrationality of Sid Cundiff continues to amuse. FDR’s America and Churchill’s British Empire were more expansive race regimes than Hitler’s Third Reich. The Second World War actually shows that racialism does not lead to Nazism.”

People like Sid and John Ball don’t know much about the science of race and can only call names (thereby admitting they have lost the argument). The fact that every other racial group in America (and the planet) puts their race above any abstract notion of race or religion seems lost on them.

As I’ve said before, if they want to stop white racialism they must first deal with its cause—increasing (and often violent) racial nationalism by non-whites (particularly blacks).

For the record, Montenegro held a referendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegrin_independence_referendum&#x2C;_2006
Independence won by a majority. 

You don’t have to be a Serbian to be a Serbian Nationalist.

However much I dislike Social Democrats, I’m saying a nightly rosary for Boris Tadić’s victory on Sunday.  He’s not as good as the New Serbia party, put far better than his opponent. Tadić is a patriot, his opponent a nationalist. Whatever the result, I think the Serbs are coming to their senses, as have Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, and are choosing the well-being of the patria over the irredentist ambitions of nationalists.

Words can indeed mean various things to various people, even to the point that A word becomes so confused in meaning that it becomes meaningless, e.g. “liberal”, “conservative”, “nation”, “nature” (natura naturans or natura naturata?) and “real”. One ought to strive for conceptual clarity and find the right words for the concept.  Can we, sir, agree on this at least?

You yourself have said that “nation” is a term with various meanings.  Nationalism has its own particular concept of “The Nation” (largely a concept without historical reality).  Are these Church documents using nation as the nationalist means it, as or as patria?  The patria/polis is certainly a natural institution.  The “Nation” of nationalism is a fiction.

In Quanta Cura, Pius XI was referring to what I prefer to call “the Patria”, not the “nation” of the Whigs, Cavour, Robespierre, Buonaparte, Bismarck, Lincoln, the Orangemen, the IRA, and The Black Hand.  OR?  Even if I were to concede the “naturalness” of Nationalism’s nation, the “nation” of the and English Whigs, Richelieu and the Jacobins, of Mazzini and Cavour, of Fichte and Bismarck, and Hamilton and Lincoln, are lies, and hardly noble lies.

Odd, frankly, that Pius XI, in the very document you linked, Mit brennender Sorge, fiercely attacked nationalism, as did Paul VI in his document. They meant by nationalism what I and John Lukacs and you (I think) mean by it. 

Your attempts to make me a Catholic heretic will get no where.  I know what the Church teaches, and I don’t twist documents to mean what I wish them to mean.  The Church utterly condemns nationalism.  She know well the suffering it caused.

“No, George Bush is very much a nationalist, and I know that the self-identified nationalists in these comments won’t like me saying that.”

No Scott, you have things very wrong. Bush is very much an imperialist and imperialism is the antithesis of nationalism.

@Sid Cundiff:

“ The Church utterly condemns nationalism.  She know well the suffering it caused.”

We’re in complete agreement on that point.  Where we disagree is that the Church holds to a traditional conception of the nation, as do I, and you deny such a conception.  In order to do so while trying not to contradict the Church, you engage in speculation about what the documents might mean, instead of simply reading them and finding out that they mean what I’ve said they mean.

Once again: You can understand that, as the Church teaches, the nation is a natural human society that is an extension of the family without being a nationalist.  It’s your insistence on your definition, which differs from what the Church teaches, that trips you up and makes you believe that anyone who acknowledges that the nation is a natural institution must be a nationalist.

Why not take the easier way, and simply accept what John Paul II wrote as representative of what the Church teaches?

@ian:

“No Scott, you have things very wrong. Bush is very much an imperialist and imperialism is the antithesis of nationalism.”

We can play ping pong all day and night, if you wish.  If you believe that nationalism is synonymous with what John Paul II, John Lukacs, and I have called “patriotism,” then of course you’ll believe that imperialism is the antithesis of nationalism.  If, however, you’ll simply agree, for the sake of argument, to entertain the possibility that the traditional distinction between nationalism and patriotism might be right, then you can understand (even if you don’t wish to agree) what I mean when I say that imperialism is very much a nationalist, and not a patriotic, endeavor.

By the way, Sid, I’m not attempting to make you a Catholic heretic or even to imply that you are one.  On the other hand, I do think that you have been misled by liberalism, in the guise of libertarianism, and I think that the proper remedy for that is to examine more fully the Church’s condemnation of liberalism.

@Sid Cundiff:

“Are these Church documents using nation as the nationalist means it, as or as patria?”

Let’s set aside the straw man ("nation as the nationalist means it"), since I’ve never said that they mean it as the nationalist means it, but rather as I’ve outlined it.  Instead, let’s look at the Latin word that’s being translated as “nation,” since the Latin text of Church documents is the normative text.  If you are correct, then the word that is being translated as “nation” should be “patria.”

Here’s the Latin text of p. 2281 of the Catechism, whose English text I cited earlier:

“Suicidium naturali creaturae humanae contradicit inclinationi ad eius vitam conservandam et perpetuandam. Graviter iusto sui ipsius amori contrarium est. Pariter amorem offendit proximi, quia iniuste solidarietatis frangit vincula cum societatibus familiari, nationali et humanae, erga quas obligati permanemus. Suicidium amori Dei viventis est contrarium.”

<<the word that is being translated as “nation” should be “patria.”>>

It should be.  From what the Catechism was describing, it is not the modern (Enlightenment/Masonic/Jacobin) notion of the “nation”, but the traditional.  John Paul II was describing not “nationalism”, but patriotism.

You did an outstanding job of defining terms, but we have failed in sticking to those definitions, Mr Richert.  I believe the poor translations from the Latin are partially to blame.

Let us set the record straight (again): patria is something more akin to Louis IX France.  Nationalism is something more akin to Jacobin France.  Agreed?

@Andrew Capp:

We’re close.

“Nationalism is something more akin to Jacobin France.  Agreed?”

Agreed.

“patria is something more akin to Louis IX France.”

No.  Patria is native land.  There is a connection between the nation and the native land, as John Paul II explained, but they are different things: the nation is a human society that is an extension of the family, while the native land is, well, a native land.

The two merge in “patriotism,” which is derived from patria, but includes love not only of one’s native land but of those who live there.  (Or, as I wrote much earlier, love of a particular people in a particular place.)

I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but I think that we actually agree here, and that you meant that Louis IX France was a nation that wasn’t nationalistic (thus the contrast with the nationalism of Jacobin France).  If so, we do agree.

@Andrew Capp:

One more point of clarification.  You quoted this remark that I made:

<<the word that is being translated as “nation” should be “patria.”>>

And you commented:

“It should be. ”

I want to make sure that everyone understands that I wasn’t saying that the word in the Latin text is wrong; rather, I was saying that if Sid is right, and the Catechism is using the English word “nation” to mean “patria,” then the Latin text should read “patria.”

But it doesn’t; the Latin word used is “nationali,” from “natio.”

And one last clarification, for anyone trying to follow this who doesn’t know the Latin roots: Patria means “fatherland”; Natio means “a tribe, race, people.”

Some final thoughts for the night:

Wherever men escape from their daily confrontation with the saving and threatening powers of the cosmos and apprehend themselves as a community that meets the pressing needs of existence that perdures through generations, there history as a form of salvation has its origin: the individual is no longer exposed alone to the abysses of his own existence but sees himself as a member of a race, a nation, a culture that bestows directly upon him the form and direction of that existence, that guarantees him safety, freedom, life--that are “salvation.” It is race that makes possible for him the peaceful management of his daily existence; that provides him with the external means of mastering that existence and, in the structuring of marriage and family as well as in the ordering of social relationships in general, supplies him with answers to the question about his own existence; that enables him to form and interpret in terms that are essentially human the open riddle of existence.  History becomes his salvation, the makers of history become for him those special divine powers in whom he has more confidence than in the distant cosmic divinities: “God-Son” is nearer than “God-Father,” the distant and mysterious Being who becomes near and gracious through the mediation of the Son.

This is, in essence, the principle of “salvation history”: salvation comes through history, which, therefore, represents the immediate form of religious experience.  History is thus a shelter; it gives existence its true character (not its alienation), because this history is divinely established and it is precisely in the reception of the historical that that which transcends history--the eternal--becomes present.

It is my opinion (I know...) that the Latin “natio” and “patria” are, more or less, interchangeable terms (differentiated only by degree, not type; the “nation” is a larger set of aligned families, who are tied to the land via their patriarch, hence “patria").

Perhaps a better translation for the modern notion of “nation” in the Latin would be “administratio” or “habenae”.

A “nationalist”, as defined my Mr Richert, does not necessarily even have an idea of a “tribe”, but they DO have a love of the government, the administration, the “reins of power”.

@Sid Cundiff:

Rome was a polis, er, rather an urbs.  Yet the Romans were part of the Latin natio, or nation.  Greece, by which I mean all the Greeks as a community (so as to avoid the contested word “nation"), is certainly a natural society, yet there are many poleis in Greece, and even many subdivisions of Greeks (Dorian, Attic, Ionian, etc.).  The different urbes of Latium all belonged to the Latin nation, and the different poleis of Greece all belonged to a Greek national community. 

Furthermore, if Mr. Cundiff is correct, then one is hard-pressed to explain cultural-genetic-political groups (for he won’t admit the word “nation") that have moved from one land to another.  The Hungarians, for instance, did not always occupy their current patria in the Danube Basin.  Nor did the Ionians always live on the Aegean shore of Anatolia.  If “patria” is all that exists, how do we explain the obvious continuity of the Hungarian and Ionian communities as they permanently switched the physical location of their “native” lands?

Additionally, Mr. Richert, thank you for your reply on the Chronicles thread about the Illinois Black Codes.  I have responded there. 

Also, I would appreciate it if you would bring to Dr. Fleming’s attention the decree of the Council of Trent which anathematizes those who maintain that parental consent is at all necessary for the validity of marriage.  He has in the past claimed that the Church once required parentaly consent.  I have provided the citation in my writeback.  Thank you.

Additionally, my impression was that the Bourbons were committed to centralizing government in France.  The palace at Versailles was useful in keeping the nobility locked up and away from fiefdoms their ancestors once actually governed with some degree of autonomy from the Crown.  So there seem to have been some administrative precedents for nationalism, or at least violation of the principle of subsidiarity, even within the “ancien regime.”

<<If “patria” is all that exists, how do we explain the obvious continuity of the Hungarian and Ionian communities as they permanently switched the physical location of their “native” lands?>>

As I have put forward, “patria” is the land tied to one’s patriarch, most directly your father and his father and his father, etc.  When people move, they bring themselves with them; that is, when they move, their present and future descendants are brought to that new place.  When my ancestors were driven out of Scotland they did not bring the land.  No, they brought themselves to a New Land, and that New Land is now MY patria.  Patria is more than “just land”, it is also a family tie to that land.

The most striking aspect of this debate is the centrality of Catholicism to analysis of what importance we should attach to race and nationality ... in America. Historically speaking, the United States has been a Protestant nation. Catholicism didn’t factor in at all to the blueprint the American Founders left behind for us. The men who built this country at the expense of the French, Spanish, Mexicans and various Indian tribes were not Catholics. Thus, it is not really surprising that Catholics misunderstand and discount the importance of our national customs.

“As I have put forward, “patria” is the land tied to one’s patriarch, most directly your father and his father and his father, etc.  When people move, they bring themselves with them; that is, when they move, their present and future descendants are brought to that new place.  When my ancestors were driven out of Scotland they did not bring the land.  No, they brought themselves to a New Land, and that New Land is now MY patria.  Patria is more than “just land”, it is also a family tie to that land.”

You didn’t answer my question.  “Hungary” must be more than just the “patria” as the Hungarians have lived in more than one land yet have remained Magyars all the while.  There clearly is a Hungarian natio that has migrated.  The natio occupies a patria, but the one cannot be reduced to the other.  Throughout the world, different nationes (to use the pre-modern Latin word for the disputed English word “nation") dispute whether a given parcel of land is part of their patria or not.  For centuries, both Croatia and Slovakia were in perpetual personal untion with the Kingdom of Hungary.  So Hungarians regarded both countries as parts of the Hungarian patria, with some justification.  Yet Croats and Slovaks were distinct nations within the Hungarian state.  Croats rightly would regard Croatia as their own particular patria, and would not view Slovakia or Hungary proper in the same way.  “Croatia” cannot be reduced to “Croatian fatherland” without reference to the Croatian ethnic group, i.e. the nation of Croatia.

“It is my opinion (I know...) that the Latin “natio” and “patria” are, more or less, interchangeable terms (differentiated only by degree, not type; the “nation” is a larger set of aligned families, who are tied to the land via their patriarch, hence “patria")."

Mr. Capp, here are some citations from the best English-Latin dictionary in existence, Lewis and Short.  Fr. Reginald Foster at the Vatican uses it. 

“Patria” means “one’s fatherland, native land or country, native place,” “a dwelling-place, home.” No reference to any one “patriarch.” “Patria” is a shortening of “patria terra,” meaning “land inherited from one’s fathers, i.e. ancestors.” “Patrius, -a, -um” is an adjective meaning “inherited from one’s forefathres,” “terra” of course means “land.”

“Natio” means:

II.A. “a breed, stock, kind, species, race,” “also, in a contemptuous sense a race, tribe, set”

B.  “In a more restricted sense, a race of people, nation, people (used commonly in a more limited sense than gens, and sometimes as identical with it; cf.: gens, populus; usually applied by Cicero to distant and barbarous people”

I wouldn’t be too bothered by the sometimes negative connotations, as in many of those contexts “the nations” amounts to “the *foreign-and-hence-not-as-good-as-us* nations.” The word itself means more or less what we mean when we refer to a nationality or national identity, though not so much what we mean by modern nation-state.  Yet even we make that distinction in our own language.

So it is not fair to say that patria and natio mean the same thing.  Patria refers to the fatherland or country, natio to an identifiable race or ethnicity or people.  The words are not interchangeable, and they really do differ in kind, not just degree.  Substitute the literal English word “fatherland” to see why.  Rome fought wars against the Gallic nations, not the Gallic fatherlands.  Hence Pope John Paul II is correct in distinguishing between the two.

“Administratio” and “habenae” might translate “nation-state,” but they would not translate “nation.”

Furthermore, Mr. Cundiff makes the mistake of thinking that because the nationalists tout their devotion to the nation, therefore that word is dirty.  Why, then, is patria an acceptable word?  It is simply that Latin word for “fatherland,” and Hitler and other nationalists have certainly used fatherland in their rhetoric.  If nation is off limits because of the nationalists’ appropriation of the word, it stands to reason that fatherland (the literal translation of patria) should be off limits.

Perhaps a good way to correct this mistake would be the following:  “Contrary to the claims of nationalists, the nation is subject to the law of subsidiarity.  Hence, families, guilds, towns, counties, sub-national ethnic groupings, localities, etc., all possess their own proper roles within the nation.”

“No reference to any one “patriarch.””

Whoops, I had meant to delete that.  Please disregard it. 

Also, “personal union,” not “untion.”

I thank Caper for a series of very insightful comments that go to the heart of the matter and show a depth of historical and linguistic understanding that has been lacking from other contributions to this debate, my own included.

Scott

I appreciate that you have taken the time to respond to my comments.

I disagree strongly with the approach you have taken here, namely take two words that in modern usage are virtual synonyms and then with little justification load one up with bad connotations and associate the other with more pleasant attributes. Irrespective of what a couple of academics may think, my understanding of these words is that patriotism is a less-defined, less intellectualised or less politicised version of nationalism. You (like many socialists before you) have turned “nationalist” into a cheap pejorative associated with a vaguely defined bunch of evils. The sort of problems raised by this approach are well illustrated by your claim that George Bush is a nationalist. Your logic for this claim appears to be that George is associated with the various evils that you have attributed to nationalism therefore he must be a nationalist. I am not an American, but much that I have read about George Bush convinces me that he is anything but a nationalist (even given considerable looseness in how the word is defined). For example, Bush’s social policies have seen declines in American educational and health standards, his economic policies have seen the continued exporting of manufacturing jobs, the accumulation of ruinous foreign debt, and a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar, etc etc etc. A great many Americans believe that Bush governs for the benefit of a small, highly privileged elite. To conclude that such a man is a nationalist is a ludicrous mischaracterisation.

I believe that words and ideas should be treated more carefully and with more respect. The path that you have taken only leads to needless confusion and discord.

@ian:

“I believe that words and ideas should be treated more carefully and with more respect. ”

Indeed.  Which is why traditional definitions and etymologies should be respected and stressed once again whenever common usage degenerates, as it has in this case.

“The path that you have taken only leads to needless confusion and discord.”

On the contrary--reminding people of the traditional definitions is the first step toward achieving some intellectual clarity.

@ian:

“For example, Bush’s social policies have seen declines in American educational and health standards, his economic policies have seen the continued exporting of manufacturing jobs, the accumulation of ruinous foreign debt, and a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar, etc etc etc.”

If the proof that one is not a nationalist is that one’s policies hurt one’s country, then Hitler was not a nationalist.  When we look at it that way, such an idea, of course, is patently ludicrous.

It matters not how these words have been defined in the PAST.  What matters is how we define these words for THIS discussion.  We can define “dutch oven” as a “kitchen sink”, and can discuss, rationally, the qualities of dutch ovens, such as the spigot, the drains, the garbage disposal, etc.

The fact that others before us have defined these words we use matters not.  Mr Richert started with a definition of terms, and we should respect it.  People claiming that Mr Richert has defined the words “wrong” simple need to accept his, the moderator of this discussion, definitions.

Once again, according to Mr Richert’s definitions, patriotism is the love of one’s land, and the tribal customs that go along with it, as handed down by his forefathers.  Nationalism is the love of the power of the society around the patria, the government, at the expense of everyone else.  It matters not that you may not agree with that definition.

A big fuss over nothing. Most folks, when they use “nation” really mean “country” (patria).  So the Church.

Caper means by “Nation” ethnos.  The fiction of nationalism is to fantasize that various ethnoi be one.  Caper needs to look up his words in the Pauly, esp. “Natio”.  “Race” as racialism teaches and “Nation” as Nationalism teaches didn’t exist as concepts until the late 18th and the 19th C. And they are concepts evil and stupid.

Someone guote me where Lukacs, in his recent writings, supports the idea of “Nation” as Nationalists understand it.

Clerical Fascism of the 20s and 30s had believed the Church to teach “race” as racialists would understand it and “nation” as nationalists would understand it, provided racialism and nationalism would be subordinated to the Faith.  As if the Devil would subordinate himself to Anyone!

He who celebrates “Nation” as Cavour and Mazzini understood it spits on the grave of Bl Pius IX, the opponent and victim of nationalism.  Real Catholics know better.

Caper:  “So it is not fair to say that patria and natio mean the same thing.  Patria refers to the fatherland or country, natio to an identifiable race or ethnicity or people.  The words are not interchangeable, and they really do differ in kind, not just degree. “

Caper, you are correct in that the modern meanings have shifted, and that the ancient are not identical.  But the roots of both ‘nation’ and ‘patriotism’, ‘natio’ and ‘pater’, imply link by blood.  There is no getting away from the fact that the ancients (and anyone until recent times) were ethnocentric in their conception of any form of statehood.

Vergil wrote:  “Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem (So great an effort was required to found the Roman race).” Notice that Vergil mentions not an abstract state, but the actual founding of a flesh-and-bones people.

Caper:  “Mr. Capp, here are some citations from the best English-Latin dictionary in existence, Lewis and Short.  Fr. Reginald Foster at the Vatican uses it. “

Out of curiosity, have you been to Fr. Foster’s Vatican summer program in spoken Latin?  I was there the summer of 2001.  I’m actually Protestant, but this experience gave me a very deep respect for Catholic traditions.  I actually thought about converting while there.  But about 1/3 of the people in the class were Protestant, which surprised me.

@Sid Cundiff:

You’re right--it is a big fuss about nothing, because you insist on making false claims, such as:

“Most folks, when they use “nation” really mean “country” (patria).  So the Church.”

That’s manifestly untrue.  If the Church meant patria, She would use patria in the Latin text.  She does not, but instead uses a derivative of natio.

And you create additional fuss by creating straw men, such as:

“Someone guote me where Lukacs, in his recent writings, supports the idea of “Nation” as Nationalists understand it.”

He does not, but no one has claimed that he does.  Rather, I have pointed out that Lukacs, an anti-nationalist, believes in the reality of the nation as a human society, just as the Church does.

For the last time (really, truly), the problem is that you’re working backward.  You think that to acknowledge the reality of the nation means that you must embrace nationalism.  That’s patently false, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Quas primas, and the writings of John Paul II and John Lukacs illustrate.

Fascinating discussion, gents, bravo! Have no fears that I am missing Rome by blogging. I do most of my work from a Wi-Fi cafe in Trastevere with a carafe of Frascati at my elbow--and the rest at an office with a view of Bernini’s colonnade in St. Peter’s Square. Ciao!

Mr. Zmirak:  If you are at the same internet cafe on Trastevere that I used to frequent, then next door there’s a pizza shop with the best tuna/green olive pizza.

“Caper means by “Nation” ethnos.  The fiction of nationalism is to fantasize that various ethnoi be one.”

But, Mr. Cundiff, one valid translation of the Greek word “ethnos” is the English word “nation.” Liddell, Scott, and Jones in their definitive Greek lexicon list “nation, people” as definition A.2 of the word “ethnos” as it appears in post-Homeric Greek.  *Not* “nation/nation-state as the nationalists understand it,” but just “nation/nationality,” the non-ideological English common noun.  I do not see why we should insist upon Greek and Latin jargon when the English language has a word, or rather several, that work:  “fatherland/homeland/native land/native country/home country” for patria, and “nation/nationality/ethnicity/people” for natio/gens/ethnos?  Yes, the nationalist does fantasize that various ethnoi are one.  This might also be phrased:  “nationalists imagine that the nation is a single, unitary, totalitarian ball of wax instead of the natural outgrowth of subsidiary familial, ethnic, and socio-cultural bodies.” The nation, which may also be translated ethnos or gens or populus or natio as you wish or nuance demands, is no more what nationalists claim it should be than the Vaterland/patria/patrie/fatherland is what they claim it is.  It is a natural body. 

“Caper needs to look up his words in the Pauly, esp. “Natio”. “

What do you think I’ll find there?

Bede, yes, indeed I took Fr. Reggie’s course in Rome.  It’s good to encounter another Reggie-ite!

Whoops, yet again I posted too quickly.  I was there last summer.  Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to give some more thought to conversion. 

A sizeable number of non-Catholics were there this summer, too.  My observation was that Reggie tries to avoid being too specifically Catholic in what he does.  Yes, there are plenty of Christian Latin and talk about Church politics, but no overt preaching of dogma.  He’s there to save the language, and if Protestants are willing to come all the way to Rome to do so, not only will he avoid offending them, but he will positively revel in the irony of Latin being preserved outside of the Church.  Does this match your own observations?

Caper:  Yes, very much so.  He was very welcoming to Protestants taking his courses.

I think the distinction between patriotism and nationalism that John Paul II and Lukacs make is much clearer in the Central European context they were formed by.  Historically, the “Hungarian nation” or “Polish nation” meant the classes that had political rights in the Kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, namely the nobility and the gentry.  There were nobles and gentry in both countries that were not Magyars or Poles, though there was a natural tendency toward Magyarization and Polonization within those classes over the centuries. 

In 19th century Hungary, nationalism began to change everything.  Hungarian nationalists began attacking the non-Magyar groups that had lived within the Kingdom of Hungary for centuries, closing down schools that taught in languages other than Magyar and demanding as the price of admission to Hungarian society the complete acceptance of Magyar language and culture and a renunciation of any other language or culture.  Thus, the distinction between a patriot--whose primary loyalty had been to the King of Hungary--and a nationalist--whose primary loyalty was to the Magyar people--turned largely on the question of how non-Magyar peoples were to be treated within Hungary.

A similar analysis can be applied to Poland.  Before the partitions, for example, German Danzigers were loyal subects of the Polish crown.  When Poland was revived after World War I, most Danzigers wanted nothing to do with Poland, and the same was true for many in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian minorities within Poland.  Polish nationalists reciprocated, viewing non-Poles who had lived in Poland for centuries as alien interlopers at best.  Once again, the distinction between patriotism and nationalism turned largely on how the non-Polish minorities within Poland were viewed.

This distinction is much less clear in modern Poland and Hungary, which are more ethnically homogeneous than they ever were in the past.  In fact, at this point, I think “patriotism” and “nationalism” are largely synonymous in those countries.  And I think the distinction between patriotism and nationalism becomes nebulous at best in contexts other than the Central European milieu that formed Lukacs and John Paul II.

“If the proof that one is not a nationalist is that one’s policies hurt one’s country, then Hitler was not a nationalist.  When we look at it that way, such an idea, of course, is patently ludicrous.”

Scott, you are being silly. The point that I was trying to make was that Bush’s policies have impinged disproportionately on the middle and working classes in America, but to the great advantage of many of the most wealthy people in the country. And, unlike the case of Hitler, this outcome appears deliberate.

Re. Andrew Capp’s comment that such arguments about the meaning of words are pointless: you couldn’t be more wrong. Just think about how “political correctness” has poisoned the language and perverted public discussion on various issues.

“Hungarian nationalists began attacking the non-Magyar groups that had lived within the Kingdom of Hungary for centuries, closing down schools that taught in languages other than Magyar and demanding as the price of admission to Hungarian society the complete acceptance of Magyar language and culture and a renunciation of any other language or culture.”

This is an excellent point, Mr. Piatak.  For centuries, the Slovaks, the Croats, and the Vlachs (ethnic Romanians) of Transylvania lived within the Crownlands of St. Stephen (i.e. the Kingdom of Hungary) without being forced to adopt Magyar culture or national identity.  Then the nationalists changed all that.  And who was the major Hungarian nationalist?  Louis Kossuth, who was a revolutionary in 1848, a Protestant, and a Freemason.  In other words, this nationalism was opposed to the Catholic Church. 

Poland is also an interesting case.  There were some severe problems in the ethnically Ukrainian east as early as the 1640s.  One significant provocation was the fact that absentee Polish landlords, through the agency of (for the most part) Jewish middlemen, oppressed the Ukrainians with excessive fees, taxes, and tolls.  The Cossacks rebelled, and yet again a wall went up between the East and the West, between the Orthodox (sic) and the Catholics. 

Oddly, World War II had the net effect of leaving Poland more ethnically homogeneous than ever—very few Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Jews, Gypsies, or Germans were left by the time every thing was said and done.

Lastly, for what ever it’s worth, Hungary and Poland formerly shared a common border.  They have even been ruled by the same dynasty at various times:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JagiellonianThe friendship between Pole and Magyar is proverbial in both countries:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole,_Hungarian,_two_good_friends
The wikipedia article suggests that the two nations actually are genetically related.  One might speculate that the status of both nations as rulers of multi-ethnic states gave them a similar outlook on European affairs and ethnopolitics.

Whoops, here is the link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagiellonian

Caper:

You may be interested to learn that the Piataks came from a village in Spis County (Szepes Megye) that for many years was right on the Polish-Hungarian frontier, the villges just to the north being part of Spis “pawned” by the Hungarians to the Poles in the 15th century.

<<the meaning of words are pointless>>

That is absolutely NOT what I said.

Do you have a reading comprehension problem?

I stated that OTHER definitions, outside of the ones we are using for this discussion, do not matter.  If we decide to call a “teak kettle” a “trzek”, then we can discuss “trzeks” and their traits (boiling water, aesthetics, etc.) rationally.  It matters not if someone on the planet Ykujgh translates the word “trzek” as “metal roofing”.  We aren’t discussing “trzeks” with the Ykujgh “people”.

Well, Mr. Piatak, it truly is a small world!  Thank you for that information.

“In other words, this nationalism was opposed to the Catholic Church.”

Magyar nationalists were also opposed to the Hapsburgs, at least before they attempted to co-opt it.  In any case, Admiral Horthy (also Protestant, for whatever that’s worth) later refused to permit the Hapsburgs to return to the newly independent Hungary.  I add that for Mr. Zmirak, whose ancestors may have encountered magyarization in nineteenth-century Croatia (?).

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