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Entry: Race, Nationalism, and Patriotism, Part II: Nationalism Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/race_nationalism_and_patriotism_part_ii_nationalism#15652 Post contents: 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. <i>The nation is a natural institution </i> 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. <i>The nation is a real institution.</i> 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. <i>the Nation is a necessary institution</i>: no the alliance of poleis might be necessary for free trade and mutual defense. iv. <i>The nation is a good institution.</i> 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. <i>the nation is a conservative institution</i> 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”. Sent at: 2008 07 05