Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Further Notes on Nationalism Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/further_notes_on_nationalism#23463 Post contents: "America cannot entirely cease to be an ideological nation without ceasing to be America." Wow. There's an awful lot to unpack in that one short sentence. But let me forego the unpacking and simply say this: While the American idea of nationality has been, to some extent, ideological (as Lukacs notes), that doesn't mean that there could never have been an American national identity that wasn't ideological. I'm not talking here about some romantic Catholic dream in which the United States was founded as a Catholic country, but rather the gelling of an American identity that Lukacs, in his <i>Outgrowing Democracy</i>, notes was occurring at several points in American history, only to be disrupted (by the Civil War, massive waves of immigration, etc.). In the other comment thread, Dan, you chided me for what you regarded as an "ideological" statement; here, you're embracing ideology as an essential component of the American national identity. That's an argument very similar to the one Justin makes in <i>Reclaiming the American Right</i> (and that Paul Gottfried echoes in his most recent book). I'll plug the forthcoming ISI edition of Justin's book by noting that my response to that argument is fully developed in my critical essay in the ISI edition. Sent at: 2008 10 13