In a way, libertarianism’s greatest success is in dealing with a very important group — government — by pointing out that social happiness is generally proportional to the extent to which the government keeps its nose out of the business of the citizens. But libertarians virtually ignore the political impact of all other groups, and in particular have failed to heed Lord Acton’s injunction that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. And altho I am certainly no fan of the Left, it is clear that the Left has a far better grip on reality than the libertarians with respect to Acton’s observation, since the Left long ago recognized the danger which corporations pose to the body politic.

So what then are the groups on the political landscape which libertarians ignore? They include groups with a financial interest in politics (corporations, labor unions), groups with a racial, ethnic, sexual or similar interest (blacks, Jews, homosexuals) and those with other specialized interests (gun control, gun rights, anti-censorship, anti-porn, medical freedom, etc). Such groups are not limited to lobbying organizations, but include any type of organization that has political clout.
Actually, it is not quite right to say that libertarians ignore these groups, since libertarians probably do direct mail solicitations to many of them. But what libertarians fail to appreciate is that it makes far more sense to view the political game as having these groups as the players, rather than the vaunted “individual” with which libertarians are so enamored. The problem, however, is not just that libertarians organize their political perceptions poorly. Rather it is that their focus on the individual keeps them from seeing how the political process works, and thus prevents them from being an effective part of it, and in addition has caused them to embrace propositions which directly contradict basic libertarian principles.

To explain, we begin by noting that the essence of the American political process — at least as it involves legislative activity — is not what the Founders conceived it to be (and what most libertarians seem to think it is), namely, the reflective consideration of what constitutes the greatest good for the greatest number. Instead, the political process may be summarized in one simple phrase: paying off the (few very wealthy) individuals who supply substantial money and the constituencies who supply both substantial money and substantial votes. And who are the constituencies? Very simply, they are the groups which libertarians ignore, and which constitute the major players in the political process. And what is more, such groups are the driving forces behind the types of legislation that libertarians hate: Welfare is driven by the black block vote; the largest recipient of foreign aid is Israel, driven by the notoriously-powerful Israeli lobby; laws hindering business are driven by labor unions; dumbed-down federalized education is driven by teachers’ unions; restrictions on alternative medicine are driven by medical organizations and drug manufacturers; affirmative action is driven by large companies seeking to hurt their smaller competition for whom such programs are a greater proportional burden; drug laws are driven by anti-freedom groups and the enforcement bureaucracies, and so on.

But even more important than the libertarian blind spot on groups is the fact mentioned above that ignoring groups has caused libertarians to violate fundamental libertarian principles. To explain, we note that libertarians are enthusiastic advocates of private property, and apparently have no objection to multiple-owner property such as condominiums or stockholder-owned corporations. So logically it would seem they would agree with the notion that countries are owned by their citizens, and may rightfully be defended by force from invaders and other trespassers. And yet we hear no end of libertarians who sing the praises of “open borders” and unlimited immigration.
Which, to put it kindly, is illogical. And also insane.
The insanity springs from what in philosophy is known as reductionism, ie, the belief that the whole is just the simple sum of its parts. The reductionist, then, holds that a country is just a bunch of disconnected individuals, hopefully libertarians.
But this is foolish. A country is not a disconnected bunch of individuals, no matter how much libertarians think they are disconnected from everything except the Internet. It is a group of people who share a language and culture, with the result that their values are similar, and their desire to live together in the same geographic location is considerable. In Sir Walter Scott’s words:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said
“This is my own, my native land”?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As homeward his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there be, go mark him well:
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High tho his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch concentered all in self;
Living, shall forfeit fair renown
And doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Love of country, like love of one’s mate or one’s family, is often not well-perceived until separation. But it is real and palpable, and it has driven men since the dawn of time, as it drives them today. So for that overeducated clique of highbrow deep-thinkers known as libertarians to simply toss this emotion into the intellectual wastebasket as if it were somehow irrelevant to social order is fatuity raised to the nth degree.
Love of country, like love of family, depends on one element more than any other: likeness. One’s countrymen are like oneself in language and culture, just as one’s family is like oneself in genetic relationship. In fact, this notion is so basic as to be rooted in our very language, and not just once, but twice: We like those whom we are like, and we are kind to those of our own kind.
And one of those elements of likeness is race. It is not the only likeness — language and culture are also likenesses — and it may not be crucial in all cases to regarding someone as one’s countryman, but it is clearly important.

So what, then, is going to happen to a country which allows open borders (particularly coupled with the temptation of such freebies as welfare and Social Security), whose president celebrates the end of history for the white majority, and where the cult of multiculturalism is rammed down employers’ throats and slipped quietly into the minds of youngsters by the New World Orderlies of the Education Establishment? What will happen is very simple: The country, along with its culture and language, and probably its race, is going to dissolve.

And that, as it turns out, does not bode well for libertarians. This is because America, more than any other place on earth, has nourished the idea of individual liberty and brought it to fruition. The culture of America is the culture of liberty. But liberty-loving libertarians seem indifferent to throwing all that away. They are so enamored with corporate profits and so indifferent to the culture which has emerged from the coordinated efforts of the white European race that they are quite happy to flush the American nation down the toilet by allowing swarms of Turd- worlders to intermingle with, and eventually replace, the core American population. And even worse, sending the American nation down the tubes may in the long run turn out not to be as profitable as believed by the calculating Economic Man which libertarians have reduced human beings to; for shipping jobs overseas when American workers are too “inefficient” means the loss of an industrial base and the skills of workers who are employed in that industrial base, a situation which leaves the nation vulnerable in times of war when “free trade” is only a memory. Yes, it is perfectly true that this may result in higher prices for labor, and thus for consumer goods, but pricey goods are a small price to pay for priceless culture. Or to put the matter another way, Do libertarians really want to sell their freedom for a filthy mess of Turd-world free-trade pottage?

Part of the open-borders/free-trade problem is that libertarians recognize that, without the temptation of government handouts, immigrants who come here would be those who want to work, and would therefore — at least from an economic standpoint — be good for the country. But this fact still doesn’t change the culture argument against open borders, or the reality of immigration as it is now going on. Nor does it change the fact that, if the lower-status jobs which immigrants usually take cannot be filled, this will generate pressure for mechanization and automation which will have a long-term beneficial economic effect.

We spoke earlier about the libertarian blind spot about race, and it is only fair to mention that this blind spot is partly the result of the desire on the part of libertarians to be regarded as “tolerant”. And while we may acknowledge this as a nobly-intentioned sentiment, the ugly fact is that we are all racists. We are racists because evolution has made it instinctive for every living thing to love its own kind — and what is racism but the love of one’s own kind? How fatuous it is to think that we are morally obligated to toss out the product of a billion years of evolution in order to keep from being guilty of a sin which was regarded as a virtue till only yesterday!
The reason evolution has made racism instinctive is that group membership helps the individual to survive. Groups give the individual members protection against other rival groups — and if you don’t believe it, just arrange for a sojurn in one of our multicultural prisons. So for libertarians to ignore man’s racial nature — to say nothing of the fact that the notion of individual liberty is a product of white European culture — is both unscientific and — if I may say so — suicidal.
In conclusion, if libertarians are realistic enuf to admit — and indeed to celebrate — man’s selfish nature, isn’t it time that they admitted and celebrated his racial nature as well? Or maybe all they need to do is realize that an interest in their race is really a selfish interest.
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Lbtn/Lbtn-LibertBlindSpot.html

This is all a bit mute, however. As Ernest Gellner pointed out long ago, nationalism is modernity, you can’t have a modern state — and therefore a modern economy, for state modernization always precedes economic modernization — without nationalism.

Perhaps you should do a little reading on Einstein’s choices in the matter. Hitler was eager for Einstein’s participation in a project, so to speak; but it wasn’t a bomb project.

As to Einstein’s naive political views this quote from Richard Feynman is on point.

“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”

(…)libertarians turn a blind eye to the alternatives when they denounce nationalism and praise open borders.

Not All libertarians!

In his essay BIG-GOVERNMENT LIBERTARIANS, Rothbard says that “In strict logic, libertarian political doctrine can be severed from all other considerations; logically one can be – and indeed most libertarians in fact are: hedonists, libertines, immoralists, (…) one can be a consistent devotee of property rights politically and be a moocher, a scamster, and a petty crook and racketeer in practice, as all too many libertarians turn out to be. Strictly logically, one can do these things, but psychologically, sociologically, and in practice, it simply doesn’t work that way.” He also scorns libertarians who “join the ACLU in protecting the alleged “right of free expression” of bums and beggars on the streets of our big cities, no matter how annoying or intimidating…”.

In the same vein, Rothbard could haved added that in strict logic the libertarian position is to support open borders, but that “in practice, it simply doesn’t work that way.” And in fact his alliance with paleo-conservatives in the 90s (such as Samuel Francis), not only implies his criticisms of the “lumpen”-libertarians who didn’t want to work and only wanted to take drugs and have sex, but also implies his opposition for open borders – as is evident from his statement in which he deplores the left-libertarians’ “uncritical and unlimited devotion to open borders” and, he continues: “as in the case of most left liberals and all neocons, any proposal for any reason to restrict immigration or even to curb the flow of illegals, is automatically and hysterically denounced as racist, fascist, sexist, heterosexist, xenophobic, and the rest of the panoply of smear terms that lie close to hand.”

He also criticizes what he calls “high libertarian theory”(*), in which it is claimed that “only the individual is sovereign and not the nation.”

As a matter of fact Rothbard views populism with great sympathy (cf. an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.) and condemns the “libertarian anxiety never to be connected with or labeled as a conservative or a right-wing movement.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch16.html

(*) an example of this, is a recent statement by Frank van Dun:

“Ten years ago, John Hospers (“A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders”, p.153-165 in the JLS symposium referred to in note 2) challenged opponents with the question “What are we supposed to do in the meantime [before we have got rid of the welfare state]?”—as if “In the meantime, stick to your principles!” could not be considered a sensible answer.”
http://users.ugent.be/~frvandun/Texts/Articles/LibertarianCaseAgainstImmigration.pdf

Even the most die-hard libertarian should recognize that the pressures unleashed by a multicultural community – a community deliberately created by the mass, Third World immigration scheme unleashed in the 1965 Immigration Reform Act – undermine the achievement of the very goals that libertarians purport to value, such as limited government, prosperity, religious freedom, and individual chice

In his book “The Culture of Critique”, Kevin MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of “The Authoritarian Personality”, which was written by Adorno. It was part of a series called “Studies in Prejudice,” produced by the Frankfurt school, which included titles like “Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder.”

In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the book’s purpose was to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder and defective “authoritarian personality.” All group loyalties, not only to nation and race, but even close family ties are “prejudice.”

It is precisely the kind of group loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences central to Jewish identity(!) that was described as mental illness in gentiles. As Prof. MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: “behavior that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles.”

As Christopher Lasch has written, the book leads to the conclusion that prejudice “could be eradicated only by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum.”

“Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology.”

In the same vein, the French-Jewish “deconstructionist” Jacques Derrida wrote:

“The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue… The idea is to disarm the bombs… of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants…”

Needless to say, this project has been successful; anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a mentally unhinged “hate-monger,” and whenever whites defend their group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The irony has not escaped Kevin MacDonald: “The ideology that ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric group among all the cultures of the world.”

As for various Communist dictators, they did mix in elements of nationalism, but that did not constitute the core of their ideology.

“Die Arbeiterklasse tritt ein für Frieden und Völkerverständigung, für Gleichberechtigung und nationale Selbstbestimmung aller Völker, für die Souveränität aller Staaten. Sie erkennt die wahren nationalen Interessen des eigenen Volkes, die andere sind als die des “bürgerlichen” Nationalismus, der die Interessen der herrschenden Klasse mit denjenigen der Nation identifiziert.” (Lenin, “Ursprünglicher Entwurf der Thesen zur nationalen und kolonialen Frage”, 1920, in AW Bd. II,

“Kautsky arrived at the conclusion that Otto Bauer “underestimates the strength of the urge towards a national state” (p. 23 of the pamphlet).” (…) To this we must add Kautsky’s still more precise concluding remark that states of mixed national composition (known as multi national states, as distinct from national states) are “always those whose internal constitution has for some reason or other remained abnormal or underdeveloped” (backward) – Lenin The Right of Nations to Self-Determination [ Collected Works Vol. 20 p. 395

The old Economists, who made a caricature of Marxism, told the workers that “only the economic” was of importance to Marxists. The new Economists seem to think either that the democratic state of victorious socialism will exist without frontiers (like a “complex of sensations” without matter) or that frontiers will be delineated “only” in accordance with the needs of production. In actual fact its frontiers will be delineated democratically, i.e., in accordance with the will and “sympathies” of the population.” – Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 324

“Socialism cannot be reduced to economics alone. A foundation – socialist production – is essential for the abolition of national oppression, but this foundation must also carry a democratically organised state, a democratic army, etc. By transforming capitalism into socialism the proletariat creates the possibility of abolishing national oppression; the possibility becomes reality “only”-“only”!-with the establishment of full democracy in all spheres, including the delineation of state frontiers in accordance with the “sympathies” of the population, including complete freedom to secede. And this, in turn, will serve as a basis for developing the practical elimination of even the slightest national friction and the least national mistrust, for an accelerated drawing together and fusion of nations that will be completed when the state withers away. – Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 22, p. 325

However, in his article “The Vital Importance of Separation” (in the April 1994 issue of the Rothbard-Rockwell Report), Murray Rothbard warned that “Beyond a small quantity, national heterogeneity simply does not work; the nation disintegrates into more than one nation, and the need for separation becomes acute.” And, in the same vein, in his 1993 essay, “Nations by Consent,” he advised to “proceed with the decomposition and decentralization of the modern centralizing and coercive nation-state, deconstructing that state into constituent nationalities and neighborhoods”, so that “we shall at one and the same time reduce the scope of government power, the scope and importance of voting and the extent of social conflict.”

According to Ayn Rand, a ‘nation’ is a large number of individuals who live in the same geographical locality under the same political system. Capitalism protects individual rights and, rights derive from our nature as rational human beings. Miss Rand describes a right as “a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” Social context!

Or take this: “Rights provide guidance in a social setting (…) A Government is an institution that has legal monopoly on the use of force in a given geographic region. (..) protecting the citizens of a country.” (objectivist Brian P. Simpson in his book Markets don’t fail).

Social setting, citizens of a country, a given geographic region…. Does this not mean that the individual by himself, is not a mere atom in a humanity broken down into its separate cells; that men are not disembodied and denationalized intelligences, operating without relation either to their forebears or their posterity? In this sense, a ‘nation’ is a homogeneous group of men who have joined themselves in a distinct entity on the basis of fundamental and shared treats.

In his book, “In Defence of the Realm: The Place of Nations in Classical Liberalism,” David Conway denies that nationalism and liberalism are mutually incompatible. He argues for the perfect compatibility between the equal moral standing of all human beings and their enjoying particularistic nationalistic attachments and affiliations!

Gustave de Molinari (radical laissez-faire ultra of the French Liberal School) also defended “The Free Constitution of Nationality.” He wrote: “internal troubles, caused by differences of race, custom, and language (…) will disappear when a community of interest and action, founded on a common choice of, and common love for, a fatherland freely chosen, is established as the sole and sufficient basis of nationality.” (“The Society of Tomorrow”, 1899)

As stated by Edwin van de Haar (“Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory” ), the classical liberal view on human nature is supported by research in the fields of evolutionary biology and neuroscience, which point out that struggle, competition, the protection of honour, and tribal and ethnic conflict remain crucial elements in explaining both individual and group behaviour!

Sir Arthur Keith provided an insightful explanation of this with the publication of his 1946 book, “Evolution and Ethics.” He argued: “If mankind existed for the sole purpose of producing knowledge or wealth and prosperity, then clearly Universalism is a most desirable goal to aim at. But nations exist for another and less material purpose; they are subject to the compelling law of evolution.(….) Nations are units which the law of evolution has brought into being to fulfill an evolutionary purpose.(….) ” If we desire all national and racial frontiers to be broken down, and humanity to be united into one vast world state, then we shall count the submergence of one people in another as beneficial or good; but if we desire a world studded with free and independent nations, engaged in friendly and peaceful rivalry, then we shall regard the interminglings of peoples, whether by conquest or by peaceful penetration, as prejudicial or evil. I hold that, if mankind is to be vigorous in mind and progressive in spirit, its division into nation and races must be maintained!”

Regarding immigration, here is a critical statement by Ludwig von Mises: “In the absence of any migration barriers whatsoever, vast hordes of immigrants from the comparatively overpopulated areas of Europe would, it is maintained, inundate Australia and America. They would come in such great numbers that it would no longer be possible to count on their assimilation. If in the past immigrants to America soon adopted the English language and American ways and customs, this was in part due to the fact that they did not come over all at once in such great numbers. The small groups of immigrants who distributed themselves over a wide land quickly integrated themselves into the great body of the American people. The individual immigrant was already half assimilated when the next immigrants landed on American soil. One of the most important reasons for this rapid national assimilation was the fact that the immigrants from foreign countries did not come in too great numbers. This, it is believed, would now change, and there is real danger that the ascendancy-or more correctly, the exclusive dominion-of the Anglo-Saxons in the United States would be destroyed. This is especially to be feared in the case of heavy immigration on the part of the Mongolian peoples of Asia.” (“Liberalism in the Classical Tradition”)

Recently, in his book “A Nation of Immigrants?”, David Conway toke issue with those who are still minimising the threat posed by mass immigration by claiming that this is nothing new.

At the same time Nationalism in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries failed to achieve similar evil, though other socialist countries have all made their way there depending on the degree of socialism that they adopted.

Kalroy

One strange development among both conservatives and libertarians today is the apparent lack of recognition by large cohorts of both groups that free societies are fragile inventions that depend on a complex web of cultural, educational, social, and economic foundations that can be undermined not only by malevolent state action but also by short-sighted private actions and even, in some cases, state inaction like the late American embrace of the false freedom of “open borders.” It is this ideological thinking that leads someone like Bush to think we can easily export American institutions to Iraq, just as it is this same reductionist thinking that renders many libertarians indifferent to our de facto colonization by emigrants from very illiberal parts of the Third World. Any recognition of these groups’ tendencies would risk a departure from individualism, and most libertarian thinking today is deontological and deductive: the rules are simple and applied without regard for outcomes or local conditions.

John Stuart Mill, the godfather of a practical “utilitarian” approach to liberal thinking in the 19th Century, shows below that even the most disagreeable liberals from yesteryear were more nuanced and generally more interesting than their half-educated progeny today. He also notes, to his credit, that national unity is a key condition for viable, free representative governments. Mill writes in his essay “On Representative Government”:

Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government.
A PORTION of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others — which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively. This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language, and community of religion, greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past. . . .

Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed. One hardly knows what any division of the human race should be free to do if not to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings they choose to associate themselves.

But, when a people are ripe for free institutions, there is a still more vital consideration. Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest. Above all, the grand and only effectual security in the last resort against the despotism of the government is in that case wanting: the sympathy of the army with the people. The military are the part of every community in whom, from the nature of the case, the distinction between their fellow-countrymen and foreigners is the deepest and strongest. To the rest of the people foreigners are merely strangers; to the soldier, they are men against whom he may be called, at a week’s notice, to fight for life or death. The difference to him is that between friends and foes — we may almost say between fellow-men and another kind of animals: for as respects the enemy, the only law is that of force, and the only mitigation the same as in the case of other animals — that of simple humanity. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three-fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies. An army composed of various nationalities has no other patriotism than devotion to the flag. Such armies have been the executioners of liberty through the whole duration of modern history. The sole bond which holds them together is their officers and the government which they serve; and their only idea, if they have any, of public duty is obedience to orders. A government thus supported, by keeping its Hungarian regiments in Italy and its Italian in Hungary, can long continue to rule in both places with the iron rod of foreign conquerors.

Even the most die-hard libertarian should recognize that the pressures unleashed by a multicultural community–a community deliberately created by the mass, Third World immigration scheme unleashed in the 1965 Immigration Reform Act–undermine the achievement of the very goals that libertarians purport to value, such as limited government, prosperity, religious freedom, and individual chice.

As the late Samuel Huntington so astutely observed, there is, as in all things, a horizon (demographic in this case) within which we can have widely varying liberties, customs, and habits, but outside of which the reality of conflicting human loyalties would be the more dominant element, dominant even over long-established legal institutions and habits. Whether we are looking at something like the decline of South Africa, the LA Riots, the corruption-ridden ethnic politics of Chicago, India or Yugoslavia’s ethnic conflicts, or the racial conflicts of America’s own Deep South and inner cities, the more “diverse” parts of America are generally less free and less traditionally American in habit and values than the more homogeneous alternatives.

If I understand this correctly, what you are calling “nationalism” is the misdirection of patriotism away from the country and toward the country’s government.

In religious terms, it would be analogous to idolatry, i.e., the misdirection of the love of God to some other object. I’m sure there’s some philosophical term for this kind of misdirection. Maybe it’s some kind of category error.

It should not be surprising that such an error leads to the dangers you identify.

Implied in this statement is the idea that the Holy Roman Empire was less violent than modern nationalistic societies. A point that can be easily made is that the Holy Roman Empire was hampered by poor technology and simply were unable to exercise the violence we see in modern societies. Most citizens of the Holy Roman Empire never got more than 20 miles from their village, and had no clue what might be happening a hundred miles away. The limits of their technology slowed not only the weapons that make mass murder easier, but also transportation and communication that facilitate mass murder.

The Holy Roman Empire was brutal in its defense of Catholicism. The Hundred Years War was kinda sorta brutal, but it was not caused by the awakening of national pride. Nation states were the result of the Hundred Years War, not the cause. Without the unifying force of Catholicism and the unquestioned power of the Pope, people simply united with other people that spoke a common language, had similar customs, etc. It seems natural that we associate with people that sound like us, eat the same food, drink the same water, have the same customs.

Non-European societies suffered from mass murder but with no obvious nationalism. Was nationalism the reason that the Aztecs slaughtered millions of their neighbors in sacrifice and the raids to obtain victims to be sacrificed?

I think that you are a firm adherant to an evolutionary scheme for man’s development. It is interesting that the quality that most contributes to a species’s survival, agression within the species to dominate, agression directed outside of the species to survive, is always ignored in these discussions. Presumably humans got to the top of the heap by killing off their competition, either other humanoid species or threats such as the large species. Yet somehow, only a few thousand years later, there is an expectation that agression simply disappears from our genes. It is convenient to blame philosophy, religion, scarcity, whatever, for our agression, but humans are simply an agressive species.

It also ignores the fact that the Holy Roman

like a good cake humans need a binder to hold them to a purpose. And liberty such as we have in the US and others of the western tradition need a binder that holds to those “universal” principles granted by the higher authority.

So God’s kingdom is the ultimate nationalism – and has it been worse than the more “human” deities or nations that hold certain groups together? Question to debate in the finer points but not in the major ones.

The very notion of banding together from the caveman days says that a common interest is great – but a more local and closer one is better. The US has to be the best experiment of the lot so far. When you douse nationalism altogether something will fill that void and it won’t be the peaches and cream the volokh seems to imply. It will be the uglier half of the chicken egg equation.

Great discussion tho as always!

The excesses of nationalism have given it a stigma. By way of comparison, note that John Stuart Mill is credited with saying that war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. Some degree of nationalism is certainly not the ugliest of things. Yet the servitude which follows democracy-debilitating transnationalism should be far worse. I’d have to side with Jonah, a little nationalism is harmless, note the World Cup. A lack of nationalism leads to political servitude.

Ermmm…. how about Schumer simply pandering to American garment workers and their unions, which he relies upon for votes and financing that Thais can’t give him.

You are conflating nationalism and “vote-grubbing”.

Thanks a lot baseballhead. Do you even know who I am? Or that my first wife was an immigrant herself from Latin America?

The Yankee Clipper had the advantage of growing up in a time and place where (a) assimmilation was expected and encouraged, (b) and 2/3 of the new immigrants arriving in this country were not from Italy, unlike today where most immigrants come from a single ethnic-cultural-linguistic cohort.

To assume that just because the assimmilative process worked at one time, under a specific set of circumstances that it will do so again no matter how much has changed is pretty silly.

IV. How Playing with Nationalism is like Playing with Fire.

Ban fire!

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

That was written in 1594.

The USA was founded on being a constitutional republic – not a simple democracy. The people, more accurately, the individual is sovereign. One has a right to live as one pleases without excessive intrusion by do-gooder politicians.

Now we see the whole “global warming” movement is really another attempt at centrally planned socialism by elites. The American people reject tha and that’s why Barry bin Obama will be gone in three years. He is an soft elitist, who believes in centrall planning – rule by elites.

Those who don’t have any healthy patriotism for our country (like our big eared Kenyan chimp in chief), please, PLEASE emmigrate.

Of course, orthodox libertarians will probably foam at the mouth for the words “collective identity”, probably because it can’t be defined exactly. But it exists, albeit undefinable.

It can be quite seen that the contemporary European surge of nationalism at the street-level is connected to the increasing presence of Arab and African immigrants who are perceived to be threatening to the collective identities of individual European nations. This is in contrast to other European immigrants or East Asians, who, albeit present in significant numbers, are not perceived to be threatening to the indigenous cultures.

But the ultimate meaning of nationalism is collective protection, just like with the immune system. Nations with low level of nationalism will in the long run be displaced by nations with higher levels thereof, as the latter will be willing to spend money and lives on their “collective cause”.

After the WWII, nationalism in the West got tainted by association with Nazis and racism, and so is almost a taboo today. But it is an irrational reaction in itself. As someone already mentioned, most of the people who actually fought Hitler were not motivated by the desire for global brotherhood, but by their own nationalism.

In my own family, we had 3 people killed as guerrillas in the WWII. All fought for Slovakia, none of them for the ideal of trans-national postmodern world.

Nice try!

LIbertarianism uber alles is the only sense I can make of your postings.

However, the idea that a broader ethnic identity (and that narrow more provincial loyalties based on town, region, clan or tribe should be downgraded) should be the basis for the creation of a state whose borders roughly coincide with the population distribution of the given ethnic group is what most of us are calling nationalism and that is indeed a relatively new idea. Aside from Machiavelli and a handful of other thinkers who anticipated nationalism, no one considered it particularly outrageous before the 18th century that there was no German or Italian state in Europe. Most people would have instead considered it silly that the residents of Piedmont were somehow bound to the residents of Sicily in some shared identity. Catholic Muencheners would have had little love for their Protestant neighbors with the funny accents to the north in Berlin. Countries like Belgium, Switzerland and even the UK to some extent today (think Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland and the Channel Islands) are vestiges of the earlier multinational countries. Yes, I’m sure you can find exceptions in ancient or medieval history — they are called exceptions for a reason, though.

St. Joe Friday: Uh, Troll_dc2 you ever been to Southern California? You won’t see many of the immigrants we’ve got here giving up their language or their customs or their beliefs. Lots of them no habla ingles but they do expect you to habla espanol.

A 1939 profile of Life Magazine noted of the young Joe Dimaggio, “Although he learned Italian first, Joe, now 24, speaks English without an accent and is otherwise well-adapted to most U.S. mores. Instead of olive oil or smelly bear grease he keeps his hair slick with water. He never reeks of garlic and prefers chicken chow mein to spaghetti.” Good to see that same ol’ racism, alive and well. In another 50 years, most of those non-ingles-speakers will be dead, and their grandchildren won’t be able to speak more than a lick of Spanish, so it’s best to get your shots in now.

The one is not like the other. You can learn culture. You can learn a language. You can be made a citizen. You can’t change your ethnicity.

Because you fail to distinguish between nationalism based on ethnicity from a nationalist ethic based on, well, just about anything else, your whole essay is, to be perfectly frank, bogus and marked by a lack of real consideration for what you are talking about.

I read it in it this unreflective fear of a nationalist boogey man, when really what you ought to be afraid of is racism, tribalism, and other sorts of non-cosmopolitian and xenophobic expressions. Nationalism is by no mean inherently uncosmopolitan or xenophobic. You have a really wierd view of nationalism if you think that the nationalist instinct did not arise until the 19th century, or if you believe that the nationalism of latter centuries was somehow less inclusive than the greater part of what went before. That’s a view that just doesn’t stand up to the slighest historical scrutiny.

In my nation, we are more than willing to adopt people into our culture, language, and citizenhood regardless of national origin. Sometimes we have to fight off the old excluding instincts of racism and tribalism of an older order, but by and large our nationalism is marked by a great respect for all peoples. However, that respect for all peoples does not require a great respect for all cultures, nor do I think that it should.

Finally, I should say that I personally would little a trust a person that did not love their country as I loved mine. Such a person would strike me as scary, easily manipulated, and prone to the winds of fanaticism. It doesn’t scare me that a person takes pride in there country; it very much scares me when a person feels humiliated and ashamed because of their association with their country. Such people might do anything and be persuaded to believe almost anything in order to gain a measure of self-esteem.

Nationalism, by any reasonable definition, is a 18th century invention.

etc.

I was respondng to Somin’s words, which I quoted in full. Pertinent to this are the following:

the 19th century. Prior to that time, few objected to the existence of multinational polities such as the Holy Roman Empire (at least on nationalistic grounds) or believed that any important moral obligations could be based on common ethnicity.

As I pointed out, common ethnicity (a direct precursor and close relative to nationalism) can be found throughout history as a driving force behind wars and other things. Somin also makes it clear that his objection is to shared group identity period, not merely nationalism. So, respectfully, I think your response misses the point.

The factual matter of the state or region they lived in, or the sovereign they were a subject of did not enter into people’s identity.

No, it pretty much did. Among the features of the Middle Ages were ethnic pogroms and “state” (or kingdom or empire) laws which differed dependng on your religious group. For instance, Jews could borrow and lend money while Christians could not. Or think of the Moors in post Reconquista Spain. I suggest you take a crash course in medieval history, it’s a fascinating period to study.

The notion of laws which apply equally to everybody within a certain geographical area is a very late development in history.

Solzhenitsyn is one of my favourite writers, but he had some very strange ideas about a range of issues. I certainly wouldn’t put him in the same category of “dissidents” as Havel and Sakharov.

I don’t see why not. In the category “dissidents” he has to rank right at the very top. You may chose to demote him for unrelated reasons, such as disagreeing with his take on nationalism. Just be clear about why you’re doing it.

Twirlip:
This is ahistorical rubbish. The Teutons and the Gauls fighting the Romans are just one example. You’re so determined to make your vision of the world the one going forward that your’re rewriting history like some Soviet commissar.

Nationalism, by any reasonable definition, is a 18th century invention. Before that time, people did not identify as members of a nation, but more likely as members of a clan, a family, a community or a variety of other groups at a smaller scale. The factual matter of the state or region they lived in, or the sovereign they were a subject of did not enter into people’s identity.