Happy 4th of July, everyone. This is a holiday in which I think about the Declaration of Independence, but sometimes find myself, like today, drifting to think about America’s national anthem. Views on the Star-Spangled Banner usually start – very sensibly – from the concession that as a piece of music, it’s mostly un-singable and […]
Archive | Nationalism
Putin Signs Law Banning Adoption of Russian Orphans by Americans
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently signed a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans: President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated […]
Racial “Obligations” of Mixed-Race People
Co-blogger David Bernstein links to a New York Times column by Thomas Chatterton Williams which argues that “[m]ixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look.” […]
When a Horse has to be More than Just a Horse to be Eligible for the Olympics
In order to compete in the Olympics, a horse has to be more than just a horse [HT: Tyler Cowen]. It also has to have the right “nationality”: Their bond was a gold-medal partnership years in the making — and practically impossible for Canadian equestrian Eric Lamaze to duplicate. When Lamaze’s horse Hickstead collapsed and […]
Current Controversies Volume on Patriotism
The Current Controversies series has recently published a volume on Patriotism, which includes contributions by Eugene Volokh and myself. Mine is an expansion of this post, which argues that patriotism goes wrong when it leads us to value the nation for its own sake, as opposed to a means to the end of promoting the […]
An Underappreciated Advantage of American Professional Sports Over International Soccer
This month, as two years ago, we have an interesting coincidence of a Celtics-Lakers NBA finals and a major international soccer tournament. In 2008, I wrote a post on the subject that I think is still relevant today: The conjunction of the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals and the European Soccer Championship [this year, the World Cup] […]
Jonah Goldberg on Nationalism
Jonah Goldberg of National Review has written a response to my post criticizing nationalism. Here is his main point: Somin admits that he’s being more than a bit unfair to me in his post since, I was praising a “little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that […]
On Patriotism
Some commenters and others reacting to my post on nationalism raise the issue of its relationship to patriotism. Even if nationalism is an evil, perhaps patriotism can still be good. Patriotism is certainly distinguishable from nationalism, as I defined that term in my previous post: “loyalty to one’s own nation-state based on ties of language, […]
Against Nationalism
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg recently expressed the common view that “A little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that helps us hold onto our patriotism.” Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry expounds on this defense of nationalism in more detail here. My own view of nationalism is far more negative than […]