Danish far-right party calling for Muslim deportation to stand in election

[Lexicus]

I provided a fact, you provide an idiotic wannabe parallel that is lacking the core concept that would make it work as a parallel. I know which one hold the most weight.

You know, throwing insults around can't change the fact that the logic is the same in both of the claims there. It's literally the same argument except you're appealing to "cultural lines" instead of Heaven so it sounds less ridiculous to modern ears.

 

[Akka]

They don't do so well ENOUGH that border disputes, separatist movements (whether militant or as political parties, depending), proclamations with a lot of baggage - and even good points and evidence - and lack of national legitimacy, Aboriginal peoples' and their claims and issues, including the malappropriation their old land and resource claims within

Aren't separatist movements a good example of cultural line ? (unless it's not about culture, but how many non-cultural separatist movements exist compared to cultural ones ?)
Same as border dispute, how many are happening around cultural lines compared to those along historical lines compared to all the rest of reasons combined ?
Same as with aboriginal people, isn't it the by-the-book example of cultural line ?

even if they're not falling apart at the seams, like Austria-Hungary, or the Russian or Ottoman Empires at the end of WW1, the great Colonial Empires during Decolonalization, or the USSR and Yugoslavia in the early '90'.

So basically, you recognize they hold much better.

And that's all BEFORE newer issues like immigration and political asylum migrants and globalization and the changes they wreak are taken into account.

And all that is about... cultural lines ?

Sorry, you provided a ton of examples that actually illustrate my point, so... where are you disagreeing ?

 

[Akka]

You know, throwing insults around can't change the fact that the logic is the same in both of the claims there. It's literally the same argument except you're appealing to "cultural lines" instead of Heaven so it sounds less ridiculous to modern ears.

Calling a parallel idiotic is not an insult. Especially on this case as it's a fact, but even if it weren't, a parallel has no feelings and can't be insulted.

And no it's not the same logic, because one is an observable fact while the other is an after-the-fact circular reasoning.
I'm sorry reality doesn't conform to your preferred narrative. I'm sure she's very sorry too.

 

[Lexicus]

because one is an observable fact while the other is an after-the-fact circular reasoning.

As usual, you demonstrate that your "thought process" or whatever you called it doesn't extend much beyond "whatever I believe is fact, anyone who disagrees must be an idiot"

But actually, no, both are after-the-fact (or more specifically post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc) circular reasoning.

 

[Akka]

As usual, you demonstrate that your "thought process" or whatever you called it doesn't extend much beyond "whatever I believe is fact, anyone who disagrees must be an idiot"

Pot, meet kettle.

But actually, no, both are after-the-fact (or more specifically post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc) circular reasoning.

Sure man, "the will of the heavens" is totally comparable and just as factual as the language and culture of an existing population. No problem here.

 

[Lexicus]

Sure man, "the will of the heavens" is totally comparable and just as factual as the language and culture of an existing population. No problem here.

This is of course not a real argument, but yes, the "mandate of heaven" is literally just as factual as this unified national culture and language you imagine existed before the policies of the various national states created it.

 

[Hrothbern]

Also, keep in mind, EVERY single nation-state in existence today was artificially created by someone, at some point, securing a piece of land (or sometimes several non-contiguous pieces) to mark invisible borders around and get a system of laws and order and governance established, and have it recognized by enough relevant nation-states already established to make it viable. These are not natural, organic, intrinsic institutions like nationalists often portray them as, and, technically - and theoretically - they're always up for renegotiation - internally and externally - with enough military, political, economic, and/or cultural clout. As an astronaut from the ESA said after first setting foot on the International Space Station and looking down from an observation window, "you cannot see international borders from space."

Much of what many nations-states started to do was copying from its small scale predeccessor, the medieval town.
And yes... the former colonies have that phase not as part of their history (like the US) and yes... former very imperial absolute monarchy countries have another balance of history between local towns and "the Capital"

Until the Napoleontic occupation we had ofc already 200 years the Dutch Republic as superstructure, but all kinds of rights and duties regarding "citizens" were tightly and precisely in place for townsmen in towns.
The Dutch word is "poorter", someone with rights, privileges and duties inside the "poort", the gate of the town. => the protection of the town, mostly behind walls of the town. But also as traveller in other towns !
You could buy that status, you could marry in that status. And without that status you could not be part of a Guild. If parent "poorters" died, their children were taken care of in an "burgerweeshuis" a burgher-burgess orphan house. A right not available for "foreign" town dwellers.
Some "poorters" had more privileges than others. The ones with more privileges in the Low Lands more like what an English "burgess" is.
If I as "poorter" of Amsterdam committed a crime in Antwerpen (Anvers) I would be tried and convicted in Antwerpen according to Amsterdam Law, according to the "City Rights" of Amsterdam.
Medieval time in (at least the Low Lands and the highly fragmented Holy Roman Empire) is a big oceanlike continuum of cultures, languages, ethnicities, etc with as superstructure a much less fragmented HRE Law and everchanging nobility rulers that are mere passers by !
And in that big ocean there were everywhere dots with their own "nation-state like" more detailed and restricting laws, rights, regulations (on everything !!!), traditions. Nobility rulers gave in the late medieval time more and more towns those City Rights in exchange for a big lump sum of money. And mostly a town getting city rights would decide to copy them from this or that other town (the noble ruler playing a role in that). And in complicated court cases, the young town would often postpone the court case and seek legal advice from the mother town. It was all in all both a semi-chaotic process as a process with many converging mechanisms.

You could say in a sense that the first order range of the "town-state" was determined by the height of the Church tower with the bells ringing the hour of the day and often that new tech "a town clock" visible for everybody and bordered by the town walls.
After all... the "foreigners" not being a "poorter" or even a "town dweller" had to have left the town, before the gates would be closed for the late evening and night.
Being expelled, banned, from a town was a common punishment for not abiding to the rules of the town.
But if you look over time how towns in the sweet spots grew, migrants were absorbed all the time, and exchange of everything between towns was massive.
And the diversity of medieval time is the positive side of the coin of the fragementation felt today by many.
That typical uniformity culture, especially getting strong around the time of Napoleon, not only the military uniforms, but especially rules to be applied far outside their high return meaningfulness, the "national language", so much more.

Compare above medieval situation with:
* A US citizen runs into problems somewhere in the world, and the strong reaction of the US government to "protect its citizens" all over the world and the rope pulling which court or which prison applies.
* The rights on social security etc for nation-state citizens with foreigners (that orphan house).
* The international character, the supranational structures and the ruling high nobility and the rivalry of those kings etc with the lower nobility more bound to an area (the current national structure).
* The overstretched imperium issue of the absolute empires, surpressing local identies in medieval up to modern times, and the drive for local self-determination.
* The converging character of town rules, laws, regulations on everything by best practice sharing between towns moderated in speed by local traditions (fundamentally a bottom up & peer to peer process)

The way nation-states are spreaded over the European surface is purely historical based from that rather small period in time that so many techs evolved (economical, military, communication, etc) helped by scale size and enabling better top down control.
But those nation-states are imo only the current superstructure and has mostly not been able to root out centuries of the old continuum structure, properties and importantly social mechanisms.
As yung.carl.jung mentioned in an earlier post here (I was tempted to add a similar remark but more fluffy about the fairy tales with a hero travelling past 7 kingdoms to finally rescue the princess, but not before he chopped, felled seven trees with only one axe blow, to win a local contest (Russia has always been part of that continuum before the nation-states emerged):

in the next few decades national identities will be completely abandoned anyway, we are just ahead of the curve.

What the EU is doing... is finding out by doing.... by bargaining between all inputs and convictions.... is imo how to shrug off those WW1 & WW2 heritage and get back to that medieval ocean, get that continuum back, toggling between the necessities of scale size here (in pooling and rules and yes.. also protection) and local determination (or bottom up as it happens) there. A complex hybrid instead of systemic uniformities, and imo much closer to local society and free citizens.
I doubt that this process is well covered by newsmedia in many countries. Especially countries with a higher percentage of people and politicians favoring a federal Europe. International (English written) newsmedia, their political reporters, having anyhow no clue, no feel at all, on the processes and history I described above. With imperial spectacles you dont see much on what happens on the shopfloor.

Not only for a modern US astronaut there are no visible borders.
They never were there for medieval, early modern scientists and philosophers, nor for traders and entrepreneurs.
And why would young EU citizens of today need any borders ?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I mean, obviously Akka's statement is half-right (nation states need some cultural common denominator among the in-group in order to justify themselves), and the other side of the coin is that the way in which we infringe on people's mobility (enforcing borders) and institutionalize their identity (passports) in return also affects how culture(s) develop.

now Akka's notion of distinct cultures divided/developing by national borders is of course silly, cultural essentialism is a concept in that only fanboys of samuel p. huntington still believe in, but if you oversee that notion, then his statement is not categorally wrong, it's one part of the truth.

 

[H4run]

nation states need some cultural common denominator among the in-group in order to justify themselves

can culture is only a (dynamic not static) reality that exist within its border in which what the nation-states are all about?

 

[Lexicus]

(nation states need some cultural common denominator among the in-group in order to justify themselves)

I don't know that this is entirely true, though, or at least, I'm not sure this is any more than a truism. I mean, no kind of state can exist without some cultural common denominator, not just a national state, so what are we actually saying here?

 

[H4run]

no kind of state can exist without some cultural common denominator

Many states border are defined not by common culture. Some are decided by a colonial power while there are even other that defined by the colonial sphere of influence. The common culture is not a necessary factor.

 

[Akka]

This is of course not a real argument, but yes, the "mandate of heaven" is literally just as factual as this unified national culture and language you imagine existed before the policies of the various national states created it.

I never said a state couldn't create a unified culture, I said, literally, that "Actually, nation-states in existence today largely follow cultural lines". Be it because they were created form said cultural lines or that they enforced cultural homogeneity in the past is irrelevant to the fact observed. The point is, a large degree of cultural homogeneity is required to keep a nation-state together, which means that as time goes on, either the state will enforce it, or it will fracture.

It's (as usual with you) especial disingenuous, because you know very well that's my opinion because it's not the first time we have this discussion and I already explained it before.

 

[H4run]

a large degree of cultural homogeneity is required to keep a nation-state together, which means that as time goes on, either the state will enforce it, or it will fracture.

Is this mean in the other word that it is impossible to form and maintain a multi cultural nation? unless the government enforced cultural assimilation of other culture to the one of the dominant culture in order to create culture homogeneity that necessary for a nation-state establishment or else the state will be collapsed? am I reading this right?

 

[Hrothbern]

The point is, a large degree of cultural homogeneity is required to keep a nation-state together, which means that as time goes on, either the state will enforce it, or it will fracture.

And when it "fractures" ?
So what.
As long as the fractions dont start to war on each other, as long as they can pool together where pooling makes sense, as long as they can exchange between each other without issues or hurdles...
How much of that nation-state building is heritage of the old high nobility rivalry on owning land ? How much from control on economic resources and peasants conscription soldiers to be able to make war ?
How valid is that today for the privileged rich developed countries to influence a "national culture" to their objectives ?

There is absolutely no common cultural homogenity between me and the 6 other families in my stairhouse. But I do share the stairhouse, the roof, etc. We have an association to pay joint cost. I will when I need a taxi call my direct stairhouse neighbor and whether he drives or one of his friends or family members, is not important. He or his relative will earn money. I can talk about dogs or handyman issues with another neigbor, about philosophy with another, about fitness, food, supplements, martial arts with another, about bio-food and environmental with again another. And when something nasty would happen on the street for our stairhouse, I know who will stand besides me to deal with it.
But that is all pure practical + some individual fits.
I don't need a national homogeneous culture for all that.

 

[Lexicus]

It's (as usual with you) especial disingenuous, because you know very well that's my opinion because it's not the first time we have this discussion and I already explained it before.

Your opinion isn't merely a factual observation and you know it, it's a justification of the nation-state, a normative argument about what sorts of polities are desirable and what aren't.

Many states border are defined not by common culture. Some are decided by a colonial power while there are even other that defined by the colonial sphere of influence. The common culture is not a necessary factor.

Those colonial states have a common culture which can be described as "conquered by [insert colonial power]." My point is that" states need a common culture to survive" is little more than a truism as stated. We could restate this as "states which have the cultural basis required for them to exist, exist" which is more obviously tautological.

 

[Akka]

Is this mean in the other word that it is impossible to form and maintain a multi cultural nation? unless one of the culture were enforced force cultural assimilation to creates the culture homogeneity or else the state will be collapsed? am I reading this right?

Well, show me the number of long-lasting empires which were significantly multi-cultural and didn't fracture nor ended up with a common culture, and show me the number of long-lasting nation-state which have a somewhat unified culture. I'm pretty sure the latter will massively outnumber the former.

People tend to identify with groups, and if there is large cultural differences without a strong common basis, they will tend to see "them vs us" and this will be a divisive force. It's possible for another force to counter this (raw military/police power, a common adversary, a shared vision of the future...), but the natural tendency by itself will be centrifuge.
On the contrary, sharing a culture will tend to make them wanting to group together (see the Kurds as a good example, or the pro-UK vs pro-Ireland factions in NI).

And when it "fractures" ?
So what.

I was just pointing that nation-state aren't arbitrary, they need a cultural foundation, and there is a convergent evolution about it.

As long as the fractions dont start to war on each other, as long as they can pool together where pooling makes sense, as long as they can exchange between each other without issues or hurdles...

That's a long list of "as long".

Your opinion isn't merely a factual observation and you know it, it's a justification of the nation-state, a normative argument about what sorts of polities are desirable and what aren't.

I made a simple observation (that actually nobody has yet contested).
I have an opinion about it too, and yes it's a justification of the nation-state. But that doesn't change the factual observation in the slightest.

 

[Lexicus]

I have an opinion about it too, and yes it's a justification of the nation-state. But that doesn't change the factual observation in the slightest.

If we treat it merely as a factual observation, it is a truism. If we treat it as a justification for the nation-state, then it's a frankly dangerous closed-loop argument wherein the state's principle of existence is representing a national community that it turns out the state created in the first place, thus the state is justified by itself, an argument that I hope I don't need to point out the problems with.

Here is an argument I have made (well, adduced) repeatedly on this topic that no one has yet refuted (IIRC @innonimatu at least admitted this is a Thing That Happens last time we had this conversation):

By making the State and the nation commensurate with each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State, because the State would then cease to be national, which would be a contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of dependence.

 

[Akka]

If we treat it merely as a factual observation, it is a truism. If we treat it as a justification for the nation-state, then it's a frankly dangerous closed-loop argument wherein the state's principle of existence is representing a national community that it turns out the state created in the first place, thus the state is justified by itself, an argument that I hope I don't need to point out the problems with.

Not exactly. My point would rather be :
- The nation justifies the state.
- The state exists to protect the nation.

Here is an argument I have made (well, adduced) repeatedly on this topic that no one has yet refuted (IIRC @innonimatu at least admitted this is a Thing That Happens last time we had this conversation):

Well, it forgets the "assimilation" path, and it starts from the point of a multinational state, not a nation-state, so that's already a different situation.

 

[Hrothbern]

I was just pointing that nation-state aren't arbitrary, they need a cultural foundation, and there is a convergent evolution about it.

How about convergence in diversity at the level of the people... and governments tidying up where differences left are more of a formal nature.
Not a top-down front-loading by governments, but a pragmatical back-loading tidy up by national rule- and lawmakers, and a base level when appropiate by the EU or at recommendation level by supranational insitutions like UN bodies. (Climate Paris, etc)

That's a long list of "as long".

It should take a long time !
Also because people change (as a whole) only slowly.

It is a process, and not a project, or the most simple management tool of discrete decisions (like "the deal"), rules or laws that "just" need a consistency check (with itself and existing rules) and implementing.
If you run a big complex entity, especially with many cultures, locations, languages, techs... whether a country or a big company... you will have many programs and processes running to change and or adapt.
Change management is mostly used with projects as main driver. And it has a name, is a separate concept, a separate set of expert skills, because it can handle what discrete decisions of operational managers cannot effectively handle.
Programs for process changes are another league higher and even more voodoo because there is no immediate evidence of results, not even the milestone timeline of a project.

Process management is the highest league there is and needs (in a company or big civil society entity) also excellence of your HR (you use profiles and settings of people to strenghten your desired processes).
and because of the slow effects, you have to dance on many weddings at the same time as well (that long list of "as long")

In fact, if you run a big company par excellence, you list up first your windows to external processes, then your desired internal changes, then your needed processes, then your projects... and only then the framework for operational decisions (strategy, escalation structure, and all that). Operational decisions are the lowest level in the picking order. (and newsmedia usually reporting on the trara around those operational decisions. LOL)
Deciding for example to a law (a discrete decision) that does not allign to (desired) processes that happened or are happening, is mostly just a stone on the road, or some negative side effects of politics.

 

[H4run]

Well, show me the number of long-lasting empires which were significantly multi-cultural and didn't fracture nor ended up with a common culture

an empire? a non state? how about the Ottoman Empire? they are pretty much maintain the cultural and religious diversity within the Empire, actually what fractured them were not their diversity but it was European Industrialization and the raise of the Turkish nationalism which pretty much shared your culture homogeneity sentiment. The Armenian once called "the trustee of the nation" until the raise of the nation-state awareness (the development of the Empire to a Turkic Nation) that resulted the attrocius genocide.

While the example for a nation-state with diverse culture and language? Indonesia. It is formed not because of a common culture, however the border is defined by Dutch sphere of influence in the South East Asia, hence its pretty much unified the variety of Kingdom that possessed different languages, culture and racial diversity, it consist of 700 languages and 300 different ethnic groups, and running pretty much fine since 1945.

You seems to try to be realistic and anti-utopia, but somehow it cross to be a total pragmatic, even how you took the concept of force assimilation so lightly makes you appear to be Machiavellian.