You are a nationalist.

[Timsup2nothin]

Lots of people may not think it's practical, but you're not giving any reason why such a thing would be impractical.

I think the point is that these people who just "think it is impractical" are effectively nationalists since as you point out they do not seem to need any reason to continue thinking such. I would expand that to include the people who are saying "well, you don't have any reason to believe that but also don't provide any reason not to other than perhaps stamping their feet and repeating themselves really loudly.

The first experiment on the subject (which is in its very early stage, and is known as the European Union) is at the same time a success and a failure. It's a success because former nation-states are now a working conglomerate of nations. But it's a failure because not enough nationalists in those nations haven't been "converted" to a non-nationalist viewpoint, and are actively trying to undermine the project, while not enough people are actively trying to make it work (for example the heads of state who routinely condemn the EU for their own mistakes and ineptitudes). Add that to a number of giant mistakes made when building the EU, and later when dealing with various crisis, and you have a possible giant failure at hand.

I think the argument can be made in both direction : that it tends to prove that uniting the world, in the very long term, undern one entity, is possible because it's now proven that nation states aren't condemned to remain nation states forever, or that it tends to prove that it's not possible because trying to build a multi-state entity brings too many unsolvable problems.

The problem with your experiment is that it does not in fact relate. The EU is not the least bit about the elimination of bordered nation state economic units endlessly competing with each other. It is just an acknowledgement that on a global scale the tiny nations of Europe just can't compete effectively with the USs and Chinas of the world, so a 'European nation state' was required. European 'nationalism' is still absolutely encouraged, and the welfare of Europeans at any cost to other peoples is still the highest priority.

 

[BvBPL]

This pedantry is largely irrelevant to your post, but the EU is a multinational organization and not a nation state.

 

[Cutlass]

I am unable to see a fundamental division point on the spectrum here:

1. Transitioning to a world without borders can't be done overnight- nations may be obsolescing but are still necessary to keep order.
2. Transitioning to a world without borders is impractical and utopian, so national divisions are a necessary evil.
3. Homogeneous societies are happier and more cohesive. They have the right to keep it that way.
4. The collective is humanity's natural state of being. The will of the people and the nation are the same thing.

There's no real difference between saying "nations work better than global citizenship because [insert reason here]" and "nationalism is natural and good." At their core, both are appeals to pragmatism. Assuming you don't support an immediate and total abolition of national borders (or a proletariat revolt), then you are a nationalist.

I'm posting this in response to liberals claiming to be 'non-nationalists' or that nationalism is egoism.

Well, you aren't a nationalist, at any rate. Since you have explicitly called for the ruin of your nation.

 

[AdrienIer]

The problem with your experiment is that it does not in fact relate. The EU is not the least bit about the elimination of bordered nation state economic units endlessly competing with each other. It is just an acknowledgement that on a global scale the tiny nations of Europe just can't compete effectively with the USs and Chinas of the world, so a 'European nation state' was required. European 'nationalism' is still absolutely encouraged, and the welfare of Europeans at any cost to other peoples is still the highest priority.

The EU was not created with the primary intent being to eliminate "nations" within it, but it has destroyed many things that made France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the NL, Spain etc... nation states to begin with : borders, tariffs, separate laws/norms (on many subjects but not all), fiscal policy, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. If you follow that process to the next step (once/if Europe is one day united inside a giant EU entity) it means that this new EU "nation" would potentially be able to do the same thing on a bigger scale, uniting with the US, Russia, China etc... (of course the geopolitical situation would need to be very different from what it is now). What we see today may be step 1 of a larger process.

 

[Angst]

I am unable to see a fundamental division point on the spectrum here:

1. Transitioning to a world without borders can't be done overnight- nations may be obsolescing but are still necessary to keep order.
2. Transitioning to a world without borders is impractical and utopian, so national divisions are a necessary evil.
3. Homogeneous societies are happier and more cohesive. They have the right to keep it that way.
4. The collective is humanity's natural state of being. The will of the people and the nation are the same thing.

There's no real difference between saying "nations work better than global citizenship because [insert reason here]" and "nationalism is natural and good." At their core, both are appeals to pragmatism. Assuming you don't support an immediate and total abolition of national borders (or a proletariat revolt), then you are a nationalist.

I'm posting this in response to liberals claiming to be 'non-nationalists' or that nationalism is egoism.

Actually, the core of nationalism is a particular idealistic approach to historical analysis, seeing the nation state as a historical continuum. I am for example very supportive of the Danish state, but that's not because of a nationalist approach, rather because of ideological overlaps that would be as present if Denmark was, say, unified with Germany with the very exact politics.

Also when people say "nations work better than global citizenship because [insert reason here]" they could be using nation colloqiually, that is, meaning state, not actually meaning nation. Nation is sadly synonymous with state due to the heavy influence of 19th century romanticized notions. Of course, they could mean it nationalistically, but it is a particular political ideological approach with legitimization from a historical construct more than anything else.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The EU was not created with the primary intent being to eliminate "nations" within it, but it has destroyed many things that made France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the NL, Spain etc... nation states to begin with : borders, tariffs, separate laws/norms (on many subjects but not all), fiscal policy, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. If you follow that process to the next step (once/if Europe is one day united inside a giant EU entity) it means that this new EU "nation" would potentially be able to do the same thing on a bigger scale, uniting with the US, Russia, China etc... (of course the geopolitical situation would need to be very different from what it is now). What we see today may be step 1 of a larger process.

It wasn't to "eliminate" the individual European nations, but as you point out it was to eliminate the economic borders (tariffs, currencies, internally competitive fiscal policies) and create a continent sized economic unit that could then compete with other similar sized economic units...that being the US and China. But no matter how you present it this was not a move away from nationalism. It just shifts the economic aspects of nationalism to a larger scale while leaving the same "zero sum" competitive aspects driving the economics. Whether it eventually breaks down the other aspects of nationalism and expands them to the bigger unit as well remains to be seen, but in no way is it a step towards "doing away with" nation states and borders...or their conflicts. The EU economic unit is all about conflict and competition externally, which is the core element of economic nationalism.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think Mouthwash is mostly right. He may be over-simplifying, but most people do indeed accept that the convergence of the political community and national identity is A Good Thing, as a source of political stability and a foundation for social and economic development. They may want to see political communities rearranged to reflect nationality identities or they may national identities reconsidered to align with political communities, they may favour radical seperatist movements or gradualist nation-building schemes, but in the most basic sense, the aspiration towards an at least approximate correspondence between states and nations is largely unquestioned part of the conceptual tool-kit of modernity.

I think that people may be unwilling to accept this, because "nationalism" generally connotes a strong attachment to a single nationalist project, and a belief in the exclusivity of that national identity, and most progressive-minded people are ambivalent about either proposition. They're willing to accept that their attachment to, say, British nationalism simply reflects the fact that they happen to live there, and that they don't think a person has to choose between being British and Welsh, or in a different sense, between being British and Pakistani. But, if we take nationalism to mean something more general, a simple belief that political borders and national identities should align insofar as reasonably possible, if we define "nationalism" not as an ideology but as a mode of political practice, then Mouthwash is right, it is quite likely that any given person reading this thread is a nationalist.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think what most people who pretend they aren't nationalists are trying to separate themselves from is the inevitable "if we are this nation and you are that nation then the 'balance of power' needs to favor us" aspect. They claim that "nation states don't need a balance of power" and that they would willingly give up their privileges that accrue to them through the operation of their nation state so we can all "just be brothers."

Generally, of course, they make this claim while pressing the gas pedal in their nine passenger SUV (current occupancy one) with their athletic shoe (made by slave labor) clad foot on their way to the jewelry store to buy a blood diamond for their sweetheart.

 

[Arwon]

Generally, of course, they make this claim while pressing the gas pedal in their nine passenger SUV

Their what?

Isn't that just a mini bus?

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't think that's remotely true. There certainly is, in international law, a principle that 'peoples' should have the right to self-determination, but no clear sense of what a 'people' actually is, and a very clear sense that it does not match the nationalist idea of a 'nation' (for instance, when Yugoslavia broke up, the citizens of each previously-federal unit were considered a 'people', even though these federal units cut across national lines). I live in Britain, where we have four 'home nations' under a single state - each has its own flag, language(s), sports teams, food, even religious denominations. Cross the sea to the west and you're on the island of Ireland, home to one nation divided into two states. Get on the ferry and you can be in Spain, which includes Catalonia, home to the Catalan nation. Take a flight at Barcelona airport and you can be in the United States, which contains several sovereign Indian nations within its federal system, or Canada, which is home to the 'First Nations' alongside Canadians. You rightly mention the Middle East, where nobody would talk about Iraqis as a nation, or Afghans. None of these cases is a problem for how these countries are conceived, because none of them are supposed to be built around the nationalist idea, that the nation exists and should be coterminous with the state. There's a sense of nation-building - that states should work to build common identity between the people in them - but that's not the same thing.

I was referring to the monarchies in the Middle East. Your examples don't work because because nationalism is based on the ideal that states should represent a specific nation (we are discussing ideas here, remember?). A bit of fudginess is inevitable in real life, but there's no real contradiction in being both a Welsh nationalist and British nationalist even if you don't think that Wales needs independence. If you still support its representation as a nation in some sense, that's enough to be a nationalist.

This is true, though nationalisms not based on something that is, in at least some sense, strongly tied to origins (such as language) are vanishingly rare.

But does that invalidate other kinds of nationalism?

If you take nationalism by its usual definition, then a belief that states are a good thing is not a form of nationalism at all.

I'm defining it as the belief that nations, however conceived, deserve some kind of representation and/or autonomy.

Well, you aren't a nationalist, at any rate. Since you have explicitly called for the ruin of your nation.

Um, OK?

It wasn't to "eliminate" the individual European nations, but as you point out it was to eliminate the economic borders (tariffs, currencies, internally competitive fiscal policies) and create a continent sized economic unit that could then compete with other similar sized economic units...that being the US and China. But no matter how you present it this was not a move away from nationalism. It just shifts the economic aspects of nationalism to a larger scale while leaving the same "zero sum" competitive aspects driving the economics. Whether it eventually breaks down the other aspects of nationalism and expands them to the bigger unit as well remains to be seen, but in no way is it a step towards "doing away with" nation states and borders...or their conflicts. The EU economic unit is all about conflict and competition externally, which is the core element of economic nationalism.

If that's the case, why is the pro-Remain/EU crowd seething at Britain's perceived resurgent nationalism? Even if the purpose of integration wasn't to do away with national identities, there was certainly an expectation that they would lose relevance.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Ford Expedition, Chevy Suburban, Toyota Sequoia, Nissan Armada, etc...

Most are more commonly "only" eight passenger because the front buckets sacrifice that ninth spot. How does one survive such limitations?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If that's the case, why is the pro-Remain/EU crowd seething at Britain's perceived resurgent nationalism?

Because that small scale nationalism is damaging the large scale economic nationalism that was actually working pretty well. The euro could conceivably challenge the dollar as the shelter currency standard, the EU exceeds China and challenges the US in GDP, everything was moving along according to plan...but the US lackeys of GB kept throwing spanners in the works. Now their spanners are coated with "British nationalism" so that is the focus of the seething, but ultimately the issue is that without GB the EU is a stumbling third economically rather than a threatening dominant force.

 

[Mouthwash]

So what's happening in Italy right now is just pure coincidence? I mean, I wouldn't expect a successful integration to devastate the southern half of Europe.

 

[Arwon]

Ford Expedition, Chevy Suburban, Toyota Sequoia, Nissan Armada, etc...

Most are more commonly "only" eight passenger because the front buckets sacrifice that ninth spot. How does one survive such limitations?

Hahahah I've never heard of any of those, maybe they're illegal here?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hahahah I've never heard of any of those, maybe they're illegal here?

Maybe your country isn't full of people who demand so much from their four wheeled prosthetic penis.

 

[Arwon]

I saw some huge SUVs and passenger trucks in Canada, I was told they were for surviving moose.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I saw some huge SUVs and passenger trucks in Canada, I was told they were for surviving moose.

Ya never know when some moose is gonna dart out of an alley right into traffic.

The majority of four wheel drive vehicles in the US have never been shifted into four wheel drive, and the rear seats in most 8-9 passenger SUVs have never met a buttock...other than in passing visits from the owner, who wears his on his head. Most owners of high performance vehicles that are capable of cracking a hundred have never had them past ninety. Cars in the US are about the having, not the using.

 

[Agent327]

I was referring to the monarchies in the Middle East. Your examples don't work because because nationalism is based on the ideal that states should represent a specific nation (we are discussing ideas here, remember?). A bit of fudginess is inevitable in real life, but there's no real contradiction in being both a Welsh nationalist and British nationalist even if you don't think that Wales needs independence.

Nationalists that don't want independence. What will we get next? Flying pig?

 

[CavLancer]

The nation from which I am an partial escapee is so scrod up that different peoples can't look each other in the face and speak without bringing a tonne of baggage with them about how they got to the point where they are chatting with you without calling you something other than a fellow human being sometime prior to saying hi. We cannot absorb any more BS until this is resolved. We are a melting pot which needs to melt for a couple of thousand years first. Then we can maybe consider absorbing some new and may I say *explosive* group. Until then world eff off. We're busy.

Does that make me a nationalist or some other term? Did you remember to say Hi! first?

 

[Cutlass]

Hahahah I've never heard of any of those, maybe they're illegal here?

Many vehicles have different names in different countries. But the max size SUV is mainly a North America thing. Most other places think that a Range Rover or Toyota Land Cruiser is big enough.