What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Anniversary Post - Conservatism and Nationalism or “Patriots, Please Stop Your Moral Preening and Start Singing Our National Anthem!”

I wanted to use the occasion of the ten year anniversary at What’s Wrong with the World, along with Tony’s excellent summary of our understanding of conservative ideas to explore in more detail one of my particular interests, the subject of national identity and the relationship between conservatism and nationalism. To do so, I am aided by the recent exploration and debate of this very subject held by the magazine National Review – you can get up to speed with most of the background pieces I will be quoting from via this summary piece. In short, back in February, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a cover story for the magazine in which they argued that conservatives should embrace a “sensible and moderate form of nationalism” against many of the arguments that are often raised against such an embrace by modern day liberals (it goes without saying) but even by many modern day conservatives:

Nationalism has a bad odor even among some conservatives. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since nationalism is in tension with two powerful strains of conservatism. Economic conservatism, particularly as influenced by libertarianism, can come to see borders as barriers to free markets. Businessmen with interests abroad, an important part of the conservative coalition, can acclimate to that way of thinking even if they have no philosophical inclinations. Religious conservatism often emphasizes the God-given dignity of all people, which transcends national borders. Thus former president George W. Bush’s declaration, in the context of immigration policy, that “family values do not stop at the Rio Grande river.”

And American conservatives of many kinds, like liberals and libertarians, have been influenced by the notion that America is an “idea” or a “proposition nation.” The expression of this view is itself often a manifestation of patriotism, because it is self-flattering: “Our country, unlike all the world’s ethno-states, is founded on high-minded ideals.”

All of these intellectual currents have fed the view that nationalism is atavistic and sinister, a corruption of conservatism if it has anything to do with it at all. And the plasticity of the term “nationalism” has contributed to its bad reputation in all corners of the political world. Take George Orwell’s influential essay against nationalism. He adopted a capacious definition of the term, one that included Stalinism and excluded a normal devotion to one’s own country. What he meant by nationalism — self-identification with a group or cause, hostility to any criticism of it, and a limitless desire for it to have additional power and prestige — was something like what Edmund Burke had in mind when he spoke of “armed doctrine.” Orwell’s definition remains idiosyncratic, but hostility to nationalism typically rests on similar conceptual muddles. Anti-nationalists blame the world wars on nationalism even though those wars involved multinational empires (in the case of the first) and transnational ideologies (in the case of the second). They strain to devise labored distinctions between a good patriotism and a bad nationalism.

There’s no doubt that there are aggressive and noxious forms of nationalism. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute makes a useful distinction between authoritarian and democratic nationalism. Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are examples of the former (although Putin leads a multinational empire with designs for more territorial acquisitions). Democratic nationalism is a category that encompasses Lincoln, Churchill, de Gaulle, Reagan, and Thatcher, all of whom were champions of national sovereignty and solidarity.

I like what Rich and Ramesh had to say even more when they argue affirmatively for the particulars of what they like to call a “benign nationalism”:


It includes loyalty to one’s country: a sense of belonging, allegiance, and gratitude to it. And this sense attaches to the country’s people and culture, not just to its political institutions and laws. Such nationalism includes solidarity with one’s countrymen, whose welfare comes before, albeit not to the complete exclusion of, that of foreigners. When this nationalism finds political expression, it supports a federal government that is jealous of its sovereignty, forthright and unapologetic about advancing its people’s interests, and mindful of the need for national cohesion.

[…]

Any worthwhile nationalism has these components, but beyond them the content of a country’s nationalism depends on its particular character. American nationalism has an ideological component, so much of one as to render it exceptional (as in “American exceptionalism”). This is the truth underlying the simplification that America is an idea rather than a nation. In reality, it is a nation with an idea. The first Federalist paper presents America as an example to the world, and even John Quincy Adams’s famous remark about how America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy,” was immediately followed by: “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.” The aspiration that all people enjoy freedom is built into our political DNA.

Important as these ideas are, American nationalism is not merely about them. This fact can be seen easily enough from our patriotic fanfare. A flyover or July Fourth fireworks display is not creedal. Neither is a Memorial Day parade, or laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. John Philip Sousa marches aren’t statements of ideals. Surely, the revulsion that most people feel when protesters burn an American flag is based on the belief not that the protesters are symbolically destroying an idea, but rather that they are disrespecting the nation to which they owe respect and fealty. Indeed, the vast majority of expressions of American patriotism — the flag, the national anthem, statues, shrines and coinage honoring national heroes, military parades, ceremonies for those fallen in the nation’s wars — are replicated in every other country of the world. This is all the stuff of nationalism, both abroad and here at home. It is worth noting, as well, that none of these expressions of love of country and anger at its opposite reflects ethnocentrism, either. Discussions of nationalism frequently pose the alternatives of an obsession with blood and soil (nationalism!) and an exclusive focus on political ideals (patriotism!). The actual practice of American patriots has avoided both. For conservatives, the sensible and moderate form that nationalism has taken in America should have particular appeal. Conservatism is grounded in a respect for what is local, particular, and traditional. And most nations are historical accretions, as the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who has written powerfully in defense of nationalism, notes:

***A nation-state is a form of customary order, the byproduct of human neighborliness, shaped by an “invisible hand” from the countless agreements between people who speak the same language and live side by side. It results from compromises established after many conflicts, and expresses the slowly forming agreement among neighbors both to grant each other space and to protect that space as common territory.***

[…]

Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good,” G. K. Chesterton wrote. “Nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best. Cosmopolitanism offers a positive, patriotism a chorus of superlatives. Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant.” He continued, in a charming touch, “Wherever there is a strangely-shaped mountain upon some lonely island, wherever there is a nameless kind of fruit growing in some obscure forest, patriotism insures that this shall not go into darkness without being remembered in a song.”

So the contours of their argument are all here – an American nationalism that is wedded to the best of the English traditions we inherited from our colonist ancestors as well as the ideas that inspired the revolutionary generation and gave us the Declaration and Constitution is all well and good. But a conservative nationalism would also want to emphasize the gratitude Americans have for the economic bounty we are blessed with here in this land, the natural beauty (i.e. “amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, etc.) and appreciate the bond that a shared culture and history forms with our neighbors who are fellow citizens. That’s why in the modern era we have conservatives fighting against such issues as (which Rich and Ramesh point out) “bilingual education, the downgrading of traditional U.S. history in curricula, racial preferences, the elevation of subnational groups, and mass immigration — anything that has been part of the multiculturalist onslaught on national solidarity.”

So why object at all to such a defense of “sensible and moderate nationalism” – why did some conservative writers take issue with this piece? Ben Shapiro was the most adamant in his counter-argument (published online) suggesting that the problem with promoting nationalism, if you were an American conservative, is that it would be divorced from the important ideas that conservatives champion:

Because Trump’s definition of nationalism is not the conservative definition of nationalism. Conservatives love America because we believe it is a nation founded on an idea. Our interests ought to prevail because our principles ought to prevail: limited government, individual liberty, God-given natural rights, localism in politics, religious freedom, freedom of speech and of the press, and so forth. If America ceased to believe those things or stand for them, we would not deserve to win. “Make America Great Again” would then ring hollow with the same blood-and-soil nationalistic violence of the Old World. If greatness is measured in utilitarian terms rather than ideological ones, nationalism is merely tribalism broadened, a way of valuing the collective over the individual.

So Shapiro is not on board with the second half of the sensible and moderate nationalism definition. No talk for him of shared culture and history, no gratitude for the land we live in in, no particular concern for his fellow citizens’ well-being. He apparently thinks any focus on these elements of nationalism make us no better or different than the tribes of the Old World (and to hammer home his point he even brings up Fascist Italy.) It is as if Shapiro has no ability to think conceptually of the idea of the common good:

Rich and Ramesh describe Trump’s nationalism as an “enriched understanding of what it means to be American,” citing his belief that we are both consumers and workers, that CEOs “are citizens with obligations to their countrymen.” This isn’t an enriched nationalism. It’s an impoverished one. In the end, it makes ideas secondary to blood and soil.

Jonah Goldberg seems more willing to meet Rich and Ramesh half-way in their argument, but prefers to think of conservatives as patriots rather than nationalists because like Shapiro, he seems to think that nationalism is too wrapped up in dangerous blood and soil ideas that will lead to tribal warfare:

In their cover story Rich and Ramesh wrote:

***Indeed, the vast majority of expressions of American patriotism — the flag, the national anthem, statues, shrines and coinage honoring national heroes, military parades, ceremonies for those fallen in the nation’s wars — are replicated in every other country of the world. This is all the stuff of nationalism, both abroad and here at home.***

To which I responded, in part:

***This is at the same time both entirely right and fundamentally misleading. It leaves out what the flag represents. It glides over the fact that the national anthem sanctifies the “land of the free.” Our shrines are to patriots who upheld very specific American ideals. Our statues of soldiers commemorate heroes who died for something very different from what other warriors have fought and died for millennia. Every one of them — immigrants included — took an oath to defend not just some soil but our Constitution and by extension the ideals of the Founding. Walk around any European hamlet or capital and you will find statues of men who fell in battle to protect their tribe from another tribe. That doesn’t necessarily diminish the nobility of their deaths or the glory of their valor, but it is quite simply a very different thing they were fighting for.***

[…]

The American colonists considered themselves English subjects and inheritors of an English tradition. But they were, quite obviously, not English nationalists. Indeed, they rebelled against the crown precisely because the inherent logic of nationalism — obey the crown, do as you’re told, abide by tradition — was in their eyes a violation of more important English principles that stretched back to the Magna Carta and beyond. The Founders took the arguments of Locke, Burke et al and followed them to their logical and glorious conclusion that ended up leaving the monarchy in the dustbin of (American) history.

In the nations of the Old World, nationalism is a tribal passion or sentiment that relies (in theory) on mystic and ancient myths of a shared ancestral past. Most of the foundational writers on nationalism, like Johann Herder, argued that nation and volk were literally like an ancient family.

To which I respond, both to Jonah and Ben, sure American nationalism is special and unique because we are Americans and think America is special and unique (and to Jonah’s specific point about the revolutionary generation – of course they weren’t English nationalists – they were creating a new country!) But along with our “specific American ideals” are specific American people (and yes, immigration complicates just who is an American citizen over time), specific American economic strengths (i.e. natural resources, farmland, coastal waters, etc.) and specific American natural features (could you imagine an America without Yellowstone? The Everglades? The Mississippi River?) Again, it seems Jonah, like Ben, is unwilling to acknowledge all the other elements of a sensible and moderate nationalism because he fears a return to European tribal warfare. But is European history really a story of an ending battle of one national “tribe” against another or is the picture much more complicated by royal dynasties fighting over power and wealth, religious conflict after the Protestant revolution, and the murderous ideologies of the 20th Century (Fascism and Nazism) which have a link to, but are certainly not the same thing as nationalism tout court?

Finally, what neither Ben or Jonah seem willing to acknowledge is the danger that is posed by severing their definition of patriotism from any sense of nationalist sentiment. The ideological warriors intent on bringing “freedom” to the Middle-East (whatever that might mean for those people), the libertarians who think liberty means every business in America should be able to hire every worker they want from around the world (which in practice means open borders and unlimited immigration from around the world) and the global cosmopolitan elites who have decided to turn their backs on their fellow citizens because they are too religious, or don’t work in knowledge industries, or don’t share in the elites cultural habits or tastes – what are we to think of these warriors who seem intent on putting ideology first ahead of the interests and needs of their fellow citizens? It seems to me that they are just as dangerous these days, if not more, than the nationalist boogey men that Ben and Jonah conjure up in their counter-arguments against a sensible and moderate nationalism. We face real problems from mass immigration today; we got into trouble in the Middle-East because we thought we could transform Iraq into something resembling a stable western democracy (and lord help us if we think we can do the same in Syria!) Our elites are turning their backs today on the nation’s heartland (think of all the books that have come out in the past couple of years dealing with this topic including Charles Murray’s Coming Apart; Robert Putnam’s Our Kids and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy) – that’s why Trump could do so well in rural and industrial communities in the Midwest that had traditionally voted democratic (or not voted at all) – these people feel abandoned by decision makers in Washington and want someone who will say their interests come ahead of people around the world. A return to a sensible and moderate nationalism, one that acknowledges America’s important ideas as expressed through our Constitution, can address these unique challenges facing America today. I say there is nothing for patriots to be scared of when thinking about this form of nationalism – indeed it should be embraced by conservatives and used as just another weapon in our intellectual arsenal when we do battle against our real enemies: liberals and Islam.

Comments (32)

I find it interesting that Ponnuru, in his summary article, tries to make it clear that he and Lowry weren't actually endorsing "Trump's nationalism" but see it in serious need of correction.

I can't help wondering how much of the disagreement here is an artifact of the unfortunate (which is really too milk-and-water a word!) association of the context of the discussion with Trump and the assumption that Trump himself even *has* clear ideas on this matter.

These days I suppose one can't, practically speaking, go quite so far as to say, "Can't we just leave Trump entirely out of this discussion?" But perhaps a better way would be not to attribute actual beliefs and commitments to him but to talk instead about ideas that his followers believe or ideas that he is taken to represent, and then evaluate those on their merits. It looks like Ponnuru does a fairly good job of making this separation in the summary article except for one slip where he once again uses the phrase "Trump's nationalism" as if there really is such a thing and as if it has some good points that ought to be disentangled from the ones that need correction.

Jeff, excellent post, very well balanced. Thank you.

Quoting Goldberg, in support of the "proposition nation" basis of love of America:

The American colonists considered themselves English subjects and inheritors of an English tradition. But they were, quite obviously, not English nationalists. Indeed, they rebelled against the crown precisely because the inherent logic of nationalism — obey the crown, do as you’re told, abide by tradition — was in their eyes a violation of more important English principles that stretched back to the Magna Carta and beyond. The Founders took the arguments of Locke, Burke et al and followed them to their logical and glorious conclusion that ended up leaving the monarchy in the dustbin of (American) history.

One of the several problems with using the "proposition nation" as the sole basis for Americans' love of their America is that it is, simply, untrue historically. As Jeff points out, not only were the colonialists creating a new country, in their eyes they had already done so by the time of the Revolution. In the Declaration's long list of grievances against George III, we find:

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country...

Note, here, the facts on the ground. The British navy was in the habit of taking American (colonialist) seamen and forcing them to serve in the British navy warships, which were then used against American ships who would not submit to British trade laws (such as the mercantilist requirement that all trade pass through Britain or British shipping). These Americans, then, were being forced to fight Americans. The underlying meaning of the grievance, then, is that it is America that is the "Country" of the colonial shipping, not Britain. The men who wrote the Declaration, (and their aggrieved merchant seamen countrymen) were already Americans, no longer British simply.

This fact depends at best only in part on the items Goldberg points to - the propositions that are seated in the American psyche as part of their heritage. In addition to the principles, there was also a very lively and important aspect of simply living and working side by side in a new place, new circumstances of social structure (which grew more by organic muddling as by theoretic analysis), new realities of political ordering, etc, that people from England, Scotland, Germany, Ireland, Holland, etc were all sharing together, which melange was, by 1750, "American" and not merely "British displaced to new shores". It is not specifically American principle that told a Scottish farmer to help out his Dutch neighbors who have come down with the flu, yet the mutual experiences of doing so were also part of becoming American.

An important part of national feeling relates specifically to places and to people who are particular, not ideas. The French love the Rhone, not just "river". Just as much, Americans love the Rockies, not just "mountains". Even more so, we love our neighbors, whom we know in particular and are not just conceptually as "neighbor" only. Why does this form a substructure to national feeling? Let me quote St. Thomas, Article 6. Whether we ought to love one neighbor more than another?, (Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae, Q. 26):

Consequently the inclination also of grace which is the effect of charity, must needs be proportionate to those actions which have to be performed outwardly, so that, to wit, the affection of our charity be more intense towards those to whom we ought to behave with greater kindness.

We must, therefore, say that, even as regards the affection we ought to love one neighbor more than another. The reason is that, since the principle of love is God, and the person who loves, it must needs be that the affection of love increases in proportion to the nearness to one or the other of those principles. For as we stated above (Article 1), wherever we find a principle, order depends on relation to that principle.

Reply to Objection 1. Love can be unequal in two ways: first on the part of the good we wish our friend. On this respect we love all men equally out of charity: because we wish them all one same generic good, namely everlasting happiness. Secondly love is said to be greater through its action being more intense: and in this way we ought not to love all equally.

Or we may reply that we have unequal love for certain persons in two ways: first, through our loving some and not loving others. As regards beneficence we are bound to observe this inequality, because we cannot do good to all: but as regards benevolence, love ought not to be thus unequal. The other inequality arises from our loving some more than others: and Augustine does not mean to exclude the latter inequality, but the former, as is evident from what he says of beneficence.

We humans are physical, bound to specific place and time. It is necessary that we have more to do with some people than to others because we cannot be at all places and times equally. Thus we will have more love expressed in acts of beneficence toward some than toward others. Such as, toward our physical neighbors. This necessity grounds the parochial love of one's OWN communities. The general welfare of OUR community is numerically distinct from the general welfare of THEIR community, even though both are composed of the same kinds of (common) goods, such as justice, peace, order, knowledge, etc.

If one merely specifies that this parochial love is positive and not negative - in no sense does it imply hatred, disgust, or demeaning attitude towards others' communities - the damaging sense of 'nationalism', and the degraded sense of 'patriotism' can be guarded against. Doing acts of beneficence toward those close to you does not imply doing acts of malevolence against those farther away. One has benevolence for all, but acts specifically for the good of some, especially those who impinge on him more.

Excellent response, Tony. I can only add the Preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The preamble specifically mentions the people the Constitution is for: ourselves and our Posterity. This contradicts the narrative that American is not a people with shared traditions, culture and lineage. The Proposition Nation is simply the denial that there is an American people. The United States of America is not an abstraction, but a particular people living in a particular body of land in a particular period of time - a nation.

Lydia,

I think you are quite right in that it is better to think of "ideas that his [Trump's] followers believe or ideas that he is taken to represent, and then evaluate those on their merits" because as you note, Trump himself is not a systematic thinker and/or does well presenting his ideas conceptually. And in the case of his ideas about nationalism, many of them are worthy of support BUT with the qualification that he often neglects to talk about the ideals that make America unique and special (which is why Lowry and Ponurru add those ideals to their American version of a sensible and moderate nationalism.)

Tony,

Thanks for your kind words and your excellent reminder of Aquinas on the unequal love we are bound to have for our neighbor -- I wish more churchmen took these words to heart when they thought about the demands nationalism, properly understood, places on us all to think about policy issues like immigration.

Urban II,

The phrase from the preamble to the Constitution, "ourselves and our Posterity" are indeed a stinging rebuke to those who think Americans never thought of themselves as a unique people with a shared history and culture. I also like how Tony points out that in the Declaration -- even before we were formally a separate country from Great Britain -- many of us thought of ourselves as a unique country that had our own interests we needed to protect and defend against the motherland!

To all of this mutual agreement I want to add a caution, though: To say that this nation is "for" ourselves and our posterity, where "our" refers to the people at the time of the Constitution's writing (we are originalists, right?), and to take this to mean that the blessings of freedom of this country are not teleologically "supposed to be for" others would be, frankly, absurd. Probably a great many trying to restrict the blessings of American freedom to an ancestral tribe and using the Constitution in this way are *not* descended from anybody who happened to be here in 1789, especially if we exclude descendants of slaves, who were not regarded as citizens and probably weren't intended by the drafters to be thought of as part of the "we" in the preamble.

It would be truly silly to say that, if you don't happen to have an ancestor who was a citizen of the original 13 states in 1789, the blessings of American freedom aren't "supposed to be for" you.

Oh, that wasn't what was meant?

Then what was?

People who happen to be of some kind of vaguely similar nationality with those? (Tough on many descended from Irish and Slavs, even if they happen to be white.) So if you're Chinese by descent but your ancestors came to the U.S., I dunno, 100 years ago, should you be a second-class citizen? Or something? To show that the "blessings of freedom" weren't supposed to be "for" you?

So, yeah, I'm going to stand out as somewhat more "propositional" in that I'm *not* going to agree that, hey, the preamble tells us that the blessings of freedom of the U.S. are supposed to be tribally restricted only to those of some kind of physical descent. And I'm going to say it loudly.

Now, maybe a good idea is to allow those of other biological descents to _assimilate_ to and adopt those shared cultural values, etc., that originally came through an Anglo tradition. Great! I'm all in favor. But in that case, sorry Charlie, but "particular lineage" is not a necessary condition. And it's going to sound much too much like "proposition nation" for tribalist nationalists.

Lydia,

The short answer to your dilemma is that the Constitution's preamble doesn't preclude those original founders from expanding the U.S. via immigration -- and of course that's exactly what they did. Indeed, even before we formally became the U.S. people like Ben Franklin were worried about the power of the colonies to absorb and assimilate the German immigrants pouring into Pennsylvania (so in 1789 we were already more than just Anglos!) But the question there was always controlling the number of new arrivals and making sure they did assimilate and adopted American culture and values.

I'll be the first to push back against a "tribal nationalist" who claims that my Japanese neighbor whose grandparents fought in WWII for this country, a third generation Catholic Mexican family in a southern Texas town, or a newly arrived evangelical immigrant from Kenya can't share American culture or values with me. It is always a question of prudence and careful control of numbers (and the actual process for getting in the country) not to mention the process of assimilation in the schools that helps these disparate groups from around the world become patriotic Americans.

But the question there was always controlling the number of new arrivals and making sure they did assimilate and adopted American culture and values.

I think this is very important and is entirely lost with our current immigration policy. When people from other nations emigrate to the United States they do not arrive as blank slates, but people with their own shared history and identity, which they will not give up easily. Thus I think it is important to limit immigration under some population threshold. A nation can bring new people in just as a family grows through marriage. It should be fairly difficult to become a United States citizen.

Urban II, I hope you won't mind my saying that your more moderate comment (4:59 pm) is in some tension with,

This contradicts the narrative that American is not a people with shared traditions, culture and lineage. (emphasis added)

(1:50 pm)

Not to be aggressive, but the 1:50 pm comment sounded more like the tribal nationalist who thinks lineage--that is to say, literal, biological lineage--must be included as a necessary ingredient in defining "who we are." Whereas the 4:59 comment sounded willing to reconsider that implication, though with the correct understanding that people don't just adopt a new culture overnight.

The short answer to your dilemma is that the Constitution's preamble doesn't preclude those original founders from expanding the U.S. via immigration -- and of course that's exactly what they did.

Right. The Constitution also provides that one of the congressional powers is to set rules for naturalization, so they clearly intended to allow for an influx of new persons to become citizens.

In addition, there was the understanding that the US itself, i.e. its land extent, could expand by adding new states. The 1783 settlement established US "ownership" of land west to the Mississippi, new land that would eventually become new states.

Of course, nobody really had worked out clearly what we should do with the OLD inhabitants of said territories, but it didn't stop them from assuming something could be worked out. Since some of the settlements in those territories were French, (not Indian, or not only), I cannot but think that the Founders believed those men or at least their children would become Americans.

So, I would have to agree with Lydia that

It would be truly silly to say that, if you don't happen to have an ancestor who was a citizen of the original 13 states in 1789, the blessings of American freedom aren't "supposed to be for" you.
And it's going to sound much too much like "proposition nation" for tribalist nationalists.

Yeah, I think that's true. But then I think the extreme tribal nationalists are barking up the wrong tree. While there is probably some very modest discernible biological difference between, say, an Irish American who happens to be descended for the last 200 years from Irish-only (pure blooded) Americans, and a similarly situated Polish American, I am quite sure that culturally they would be 97% the same: i.e. "American" through and through. Blood lines and national origin have always been important to people, but to a significant degree these are held important precisely because they are indicators of shared culture, especially religion and language. In the Bible Ruth said

"Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. 17"Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried"

and her descendant became king of Israel. Which is to say, she (or at least her children) became one with them. Which trumped her foreign blood.

If blood-lines were the absolute final word on nationhood, then we would have to go back and sort out who was descended from Saxons, who from Angles, who from Lombards, who from Franks, who from Danes, etc. There would be no such thing as "English" nationality, only Saxon, or Angle, or Norman, or ... There would never have been Roman citizenship for those born more than 30 or 40 miles from Rome, much less all of Italy, (much less those like St. Paul). As for "American", the very notion would be silly: there would only be a smorgasbord of varying groups, and nothing that could answer to "American".

Urban II, I hope you won't mind my saying that your more moderate comment (4:59 pm) is in some tension with, "This contradicts the narrative that American is not a people with shared traditions, culture and lineage". (emphasis added) (1:50 pm)

That is a fair comment and if there is a tension, then I'll have to think about how to resolve it. I suppose I do not have a perfectly sound theory regarding what makes a people, but I think shared history, culture and lineage have something to do with it. The Proposition Nation advocates respect American culture, but wrongly believe that a culture can be abstracted from the people in which the culture began and continues to thrive. I think ethnicity and culture are highly correlated, so it makes little sense to respect the culture and disregard demographics.

Maybe lineage can be broadened to mean something more than a direct descendant of the Pilgrims. The nation as a family is a good analogy. Not everyone in a family is genetically related. Families grow through marriage, so what was once two different families has now become one. This leaves open the opportunity that people with no direct lineage can "marry" into the nation.

I suppose I do not have a perfectly sound theory regarding what makes a people, but I think shared history, culture and lineage have something to do with it.

I don't think anyone can say precisely what makes "a people" sufficient, say, for them to claim their own polity. Certainly shared history, culture, and lineage have in fact (historically) been major factors for it. Language, too. For the lineage part of that thesis, I would recall that the word "nation" comes from the same root word as "natus", which is "birth": a people born from the same stock. At least this is the view of many ancient peoples.

The problem is that there is no specifying in the particular for WHEN a sufficient build-up of shared history etc is "enough". When did the Saxons and Normans become just "the English"? It cannot be stated precisely.

The Proposition Nation advocates respect American culture, but wrongly believe that a culture can be abstracted from the people in which the culture began and continues to thrive.

Right. The precise form of the American approach to "freedom" cannot be wholly severed from the English / British historical development that wends from Saxon England through Norman feudal overlords to Runnymede past the War of Roses through the Reformation monarchs to the English civil war and the Long Parliament to the invited foreign monarchs - and all the twists and turns that English liberties took to develop. Any other republic sort of people will need their freedoms in a form suited to THEIR historical development: even though there will be shared principles between their forms of freedom and ours, the exact workings out will be distinct.

Nevertheless, human nature is the same for all people, so it always remains possible for a person to acquire by positive acts a great respect and even preference for the specific cultural forms of a people other than what he was born into, even if this is somewhat unusual. (As you mention, Urban, family is sometimes a key to this: through love, a person can actually become joined to a new community, so that it is now his own community.)

In America, it seems to me that this would entail more consciousness of explicitly stated ideals than it would in other nations (hence the "propositions" of the proposition nation), but that itself is at least partly an accident of our own history: unlike the British and many other nations, we have a written Constitution, a written Declaration of Independence, a written brief summation of our Civil War - all considered nearly 'holy writ'. It is not obviously true that the root _ideals_ that underlie our notion of what constitutes "the good nation" are in themselves more propositional than for the other nations (consider: 'freedom', 'rule of law', 'common good' - none of these are propositions); what is true is that we have expressed those ideals in specific propositional forms that are rather more broadly accepted by Americans than is common among the nations. Even so, the varying meanings and interpretations Americans give to these propositions are so diverse that it must give one pause before declaring "we are a proposition nation".

Very well put, Tony. You have all made excellent points.

Has anyone read American Patriotism and Nationalism: One and Indivisible? It was posted May 1 on National Review.

Urban II,

I hadn't seen that piece, so I'm glad you pointed it out:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447216/nationalism-patriotism-american-history-conservatives-progressives

John Fonte has been influential on my thinking -- he wrote an excellent report on the problems current waves of immigrants were having assimilating and how we could do better as a nation in promoting that assimilation:

https://hudson.org/research/9595-america-s-assimilation-system-is-broken-

I cite it often in debates with open borders types!

Tony,

Great comments -- all I would add is that sometimes figuring out the historical development of a people is tricky business. For example , your brief run-down of English / British historical development starts with Saxon England (don't forget the Angles!) but you could also go back to the Celtic influence that seems to make up an even bigger genetic component of the average British (and presumably American colonist) person:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530134-300-ancient-invaders-transformed-britain-but-not-its-dna/

AND

http://www.eupedia.com/genetics/britain_ireland_dna.shtml

But these historical processes take a lot of time, which means that culture is going to be transmitted more commonly via birth than adoption, to use Urban's family metaphor. Nevertheless, I think it is quite right to think that through respect and love, folks can be successfully 'adopted' into a new country as assimilated immigrants.

But these historical processes take a lot of time, which means that culture is going to be transmitted more commonly via birth than adoption, to use Urban's family metaphor.

But anyone who knows the history of England in any detail knows that the Anglo-Saxons and Normans left a much bigger stamp on English *culture* than the Celts did, chiefly because of the great success of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of formerly Roman Britain. Hence, in the case of England (formerly Britain) culture was far more passed on during those periods of upheaval by conquest than by birth! Indeed, the disconnect between Celtic and later English culture is quite stark. Compare Welsh law in the 1200s with English law, the latter being largely Norman.

So whatever that study proves about the Celts and modern English DNA (and I'm a tad dubious about what it *does* prove), precisely what it *doesn't* tell us about is the transmission of culture.

John Fonte has been influential on my thinking --

I liked his piece a lot also. I really do think he is right to say that patriotism and nationalism are very closely joined. I think he is probably right in saying

Conservatives made a strategic mistake overemphasizing abstract ideological reasoning while downplaying the concrete cultural and emotional aspect of patriotism.

Nevertheless, I don't think he quite manages to squarely hit what nationalism and patriotism mean, distinctly. He mentions Kristol's definitions:

Patriotism springs from love of the nation’s past; nationalism arises out of hope for the nation’s future, distinctive greatness.

I don't think this is particularly close at all, and it doesn't surprise me that a neoconservative is this far off.

Podhoretz is not any worse, and maybe a little better:

In 2000, Norman Podhoretz declared that both patriotism (which he defines as “love of” one’s country) and nationalism (which he defines as “pride in” one’s country)'

He agrees with Ponnuru's calling out the false dichotomy of one being ideals and the other ethnocentrism:

Ponnuru argues that the anti-nationalist stance of “patriotism good, nationalism bad,” in which positive ideals (patriotism) are pitted against various forms of (mostly ethnic) nationalism,

I suggest turning back a bit to the origins of some of our thinking, i.e. the classical ancient period of the Greeks and Romans. Here is an interesting thing: each Greek city state was its own polity, and they had (especially in the years before the Xerxes invasion) very strong variation in polities. Sparta had kings, Athens was a democracy. Yet they all considered themselves a single nation. Why? Because they shared (a) the same language, (b) the same form of religion (although each city had its main gods), and (c) sprang from the same root stock of earlier people who moved into Greece from farther east. All three of these were critical to their being able to trust each another to form an alliance which stopped Xerxes cold, even though he had completely defeated several of the city-states. They could do this because they considered themselves all "Hellenes", one nation, and they held the members of the other hellenic cities as being "one of us" in comparison to all other peoples, who were "barbarians". They also shared (even before the war with the Persians), a past mythos, and history of alliance in war - the war against Troy, at least. They were a nation, long before Greece comprised a nation-state.

On the other hand, from the history of the Peloponnesian war, it is clear that each city-state engendered in its citizens patriotism for their own city. It is less clear that what they felt for Greece was "patriotism". I think not. (Though it might be hard to say for sure, since the modern word for it comes from the Romans, not the Greeks.)

I suggest, then, that at least from this example, perhaps
nationalism is a love of one's own people; and
patriotism is a love of one's own polity.

The former wraps together all the factors that make a people a single people, but especially (going by the Greeks) language, religion, and lineage. Add to these shared history, especially wars won or lost together, and other great crises.

Patriotism adds in the notion of the people as organized into a formal whole, i.e. a political community. It is a love of not just the people, but taken together with their state and its governmental order, but not excluding the features of the place in which the state exists: an acknowledged specific polity. For example, the Jews under the Egyptian slavery and the Babylonian captivity continued to feel the current reality of a kind of national sentiment, i.e. love of their own people, but could not harbor a current patriotism, other than as either a form of nostalgia or hope for the future. (Indeed, during the Egyptian slavery they had never had their own polity yet, so their sentiment could not be one for a political order.) And, interestingly, that Babylonian period of looking forward to a future restoration wasn't merely one of gaining some land of their own, it was toward regaining, specifically, the old land of Israel, and regenerating its proper state.

Let's take another example: France was (more or less) a single entity under Louis XIV. Would we say that a modern Frenchman can have strong nationalist feelings for the France of the monarchy of Louis XIV, but not _patriotism_ for that France, because that monarchy passed away and now they are on their 5th government since? I don't think it works that way: the France of 1700 was a single political community, and that France is the same underlying political community that went through the revolutions and restorations and new regimes from 1789 through 1945. That it changed its government is true, but it was FRANCE that changed its governments. (I suppose, then, that I am saying that "the state" is not identical to "the government".)

In America, patriotism is not based solely on a set of ideals, much less on a set of propositions. If it were, then anyone in the world who affirmed those propositions in their hearts would be American. Note: it is not that they would be good candidates for being granted American rights; they would BE American, in virtue of their affirming the propositions of the American ideals. But we know that simply isn't true. A person in Armenia who runs into excellent American missionaries and businessman, and who reads up on America, and is inspired by the ideals of America, and comes to affirm those ideas wholeheartedly, does not become an American thereby.

Because of America's past, we are somewhat short (compared to most other nations) in respect of having a single lineage to count for the source of our nationhood. We are also a bit muddled on the subject of shared religion. That means, of necessity, that we must necessarily rely more on the other factors for what our nationhood rests on. Of those, the English language and the English social and political forms must be counted high up there, along with the Judeo-Christian religions. After these, 200 years of wars fought and won, founding documents and their ideals, and the shared history of growing pains of ridding ourselves of certain grave defects, must also be counted.

To add to my proposed delineation above, I would also suggest that patriotism is the word for the moral virtue with which we give due honor and respect to our formed, organized, and cohesive entity that is the political community. It is a virtue that falls under the virtue of justice and piety, as St. Thomas says, for it is (also) piety under which we render due honor and respect to God, and then to our parents. Nationalism (as Podhoretz says) is a common feeling among people everywhere - for it pleases everyone to belong to a people. I don't think the common feeling is a virtue, it is just that delight in belonging to a distinct group. Patriotism ought to be just as universal - since virtually everyone belongs to a political community and ought to have the virtues applicable to that - but liberals by and large have starved it into hibernation, where they have not actually strangled it to death.

Interesting that NRO published this article on the crack-up of conservative movement today.

Conservatives’ inconsistent attitudes toward the future are reflections of more fundamental tendencies that were once safely contained within the conservative mind but now strain its boundaries. These cannot be reduced to the familiar distinctions between libertarianism and traditionalism, neoconservatism and paleoconservatism, establishment and base. For the sake of simplicity, call them liberalism and reaction.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447324/conservatism-intellectual-divide-classical-liberals-reactionaries-political-right

In other words, the reaction is what conservatism is basically, while liberalism is the element that infected conservatism post WW2.

Tony,

A belated thank you for your excellent comments from a couple of days ago. Another reminder (which fits Lydia's last point as well) that all of us in the Western world are intellectually (and in part, spiritually) indebted in some large part to the classical Greeks and Romans. We all stand on the shoulder of giants, but you have a way of teasing out their wisdom in a very insightful way!

Mactoul, I would grant Samuel Goldman more credence if he did not mis-characterize conservatism as merely one strain of liberalism.

Nor would I ever credit any validity to F. Scott Fitzgerald's claim

the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

if by "hold" he meant "hold as true". If he meant something less paradoxical, like "compare in order to discern which elements are true and which false", well, that's quite another notion. Nor would I consider that the alcoholic Fitzgerald, married to an alcoholic and manic depressive, had reliable advice about sanity.

Tony,
American conservatism, as opposed to the European, is built on the foundation of classic liberalism. That is, the American conservatism is not pure Burke. It is more Chesterton. You perhaps recall Chesterton's evaluation of Burke as atheistic denial of fundamental rights of all men. Burke was an evolutionist---he recognized only the evolved rights of Englishmen. But the American Founders perceived the rights of all men based upon an intellectual perception of their creaturely nature.

American conservatism, as opposed to the European, is built on the foundation of classic liberalism.

That raises serious problems if you accept the argument that classical liberalism logically converges to modern liberalism. I tend to agree with James Kalb that it does. It's also why the mainstream conservative movement or "fusionism" is incoherent. The liberal aspects of the fusion will always win in the long run.

American conservatism, as opposed to the European, is built on the foundation of classic liberalism.

I suppose that might be true, if you take "classic liberalism" in a certain way. Probably not the way most people would take it.

That raises serious problems if you accept the argument that classical liberalism logically converges to modern liberalism.

It is with precisely the sort of classical liberalism that "logically converges to modern liberalism" that it is NOT true that American conservatism is built on classical liberalism.

So, you guys need to straighten out "classical liberalism". The other way of solving it is to point out that "post hoc ergo propter hoc" is a fail: that we recognized the conservative element after the rise of classical liberalism does not imply that the conservative element owes its essence to classical liberalism as such.

It is with precisely the sort of classical liberalism that "logically converges to modern liberalism" that it is NOT true that American conservatism is built on classical liberalism.

I agree with Tony here. It's perhaps only fair to add that I'm pretty skeptical of most grand "x converges to y" claims about history, sociology, nation founding, etc., anyway. I don't even like a phrase like "logically converges to" unless someone can give me a really convincing argument. And I've seen the argument here and have not found it convincing.

Indeed, very often it has seemed to me absolutely bizarre. A country is set up by people who are adamantly determined that, say, the various branches of government will be limited in their powers and mutually correcting. Along, eventually, come people who don't like that limitation, blatantly ignore the built-in checks and balances, and (essentially) overthrow the order thus created. In the process and afterwards, they do a lot of really bad stuff. But this is supposed (by reactionaries who disagree with some of the ideas of the founders) to show the worm that was in the apple from the very beginning of the founding of the country?! Ridiculous. It's part of a desire to make every story of a nation some kind of Greek tragedy, in which the wonderfully astute historian thinks he can see in hindsight the seeds of the downfall in the origin and can preen himself over how his ideas would never bring about such a downfall.

Sometimes the explanation of why institutions, nations, etc., go bad is nothing more than "the fall of man," "man is evil," "there are many evil people in the world." It isn't some deep ideological flaw in those who founded the institution or nation umpteen decades ago. The compulsion always to find one creates strained versions of history which unfortunately sound incredibly profound to those who write them.

A country is set up by people who are adamantly determined that, say, the various branches of government will be limited in their powers and mutually correcting. Along, eventually, come people who don't like that limitation...

I agree there isn't a compelling argument proving the convergence, but I think there are rational reasons to believe the connection. I'm positive you have seen all the arguments, but I will briefly explain my understanding of the connection.

The various branches of government are limited in their powers, meaning that government should not interfere with the free choices of the individual. Later generations of liberals realized that government isn't the only institution interfering with free choices. Large corporations, wealthy individuals, religious organizations, and powerful individuals can do the same, thus the same limitations on power must be expanded to society in general and the only way to accomplish that is with a totalitarian government, hence the not liking of the original limitation.

The various branches of government are limited in their powers, meaning that government should not interfere with the free choices of the individual.

"Meaning"?? I'd say rather, the various branches of government are limited in their powers in order to limit the amount of harm that any *one* branch can do to the body politic. Yes, to individuals, but also to the common good, and to individuals by way of doing harm to the common good. Checks and balances. Not because of some sweeping claim about the free choices of individuals. Just because man is fallen, and therefore it's better to have various fallen men whose desires and goals are to some degree independent cross-canceling each other's power to do evil.

I've always quirked a grin a bit when some commentator speaks of "gridlock on capitol hill" as if it's a per se a bad thing.

I'd say rather, the various branches of government are limited in their powers in order to limit the amount of harm that any *one* branch can do to the body politic.

If classic liberalism just is the idea that government size and power should be limited because man is fallen and government can do bad things, then you may be right that there isn't any meaningful connection to modern liberalism. I got the impression it was much more than that. In most context I've encountered, limited government is defended based on "rights" (e.g. freedom of religion, right to privacy, right to bear arms, etc.). For example, individuals have the right to religious expression and worship and government should not infringe on this right. The modern liberal expands this limitation on power to society as a whole, thus no social institution should infringe on that right. From that we get anti-discrimination laws protecting that right.

I've always quirked a grin a bit when some commentator speaks of "gridlock on capitol hill" as if it's a per se a bad thing.

I agree with you here. That's just the Constitution doing what it was intended to do.

In most context I've encountered, limited government is defended based on "rights" (e.g. freedom of religion, right to privacy, right to bear arms, etc.). For example, individuals have the right to religious expression and worship and government should not infringe on this right.

I'm going to be very blunt: Reactionaries think they are very clever because, if they happen to be high-IQ reactionaries, they can take your average Joe who talks about a right to freedom of religion (or whatever right it happens to be) and run rings around him by showing him that it has to be limited, that it isn't really absolute, that it has substantive boundaries and hence isn't content-neutral, etc.

That's fine when you're twenty-one. And maybe it's a good exercise for a college kid who never thought those things through to be forced to do so.

But when you're forty-five or older, running those rings around someone because you have an allergy to rights talk is nothing but a childish game.

Yes, yes, yes, the right to freedom of religion has limits. Yes, yes, yes, rights are not absolute. Yes, yes, yes, there are always tacit *substantive* constraints around claims of rights.

But guess what? Quite a lot of us got along for quite a lot of decades while talking each other's language and knowing the kinds of things we were including in our rights talk and what we weren't including. It wasn't just meaningless gibberish, and it wasn't just baloney. And it also meant that there are times when it is *really good* and even *important* to let people do things that are wrong and not to use force to stop them from doing so. The precise limits and extent of those times remain to be worked out, but if all we ever do is to "diss" rights talk and smugly pontificate about the substantive nature of government, that gets lost in the shuffle. What we end up with is, "Oh, we should have good guys in charge who only use force for good things. And by the way, someone like me is a pretty good candidate." We get a loss of the sense of how power can be abused. We get a loss of the sense of the importance and value of self-limitation in power, yes, *even to do good and stop bad*. We get a pining for authoritarian autocracy. Run, of course, by people we think we would like.

I have never once, never once, seen a person who had an automatic "tic" against rights talk who had what I would consider a good, wise, prudent sense of the proper limits of power. That "tic" has, every single time, been a sign, in some area or other, of pining for something akin to absolute power or at least for a dangerous degree of control on the part of "our guys."

Give me the conservative Joe who talks somewhat unthinkingly about a "right to freedom of religion" or a "right to freedom of speech" over the smart-aleck reactionary who despises him and can talk rings around him. Every time.

End of rant.

(No other contributor to W4 is implicated in the above rant.)

If classic liberalism just is the idea that government size and power should be limited because man is fallen and government can do bad things, then you may be right that there isn't any meaningful connection to modern liberalism. I got the impression it was much more than that. In most context I've encountered, limited government is defended based on "rights" (e.g. freedom of religion, right to privacy, right to bear arms, etc.).

Well, given the continued misunderstanding of the connection of "classical liberalism" and conservatism, I am going to do a post on it. In the next few days, I hope.

In the meantime, let me offer a significant point or two. These are points taken from the American founding, and while I want to be cautious about just how far that enterprise represents "classical liberalism", it often is considered right there in the midst of it that project as an example.

First, although the American founders did quite quickly get around to adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, they didn't put those into the Constitution right from the first moment of stating what a government is and does. They are amendments. Which implies that at a minimum, the founders (and many of their contemporaries) did not understand by "what government is" as _primarily_ being "to defend individual rights". They could not have set forth a Constitution that way if the very structure of what they understood liberal government to be as "defense of individual rights".

Secondly, our federal Constitution sets out what powers the FEDERAL government shall have, precisely because that entity was understood to be constructed, by man's ingenuity, out of powers that otherwise automatically belonged to the several states. Recall that in that parlance, "state" meant roughly what "independent country" means to us. Each state was a complete polity, having plenary political powers, answerable to God and no lower authority. The federal order received from the states some of their powers, but only some. In THAT connection, "limited government" was precisely the government which received ONLY those powers delegated to it, not plenary powers across the board.

As an example, eventually we cobbled together the disorder of imagining the federal order entails that no state government can restrict the exercise of religion, but in the founding period most of the states had an established religion, and the founders (mostly) thought that was the normal condition for government. It was not the normal condition of the FEDERAL government, because it belonged to the states. The (much) later event of reading the federal constitution to prohibit state intrusion on religious practice is certainly not something that necessarily flowed from what the Founders set up.

And it also meant that there are times when it is *really good* and even *important* to let people do things that are wrong and not to use force to stop them from doing so. The precise limits and extent of those times remain to be worked out...

True Tolerance by J. Budziszewski is an excellent working out of those limits and times.

Recall that in that parlance, "state" meant roughly what "independent country" means to us. Each state was a complete polity, having plenary political powers, answerable to God and no lower authority. The federal order received from the states some of their powers, but only some. In THAT connection, "limited government" was precisely the government which received ONLY those powers delegated to it, not plenary powers across the board.

One limitation on this was Article IV's guarantee of a "republican form of government" to the states. Whatever precisely that means. I don't believe it was ever seriously strained or tested. But I completely agree that this amounted to far less than the later incorporation of the Bill of Rights as applying to the states. And as you say, some of the states *did* initially have established religions, though most (all?) of them (eventually) actually forbade this in their *own* constitutions even independently of the Constitution.

In fact, as things stand, all or virtually all states have mirrors of all or virtually all of the items in the Bill of Rights in their state constitutions. These have various "tweaks," sometimes based on an attempt to make the rights more broad than they are in the U.S. Constitution. For example, our Michigan right to bear arms is explicitly stated to be for (inter alia) self defense, to make sure that Michiganders may have more sweeping "2nd amendment rights" than the Supreme Court at some point might grant just from the 2nd amendment alone.

And it also meant that there are times when it is *really good* and even *important* to let people do things that are wrong and not to use force to stop them from doing so. The precise limits and extent of those times remain to be worked out...

I do not have an allergic reaction to rights talk. The Catholic Church uses rights talk, so I do not deny that sense can be made of such talk. In the case of letting people do things that are wrong, this is a matter of practical judgement, not abstract rights. A right to do wrong implies that it is not within the authority of any government (Federal, State, or local) to regulate the particular wrong behavior. In the context of the United States, it is fair to argue that it is not within the Federal governments authority. For example, a federal law banning sodomy may be outside the authority of the Federal government while well within the authority of State governments, notwithstanding the Supreme Court.

Returning to Tony's comments about the Bill of Rights, it is my understanding that the "rights" were a restriction on the Federal governments power. Thus the "right to free speech" meant that the Federal government did not have the authority to regulate speech, but it did not mean that no government anywhere at anytime does not have that authority. There may be confusion about how "rights" were understood in the Bill of Rights and how modern people think of rights.

In the case of letting people do things that are wrong, this is a matter of practical judgement, not abstract rights. A right to do wrong implies that it is not within the authority of any government (Federal, State, or local) to regulate the particular wrong behavior.

I can quite easily imagine such a thing. For example: It is not within the authority of any government entity to regulate a person's mental act of coveting his neighbor's cow. If, in some imaginable sci-fi universe, some level of government or other (I really don't care how local) were to develop a "coveting sensor" that let off a beep when a particular person was engaging in the mental act of coveting, and that correctly identified the person engaging in it, it would be egregious totalitarianism for that level of government to use its coercive power--which ultimately amounts to the ability to use ultimate coercion if the person continues to refuse--to assess a punishment upon the person thus identified.

I can think of numerous other such examples. I realize that the phrase "a right to do wrong" is said to be a contradiction in terms, but explained as I have just explained it in the previous paragraph, it isn't a contradiction in terms. If one prefers to use the longer and clumsier statement (that it would be egregious totalitarianism to punish for it, etc.), then one can go ahead and do that.

Lydia,

I liked this comment of yours:

I can quite easily imagine such a thing. For example: It is not within the authority of any government entity to regulate a person's mental act of coveting his neighbor's cow. If, in some imaginable sci-fi universe, some level of government or other (I really don't care how local) were to develop a "coveting sensor" that let off a beep when a particular person was engaging in the mental act of coveting, and that correctly identified the person engaging in it, it would be egregious totalitarianism for that level of government to use its coercive power--which ultimately amounts to the ability to use ultimate coercion if the person continues to refuse--to assess a punishment upon the person thus identified.

It made me think of Philip Dick's book, later made into a pretty good (i.e. entertaining) movie by Spielberg called Minority Report. The premise of the book/movie is that in the future the government uses special psychics ("pre-cogs") who can see into the future people who are about to commit crimes, and then a special "PreCrime" police unit is sent in to apprehend the potential future criminal before the crime is committed. Fun sci-fi stuff from Dick, and as usual with him, worries about totalitarian control creep into the story fairly quickly!

I'm looking forward to Tony's new post on these topics as the comments have gone quite a bit off topic to my original post (although they are interesting so I'm letting the conversation run its course!)

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.