There's a lot of sound and fury on the right these days about nationalism. The argument is the old one about which witch is which? Which nationalism is the right one?
Is it civic nationalism, "an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres with traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights?" (La Wik)
Is it white nationalism, "a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity?" (La Wik)
Is it "blood and birth" nationalism, proposed by Vox Day? "Nations are not soil, they are blood and birth. Because nations are people, extended families that share genetics, language, religion, culture, and traditions." (Vox Day)
Here is what I think, I think that proper, effective nationalism is "whoever-shows-up" nationalism.
That's because I believe that every nation was forged in the blood of war and/or revolution. (Note how my "blood" is slightly different from Vox Day's blood). The cult of the nation is a cult that is put together after the formation of the nation, and its forging in the furnace of war, and the blood that was shed to win the war.
The cult of the nation is the lingering brotherhood of the men that fought in the war. And those guys would be? They would be the men that showed up and risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the conflict.
See, the nature of honor in men is the reputation for courage. So, if you are a man who has been through a nation-creating war, your reality and your reputation is the knowledge of the courage and the honor of the men that served with you, and their knowledge of your courage as you served with them in that war. And you and your comrades will come to set the tone and the narrative of the national founding. And so it always has been, and so it always should be.
But, obviously, as time goes by, the founding narrative will start to wear off, and new generations will arise, that knew not the founding generation. They will, of course, change and probably weaken the original notion of the nation that was created by the founders and their publicists. But that is life.
And so the founding narrative winds down and fragments, until another war. And then the nation will be redefined by the men that showed up.
We can see that in the founding generation that created the American Revolution, fought its war, and set up the nation of the United States of America. A telling point, I think, is that men that fought in the war were forever after known by their rank in the war. Thus, Colo. Hamilton, not Secretary Hamilton.
Same thing occurred after the Civil War, which is often called a Second Founding. President McKinley was called Major McKinley, after his rank in the Civil War.
After World War I there were tons of movies celebrating the heroes of that war, including, significantly in musicals like On Moonlight Bay, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. After the start of World War I, by the way, there were no more German Americans. They all became Americans, or else.
World War II, in my view, healed all the divisions of the 1930s, as the sons of immigrants, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Irish, you name it, were all sent off to war, and became buddies. (Note that the segregation of the armed forces meant that African Americans didn't get to be foxhole buddies with the 1900 immigrants. What a missed opportunity that was).
The most famous nation-forging operation in our modern memory is the genius foundation of Germany by Bismarck, who tricked all the various German states and statelets into joining in his three carefully calibrated victorious wars: in 1862 against Denmark; in 1866 against Austria; and in 1870 against France. At the end of it Germany proclaimed the Second Reich, a united German nation, in the very heart of France, and the palace of its absolute monarchs, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The point of these wars was not conquest; it was to unite the Germans into a single nation. The Germans subsequent problems can be attributed to the fact that Bismarck was followed by idiots that really had no understanding of what he had done and why.
So I believe that it doesn't matter who Americans are, whether they are the original founding stock, or today's "diverse" America. What matters is what happens the next time we have a war.
Of course, it is possible that the war we are talking about is the current "cold civil war." The winners will get to define what America is all about for the next 50 years.
The question will be: who shows up. They will get to define what the post-war America is all about.
Is it civic nationalism, "an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres with traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights?" (La Wik)
Is it white nationalism, "a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity?" (La Wik)
Is it "blood and birth" nationalism, proposed by Vox Day? "Nations are not soil, they are blood and birth. Because nations are people, extended families that share genetics, language, religion, culture, and traditions." (Vox Day)
Here is what I think, I think that proper, effective nationalism is "whoever-shows-up" nationalism.
That's because I believe that every nation was forged in the blood of war and/or revolution. (Note how my "blood" is slightly different from Vox Day's blood). The cult of the nation is a cult that is put together after the formation of the nation, and its forging in the furnace of war, and the blood that was shed to win the war.
The cult of the nation is the lingering brotherhood of the men that fought in the war. And those guys would be? They would be the men that showed up and risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the conflict.
See, the nature of honor in men is the reputation for courage. So, if you are a man who has been through a nation-creating war, your reality and your reputation is the knowledge of the courage and the honor of the men that served with you, and their knowledge of your courage as you served with them in that war. And you and your comrades will come to set the tone and the narrative of the national founding. And so it always has been, and so it always should be.
But, obviously, as time goes by, the founding narrative will start to wear off, and new generations will arise, that knew not the founding generation. They will, of course, change and probably weaken the original notion of the nation that was created by the founders and their publicists. But that is life.
And so the founding narrative winds down and fragments, until another war. And then the nation will be redefined by the men that showed up.
We can see that in the founding generation that created the American Revolution, fought its war, and set up the nation of the United States of America. A telling point, I think, is that men that fought in the war were forever after known by their rank in the war. Thus, Colo. Hamilton, not Secretary Hamilton.
Same thing occurred after the Civil War, which is often called a Second Founding. President McKinley was called Major McKinley, after his rank in the Civil War.
After World War I there were tons of movies celebrating the heroes of that war, including, significantly in musicals like On Moonlight Bay, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. After the start of World War I, by the way, there were no more German Americans. They all became Americans, or else.
World War II, in my view, healed all the divisions of the 1930s, as the sons of immigrants, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Irish, you name it, were all sent off to war, and became buddies. (Note that the segregation of the armed forces meant that African Americans didn't get to be foxhole buddies with the 1900 immigrants. What a missed opportunity that was).
The most famous nation-forging operation in our modern memory is the genius foundation of Germany by Bismarck, who tricked all the various German states and statelets into joining in his three carefully calibrated victorious wars: in 1862 against Denmark; in 1866 against Austria; and in 1870 against France. At the end of it Germany proclaimed the Second Reich, a united German nation, in the very heart of France, and the palace of its absolute monarchs, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The point of these wars was not conquest; it was to unite the Germans into a single nation. The Germans subsequent problems can be attributed to the fact that Bismarck was followed by idiots that really had no understanding of what he had done and why.
So I believe that it doesn't matter who Americans are, whether they are the original founding stock, or today's "diverse" America. What matters is what happens the next time we have a war.
Of course, it is possible that the war we are talking about is the current "cold civil war." The winners will get to define what America is all about for the next 50 years.
The question will be: who shows up. They will get to define what the post-war America is all about.
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