You Support (Civic) Nationalism More Than You Think You Do

[JasonBlack]

- Free Tibet? You support nationalism
- Stand with Ukraine? You support nationalism
- Glad we fought the War of Independence? You support nationalism.

Civic Nationalism doesn't have to mean racial superiority, ethnocentrism, violent war, etc. All it means is 
1) You believe that different regions with different cultural makeup should have sovereignty over how the rules that make sense for their given culture. 
2) You support other country's rights to self-determination, and oppose foreign despots who seek to overtake them
3) You realize that the only way to get through a period of crisis is to focus on what is the same about people, and not what is different. This doesn't mean we can't celebrate differences. It just means that those aren't things we're really going to bond over. People bond over what they have in common: common interests, common experiences, common triumphs/losses, common values. 
4) You are a okay with some type of immigration. In fact, sometimes you encourage it, but only immigration of people who will reinforce your country's values and prosperity, not people who will be a net-burden or oppose those values. 
5) You believe in making decisions based on what is in the best interest of your country, rather than making ideologically-driven sacrifices for foreign nations (ex: Ukraine and Russia   )

[pbrower2a]

OK.

1. The United States is more an empire than a nation-state. This I say not so much with respect to having a crowned empire as having no dominant group by ethnicity deciding that their group can dictate how others live -- that other groups do not have similar, parallel rights.

2. Few national borders can perfectly delineate a nation. There may be ambiguities about people living across some border. It is a commonplace idea among Russians that Ukrainians are practically identical to Russians with tiny sibolleths of pronunciation. This said, the age of empire-building by obliterating the sovereignty of people who wish to keep their independence is rightly over.

3. Because America is not a true ethnic state, it has multiple traditions based on ethnic order, all of them equally valid. We have a strange continuum between "white" and "black", and our convention is that anyone who seems to have any ancestry among native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa is black -- and no personal achievement can whitewash the "blackness" out of even Barack Obama, one of our best Presidents ever.

So what do we share? A common educational system that teaches, among other things, what it means to be an American. Part of that is a recognition that Chinatown is as valid a part of America as is Little Italy. A Constitution protects our right to be what we are, if not to abuse others.

4. The only way in which to deter immigration is to make one's country unattractive to immigrants. For humanitarian reasons alone we must tolerate immigration of refugees who typically fail to return to where they came from. Refugees typically become model citizens because they know as people who know nothing else and especially not tyranny what "America" really means.

5. A patriot wants his country (or as I hope America remains, the "Empire of Liberty") to be a more congenial place for those who live here. That means that prosperity is no pipe dream and that liberty remains intact. One may disagree on what is best for America, but I am satisfied that despotism, peonage, the support of some concept of the Will of God to be imposed on all, Marxist-Leninist economics, and some other perversities are not to be done.

[Anthony '58]

(06-30-2022, 11:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: OK.

1. The United States is more an empire than a nation-state. This I say not so much with respect to having a crowned empire as having no dominant group by ethnicity deciding that their group can dictate how others live -- that other groups do not have similar, parallel rights.

2. Few national borders can perfectly delineate a nation. There may be ambiguities about people living across some border. It is a commonplace idea among Russians that Ukrainians are practically identical to Russians with tiny sibolleths of pronunciation. This said, the age of empire-building by obliterating the sovereignty of people who wish to keep their independence is rightly over.

3. Because America is not a true ethnic state, it has multiple traditions based on ethnic order, all of them equally valid. We have a strange continuum between "white" and "black", and our convention is that anyone who seems to have any ancestry among native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa is black -- and no personal achievement can whitewash the "blackness" out of even Barack Obama, one of our best Presidents ever.

So what do we share? A common educational system that teaches, among other things, what it means to be an American.  Part of that is a recognition that Chinatown is as valid a part of America as is Little Italy. A Constitution protects our right to be what we are, if not to abuse others.

4. The only way in which to deter immigration is to make one's country unattractive to immigrants. For humanitarian reasons alone we must tolerate immigration of refugees who typically fail to return to where they came from. Refugees typically become model citizens because they know as people who know nothing else and especially not tyranny what "America" really means.

5. A patriot wants his country (or as I hope America remains, the "Empire of Liberty") to be a more congenial place for those who live here.  That means that prosperity is no pipe dream and that liberty remains intact. One may disagree on what is best for America, but I am satisfied that despotism, peonage,  the support of some concept of the Will of God to be imposed on all, Marxist-Leninist economics,  and some other perversities are not to be done.

1. This is disappearing rapidly, as the far right is doing all they can to make America as Christian as Saudi Arabia is Muslim, and India is Hindu.

2. The problem with Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine was caused by Khrushchev in 1954, when he arbitrarily tore Crimea, the Donbas, Luhansk, and Kharkiv from Russia and handed them over to Ukraine, in the name of "de-Stalinization" - despite the fact that Stalin was a Georgian, not a Russian.

3. Brazil does race a lot more fairly, classifying persons of mixed race (such as former MMA fighter Anderson Silva) as "brown" rather than "black."

4. Twice in the first half of the 1920s, we passed anti-immigration laws - and by 1926 the unemployment rate, which had been 12% in 1921, went all the way down to 1.9%, the lowest ever in peacetime - and everyone ran out and bought cars and radios, and had their homes wired up with electricity and telephone service for the first time.

5. If some other perversities are not to be done, a lot of Republicans, chief among them Rick Scott, have not received that memo: Their platform would take us back to the days of poorhouses (you might want to peruse the "New York City Farm Colony" entry on wikipedia), child labor, 72-hour work weeks, no minimum wage, no overtime pay, and unions becoming essentially non-existent (which the passage of a federal right-to-work law would do).

[Eric the Green]

(06-30-2022, 10:26 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - Free Tibet? You support nationalism
- Stand with Ukraine? You support nationalism
- Glad we fought the War of Independence? You support nationalism.

Civic Nationalism doesn't have to mean racial superiority, ethnocentrism, violent war, etc. All it means is 
1) You believe that different regions with different cultural makeup should have sovereignty over how the rules that make sense for their given culture. 
2) You support other country's rights to self-determination, and oppose foreign despots who seek to overtake them
3) You realize that the only way to get through a period of crisis is to focus on what is the same about people, and not what is different. This doesn't mean we can't celebrate differences. It just means that those aren't things we're really going to bond over. People bond over what they have in common: common interests, common experiences, common triumphs/losses, common values. 
4) You are a okay with some type of immigration. In fact, sometimes you encourage it, but only immigration of people who will reinforce your country's values and prosperity, not people who will be a net-burden or oppose those values. 
5) You believe in making decisions based on what is in the best interest of your country, rather than making ideologically-driven sacrifices for foreign nations (ex: Ukraine and Russia   )

1) I only think there should be some more-local authority within world-government authority; that federalism is better than top-down rule over everyone. That's because local authority is easier for people to have some voice in, rather than one too large and distant. But I don't think has anything to do with cultural make-up.

Different cultures are worth supporting as part of our heritage, rather than insisting that everyone have the same culture imposed on them by one culture. But different cultures can and do co-exist within one sovereignty. To think otherwise I think, yes, is a type of ethnocentrism. My heritage is the entire world, and all cultures in it contribute to my being, based on their inherent value as I perceive it and need it, not because of which nation, religion, gender or race I belong to.

2) The key here is "despots", as with #1 and all of these supposed nationalist concerns. A "country" is an arbitrary border, a way of regulating the flow of people and goods so that people in some places are not overwhelmed by others from elsewhere. But the notion has no meaning or value beyond that. Borders of countries are ideally nothing more than a way to have more units of local control, as I mentioned in #1. The value is not nationalism, but democracy: the ability of people to have a voice in who rules and how; the consent of the governed as the Declaration of Independence put it.

Am I glad we fought the war of independence? NO. These and all disputes between local authorities should be resolved peacefully, with the help of the larger global authority--, which up until now has consisted of power alliances and empires, but which since 1920 has also been under the purview of nations joined together for the purpose of peace between peoples, which is the basis for the eventual world federation which I see being developed, with teeth, in the years leading up to 2165. And that also maintained in its power by the consent of the governed, with the right of the people to overthrow any despotic rule by anyone, anywhere. (Interesting that 1920 and 2165 are both 3T years, as was the "New World Order" declared in 1991)

3) As Barack Obama mentioned in that great U of Illinois 2018 speech I keep posting here, "common ground is out there", and love is something always functioning and available to call on, (indeed in our own heart chakra, as I say, which we can each feel and know), if we choose it instead of fear. It is what "Dino" wrote in his song "Get Together". We hold the key to love and fear in our hand, and it's there at our command. It has nothing to with what is the same about people at all, in contrast to others. "It's just in the way people treat each other" as Obama said. History shows the power of fear, so common ground doesn't always win out, he said. But love is available, as Dino said; it's our choice. Love, not sameness, is the value to uphold, indeed that love, that golden rule, is the "same" value that makes people "the same", here, there and everywhere. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, not Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump.

4) The only valid principle in your statement #4 is just what I said in #2, what you call not being a net-burden. Too many people and goods crossing borders too soon, without regulation and a level playing field, without human rights being guaranteed everywhere, is a burden. Immigration (and refugee status as needed in case of disaster) otherwise should be open to everyone, not just for those "people who will reinforce your country's values and prosperity." Especially not "prosperity"; that goes directly against what's on our Statue of Liberty. But our country's values? Again, that is democracy, as defined in our Declaration: just legitimacy conferred on authorities by the consent of the governed. 

In our time yes, immigrants still need to learn our nation's founding principles and documents and swear allegiance to them. That's what constitutes "people who will reinforce your country's values" in the USA already, by law. In the future, when these are the same and guaranteed everywhere, as they should be, everyone will have already sworn to them as part of their basic education growing up. In that sense, I am something of a nationalist, as I believe the USA at its core has declared what is to be obtained by everyone everywhere, including within the USA itself, and that those who believe in any kind of restrictive authority that takes away "these inalienable rights" are incorrect. That does not include the Second Amendment, though, as currently interpreted as an individual right (except for the right of the consensual world federation and local authorities to enforce human rights by its government-organized and well-regulated militias). And our Constitution includes the ability to amend it by large majorities of both the federal and local authorities.

5) And that, my friend, democracy and human rights, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of same as approved by all nations in the 1940s, is indeed the value and "ideology" worth sacrificing for, regardless whether it's for your nation or for any other nations. That's why supporting Ukraine is crucial, so that it is ruled by consent of the governed, not by one mad tyrant. That's also why we are not as the USA itself invading Ukraine, but supporting the people there in their fight against tyranny and genocide. We the USA or other nations should not do such an invasion, even if Russia did not have nuclear weapons. But a world federation should do that.

Despotism and tyranny now includes violation of one nation's or local authority or gang's army by one invading another and imposing its rule over another people. In a working world federation, this would mean one local authority not dominating others, and no imperial ambitions, politically OR economically, but respecting their rights of each within their assigned purview so that the value of a degree of local access by the people is preserved. And respecting human rights of all people everywhere, enforced by the global authority so that NO local (or world) authority or despot has the right to take those human rights away; absolutely none, anytime, anywhere in the world!

And these rights should be expanded according to the two following revolutionary movements beyond the democratic: the rights of workers and consumers or small businesses not to be dominated by oligarchy or wealth that impoverishes others (aka "freedom from want" as FDR declared), and the rights of Nature too (together this could be called the worldwide Green New Deal). It is not about what's in the best interests of our country alone, but what is in the best interests of all people everywhere, because we are all interdependent now in an irreversibly global society.

These days in the USA, it is crucial to have the Democratic Party in charge as much as possible, not the Republican Party, because the former supports these basic values and the other directly opposes them.

These values may be considered a bit utopian in some times and places. As Obama said, there will still be problems and disagreements. But we can aspire to progress, if not perfection.

Thanks to brower, who (this time!) has made the points with more brevity

[Eric the Green]

(08-31-2022, 11:34 AM)Anthony 58 Wrote:

(06-30-2022, 11:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: OK.

1. The United States is more an empire than a nation-state. This I say not so much with respect to having a crowned empire as having no dominant group by ethnicity deciding that their group can dictate how others live -- that other groups do not have similar, parallel rights.

2. Few national borders can perfectly delineate a nation. There may be ambiguities about people living across some border. It is a commonplace idea among Russians that Ukrainians are practically identical to Russians with tiny sibolleths of pronunciation. This said, the age of empire-building by obliterating the sovereignty of people who wish to keep their independence is rightly over.

3. Because America is not a true ethnic state, it has multiple traditions based on ethnic order, all of them equally valid. We have a strange continuum between "white" and "black", and our convention is that anyone who seems to have any ancestry among native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa is black -- and no personal achievement can whitewash the "blackness" out of even Barack Obama, one of our best Presidents ever.

So what do we share? A common educational system that teaches, among other things, what it means to be an American.  Part of that is a recognition that Chinatown is as valid a part of America as is Little Italy. A Constitution protects our right to be what we are, if not to abuse others.

4. The only way in which to deter immigration is to make one's country unattractive to immigrants. For humanitarian reasons alone we must tolerate immigration of refugees who typically fail to return to where they came from. Refugees typically become model citizens because they know as people who know nothing else and especially not tyranny what "America" really means.

5. A patriot wants his country (or as I hope America remains, the "Empire of Liberty") to be a more congenial place for those who live here.  That means that prosperity is no pipe dream and that liberty remains intact. One may disagree on what is best for America, but I am satisfied that despotism, peonage,  the support of some concept of the Will of God to be imposed on all, Marxist-Leninist economics,  and some other perversities are not to be done.

1. This is disappearing rapidly, as the far right is doing all they can to make America as Christian as Saudi Arabia is Muslim, and India is Hindu.

To be opposed, and will be.

Quote:2. The problem with Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine was caused by Khrushchev in 1954, when he arbitrarily tore Crimea, the Donbas, Luhansk, and Kharkiv from Russia and handed them over to Ukraine, in the name of "de-Stalinization" - despite the fact that Stalin was a Georgian, not a Russian.

There is no reason anymore for people to fight to be part of a nation with the same or uniform ethnic group. There's no reason Russians can't live in Ukraine and vice versa. The value now is human rights for all. Putin takes those away; Ukraine provides them. That's the issue.

Quote:3. Brazil does race a lot more fairly, classifying persons of mixed race (such as former MMA fighter Anderson Silva) as "brown" rather than "black."

Maybe so. Mixed race will be more and more the rule rather than the exception everywhere in our 130-year old global society.

Quote:4. Twice in the first half of the 1920s, we passed anti-immigration laws - and by 1926 the unemployment rate, which had been 12% in 1921, went all the way down to 1.9%, the lowest ever in peacetime - and everyone ran out and bought cars and radios, and had their homes wired up with electricity and telephone service for the first time.

Maybe that's because in the previous 30 years so many new immigrants came, not because they had been eliminated for two years

Quote:5. If some other perversities are not to be done, a lot of Republicans, chief among them Rick Scott, have not received that memo: Their platform would take us back to the days of poorhouses (you might want to peruse the "New York City Farm Colony" entry on wikipedia), child labor, 72-hour work weeks, no minimum wage, no overtime pay, and unions becoming essentially non-existent (which the passage of a federal right-to-work law would do).

I agree.