Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, July 29, 2010 8:19:37 PM
This is not going to be a long essay. I have plans to write a thorough refutation of all nationalist nonsense in the near future, so I won't go into detail now. Instead, this is a simple observation about a single nonsensical aspect of nationalism. It is oddly an aspect nationalism shares with modern liberalism ("
It
Is All In How You Say It"). And that aspect is, that a statement is judged not so much by what is said, but who says it. That is, the same thing can be said by "our" group, and it will be treated as acceptable, even genius, but when said by an outsider, it is wrong. ("
Eurocentrism?
Racism? Liberal Traits All", "
The
Racism of the Left", "
The
Costs of Understanding", "
The
Threat
of Perfection", "
Utopianism
and
Disaster", "
The
Danger Inherent in Banning "Bad Ideas"", "
In
Defense
of
Discrimination", "
A
Statute of Limitations for Race", "
How
to
Handle
Idiots", "
Back
Again", "
Tolerance, Agnostic Prostelytizing and Liberal Activism", "
Non-Judgmental Ethics?").
This struck me today because I was considering the horror with which many greet the revelation that Lincoln considered repatriating freed slaves to Africa, as he worried that American whites would have troubles living alongside blacks. However, the same people have no problem when Marcus Garvey said effectively the same thing just a short time later.
A similar nonsensical position existed with the writings of Zionist nationalists, who claimed that Jews could never live among the gentiles. That was considered an acceptable position, while, at the same time, the writing of various nationalist writers in many European countries, were considered unacceptable for writing the same thing.
And the same thing happens with liberalism today. Feminists claim women's minds give them a "unique perspective" which we must include for "diversity" and they are praised. Someone suggests women choose different majors due to biology and he is pilloried. Similarly, it is racist to suggest there is a correlation between race and crime, or that blacks have less success in America, but only if you aren't liberal. If you use those arguments to argue for more programs, or affirmative action and they are fine, even laudable.
Which is the problem with nationalism. It is not a rational thesis. Just as the Nazis often rejected valid arguments as "Jewish science" or the Communists ignored facts they disliked as "bourgeois", the modern nationalists tend to evaluate arguments based not on merit but on identity. And I don't think I need to tell anyone how little success attends such an approach.
Of course there are many, many more argument against nationalism, but they will have to wait. For now I wanted to point out how nonsensical it was to judge an argument by who made it, and that the same stupidity still occurred among modern liberals.
POSTSCRIPT
Oddly, the most recent theory coming closest to Nazi biological determinism is the quest to determine that homosexuality is biological. The left wants this, not to show that they are somehow defective, as would have been the Nazi purpose, but to make an argument that homosexuality is not a choice and thus deserves civil rights protection. (I have argued biology doe snot trump ethics, but in our modern victim based society, with its penchant for biological determinism, I doubt that argument will go far.)
To see my arguments on this topic read "
The
Underwhelming Exception", "
Biology
as Justification", "
Cultural
Rules", "
Mental
Illness", "
Don't
Liberals Notice the Contradictions?", "
Myths
of Homosexuality", "
Follow
Up", "
Correlation
and Causation Revisted", "
Just
Asking For It ", "
A
Question About Biological Theories of Sexual Identity", "
Update", "
Insufficient
Skepticism" and "
Biology and Ethics".
I mention this not only because it is relevant to the post above, but because, in addition to writing a comprehensive dismissal of nationalism, I want to write two other posts. One on our folly in trying to turn every choice and behavior into a "mental illness", "disorder", "dysfunction" or other syndrome, and another on our tendency to buy into biological determinism, not matter how poorly it fits with the remaining beliefs we hold.
UPDATE 07/30/2010:
I don't want anyone to think my criticism of Zionist nationalism in any way translates into opposition to Israel. First, while the creation of Zionist theories, Israel is hardly a nationalist state in the traditional sense, as the significant number of non-Jewish citizens attest. Second, though it does rely upon national identity for new citizens, that is the result of its role as a refuge against the nationalism of others. Ideally, we would not need a state based on a national identity as a refuge, but the reality makes that idealism impossible. So, while I am no fan of nationalism, or identity politics, Israel's existence is a regrettable necessity arising from the near universal unwillingness of nations at the time of its founding to provide a refuge for Jews.