Why nationalism is stupid

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Global Freedom. Government and Politics. Health Care. Monetary Policy. England was the mother country to us. The country where many of our teachers went to university. The politics of America has tainted this understanding of Englishness for almost years.

This Brexit thing is more about getting the economic balance right. People should be able to earn a living in parts of this country where it is now impossible to do so because all investment seems to have been concentrated in the South East. The reasons people voted Brexit are much more about unfairness than anything else.

English nationalism is definitely driving brexit. About time too. Note the poll did not include either 16 and 17 year olds or EU citizens both of which groups will be allowed to vote in an indyref as they were in the last one. In absolute numbers the gap last time was , people. There are around , adult EU citizens living in Scotland who will have a personal stake in the outcome.

Denied a vote in the Brexit referendum they will be able to effectively vote Remain by voting Yes and get to stay stably and securely in EU member Scotland.

I am a Scot, and we shall choose our own path, TVM. The exceptionalism of the English and their tattered remnants of Empire, briefly touched on in this article, is clearly alive and well. All welcome to apply for Scottish citizenship who are resident in the Former UK. Bon voyage, Green and Pleasant Land. We or at least I will miss you. I am not even a little bit Scottish but I do feel British and the departure of Scotland from the UK would be a fatal wound to that part of my identity.

You wish us the best as the 51st State of the US. That will not be the best and I think hardly anyone wants it.

I know the provocations have been very great but surely a year relationship is worth saving, if you can? They will, I hope, continue to improve. Rationally speaking, I think after Brexit, one of two things are going to happen. Either a. In the latter case, things will continue much as they are.

You seem to believe in the former. Physically Scotland is going nowhere. You are taking a radically different and alarmingly isolationist path to us Scots citizens. We are not going to suck it and see. We have reached tipping point. We wish you well, truly. There is no turning back. Of course, you could emigrate here, alias. Scotland with its isles is roughly the same size as England. We have 5. You are 58 million Down There piled high on top of each other gasping for air. It would be nice if all English realised how many people in Scotland feel like Jack I think, a lot and would see that they have a problem if they want to save the Union.

Back in September I remember the Scots being told that the details of Scottish independence would be worked out in about 18 months, including such knotty problems as what to do with Sterling which no-one seemed to have an answer to. Back in June I remember everyone in the UK being told that the trade deal with the EU after Brexit would be the easiest in history and that the UK would be soon be practically part of the European free trade area without having to accept freedom of movement and while still able to make its own trade deals again, although no-one could explain how that would work.

Calling Project Fear threatening and lying and calling it other names was not a sensible thing to do, in or To me, Project Fear seemed more like common sense, in both cases. A second Scottish independence referendum would have the additional problem that it would involve a hard border across the middle of the island of Great Britain, since of course Scotland wants to join the EU, which England is leaving.

I think this is an even more awkward problem than the problem of giving an independent Scotland power over its currency. You can respond by accusing me of being negative about the UK if you are a Brexiteer or Scotland if a Scottish Nationalist.

It is your right, and the right of all Scots, to say that your emotional attachment to an independent Scotland is so great that you are prepared to pay the economic price. Just as Brexiteers are entitled to say that they are so disenchanted by the EU they want out even if there is an economic cost of that. If the UK gets Brexit and Scotland gets independence, I think it unfortunately likely that historically these will both be seen as the same kind of mistake, prompted by similar emotions.

Perhaps both are going to happen. In that case I can only hope that the consequences are not too dire, for anyone. Och, alias, you demonstrate the exceptionalism to which the author of this excellent piece refers when you write There will be a border between England and the rest of the world on the 1st November Scotland will be the continuer state, Member 28 of the EU, and we shall continue as before, freely travelling working, setting up businesses and retiring in 27 countries, as now.

You clearly have no idea about the intensity of the attacks on Scotland during Indyref1. They lied to our pensioners, warning that the UK would stop paying their pensions…I could go on. Your language tells me everything I need to know alias. You are the country erecting borders, setting up barriers, and ejecting Furriners, alias. It is the natural order of things. Finally reflect on your own words, alias. However it remains the case that if the Rest-of-the-UK and Scotland were to share a currency, they will need a currency union.

This is not likely to be easy to negotiate since both sides will perfectly reasonably want their own interests to be taken into consideration, but neither will want to grant the other a veto. Personally I think it would be better to split the currencies, starting with a Bretton-Woods-style peg but gradually decoupling them. Of course, if called upon, both would defend their nation with violence.

Lowry does make an important concession that sets his book above those by other nationalist apologists like Yoram Hazony. In his book Nationalism: A Religion , Hayes creates a useful taxonomy of nationalisms. Few American nationalists fit into this category, but those who do are certainly nationalists. Conservatives like Lowry rightly fear and criticize the rise of avowed socialism on the left.

They understand the dangers inherent in socialism and communism and the human suffering that inevitably comes with them. But nationalists, mostly overseas, have an ideological history that comes close to the communists for mass slaughter and tragedy. In a pinch, some progressives don a Che Guevara shirt and shift their rhetorical emphasis to wage disparities or support for what they mistakenly believe are socialist welfare policies in Northern Europe.

Excusing it is bad enough; arguing to give it another try is completely unreasonable. The same standard should apply to nationalism. He primarily does so by selectively and misleadingly quoting scholars of nationalism who disagree with him and, oddly enough, praising the effects of grand military boondoggles and wars. It is blatantly unfair and inaccurate to label every nationalist a fascist, Nazi, or racist. But many people think there is a racial, ethnic, or xenophobic aspect to most forms of nationalism for good reason: there is—as many of the scholars cited by Lowry agree, as do a large segment of the most nationalistic subgroup of American voters.

Lowry should have addressed that head on rather than tiptoe around the issue, redefine nationalism, and accuse those who disagree with his new definition of nationalism of smearing his ideology.

In a few more years, hopefully, conservatives will shed nationalism and embrace some other intellectual trend with nary an admission that things changed. Live Now. Cato Journal. Current Archives About Advertise. Two years later, Sir Winston was elected president of the Congress of The Hague that led to the formation of the Council of Europe, the first political precedent for the European Union.

However, if forced to set a date for the birthday of the European integration process, the best would be May 9th, ; when Robert Schuman, Minister of Foreign Affairs from a victorious France, proposed to share the coal of Alsace the regional nucleus that launched conflict in the two previous World Wars with Germany. Never again would a united Europe suffer war within its borders. Therefore, my sense of justice would be highly rewarded if those people that voted in favour of Brexit would be sent back in time to live in the Europe of sovereign nation states that they all seem to like so much; the Europe before , a year that divided the 20 th century into two opposing halves.

The first of which witnessed poverty, crisis, war and genocide in societies whose primary political leaders were called Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Stalin. The second half of which witnessed seven decades of peace, human rights and prosperity in a Europe governed by the hellish Commission and the luciferous European Parliament.

The people that voted for the Brexit did so in order to reaffirm the sovereignty and unity of the United Kingdom, but its most probable result will be the UK dissolution by way of a Scottish referendum and its subordination to the United States of America.

Regarding the dangers of immigration and terrorism, almost everyone that has carried out a terrorist attack on British soil possesses an English passport. May be. All things that were part of the original Spinelli project and of the constitution that the French and Dutch rejected in the referendums. Any comparison with what any country spends at its own national level is an excellent argument in favor of Brussels.