What is nationalism? Can there be good nationalism?

[Ecthy]

Exclusion is always a part of nationalism and/or of nation-building. A nation defines itself also by how it's different from other nations.

[Ecthy]

Care to elaborate on that suspicion, PA?

[Solly]

"Our teacher is a Pole in his early 30s and he confronts us with essays from Gellner, Hutchinson, Smith, etc"

I get the impression you harbour a hatred against Polish nationalities? Is that a good nationalism?

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
a good patriot does not say to a muslim seeking to be american that he and his kind are all terrorists and then proceed to try and make his life miserable. rather, he welcomes him, and tries to help integrate the muslim into the american way, so before long, he is no longer muslim, but american.

So you can not be both American and muslim?

[East Street Trader]

It comes down to this. Human beings can control their environment well by co-operating.

As time has gone by the extent of that co-operation has become very extensive. Not just in terms of huge construction projects and huge co-operative industrial or commercial enterprises but also in such things as banking systems and international communications.

Such levels of co-operation require a lot of mutual trust and cohesion among those co-operating. Also a lot of confidence that conditions will remain stable. So the political unit has steadily grown - family to tribe to city state to nation state.

But this process has been associated with conflict. And the nation state has proved just as effective in co-ordinating people for war as it has for peace. Hence the appalling destructiveness of the Great War and the Second World War.

And I have come to think that the political institutions associated with the nation state are, in the modern world, now limiting factors. Which explains some of the current moves away fromm nationalism - the European Union, the United Nations, International courts, the Internet.

I suspect that controlling the environment now calls for a supra-national approach. Global warming, the threat of nuclear war, space exploration, developing a means to distribute wealth otherwise than through the wage mechanism - all these challenges are beyond a mere nation state.

We must take our level of co-operation yet one stage further.

So my answer to your question is no, there can be no good nationalism.

[Ecthy]

Not at all. It's just very interesting to be told stuff about national identity by a man who comes from Poland but lives in Germany. If "state" is "authority", then what is "nation"? "society", I said, but no, he's a part of the German society, yet not of the German nation. "community", ah.

[Ecthy]

You on the other hand express a lot of hatred against minorities in your sig.

[Bereta_Eder]

nationalism is prevalent in cities like Manchester where Stewie comes from because there are too many immigrnats It's like a drug to help him close his eyes to a reality that disgustes him.

[Solly]

"You on the other hand express a lot of hatred against minorities in your sig."

That's bull**** and you know it. My sig just exposes the hatred from police against the majority..

[Solly]

"nationalism is prevalent in cities like Manchester where Stewie comes from because there are too many immigrnats It's like a drug to help him close his eyes to a reality that disgustes him."

Tell me about Macedonia.

[Bereta_Eder]

You know it's true.

[Ecthy]

What about Macedonia? Is it true there's a country and a Greek province named that? Do both area contain people of a Macedonian nation? Which bears the name justifiedly?

[Q Classic]

So you can not be both American and muslim?

tsk.

you know exactly what i mean.

i look foreign, can speak foreign, and in the boxes i pick asian-american/pacific islander, but i'm not so much asian- or korean-american as i am just american.

[Bereta_Eder]

Ecthelion OTOh has lived his life in the collapse of a dream. In eastern Germany. He hasn't gone through th psyche cleansing of western germans. His country was an oppressive regime and all of the sudden he's reuniated with his better half.
Unemployment, disellusion, still he has held better than Stewie.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
you know exactly what i mean.

Sure, just couldn't resist