Trump's homeland speech

There were some significant highlights in President Trump's recent speech to the United Nations. He went well beyond the usual right-liberal talking points in defending national sovereignty against those pushing for global governance.

He said, for instance:

Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth. That is why America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination. I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions.

He also argued for a change in refugee policy:

As we see in Jordan, the most compassionate policy is to place refugees as close to their homes as possible, to ease their eventual return to be part of the rebuilding process. This approach also stretches finite resources to help far more people, increasing the impact of every dollar spent.

He firmly rejected ceding power to UN agencies:

...the United States will provide no support and recognition to the International Criminal Court. As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority. The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy. America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from new forms of coercion and domination.

He spoke out against uncontrolled, illegal immigration:

The United States is also working with partners in Latin America to confront threats to sovereignty from uncontrolled migration. Tolerance for human struggling and human smuggling and trafficking is not humane. It is a horrible thing that is going on, at levels that nobody has ever seen before. It is very, very cruel. Illegal immigration funds criminal networks, ruthless gangs, and the flow of deadly drugs. Illegal immigration exploits vulnerable populations and hurts hardworking citizens and has produced a vicious cycle of crime, violence, and poverty. Only by upholding national borders, destroying criminal gangs can we break the cycle and establish a real foundation for prosperity.

We recognize the right of every nation in this room to set its own immigration policy in accordance with its national interests, just as we ask other countries to respect our own right to do the same, which we are doing. That is one reason the United States will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. Migration should not be governed by an international body, unaccountable to our own citizens. Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again.

There was support for Polish efforts to stand up to the EU:

In Poland, the great people are standing up for their independence, their security, and their sovereignty.

There was a powerful endorsement of a humanity made up of distinct, unique nations:

Many countries are pursuing their own unique visions, building their own hopeful futures, and chasing their own wonderful dreams of destiny, of legacy, and of a home. The whole world is richer. Humanity is better because of this beautiful constellation of nations, each very special, each very unique, each shining brightly in its part of the world. In each one, we see also promise of a people bound together by a shared past and working toward a common future.

He spoke of his patriotic feeling as an American:

We celebrate our heroes, we treasure our traditions, and, above all, we love our country. Inside everyone in this great chamber today, and everyone listening all around the globe, there is the heart of a patriot that feels the same powerful love for your nation, the same intense loyalty to your homeland, the passion that burns in the hearts of patriots and the souls of nations has inspired reform and revolution, sacrifice and selflessness, scientific breakthroughs and magnificent works of art.

Our task is not to erase it, but to embrace it—to build with it, to draw on its ancient wisdom, and to find within it the will to make our nations greater, our regions safer, and the world better.

And he finished with this:

Together, let us choose a future of patriotism, prosperity, and pride. Let us choose peace and freedom over domination and defeat. Let us come here to this place to stand for our people and their nations. Forever strong, forever sovereign, forever just. Forever thankful for the grace and the goodness and the glory of God. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the nations of the world.

It's unusual to hear this from a mainstream politician. If you read through these quotes, President Trump recognises that:

1. It is the uniqueness of nations that truly enriches and embellishes the world, not open borders.

2. It is the souls of nations that have inspired great art and a willingness to act selflessly for the common good.

3. That loyalty matters.

4. That nations help to preserve our legacy and to create a sense of home.

5. That nations are made up of peoples united by memory and traditions.

6. That a genuine refugee policy would seek to return people to their own homelands once the conflict finishes.

7. That those attempting to migrate illegally should instead work towards making their own homelands better places to live.

This is not a blanket endorsement of President Trump (he has yet, for instance, to secure the southern border of the U.S.). But he is continuing to push the Overton window toward a more open discussion of significant issues.

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

Kristol wants to replace the white American working class

Here is a good traditionalist quote from Abbé Grégoire Celier, who I believe is a French cleric affiliated with the Society of St Pius X (via Wrath of Gnon):

Note the insistence that a nation is not an aggregate of standardized and interchangeable individuals. I was reminded of the relevance of this when reading about comments made recently by Bill Kristol, a leading American neoconservative. During a debate on the difficulties being experienced by the white American working-class, Kristol took the view that rather than trying to help them by limiting low skilled immigration, they should instead be replaced via open borders:

Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? Seriously, you can make the case—this is going on too long and this is too crazy, probably, and I hope this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse.

You can make a case that America has been great because every—I think John Adams said this—basically if you’re a free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled—whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. In that respect, I don’t know how this moment is that different from the early 20th century.

This is a rampantly ideological position to take. Although it is no doubt true that some migrants do work hard to establish themselves, the statistics clearly show that many immigrant groups are far more likely to be welfare dependent than the natives. Consider this:

In 2012, an average of 41.6% of African Americans received means-tested benefits each month. About 18% of Asians or Pacific Islanders and 13% of whites received benefits each month. Thirty-six percent of Hispanics of any race received government assistance.

Bill Kristol has things exactly the wrong way around. White Americans are far less likely to be "clipping coupons" than the wave of immigrants from Mexico. And yet Kristol calls white Americans "decadent, lazy, spoiled" and believes that they need to be race replaced by "waves of people" from Mexico.

Kristol's attitude is also rampantly ideological in the sense that he sees people as interchangeable units, with those best fitted to the needs of the market being the ones who can justify their place in society. In theory, the liberal take on society is supposed to uphold the rights of the individual and to promote "individuality". But look at what happens in practice. Individuals are stripped of those qualities that tie them to a particular place, people and tradition, and are instead standardised as part of an anonymous mass serving the market, and can therefore be readily replaced.

If you can be so readily replaced on the grounds of lacking dedication to the market then you cannot claim to have much standing as an individual in society. You have value not on the grounds of your individuality but rather on your utility.

The insurrection of the mind

Tiberge at GalliaWatch has an interesting post up about Philippe de Villiers (his wonderfully Gallic full name is Philippe Le Jolis de Villiers de Saintignon).

Villiers is a leader of the Movement for France Party; a member of the European Parliament (though a Eurosceptic); and he was a minister for culture in the Chirac administration. He also established a popular history theme park called Puy du Fou, intended to promote patriotic feeling (it gets 2 million visitors a year).

He has written a book about his political career. In an interview about the book he made comments that most readers of this site are likely to sympathise with:

Politicians refuse to find solutions because they are sold to globalism that necessitates the destruction of all vital attachments.

Behind the lies I saw high treason. This unheard-of conjunction between the interests of some and the ideology of others. On the one hand the search for a planetary market, and on the other the ideology of a nomad, rootless, de-sexed, atomized.

Ever since May '68, the "no borders" of the liberals joined with the "no limits" of the libertarians to unseal all cornerstones.

The globalist elites that I am denouncing knocked down all the sustaining walls of France.

I'd like to highlight the following as well as it so directly contradicts the liberal ideology that currently rules the West:

The drama France is experiencing is twofold: they have attacked the family, and the family of families that is the nation. The latter is a heritage. It must be restated: the nation is received, it is not chosen!

We must confront the globalist elite who have not ceased to destroy the real people, the national community, the long memory, the family, and finally France.

I have bolded the most relevant part. Liberals believe in the autonomous individual, in which freedom is thought to mean having the liberty to self-create, self-define or self-determine. But a traditional communal identity is not self-defined; it is something we are born into. Therefore liberals have set themselves against traditional identities. Villiers is challenging the reigning ideology head on when he insists that we should accept the nation as something received rather than as something chosen individually.

Villiers suggestions of what to do next are worth considering:

They want to fabricate urban manipulable atoms, it is up to us ... to work towards the insurrection of the mind!

We must increase the number of isolates of resistance, create non-government schools that develop straight thinking and ensure transmission, re-affiliation, and rooting.

We must defend the sacred nature of life, and filiation as a mark of identity, the nation as heritage, the borders as anchors and the French dream as a window on the world.

We have returned to the days of the catacombs and each of us must guard his little spark, so that the flame does not ever go out. Those who no longer have hope are those who no longer have a solution.

If we could get just a little bit more organised we could perhaps do more to promote and publish the ideas of men like Villiers. It is fortunate that Tiberge runs her site or else English speakers would have little chance at all of accessing thinkers like Villiers.

(There is more at the original post by Tiberge which I encourage readers to visit.)

Some thoughts on patriotism and religion

There's an Australian Aborigine (Mohammed Junaid Thorne) who has converted to Islam and who is now supporting ISIS. In one of his messages he criticised patriotism because it is a term that was not given authority by Allah:

The 25-year-old also went on to mock 'The ones who spew the nonsense of "patriotism", "Australian Muslims", "deradicalization", and other terms for which Allah has sent down no authority.'

I'm not someone who supports blind patriotism or patriotism in any circumstance. But at its best patriotism is a profound love for a people and a tradition you are closely connected to. It can be one of those transcendent loves, through which we recognise a good that goes beyond our own self-interest, and which draws out our loyalty and our willingness to serve. It can be, in other words, an expression of caritas (of "charity" in the Christian sense).

Now, there are certainly references in the Bible to the existence of nations and peoples, and there is a clear message that this is part of God's plan for humankind. But there is not (as far as I know) a commandment that we are to be patriotic. But it seems to me that we would be turning religion into a dead letter if we took this absence to mean that patriotism is therefore never a spiritual good.

The following aphorisms by Don Colacho could be applied, I think, to the kind of love I am referring to:

The particular creature we love is never God’s rival. What ends in apostasy is the worship of man, the cult of humanity.

To love is to understand the reason God had for creating what we love.

Nothing surpasses the beauty of loyal love, of the love that is not loyalty with love, but the loyalty of love itself.

Undefining the nation

Australia Day is coming up. There's an interesting post at Tweed Renegades on the official publicity being put out to commemorate our national day (see here).

One of the posters for Australia Day shows a group of people dressed up as Mexicans with the slogan "Australia Day: Celebrate Your Way." Below this is the following advice:

Australia Day means something different to everyone, and it's important you do what's right for you. So on Jan. 26 reflect on what you love about being Australian.

Which prompted this response at Tweed Renegades:

“Reflect on what you love about being Australian”? Evidently, what these people love about being Australian is being Mexican.

I'm afraid that the nation is being given the same treatment as the family. Just as we are told that family can be anything we want it to be, so now the nation is being similarly "undefined" to mean whatever we want it to mean.

It fits in with the liberal idea that we cannot know objective goods held in common as a community and so we must instead self-define our own subjective goods (that which is right "for us").

But a national identity has to be something that has a common element - otherwise it wouldn't be a communal identity. Such an identity works best when there is felt to be a national spirit and culture that individuals are able to participate in, draw part of their identity from, and give their loyalty to.

It doesn't mean as much when it's just something that I generate for myself alone.

A Swedish patriot on love of country

Stefan Torssell is a Swede who has written a defence of patriotic love. I'm a little reliant on Google translate in what follows (and it's an abridged version of his column), but the gist of his argument is clear enough.

It is he who loves who is happy...

And then comes the question: can someone love their country? I believe they can and actually remember the moment when my love grew...I went on the folk high school excursion. We lay in the grass and talked.

All around me were red cottages along a country road. Large arable fields spread out. Sweden was a beautiful country with good values...The language, culture and traditions created a national community that made us develop into a good society.

Just as insights about oneself are a prerequisite for being able to love another human being, a love of country presupposes that you know your country's places, fauna, traditions and culture. I grew up in my language, in my country, in my nature and our traditions.

It is essential for me to be able to love my country. But it is not enough. Love of Sweden contains love in two ways: it is a feeling, and it is an active choice.

It may seem pathetic to write about the love of a country. Some may perceive it as pompous in our time when the denial of their own national culture has become a competition. My experience of Sweden recalls the love of a person. They want to stay in that person's proximity, giving up a part of himself and is sympathetically tuned to that person.

There are those who do not love Sweden. One member of the cultural Left who often persecutes the Sweden Democrats (the patriotic party) is Martin Aagard. I heard him on the radio a while ago. He explained that he did not feel anything for his native Sweden.

I think the idea is not foreign to the cultural left that one can hate their own nation, or at least feel indifference. From that state can be born a destructiveness. It is not just the Left that can have this negativity to their own country. Even right circles I believe can make such choices.

Increasingly now I hear people express themselves negatively about Sweden, not only Mona Sahlin and Reinfeldt. Sweden has no culture. Swedish culture is borrowing from other more developed cultures. Swedish culture is barbarism.

The Swedish Democrats expressing kindness to Sweden is described as xenophobic. Many are forced to be cautious. They try to adapt to the zeitgeist to malign everything that is Swedish. They are to be regretted.

I've written about this before in terms of love, but it bears repeating. Faithfulness and truth are necessary in a relationship. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is to lie to someone we care about. Anyone who wants to lose a friend or a loved one should lie immediately to the man. The lie starts a mental process of decomposition and soon the friendship or love lost.

The powerful want EU countries to grow together into a federation with a single currency and a uniform law of free movement of capital. Multiculturalism has a purpose. It breaks down a country's uniqueness and national institutions.

That the Sweden Democrats are disliked by people with power and influence, I interpret as a sign that they are lying to us and about us. 

But there is another question. Can even the love of a country end? I think so.

The Sweden I discovered long ago is no more. Fragmentation in the nation is extensive. Much happens that is detestable. I have a strong feeling that many want to destroy Sweden in order to get something else.

My country feels strange when terrorists with Swedish citizenship are captured in an Arab country or when Swedes who committed a gang rape are reported to have spoken an incomprehensible language. I do not regard them as Swedes and I doubt very strongly that they do themselves.

Obviously, it is not the negative consequences of multiculturalism the establishment want. They want Sweden to become something else. What is happening now they consider a passing phase. Because they just want to discuss what is good with multiculturalism and only with those who think alike. I and the majority of the population have never been asked.

They are ruining Sweden. The whole project seems to now move toward a tragedy. We'll see which side wins. We who are sympathetic to Sweden or those who want to impose multiculturalism?

The good news from Sweden is that the Sweden Democrats are strong enough to have won 20 seats in the parliament. Below is a photo of the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, at a community event in his hometown.

I particularly liked Torssell's analogy between the love of a person and the love of a country:

My experience of Sweden recalls the love of a person. They want to stay in that person's proximity, giving up a part of himself and is sympathetically tuned to that person.

A Christian defence of nationalism

Ruskin at Occidental Traditionalist has posted an interesting Christian defence of nationalism. He writes:

Before birth God assigns to every man the species, sex, family, and nation to which s/he will be given. These assigned identities can never be truly revoked. In this case we are dealing specifically with the nation and to a lesser extent; the family. Since God has pre-selected for us our nation it is our responsibility to love what God has chosen. To express our appreciation, beyond prayer, would be to love one's nation, the people who built it, the land which sustains it, and the culture which had sprung forth from it.

Reading that is going to give a liberal a headache, as the emphasis here is not on self-chosen identity but on appreciating an identity we are assigned by God - an identity that is so part of us that it cannot be wholly abandoned.

Ruskin argues, tellingly I believe, that we express our appreciation for what God has chosen by acting on our responsibility to love our nation, our forebears, and the land and culture to which we are connected.

Professor Smith on national identity

Anthony D. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics. This is his account of national identity:

National identity ... is felt by many people to satisfy their needs for cultural fulfilment, rootedness, security and fraternity ... Nations are linked by the chains of memory, myth and symbol to that widespread and enduring type of community, the ethnie, and this is what gives them their unique character and their profound hold over the feelings and imaginations of so many people.

(quoted in Kok-Chor Tan, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice, kindle location 1276)

It may not be the perfect description from a traditionalist point of view, but it's a lot better than the usual dismissive liberal attitude that people are motivated to feel national identity by fear, or discrimination, or exclusiveness, or hatred, or ignorance, or bigotry or prejudice etc etc.

Note too that Professor Smith recognises that the uniqueness, depth and stability of a national character derives from its link to an ethny rather than from open borders or multiculturalism.

Schwarzmantel: what use is the nation for the left?

In my last post I looked at a paper by John Schwarzmantel, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Leeds. Writing as a neo-Gramscian Marxist, he believes that liberalism is so dominant that it has narrowed the range of political options, leading to a loss of interest in political involvement. So he has set himself the task of creating a counter-ideology:

My argument is that there is a need for ideological contestation, which is not met in the conditions of contemporary politics, where liberalism has cornered the ideological market. (p.10)

According to Schwarzmantel, this counter-ideology has to be popular, forward-looking and inspire emotionally. Only in this way can it hope to be a mass movement.

And here Schwarzmantel hits an interesting problem. Gramsci himself suggested that Marxists should aim at a "national-popular" movement; the idea being to use national symbols and traditions to inspire an emotional commitment:

So for Gramsci Marxism could meet these criteria for being the new counter-ideology ... It was ... national-popular in that it tried to inspire people with symbols and emotions rooted in popular culture and national traditions.

Notice, though, that nationalism is to be used to mobilise people to support the ultimate aim of internationalism:

... the concept of the national-popular is also problematic, especially in a country like Britain where many of the national traditions have connotations which are redolent of an imperialist past, rather than a democratic and international future. (p.13)

I don't think this admission will shock too many readers; it's been clear for many years that Australian politicians are willing to invoke a sense of national identity at times to garner support, whilst continuing to undermine the same national tradition.

Schwarzmantel recognises another problem in invoking nationalism to mobilise support for a democratic and internationalist mass movement. Modern Western countries have become more multicultural, so the sense of national unity is not as strong as it once was:

... a counter-ideology must possess the emotional resonance needed to inspire the mass basis needed in the conditions of modern politics. Gramsci saw that emerging at least in part from the national-popular dimension, but that may be a weaker base in times when the solidarity and unity of the nation have been reduced by a much more multi-cultural and heterogeneous population. (p.18)

How then can our neo-Gramscians emotionally inspire a mass movement? Schwarzmantel turns to the idea of a civic nationalism:

In order for an ideology to be popular, the mixture of nationalism is certainly effective. Hence, one could argue, the fact that a whole range of ideologies of the past ... have linked up with nationalism to give them greater pulling power ... I would suggest that the concept of the national-popular may be dated and not much help in forging an ideology of progressive politics suitable for our time.

Nationalism can certainly be separated from its ethnic an exclusive connotations by giving emphasis to a civic form of the ideology. Such civic nationalism would appeal to all those living on the same national territory, irrespective of ethnic origin, cultural or religious identity and belief, and would find its affective element in symbols of civic unity and shared political rights.

An ideology of shared citizenship rights, open to all, is the basis for a new ideology which opposes or seeks to contain the fragmenting and dissolving tendencies of the market. (p.16)

Several things strike me on reading this. First, Schwarzmantel sounds like an orthodox liberal himself here. Is there much of a difference here between Schwarzmantel the neo-Gramscian Marxist and your ordinary left-liberal? Both focus on civic nationalism and a criticism of the market.

Second, the argument doesn't work well. Schwarzmantel has already admitted that the "national-popular" is less effective in a multicultural and heterogeneous population. A civic nationalism, in which there is no regard for a shared ethnicity, will only serve to make a population more multicultural and heterogeneous.

Schwarzmantel chooses to blame the market for social fragmentation, but it's his solution, civic nationalism, which has done just as much or more to fragment and dissolve.

Third, it's questionable that shared citizenship would really inspire people as the older nationalism once did. Schwarzmantel himself is aware of this problem. He doesn't think that ideas of political or economic citizenship, shorn of national identity, will be quite enough to motivate people. Some sense of a shared membership in a "historically based community" are still necessary:

It seems to me that the strength of the national-popular is that it calls up two ideas, those of solidarity, which is in turn based on a shared history, an evolved tradition. Can the combined idea of political and economic citizenship aspire to the same emotional resonances which could be conjured up by the idea of the nation?

... Here the issue is whether a concept of shared civic rights is rooted firmly enough in an affective base which is needed in order to give citizens the incentive or emotional stimulus to internalise and make their own ideas of shared political community. My own view is that the idea of the 'civic minimum' and joint political/economic citizenship ... does need to be rooted in a historically based community. The idea of the nation has a role to play, but it takes second place to one of reciprocity and citizenship. (p.17)

So membership of a "historically based community" is still necessary to further certain political ends, but is secondary to citizenship rights.

You can see from the above why those committed to political modernism haven't entirely ditched nations and national identity. It's not that they think such things are important in themselves. They are aware, though, that the future they are planning for us, of citizenship within a state rather than membership of a nation or ethny, does not have the same power to inspire or motivate our commitments to society.

A policy just to plug the gaps?

As predicted the Rudd Government is introducing a scheme to bring Pacific Islanders to Australia to harvest crops.

The scheme is not without its critics. Aboriginal leaders have asked why their own youth couldn't be employed to do the work; similarly, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has pointed to the large numbers of local unemployed available for work:

Why is it beyond the wit of our country to be able to provide the resources and encouragement in supporting Australians who are unemployed to go to areas where they can get seasonal work?

Dr Nelson is taking the scheme at face value; he is assuming that its promoters really do believe that they are just plugging temporary gaps in the labour market. I think it's more likely that those who support the scheme do so for other reasons.

Back in 2005, as the shadow minister for foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd boasted,

Labor led the government on the East Asia Community. We're now leading the government on the creation of a Pacific Community.

As PM, Kevin Rudd has had a further go at developing the East Asia Community, but with lukewarm support from abroad. But what is the Pacific Community he is so keen to create?

In 2003, an Australian Senate committee delivered a report which (quoting the report itself):

proposes a Pacific community which will eventually have one currency, one labour market, common strong budgetary and fiscal discipline, democratic and ethical governance, shared defence and security arrangements, common laws and resolve in fighting crime, and, health, welfare, education and environmental goals.

The Senate committee proposed, in other words, something like the European Union, but made up of Australia, New Zealand, PNG and the smaller Pacific Island nations. It's important to note that the Pacific Union would effectively replace the existing nations of the region, as there would be a free movement of people, a single currency and common laws.

The current policy of bringing in Pacific Islander labour fits this larger aim of creating an integrated Pacific Union. It's a first step toward a single labour market and an integrated economy.

Steve Lewis, the national political correspondent for the Herald Sun, has written openly about this aspect of the labour scheme. In a recent article, he attacked Brendan Nelson's opposition to the policy:

... his populist stance against a Pacific guest worker scheme ... is outrageously shrill ... he panders to the lowest common denominator ... A guest worker scheme makes sense ... it should also pave the way for a pan-Pacific economic and trade pact ... Rudd's employment scheme, which will initially allow 2500 "guest workers" into Australia, is the first tranche of an eventual Pacific "common market".

Steve Lewis summons up the usual open borders platitudes, telling Dr Nelson that he is "playing the politics of fear". Oddly, Steve Lewis ends his piece by appealing to Dr Nelson's patriotism: "The nation deserves better".

Steve Lewis is trying to have it both ways. He is anti-national in backing a policy designed to create a supra-national Pacific Community. He is anti-national too in associating nationalism negatively with a politics of populism and fear. But he then appeals for support for his open borders, anti-national policy on the grounds that "The nation deserves better". Go figure.

It's interesting too to look at the reasons given by Chris Berg for supporting the guest worker scheme. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs and describes himself as a libertarian or classical liberal (in other words, he is a right rather than a left liberal):

I admit to being very uncomfortable with those supposedly free market advocates who oppose immigration, for whatever reason ... The idea that we should stop an individual from searching for work beyond the national borders of their birthplace simply because we believe that their culture is somehow incompatable with ours is a deeply illiberal position to hold ...

How does the free movement of people differ in any significant way from the free movement of goods or services?

... we have a moral obligation to accept into our borders those who want to come. For individuals born in under-developed countries, simply crossing into the developed world can dramatically increase their potential salary, as well as allow them to experience the historically unprecedented living standards that we already enjoy.

The objections to expanded immigration seem nationalistic or economically illiterate at best, and immoral at worst.

This is the "atomised and materialistic individual living in an economy" view of society - one which has come down to us in the classical liberal tradition. If we are to be guided by an acquisitive individualism, in which the important thing is a lack of restriction on our solitary efforts to accumulate material goods, then Chris Berg is undoubtedly right - it would be immoral to prevent anyone from moving to whichever country most improved their material standard of living.

But what if the underlying view of man and society is wrong? What if man is not by nature solitary and selfish, but instead most fulfilled in his nature when he is living within a settled community? What if the primary form of human community is not so much an economic market, but rather a social community with a distinct culture and history? What if there are natural bonds between people giving rise to natural forms of community?

It then becomes immoral to break up these natural, settled forms of community.

So the issue goes beyond policy arguments to first concepts. If there is only the solitary, economic man working privately toward acquiring material goods - if that is the primary view of man and society - then it will be difficult to find a principled basis for defending existing forms of community.

Roebuck doesn't like the natives

There must be an island somewhere for Peter Roebuck. He's a former English cricketer who decided to become an Australian citizen despite apparently not liking Australians.

Earlier in the month he wrote an extraordinary column for the Sydney Morning Herald in which he described the Australian cricket team as a "pack of dogs". Now he's gone further and written a column for the Melbourne Age in which he delivers a garbled attack on native born Australians:

AUSTRALIA must not be waylaid by nauseating nationalists convinced that the defeat in Perth was caused not by a combination of absent friends and wayward bowling but by a sudden bout of politeness. Nor must it take heed of backslappers arguing that India's celebrations and appealing at the WACA Ground matched Australia's excesses in Sydney.

That is to confuse joy with rage. Likewise, the umpiring was acceptable and even-handed. Only lamingtons imagine otherwise. The game is up for that lot. It is time to move on. It is debatable whether people born in this country should be allowed to vote. It is no achievement to emerge from a womb. They could just as well be in Winnipeg. Australia is best loved by its settlers.

The "lamingtons" (a kind of Australian cake) are, it seems, parochial, native born Australians, who despite their "nauseating nationalism" don't have much love of country, might as well be somewhere else, and have no particular eligibility for political rights, unlike the more worthy "settlers" (migrants).

Tracee's victory column

Left-wing journalist Tracee Hutchison has been moved by the victory of Kevin Rudd ... to new levels of incoherence.

Her victory column begins with this:

It's hard to identify the exact moment I knew Australia was experiencing a seismic shift in identity and direction over this past week.

I'm not sure I'm living in the same country as Tracee. A seismic shift in identity and direction? Just from switching from Liberal to Labor?

Odder still is the "exact moment" Tracee finally settles on to mark this seismic shift in identity. It seems that Kevin Rudd's wife did a "shimmy" whilst standing next to him on election night:

If ever there was an image to differentiate the old from the new on election night, it was Therese Rein's shimmy ... It was sassy and confident and delicious. And 100% woman. Suddenly we had a first couple who were smart, successful AND sexy. It was magnificent.

It's not an easy thing to push Therese Rein into the sexy category. It's a measure of Tracee's euphoria that she gives it a go.

Then we have Tracee's glee at the appointment by Kevin Rudd of some female ministers:

Finally, we have a group of women in the highest office in the land who don't make me feel like a freak.

Women who are the daughters of migrants, women who are single and/or childless, openly gay, unmarried with children, married with children but who haven't taken the surname of their husbands and others who have.

This is beyond odd. Tracee herself is a single, childless career woman. She admits here that she is so sensitive to her situation that she feels like a "freak" if women like herself aren't in power. She wants her own situation to be made normative because it helps her with her own psychological issues.

And what of the fact that the Liberals also had single childless women as ministers (e.g. Julie Bishop)? Is it not possible for Tracee to be consoled by Liberal women?

But Tracee keeps it all going:

It is significant and noteworthy that half the women Kevin Rudd has given high-profile cabinet and portfolio responsibilities to are childless and/or unmarried — the Deputy Prime Minister to name just one. It is a great moment for generational change and validates the often difficult choices so many of us have made to pursue our careers. And it is so very welcome.

Yes, it's all about Tracee feeling "validated". Strangely, earlier this year she put a different spin on her childlessness. It wasn't a noble choice of hers, but something forced on her by an epidemic of feckless men. After watching the competition between three men to be named the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, she wrote:

I suspect I wasn't the only single, childless woman of a certain age who belched up a slightly sour-tasting ironic burp ...

... it seemed incredible, from my experience, that each of them seemed so desperately keen to own up to firing the winning sperm.

If only there were men queueing up for fatherhood duties with such fervour in the real-life version of what happens to women in their late 30s. With due respect to the many doting fathers I know, who love and support their kids in one — or two — homes, I seem to know a lot more women who have either given up chasing child-support payments from absent and/or financially gymnastic fathers or given up the idea of having a biological child at all.

If anecdote is the litmus test for truth, the latter category feels like an epidemic. Especially if you're immersed in that special something that happens to women when their body clock starts shrieking like a wounded hyena and there's not a willing bloke within cooee.

... There aren't enough blokes with sufficient enthusiasm for child-rearing to go around.

You might think that Tracee would be most concerned to repair the damage done to family formation in this country, in order to spare younger women the sadness of unchosen childlessness. Instead, being stuck with it herself, she wants to make it a kind of high principle.

Finally, there is Tracee's attitude to country. She tells us that the sight of Therese Rein's seismic shimmy made her overflow with patriotism:

I felt my body jolt upright with exultant anticipation and gushing love of country.

Is this the same Tracee who, in questioning the appropriateness of ANZAC Day, wrote:

why does all of it have to come with an Australian flag draped around its shoulders? It frightens me.

Tracee is frightened by the quietly held patriotism of ANZAC Day and the sight of the Australian flag, but gushes with love of country when her candidate's wife moves on stage.

I wouldn't mind Tracee following the impulses of her mind, if it represented a liberation from ideology and released her from the grip of political correctness. I expect, though, that she identifies too closely with her side of politics for this ever to happen.

A different dividing line

Does the existence of an indigenous minority make the mainstream national identity illegitimate? Not according to David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian. This is his perspective on the situation in America:

The people of a nation must never be denied the expression of their natural love for their country. Without love of country, no nation can exist for long. It will become rather a heartless business convenience, a lusus naturae [joke of nature] of mean greed.

Okay, so America presents a bit of a problem. America is now multicultural. America has many races, many religions - and many ideologies, actually. What is in fact the country? Is there something that we all love? Is there something that is tangibly American?

My view as an American Indian: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants created this country. What is it that they love? What do they consider to be the country?

As an American Indian, I seek their opinion. Their view is the one I want to consider. I am bound to them in blood, war, and treaty. My history is theirs, and theirs mine. I have looked to them for the health of the country.

I must say, they seem quite lost now. They are either afraid of who they are, or ashamed. If they are indeed not proud of who they are, yet continue to constitute the polity they created, they throw a curve ball to the world.

... George Soros equates nationhood to "tribalism." Naturally, he is most interested in bringing down the greatest nation — America. And because of America’s multi-cultural conditioning, it appears an easy enough task. He wants an "Open Society," with closed doors to the basic, historic elements of human existence: religion, ethnicity, and nationhood. He wants a world that can be perfectly controlled, one without these pestilential differences.

This could stand alone as an eloquent defence of traditional nationalism. It has an added significance, though, coming from an American Indian. We are accustomed to white liberals using indigenous affairs to further demoralise the mainstream. David Yeagley refuses to play his part in the script and speaks instead to encourage white Americans to uphold a national existence in the US, for his benefit as well as theirs.

Hat tip: Brave New World Watch
Original article: Vdare

Why have a nation?

Giuseppe Mazzini was a nationalist who devoted his life to uniting the separate states of Italy into a single country. Yet it would be wrong to assume that he was a conservative. Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, he advised Italian workers that:

Your first duties - first as regards importance - are ... towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole human family in your affections; if you do not bear witness to your belief in the Unity of that family, ... if, wheresoever a fellow-creature suffers, or the dignity of human nature is violated by falsehood or tyranny - you are not ready, if able, to aid the unhappy, and do not feel called on to combat, if able, for the redemption of the betrayed and oppressed - you violate your law of life, you comrehend not that Religion which will be the guide and blessing of the future.

But what can each of you, singly, do for the moral improvement and progress of Humanity? ... The individual is too insignificant, and Humanity too vast. The mariner of Brittany prays to God as he puts to sea; "Help me, my God! my boat is so small and Thy ocean so wide!" And this prayer is the true expression of the condition of each one of you, until you find the means of infinitely multiplying your forces and powers of action. This means was provided for you by God when He gave you a country."

Why have a nation? For Mazzini the nation is not an end in itself. Instead, it is an instrument to better enact a universal political morality.

Mazzini uses the image of a lever to describe this instrumental understanding of nations:

In labouring for our own country on the right principle, we labour for Humanity. Our country is the fulcrum of the lever we have to wield for the common good.

So was Mazzini onto something? Can this particular type of liberal or humanistic nationalism justify the existence of countries?

I think not. It seems to me to be too unstable a justification. After all, if a nation is a lever for achieving universal political aims, then it will only be held onto until a more powerful lever emerges, such as a League of Nations or a UN or a European Union or a regional power bloc.

It then becomes logical to transfer allegiance from the "lesser" instrument to the greater.

As an example of this, consider the following recent opinion piece from an Australian website, The Dead Roo. Titled "Get rid of Australia", the piece argues that the UN would be a more effective institution than the existing nation state for securing desired political outcomes:

The long-term goal of constitutional reform is obviously the dissolution of Australia.

The Westphalian system is failing. The legality and morality of meddling with the internal affairs of nation states is demonstrated by actions in the Balkans and East Timor, or the inaction in Darfur or Zimbabwe. The necessity of co-ordinated management of global issues, including forced compliance of recalcitrant states, becomes more obvious every year. Climate change is merely the most pressing issue, universal human and para-human rights the deepest.

In the modern world, nation states are as irrelevant and indeed counterproductive as the city-states of old.

There's another problem with the instrumental view of nations. There's no reason for the end goal to remain the same. Politicians might decide to change economic partnerships, or political alignments or moral causes. If the nation exists as an instrument to achieve such aims, then it must change in character as the aims change. The tool must fit the task.

Politicians therefore think it reasonable to make the most radical changes to national existence to serve what appear to be historically transient aims of trade or diplomacy.

A genuinely conservative view of nations differs considerably from this. The nation isn't assumed to be an instrument for the getting of some other aim or the spreading of some other value. It is justified, in itself, as an aspect of being, as constituting a part of who we are, of our self-identity.

A conservative is likely to value the national tradition he belongs to as providing him with a particularly close connection to his own culture, to the places he inhabits, and to generations past and future. He is likely to value it too as providing a larger, stable setting in which to make his commitments to family and to maintaining the standards of public life.

It makes little sense, in terms of this conservative view, to voluntary discontinue an existing national tradition. Even if a greater lever of state power became available, or if there were new claims of trade and diplomacy, this wouldn't be thought to justify overturning an ongoing tradition which is so significant in forming our identity and our deeper attachments.

Is this really how we earn our colour?

We are often told that Australian society prior to WWII was a boring monoculture.

I can't help but react to this claim sceptically. When I was growing up in the 1970s, the "monoculture" was still a living presence. I experienced it as anything but boring. It was for me an enriching aspect of life.

I'm sceptical too for another reason. When we travel overseas and experience other national cultures - other monocultures - we don't react with boredom. We don't arrive in Japan, for instance, and complain that the culture there is too Japanese and therefore uninteresting. In fact, it's likely to be the "monoculture" that strikes us most as distinctive and fascinating.

Which leads me to wonder if the claim about monocultures being boring is generated from abstract political beliefs rather than real life experience.

If you hold to liberal autonomy theory you are likely to believe that individuals, as a condition of their humanity, ought to be self-determining. We ought to be, according to this theory, unimpeded in creating our own identity, writing our own life script, setting our own values and so on.

The problem is that there are important aspects of life which are pre-determined rather than self-determined. For instance, we don't get to determine our gender, as we are born either male or female. Nor do we get to choose our ethnicity, as we inherit such traditions.

Therefore, in a liberal society qualities such as gender and ethnicity come to have negative associations as restrictions on the free, self-creating, autonomous individual.

It is logical, then, for a liberal to assume that in a society in which there were traditional gender roles and a traditional ethnic nationalism that the free self-creating autonomous individual was repressed - and that the society itself must therefore have been repressed, dull, grey and boring. When individuals were released from such gender roles and from a "monoculture", a liberal might well assume that society must become more creative, interesting and colourful.

In this way, political ideas unfold into assumptions about reality.

Robert Bosler is one such liberal who seems to think along the lines I described above. This is how Bosler describes Australia in the 1940s:

... the year is 1944. The country is at war. See all the people. Look at what they are wearing. It’s grey, it’s all grey. There’s no colour. They’re all doing what they’re doing but they seem like they are all boxed in. They’re all sort of trapped within themselves.

And there now we see the great leader of the time, Mr Menzies.

He’s talking to the people. What’s he saying? He’s saying he wants to give everyone there “more personal choice, more personal freedom”... Well, these people here in 1944 certainly need more personal choice, and more personal freedom, that’s for sure. It looks like every man has set jobs to do, as the breadwinner. That’s all. It looks like every woman has to have a baby and clean the house. That's all. This is no joke; it’s not much better than that for man or woman. That’s not life as we know, from where we come; but there it is, all grey and boxed in, in 1944.

Let’s consider Mr Menzies’ task for a moment. The Australian people we see here are vastly different from us. Mr Menzies has a seriously big ask here. “To provide people with more individual choice and freedom.” Can he do it?

Inspirationally, he establishes in this year a political party for that very purpose, and it’s called the Liberal Party of Australia.

The 1950s, in Bosler's account, are little better. It's still grey and colourless, because the self-creating individual is still restricted by gender roles and ethnicity:

The 1950's and it’s still grey. The men and women of Australia are still all trapped and caught up in the roles life has set for them. It’s like they are living life on traintracks. It’s a stilted existence, this. What is it gonna take for them to be free?

In the 1960s colour finally arrives:

There we see it, as time moved forward into the sixties. Huge. Boundaries break and boxed in lives burst, exploded. Colour!

By the 80s the revolution is well-secured. The self-creating individual is ascendant:

Ideas from each and every individual can take root and they can grow. And look at the colour! Look at the vibrancy and richness of life. There’s a woman excelling in a professional career, heading up a boardroom. There’s a man staying home looking after his children. The people are, individually, free. If only Mr Menzies could see this. These people have individual choice. Look, they can do what they want, be what they want ...

We saw that freedom and choice had arrived, secure, in the eighties ... We knew it had arrived when we saw on our TV screens the news item telling us that a black woman had been made a judge. That signaled the full arrival of the individual of freedom and choice ... That it would be a black woman who could now sit in judgement over whites and decide impartially upon their fate ... signaled the end of the ball game for the liberal vision. The world over: liberal fulfillment had been sought for so long, the evidence was clear that now it had come.

The Bosler example is clear enough. For him, gender and ethnicity are the key impediments to free, self-creating, autonomous individuals. He thinks traditional Australia restricted the self-creating individual and was therefore grey, boxed in and stilted. When gender and ethnicity were overthrown, you suddenly and finally get creative individuality and vibrancy, richness and colour.

This is where the abstract theory leads you. It's logical, but divorced from reality. It can be cast aside if you are willing to ask awkward questions. Am I as a man, for instance, really going to feel liberated and enriched by living a less masculine life? And do people really celebrate the loss of their traditional national culture as an enriching freedom?

If the theory is wrong, then so is the account of reality.

There's another example of this kind of liberal thinking that's worth looking at, namely the film Pleasantville. In Pleasantville a teenage boy and his sister are transported into new lives as characters in a wholesome 1950s TV show. Everything is pleasant, but their new world is literally grey.

Why is it grey? Because the characters are following a script. They are not writing their own life scripts as liberal autonomy theory requires them to do.

It is only when the characters begin, under the influence of the newcomers, to break from the script that they start to gain colour.

At this point, Pleasantville really takes autonomy theory to a logical conclusion. If what matters is breaking from the script, then a whole series of behaviours can be considered morally justified.

For instance, one of the female characters gains colour when she commits adultery. This is portrayed as a courageous act because she stops to consider her commitments instead of simply going along with fidelity.

There is no sense of adultery being in its nature a wrong act. How could it be a wrong act, when the first rule of this autonomous world is that there is no script?

That's why when the teenage boy eventually returns home to find his mother grieving about the loss of her marriage the following conversation takes place:

Mother: Oh God. It's not supposed to be like this. I'm forty-four ...

Son: It's not supposed to be anything.

If there is no obvious way for things to be, then it's difficult to categorise choices as either morally good or bad. What is left to matter is that I'm asserting my individual will in things.

So when the Pleasantville teenagers begin to engage wildly in casual sex they turn from grey to colour, as they are acting counter-culturally, in other words, against the prevailing social norms. When, though, the sister from the 1990s does the same thing, she remains grey, as she has grown up in a culture of casual sex. She only earns her colour when she begins to act more independently by questioning her promiscuity and developing an interest in literature.

The message of Pleasantville is that the worst setting of life is one which is settled and straightforward, and in which there are given values. Such a life setting doesn't provide the best conditions for asserting meaning through individual choice making.

A better life setting for an autonomist is one in which we must negotiate complex, difficult choices in a world characterised by change and uncertainty. This world might be "louder, scarier, more dangerous" than traditional societies, and create all kinds of social dysfunction, but because it fits better with an ideal of autonomy, it is thought to be more vibrant and colourful.

So this is the context within which traditional societies are categorised as grey. It's a context which goes with a wider set of assumptions, which most people I expect would find unpalatable. Do we really accept that acts must be considered morally neutral, and that the good resides primarily in an independent assertion of our will? Do we really accept that more dangerous, difficult and dysfunctional social conditions are ultimately of positive benefit in breaking up settled patterns of life and providing a challenging context for our life choices?

Finally, there are many cultural references in Pleasantville. The most significant of these is to the writer D.H.Lawrence, who is held to be on the side of the "coloureds" in their march to autonomy. I doubt very much if Lawrence himself would have accepted the role. Lawrence, as the following quote makes clear, did not equate freedom with liberal autonomy and would not have appreciated the politics of Pleasantville:

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief ... Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose ...

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing ...

Surprise conservative

Looking through a copy of University Review, a magazine I published at Melbourne University in the late 1990s, I came across an item about the Icelandic pop singer, Bjork.

Bjork is probably better known these days for her eccentric fashion sense. Back in 1998 she made the following comment, surprising for an "out there" pop star:

I think I am a conservative bastard and lucky because I was brought up in a society that has been the same for 1200 years ... When we get drunk we scream in each other's faces poems that were written 1000 years ago.

Bjork is not right in a literal sense: Iceland has not been the same for 1200 years, and conservatives wouldn't want it to be. However, it has preserved its ethnic tradition better than other European countries. So it's understandable for Bjork to feel lucky that she belongs to an unbroken national tradition, in which people still feel a close connection to their own past and their own culture.