All politics is about balancing our interests as an individual against the moral rules we are supposed to follow about promoting the greater good.
Competing political tribes try to claim us, but the independent thinker chooses his or her own.
I chose nationalism because I am a universalist. I believe anyone who lives in a nation would wish to be well-governed by a government that promotes the national interest. My ambition is to make nationalism motherhood and apple pie.
As for the insane belief that nationalism is about racism and war, we should be remind ourselves that in both World Wars it was Britain - a liberal democracy - that declared war on Germany.
Britain already had a world empire, and Germany felt it deserved to acquire a bit of living space at the expense of the Russians, since Britain and France had more or less carved up Africa between themselves. Germany was late in the race that was the scramble for colonies.
But we know that it is the victor who writes history, and so it is that the Axis powers were written as evil by the victor for wanting what Britain had already acquired.
What did WW2 demonstrate? That non-combatant Japanese could be nuked in two Japanese cities so that the point could be made it is not for non-whites to dare to acquire empire at the expense of the White Man.
Sadly, just as we do not know what is in our own best interests, governments often do not know what is in their national interest either, and politicians and leaders often do not address their minds to posterity which only promoting the long term national interest would serve.
If the nation is a macrocosm of the individual and it serves the individual to adhere to a set of moral principles, then so too would it benefit a nation to choose the best possible set of moral principles.
It is this that I wish to discuss with an apparently heedless world, full of unemployed and unemployable philosophy graduates quite unable to engage on the matter.
Competing political tribes try to claim us, but the independent thinker chooses his or her own.
I chose nationalism because I am a universalist. I believe anyone who lives in a nation would wish to be well-governed by a government that promotes the national interest. My ambition is to make nationalism motherhood and apple pie.
As for the insane belief that nationalism is about racism and war, we should be remind ourselves that in both World Wars it was Britain - a liberal democracy - that declared war on Germany.
Britain already had a world empire, and Germany felt it deserved to acquire a bit of living space at the expense of the Russians, since Britain and France had more or less carved up Africa between themselves. Germany was late in the race that was the scramble for colonies.
But we know that it is the victor who writes history, and so it is that the Axis powers were written as evil by the victor for wanting what Britain had already acquired.
What did WW2 demonstrate? That non-combatant Japanese could be nuked in two Japanese cities so that the point could be made it is not for non-whites to dare to acquire empire at the expense of the White Man.
Sadly, just as we do not know what is in our own best interests, governments often do not know what is in their national interest either, and politicians and leaders often do not address their minds to posterity which only promoting the long term national interest would serve.
If the nation is a macrocosm of the individual and it serves the individual to adhere to a set of moral principles, then so too would it benefit a nation to choose the best possible set of moral principles.
It is this that I wish to discuss with an apparently heedless world, full of unemployed and unemployable philosophy graduates quite unable to engage on the matter.
