TIME magazine publishes bad take on the plus side of NATIONALIST

[tenderfoot]

Link to tweet

[Iliyah]

1. I don't think so.

Democracy!

[dalton99a]

2. And a little child shall lead them

[uponit7771]

3. Time Magazine wants to deconflict the term but they know what Trump is talking about

[k8conant]

4. This is an opinion piece by Yoram Hazony, an Israeli writer nt

[tenderfoot]

6. That doesn't make his argument valid

it's still BULLSHIT.

[dalton99a]

7. "A false choice"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/books/review/james-miller-can-democracy-work.html

When did nationalism become a bad thing? “Only a few decades ago,” the Israeli philosopher and political theorist Hazony notes, nationalism was widely seen as a liberating force that could bring “independence and self-determination to enslaved peoples.” Today, he laments, Western liberals heap scorn on nationalism, which they dismiss as a divisive and sometimes racist impulse. Hazony’s book seeks to explain this shift and, in the process, redeem nationalism and reveal antinationalist liberals as the true purveyors of hatred and division.

Hazony defines a nation as “a number of tribes with a common language or religion, and a past history of acting as a body.” To Hazony, this form of tribalism represents the only legitimate basis for statehood: He contends that the idea of a “neutral” or “civic” state, in which individuals of many different backgrounds are bound together by shared principles, is “a myth” — a fig leaf that covers up the majoritarian realities of multiethnic societies in the United States and Europe. To be a nationalist, according to Hazony, means not only to defend the legitimacy of tribal nation-states but also to advocate a world order in which they can “chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions and pursuing their own interests without interference.” He contrasts this with today’s liberal international order of multilateral institutions backed by American power, which he derides as an “imperialist” project that will inevitably seek to impose its will on all of humanity.

A defense of nationalism may be welcomed by groups whose aspirations for statehood have been thwarted: the Palestinians, for example. But Hazony has bad news for them: “There is no universal right to national independence and self-determination.” In the end, his broad case for nationalism devolves into a narrow defense of Zionism and Israel, which he portrays as the paradigmatic victim of the “hatred” encouraged by liberal internationalism.

Hazony is certainly correct that cosmopolitanism can breed arrogance and intolerance, and that criticism of Israel is sometimes hypocritical. But his reductive approach poses a false choice between an idealized order of noble sovereign nations and a totalitarian global government. The world could use a less moralistic, more nuanced defense of nationalism. This book is a missed opportunity.

[berni_mccoy]

8. Wonder if Yoram still believes this crap after today's shooting?

Trump's White Nationalists don't want him here.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. And Israel is an explicitly ethnic-nationalist state (n/t)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. It's an essay, not the opinion of Time, which posted the caveat that

the opinions expressed in the essays it publishes don't necessarily reflect those of its editors. And I should hope not. The basis of the "nationalism" advocated by the author is not racist, but religious:

It was not until after World War II that these core institutions at the heart of classical American nationalism — Biblical religion, the Anglo-American legal inheritance, and the English language — began to fade. The disintegration of classical American nationalism, and the consequent loosening of the bonds of mutual loyalty that had held Americans together, has created a vacuum at the heart of American national identity. It is this vacuum that revolutionary new theories such as “white nationalism” hope to fill.

As Americans have stopped reading the Bible, they have also lost an intuitive sense of what a “nation” is, and of what must be done to maintain it. At a time when large-scale immigration is at the forefront of U.S. politics, a biblically-rooted American nationalism — one that recognizes the nation as a diversity of tribes bound together by a common heritage and mutual loyalty — is sorely lacking from American public debate.

http://time.com/5431089/trump-white-nationalism-bible/?xid=tcoshare

[Ms. Toad]

9. It's a gish gallop essay!

White nationalists are a self-identified group. Whether you agree that their name describes them is irrelevant.

Giving a reasonable concept (valuing all of the various tribes that make up the US) an existing name because you want to sanitize the concept already associated wtih the namel does not work.

Really? You really think Trump wasn't expressly calling out the self-identified white nationalists when he used the term nationalist???

[Solly Mack]

10. The author says America needs a biblically based idea of what a nation is & that's what he means by

American nationalism - one that shares an idea of nationalism based on the reading the bible and that America lost that sense when people stopped reading the bible.

As Americans have stopped reading the Bible, they have also lost an intuitive sense of what a “nation” is,

It was not until after World War II that these core institutions at the heart of classical American nationalism — Biblical religion, the Anglo-American legal inheritance, and the English language — began to fade.

He claims it has nothing to do with "white" but if you read between the lines - if "classical American nationalism" is based on the bible - and he says the KJV - and "Anglo-American" legal inheritance, and everyone speaking english - then yes, he does mean European white was the common unity of American nationalism.

He says that only by being strong in that 3 prong (KJV Bible, English, Anglo-American) steeped American nationalism was America then able to allow acceptance of others - Jews, African Americans, Catholics... others.

But that we lost that 3 prong strength after WWII.


Opinion piece.

Blech

[flotsam]

12. The author

Hazony received his B.A. from Princeton University in East Asian Studies in 1986, and his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in Political Philosophy in 1993. While a junior at Princeton he founded the Princeton Tory, a magazine for moderate and conservative thought.