Liberalism: Ethics, Knowledge, Power

The issue posed by liberal universalism, either in ethical or political reasoning, is that it fundamentally divorces the question of the good from the question of power.  Power is always concrete and particularized.  There is a particular government with laws, which if one breaks and is apprehended, one is punished.  If one lives in a failed state, or somewhere in the jungle, there is still power, the power of force, and the power of tribe and clan.  Power cannot be apprehended in an abstract or universal fashion.  There can't be Government without a government, or Law without a set of laws or customs.

What is the good?  If we ask our liberal universalist, they will claim that the good consists in a set of ethical rules, and that these rules are universal and binding on everyone.  That is to say, in contradistinction to positive law, which applies only to a citizen, moral rules (or moral laws) apply to all human beings, and presumably the positive laws of a state should correspond to these universal moral rules, or the State lacks legitimacy.  I should confess, this all sounds very good to my ears, until I start to examine it.

The first problem comes from the notion of an express rule, for example, "murder is wrong."  I doubt many people reading this blog will reject or quibble with a moral rule against murder.  However, the real dispute comes about when we consider the application of the rule.  For example, does terminating a fetus in the first trimester constitute murder?  Does killing a soldier in a war count as murder?  Does targeting a purely civilian target, like the City of Dresden, for a campaign of bombing constitute murder?  How about executing, or causing the execution of a criminal, who has been adjudicated guilty and sentenced to death?  Does killing a primate constitute murder?  Does killing a baby born with severe birth defects (such as a missing or severely damaged neocortex) constitute murder?  Does selling cigarettes to teenagers constitute murder?  How about shooting a rifle off above a crowd?  Driving drunk resulting in a homicide?  If you kill another person in a duel, or a boxing match, is this murder?  What about unprotected sex with someone who doesn't know you carry AIDS?  How about encouraging someone threatening suicide on the edge of a bridge to jump off?

To say "murder is wrong" gives the linguistic form of a so-called "rule", but what is clear is that our rule lacks a clear application in a number of contexts.  Certainly, if you plot to kill your ex-wife or ex-husband in cold blood and act on your plot, everyone will probably concede that you committed murder.  On the other hand, that does not save our "rule."  Our "rule" only has a meaning within a system of custom (or broadly speaking, manners).  We share a set of customs with respect to the premeditated liquidation of the ex-spouse, we perhaps don't share a set of customs with respect to higher primates, fetuses in various stages of development, or the conduct of warfare.  It is pretty clear that our so-called "universal" rule is only the expression of a particular system of custom.  Further, a particular system of customs cannot be divorced from a particular system of culture, either protected or under threat by a particular system of government (if one is fortunate not to live under a failed state or in a state of anarchy).   In this sense, any discourse concerning the good is parasitic on the existence of a particular system of culture, which depends for its continued existence on a particular system of power.  What can only, in an ultimate sense, be good is a particular form of life existing within a particular system of power, which in the modern world rests in the nation-state.  Rather than our words creating a limit on our culture or our nation, our nation and our culture creates the limit on our words, literally.  (This blog is in American English.)

Rather than arriving at universal rules, when we say something like "murder is wrong", we are merely generalizing from the particular.  Something that means nothing can also mean everything, so our quest for moral universals yields pleasant generalities that most everyone can agree with, precisely because they lack any content.  On the other hand, when we generalize from our cultural orientation, say in the assertion that "slavery is wrong" or "polygamy is wrong", we are not speaking in terms of universals, but in terms of particulars.  We are morally condemning another culture, and this moral condemnation usually serves as a basis for legitimizing force against our rivals.  I remember Laura Bush waxing eloquently about the universal rights of women, precisely after we invaded Iraq.  Here, I don't want to sound as if I am in disagreement with Laura Bush's concerns about the status of women, but rather, the fact that I am concerned in a particular way about the status of women demarcates me from a broad swath of other human beings in rival civilizations as well as from other cultural forms in human history.  Furthermore, if I seek any universal basis for adjudicating between Laura Bush's conception of the role and status of women in society and say, the Taliban's, I can only look to human history.  Some nations have a system of customs that make them strong (within the geographical/economic/technological/cultural restraints they operate within).  In contrast, some nations have a system of customs that makes them weak, or perhaps incapable of adapting to new conditions.  The strong survive, and the weak are conquered and made subjects of the strong.   At the same time, some measure of these historical outcomes is obviously a matter of luck (or divine providence).  

Of course, this question of what makes a strong nation versus a weak nation, even if one is prepared to accept this as the ultimate criterion, is not a simple question.  One could make the case for both Laura Bush as well as the Taliban, and who knows who will be on top in 1,000 years.  Instead, we must be thankful for enduring power of human prejudice.  I, for one, am prejudiced against the Taliban, and rightfully so, based on my education and cultural background.  Further, if it weren't for a well-established system of cultural prejudice against the Taliban, there would be an open question in my society about whether we should adopt their ways.  As many know, a case can always be made for the adoption of a rival idea or a rival system of ideas.  The only thing that fundamentally preserves and protects a cultural system is respect for tradition and prejudice.  Without these two forces, society would be ungovernable, and in a state of civil war.  Reason, at least with respect to disputes over morals and customs, can only be the hand-maiden of prejudice. The ultimate criterion of whether a system of customs is good or bad is historical:  evil destroys itself, and the good endures.

It is clear that our default should be strongly in favor of preserving our cultural traditions and customs, unless a strong case can be made that a reform will promote stronger national unity or strength.  For example, certain extreme forms of female circumcision practiced in some places within the Middle East cause health problems for women and declines in fertility, and a strong public health case can be made for abolition of those customs.  Given that a nation requires a healthy population to field an army, and the larger and healthier the population, relative to its neighbors, the stronger the army, no responsible leader would continue these practices, either out of concern for his or her people, or concerns for his or her nation.  In light of these comments, I hope it is clear to my reader that I do not advocate some from of fundamentalism.  The task of government is, in part, the task of reforming and improving customs, and traditions should not be blindly followed out of deference to the past.  On the other hand, the burden of proof is clearly with the would-be innovation, and the concern cannot rest solely with the welfare of individuals, but with the national interest.

I have previously stated that the ethical value of the whole outweighs the ethical value of any individual.  I think we can see this principle at work in the ethics of vaccination.  Vaccination subjects each individual with a risk of death and serious disease.  If we look solely at the welfare of the individual, no individual should be vaccinated.  Otherwise, the individual takes a risk with no clear benefit.  On the other hand, if we look at the group, vaccination prevents and restricts the outbreak of life-threatening diseases, and the higher the vaccination rate, the greater the protective factor.  From the individual perspective, the best outcome results if you prevent your children from being vaccinated, but if everyone else gets their children vaccinated, e.g. you obtain the communal benefit without undergoing the individual risk.  This same principle also holds in the case of lying, stealing or cheating.  Only if you uphold the ethical value of the whole over the ethical value of the individual can you insist on universal vaccination. 

The individualist might argue that the individual benefits from being vaccinated, so mandatory vaccination might be merely a case of ethical paternalism, rather than ethical collectivism.  This is, of course, false.  The chief benefit of vaccination comes from the herd immunity conferred to all.  If you live in a community of the vaccinated, no one can serve as a carrier of the disease, and so any resistance conferred by the vaccine is of no benefit.  On the other hand, if you live in a community of non-vaccinated people, although your vaccination may carry some resistance, you are in extreme peril.  It is much better to live without vaccination among the vaccinated than it is to be the sole vaccinated individual among a horde of the non-vaccinated.  For a community to protect itself from disease, it is necessary for the community to praise and insist on the moral duty to submit to the risks of vaccination, and the consequent restrictions on individual well-being, e.g possible death or disease.  Further, if there is a contest between two communities, one with an ethic of vaccination, and another with an ethic of individual choice (e.g. the shirking of the duty to the community), we imagine the second community would periodically undergo epidemics, resulting in a long-term advantage to the first community in terms of healthy population and thus, a stronger army.  Eventually, all other things being equal, the first community would conquer the second one. 

These same ethical principles apply to national service.  A nation which praises military service and views military service in a time of war as a duty of citizenship will be able to field a citizen army with strong morale.  In contrast, a nation which holds military service in low regard, and relegates military service to mercenaries, will suffer in morale.  All other things being equal, the first will vanquish the second.  Any argument against military conscription contains within itself a contradiction:  citizens have political freedoms by virtue of a system of power and law.  The preservation of the citizen's rights cannot trump the preservation of the system that gives those rights meaning.  Instead, each and every citizen must be subject to the demands of his or her nation to contribute to the common defense.  Not only is submission to conscription necessary, but it is good, in that it allows for the protection and preservation of a system in which citizens can live together in ordered liberty in pursuit of the good life.  Whatever level of individual liberty flourishes in a nation-state, it is inherently limited by the needs of the nation-state to insure national security.  If a nation-state accords greater rights to the individual then are prudent, then a nation jeopardizes all its individuals.  (We can also see that freedom of speech cannot extend to protect sedition, nor can the right of voluntary association extend to groups dedicated to the violent overthrow of the democratic government.)

In addition, these principles apply to endeavors such as organized labor, which I suspect is the real ideological source of modern radical individualism.  For a union to have power, all workers must participate and cooperate with the union leadership.  For a strike to succeed, all the workers must undergo the hardship of the strike without defection.  Workers can only have power against a centralized management through centralizing themselves in the form of a union, which must be capable of making decisions on behalf of the workers, and making the workers comply with decisions.  Obviously, a union will be more powerful the more power it has to punish defectors.  Thus, we can see that laws protecting the so-called "right to work" are intended to undermine the power of organized labor to advocate in the interests of their workers.  Moreover, we can see that unions, just like corporations and nation-states, suffer from the same problems of hierarchy:  that the few will use their power to benefit only themselves at the expense of those people they represent.

Human beings need to belong to collective groups based on mutual cooperation in order to survive and flourish.  These groups, to be effective, must be able to exercise coercion to one extent or another on their membership.  Thus, the fantasy of individual autonomy must be seen in its true light: it is asking for the impossible.  Nor could an aggregation of "autonomous individuals" survive for long pitted against an ordered collective.  Each group places intrinsic demands on the freedom of individuals., specifically, individuals must be expected to sacrifice their individual welfare on behalf of the group.  Individuals willing to undergo this hardship on behalf of all are heroic, and individuals who shirk are despised as cowards.  Of course, a nation-state is not simply another group, because a nation-state is more fundamental:  it creates the laws and it fights wars.  Defection from a nation-state is entirely different from defection from a business or trade union, a church, or even a family.

From the individualistic perspective, the goal of life can be understood as the impulse to avoid pain and seek pleasure.  If this language is too crude, we can speak of maximizing "happiness."  From the standpoint of the group, the purpose of life is inverted: one is praised for undergoing pain on behalf of the group, and one is blamed for pursuing pleasure at the expense of the group.  It is important to understand that a group-based ethic is not simply masochism.  An individual is not expected to seek pain and avoid pleasure in general, but rather to embrace a masochistic ethic when it is necessary for the welfare of the group.  The individual is asked to undergo this hardship because the good of the group represents a higher good than the good of the individual.  In this sense, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, as a whole in which each individual sacrifices themselves for the benefit of the whole is stronger than a group of radical individualists.

We can also relate this principle to the Platonic principle of intelligibility, that the principle that makes the whole intelligible is higher than what it makes intelligible.  Thus, the soul, the principle of unification of the body, is higher than the body itself.  Likewise, the nation, the principle of unification of the commonwealth, is higher than the individuals composing it.  Within the nation, we can see the principle of hierarchy between the rulers and the subjects.  The elite, as decision-makers, stand higher than the bureaucracy or the subjects.  The bureaucracy stands below the elite, but above the subjects, while the subjects are the lowest.  This is the principle of arche, principle or order (en arche en ho logos).  As modern people we may not like this way of looking at it, but as a realistic description, it serves to describe how a government actually functions.  For example, in the event of a nuclear strike against the United States, the governing elite could be expected to save themselves first, whatever remnant of the military and bureaucracy second, and perhaps might make some efforts on behalf of the subjects.

In actual fact, although democracy may serve as an important check on the power of the governing elite, it is not quite the radical game-changer it has been held up to being.  If we look at the American system, almost anyone who seeks to compete in a national or state-wide election must be nominated by one of two political parties.  These political parties are technically outside the constitutional state, in effect, private agents that create their own rules for themselves.  Certainly, they are subject to national laws like anyone else, but given their structural--nondemocratic--role in the democratic process, they are in a unique position to ensure favorable legislation, as the legislators are all where they are by virtue of the parties and their rules.  There are also structural--nondemocratic--actors like the mass media, as well as concentrated private interests.  To be able to stand in a competitive race for state or national office, one must get through the party nomination process and garner the support of special interest groups and the media first, before a single vote in the general election is cast.  If you look at our presidents, or our senators, or our representatives, we see that they are almost entirely the beneficiaries of a unique set of educational institutions, they are generally prominent in business or some profession, etc.  As Americans, we say anyone can be president, but when we say this, we do not mean it the same way we say anyone can win the lottery.  There are structural forces which produce and shape elites before they ever begin to think of competing in elections.  This is the self-reflexive nature of our democracy, our system forms both its elites and subjects, just as much as our elites (through policy decision-making) and subjects (through voting) form our political system.  Rather than a hierarchy with the voter at the top, it is more akin to a serpent eating its own tail.  Power is concentrated at the top, and numbers are concentrated at the bottom.   

In fact, democracy serves not as much as a check on the power of the elite, as a means of legitimating and expanding the power of the elite.  Unlike a hereditary monarchy, whose authority comes from God, and whose rule is intended to execute laws derived from custom and tradition, the modern president's power comes from the support of the people.  Legislation intended to benefit broad swathes of the populace command broad popular support.  Governments supported by people power are capable of raising conscript armies with high morale, capable of fighting with great elan.  One of the benefits of the French Revolution was the way that it transformed the possibilities of warfare, possibilities that were seized by Bonaparte to effectively crush the traditional governments of Europe.  Part of the selling point of the notion of popular sovereignty/social contract theory has never been it philosophical coherence.  Political power manifests in trans-personal relationships.  The magistrate issues the order to execute, the executioner carries out the execution, and the subject submits to his or her punishment.  A subject, except in a secondary sense, can never be sovereign over themselves.  In fact, even a dictator or an absolute monarch is not sovereign, except by virtue of a role in a network of power.  The individual dictator or king can always fall victim to execution should they be deposed.

In this way, we can understand the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm.  A constituted system of power exists, and the system of power becomes a narrative framework that the individual uses to speak about themselves.  For example, if we look at the Freudian theory of personality, there is a superego, the ego, and the id, representing the monarch, the agency carrying out the dictates of the monarch and the people.  Through a Freudian lens, we can speak of our inner lives in terms of a national political struggle.  The primacy belongs to the whole, not the individual, in that the individual learns the language of an inner self as a result of their membership in a collective form of life.  For example, a child is born, is taught rules and how to behave, and is punished by his or her parents.  However, the ultimate end is for the child to learn self-discipline, e.g. to internalize rules and to internalize punishment.  Thus, the mature individual, an ego, an agent, expresses a battle between an inner parental authority, the superego, and an inner child, the id.  Our inner lives represent the internalization of forms of trans-personal power relations.  In this sense, the sovereign state defines the individual, and the individual cannot exist except through participation in the sovereign state.  Individuals do not possess sovereignty, and they do not surrender their sovereignty to the state, quite the opposite.  On the other hand, democracy does allow for the possibility of individuals to identify with the state and to identify with their leaders in a way not possible under a traditional monarchy.  It is this principle of identity which gives the democratic nation-state one of its distinctive advantage over other forms of government. In our Republic, which makes the President the Commander in Chief over the armed forces, and allows for emergency war powers like the suspension of Congress and the temporary repeal of habeas corpus, the fact that we are a democracy makes us stronger, not weaker.  We have only to look at war-time leaders like Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR, in order to witness the true power of American democracy, when the people are unified and ready to fight under the battle flag of the Republic.  In contrast, a mercenary army fielded by an autocratic regime that did not enjoy the support of the populace would not fare so well.  The bottom line is that popular sovereignty is here to stay, not because it is necessarily a coherent philosophical theory, but because it allows governments to concentrate and exert greater power through the creation of a shared sense of identity between the rulers and the ruled.  The ancient view, of a hierarchy, serves as a better description of how states govern, but the modern view serves as a better system for legitimating rule with the populace (and effectively prosecuting foreign wars).   

Power/sovereignty is not personal and can never belong to a person, so sovereignty can never be given by the people to the government.  Sovereignty can only exist where there is authority and obedience, which means that sovereignty is trans-personal.  Democracy allows for deeper bonds between a people and its leadership.  Leaders provide carrots and sticks to the general voter in an effort to build a coalition of supporters in a way unfathomable to a traditional monarch.  Of course, the result is the "big government" derided by conservatives, the modern welfare/warfare state.  I do not see an easy way out of the modern welfare state, which was in some ways the product of Otto Von Bismark.  Bismark, while lacking a democratic bone in his body, realized that a fig-leaf republic like the German empire would need to provide social welfare provisions to its citizens or face revolutionary pressures.  The fact is that the modern citizens expect and require a certain level of services and responsiveness from its government, and failure to provide such services threatens the legitimacy of the government.  Equally important, the modern government needs to educate and form its democratic citizen.  Compulsory public education, public service announcements, and subtle pressures on media work in important ways to form the citizenry.  We can see from our failures in Iraq that without a proper culture and infrastructure of formation, simply importing an abstract and formal constitutional scheme is all but useless in the creation of a democracy.  There must be a sense of a unified demos first.  Likewise, libertarian schemes to return to traditional monarchy or libertarian dictatorship or, most implausible, libertarian democracy, are almost inevitably the proposals of philosophers suffering from an excess of affluence. A laissez faire economy is always a steeply hierarchical one, and it is unclear how the libertarians propose to keep the people on the bottom in line.  Even repression has its limits, especially if the state lacks the kind of massive centralization of power found under communism.  Today, there must be a sense of mutual duty and identification between the rulers and the ruled, or the legitimacy of the state begins to unravel.  This is, in some sense, the danger of money in elections.  A state in a free society by necessity has oligarchic features, but when a state advertises those features, or goes as far as to turn them into a fundamental principle of jurisprudence, it endangers itself.

The modern manifestation of sovereignty is in the form of the nation-state.  A nation, that is to say a people unified by common culture, language, and custom, form a state, a constituted power, to govern them.  To the extent that a nation-state forms a written constitution, the constitution results from a constitutional convention, composed of people, and subsequently ratified by the people and/or their elected representatives.  Power always precedes written law.  The question of national identity, what is a nation, is critical to the enterprise of the nation-state.  What legitimizes the nation-state is a shared sense of identity between and amongst the governed, as well as a shared sense of identity between the governed and their governors.  When there is a breakdown in national identity, the result is a civil war, a bloody and fratricidal struggle to define the nation. Another way of looking at this issue revolves around social cohesion: on what basis is a society capable of creating, building and sustaining social cohesion, a sense of involvement in a common civic endeavor.  As we have spoken previously, in the state of anarchy, there is a fundamental problem of distrust, and the real possibility of a war of all against all.  A nation which experiences a breakdown in social cohesion begins the process of collapse.

One natural basis for creating a viable nation is ethno-nationalism, the organization of the nation-state around an ethnic group or an ethnic identity.  Although ethnic identity serves as a "natural" basis for national identity, in that members of an ethnic group intrinsically feel a sense of solidarity with one another over a stranger, there are distinct disadvantages to an ethno-nationalist project.  First, the Great Powers of world history have never been small ethnically homogenous countries, but rather large, pluralistic and ethnically diverse empires (united by religion) or multi-ethnic nation-states like Russia or the United States.  The closest case of an ethno-nationalist great power would be Nazi Germany, a nation which ultimately failed in its effort at European hegemony.  Engaging in a counter-factual, it is unclear that even if Nazi Germany had succeeded in its bid for hegemony, it is uncertain that it would have been able to hold on to its territory.  Although ethnic nationalism can serve as a means of unifying a small, ethnically homogenous state, it is not clear that it is capable of effectively creating and sustaining a great power.

Of course, some might see ethno-nationalism as a civilizing principle, if it is in fact incapable or ill-suited to the creation of a great power or of achieving hegemony, then it may be a means of civilizing international relations.  Each nation would have its own fatherland, and each would trade with one another, and no nation would engage in wars of territorial expansion.  I suspect this was the fantasy of certain 19th century liberals, but alas the drive for hegemony stems from nation's intrinsic distrust of other nations, and the fact that a good offense is always the best defense (Mearsheimer;s The Tragedy of Great Powers points out that aggressors won 60 percent of expansionist wars in the modern period).  Ethnic nationalism may provide a basis for political unity within a nation-state, but it does not create trust between ethnic groups, and therefore, other nations.  On the other hand, ethnic nationalism may be something of  a civilizing force in terms of limiting imperialism, because if a state expands its borders too far, it is likely to experience ethno-nationalist secessionist drives, leading it to focus on domestic affairs.

Yet there are limits to this argument also.  For example, although China has never expressed an interest in adopting liberal democracy, a case could be made that liberal democracy would be suicidal for China, in that providing Chinese citizens with political freedoms and individual rights would provoke secessionist wars in the Western provinces.  It may be that ethnic nationalism forces a multi-ethnic and territorially diverse government to be more authoritarian and repressive than it might otherwise be.  Moreover, the mere fact of the existence of an ethno-nationalist state does not preclude foreign influence, at least short of territorial annexation.  For example, although the United States does not literally contain the entire Western hemisphere within its national borders, it does exert hegemonic control across the Western hemisphere.  The US has deposed democratic governments (such as in Chile) in the Western hemisphere, and has in other ways, influenced its neighbors.  There are plenty of carrots and sticks available to a Great Power, above and beyond territorial annexation, that allow for the creation of effective limits on other nation-states.  The US has been able to do this despite the fact that citizens in other nations in the Western hemisphere have ethno-nationalist sentiments to some measure.

Furthermore, from the standpoint of international relations, the gold standard is not national sovereignty, but rather regional hegemony.  Of course, global hegemony holds itself out as a possible objective, but one that is unrealistic, based on the problems of transporting and landing land armies on other continents, as well as problems relating to language and ethnic identity.  The best strategic position, in this day and age, is to obtain regional hegemony, and to prevent other great powers from obtaining regional hegemony in their portions of the world.  Of course, the United States has succeeded in this endeavor at the end of the nineteenth century, and has intervened twice to prevent Germany for attaining hegemony in Europe in the twentieth century (not to mention the Cold War).  America has committed many crimes in this process, but one has to ask several questions.  First, would the world be better if Germany had won the First or the Second World War?  Would things have been better if America had to contend with the Confederacy, aligned with Germany, during the Second World War?  Would things be better if Mexico, Germany or the Soviet Union had hegemony in South America?  Without a great power over their shoulder, would things be better if Brazil and Argentina were engaged in ruthless total wars for control of South America?

I think that a good argument can be made, on the basis of geopolitical strategy, that ethno-nationalism is entirely too narrow to support a nation-state capable of achieving (or maintaining) regional hegemony.  In general, it is inferior to a more pluralistic conception of nation-hood, and certainly, ethno-nationalism would reap disasterous consequences if any attempt were made to implement it in the United States. 

The second objection to ethno-nationalism is that if a nation is defined by an ethnic majority, then that inherently puts the status of ethnic minorities in question.  What does an ethnic state do with its ethnic minorities?  Ideally, it deports them to their homeland, but as we know from history, some people have no homeland, and some homelands don't want the refugees back.  Thus, ethno-nationalism can often result in ethnic cleansing or rounding up ethnic minorities and putting them in concentration camps.  At best, it tolerates them as second-class citizens, who it despises and looks down upon, and who pay back the favor with resentment and resistance.  We can see that this prospect stems directly from defining identity in terms of an ethnic group, as then ethnic minorities become de-facto enemies of the state.  The best case scenario for ethnic nationalism in an ethnically diverse state is a system of apartheid.

Although I rule out ethno-nationalism--perhaps too cursorily admittedly--I do think that ethnic identity forms the "root" for understanding the formation of national identity.  That is to say, a meaningful sense of national identity must bear a family resemblance to ethnie, which is a natural and spontaneous unit of social solidarity in humans.  Ethnie has three basic elements:  i.) a belief in common descent, ii.) a sense of shared history, myths, and customs, iii.) restrictions on exogamy.  Humans organize spontaneously into ethnic groups, and forms of social solidarity inevitably mimic features of ethnie, even if they do not constitute true ethnies.  Looking at the second and third factors, we can understand the emergence of axial age empires and religion.  Clearly, a religion like Christianity, which provides a common history, mythology and liturgy, and rules against exogamy, provides an organizing principle that transcends ethnic descent.  It is not surprising that Christianity has historically been nested within the Roman Empire.  Christianity provided a principle of trans-ethnic order which unified the Roman Empire, and it was undoubtedly this potentiality which made it attractive to Roman Emperors like Constantine.

What did Christianity provide to the Roman/Byzantine Empire?  First, a common book containing a history and mythology discussing the origins of the world and the origins of Christendom.  This provided a mythology of origins, as well as a means of transferring loyalty from tribe to Church.  Certainly, Christianity saw its origins in the Jewish ethnie, the Chosen People of God who preserved God's Covenant and through fidelity to the Covenant were able to become strong and preserve their way of life, despite internal episodes of back sliding, as well as facing much more powerful enemies arrayed against it.  In Christ, the Gentiles were grafted onto the Vine, thus allowing for a unity within the Church which transcended ethnicity.  The Church was, from its inception, a unity in plurality that included multiple ethnic groups, yet which maintained a form of unity, through a common liturgy, a common cannon and a common system of dogma.  The Church created the cultural unity necessary to preserve and support Byzantine rule.  This should also allow us to understand the threat of religious plurality and heresy in the Church.  Heretics, Jews and Pagans were not simply "free-thinkers" or "dissenters", they did not possess alternative ideas, they posed rival systems of social order.  They were not just enemies of the Church, they were enemies of the state, the social order under the protection of the Emperor.  To be a heretic in the late Antiquity or the Middle Ages is not like being the village atheist in small town America.  To find a contemporary equivalent, we would have to consider an organized group of revolutionary cells espousing Neo-Nazi ideas and holocaust revisionism.  Moreover, ancient governments, not rooted in broad socially distributive networks and universal educational schemes (which interconnect the masses and the government in the welfare state) had much a weaker basis of support than a modern government, essentially the confidence of the military and factions within the royal family and the aristocracy.  Peasant revolts, or an alternative social movement providing opportunities invasion by a neighboring rival (or revolt by an imperial general) posed a much greater threat to an ancient order, than in a liberal democracy with a generous safety net (relative to historical standards).

There are also some differences between Orthodox Christianity and a modern ideology in terms of how they go about creating a sense of political and cultural unity.  Orthodox Christians practiced a religion based on collective prayers, chastity, fasting, and alms-giving.  Orthodox Christians came together and worshiped God in the form of a common ritual or liturgy.  They fasted during set fast periods, and gave the money they saved to the poor (thereby forging social bonds between the institutions of the Church and the people).  They prayed together, saying the same words at the same time.  They shared a system of common symbols that held a common meaning.  Returning to our discussion of pain and pleasure, Orthodox Christians collectively undertook joint pain for the higher purpose of collective expiation of sin and spiritual awakening.  It is not accidental that many religious rituals and ascetic practices involve the intentional infliction of pain on one's self.  From a contemporary, secular perspective, these practices are generally regarded as demonstrations of masochism or mental illness.  This viewpoint grossly misconstrues these practices:  these rituals demonstrate a level of commitment to the group, a willingness to sacrifice and endure hardship on behalf of all in the interest of the common good.  If we consider that the primary problem of politics involves trust, ritual displays of the willingness to endure pain and hardship engender a sense of trust in other members of the group, creating a strong feeling of solidarity.  These practices thus unified the group and promoted feelings of trust, which in Orthodoxy was projected onto the entire Empire.  Likewise, certain Emperors often showed great devotion to the Orthodox tradition, sleeping on the stone floor, dressing in hair shirts, conducting prayer vigils and otherwise demonstrating their solidarity with their subjects in a common form of life.

This asceticism also transfers into the rituals of military life.  Basic training is intended to wipe out a prior civilian identity, and replace it with an identity as a member of the military.  This process takes place through mastery of military rituals and practices.  Soldiers undergo joint suffering through the process of basic training, and forge an identity and a sense of trust and esprit de corp through these practices and hardships.  Soldiers in combat, under trauma, forge close bonds with other soldiers unlike any they experience in civilian life.  If we consider estimates that males in early human hunter gatherer tribes had a 70% homicide rate, we can come to understand that these close knit bonds forged through ritual, pain, and trauma represent the raw human condition as it existed throughout our evolutionary history.

Certainly, Orthodox Christianity had a cognitive component, the Creeds of the Church, as well as the use of the Bible and oral traditions attributed to the early Christians.  But most people in Antiquity and the Middle Ages were illiterate, and probably had little grasp of these cognitive elements, they were influenced primarily by stories and images.  Yet these Creeds were important, and were the subject of great debate, both popular and among the educated in Church history.  I have suggested elsewhere that the monotheistic God is related to war, that God brings salvation, in the form of victory in battle, to his faithful followers.  In this context, theology was a question of national survival, and had political as well as religious implications.  After all, God is an expression of an ideal community:  the Father begets the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.  At the same time, the Trinity is one in substance through the coordination of the activities of each of the Divine Persons.  If we consider the Byzantine Empire, there was the Emperor, the Imperial Bureaucracy, and the Subjects.  One can see the analogy, that the Light of the Trinity manifests in the world through the coordinated activity of Emperor, Bureaucracy, and Subjects, which if perfect, reflects the inspiration of God.  In this sense, we can say that the Doctrine of the Trinity constituted the Constitution of Byzantium.  To the extent that Byzantium was willing to cleave to the Trinity, Byzantium would be strong and prosperous.  Indeed, traditionally, God is love, and the power of God is expressed in the synergy of the many into one unified activity.  Without the power of God, the Empire would shatter into fragments.

Yet today, the Age of Empires has faded.  With the Reformation, Western Christendom became divided.  Kings began to determine the form of religion in their countries, and with the coming of the Reformation came the end of Empires and the beginning of religious disunity.  Various countries throughout Western Christendom became divided by battles between Catholics and Protestants, with bloody and vicious persecutions for over 100 years.  In the wake of all these changes came the emergence of the secular nation-state, founded not on the basis of religious identity, but on national identity.  Notions of religious tolerance emerged, but it is noteworthy that these expressions were not based on a general philosophy of liberalism, but on a general sense of fatigue.  At least in its earliest inception, the notion of tolerance was not based on a general belief in the value of tolerance, but a general lack of will to keep fighting to resolve an insoluble social question.  Liberalism was initially a shield, not a sword, and it was a shield in certain narrow contexts where it was necessary to avoid actual bloodshed.         

What also began to emerge in Europe, due to the development of the scientific method, and the work of individuals such as Descartes and Newton, was the emergence of reductionism, that the whole consists only of the parts.  We find in England the development of a crude empiricism, that ideas constitute sense impressions in the mind, and that each word corresponds to the idea, the meaning, in the mind.  Thus, there is a notion that words trigger something like hieroglyphic images in the mind.  In this mindset, we find a new definition of love.  In the past, love was a principle that brought people together and synergized their behaviors.  Now, love is a sensation in the mind.  From this empiricism came the notion of popular sovereignty by default.  Sovereignty, instead of being a principle that unified a whole, could not be, as no whole existed, only parts.  Thus, sovereignty was conceived to be a property of individuals that they possess, and that they transfer to the Sovereign, through voting or some other process.  Likewise, atheism comes into vogue, because if everything that exists is empirically observable and a part, then everything that cannot be analyzed as a part becomes tossed into the mind as an idea or a sensation.  There is literally no place for God to be anymore, except in the mind, e.g. as something subjective.  At the same time, the objective world is analogized to a machine, with physical things following determinant mechanical laws.  Thus, modern philosophers are stuck with the conceptual problem of relating the "mind" to the body, and given that all the important things in life, like God, and Beauty and Goodness belong to the "mind" by default, there is much at stake in this mind/body "problem".

What emerges from reductionism is the disappearance and devaluation of culture.  Culture creates a collective sense of meaning amongst people.  If our only two categories are "objective", meaning reference to something in the physical world, and "subjective", meaning something existing only privately in my mind, then an inherently trans-personal notion like culture has no place it can exist.  Rather than understanding a myth as a story that creates a sense of collective meaning and motivates collective action, a myth can only be understood as a historical representation, of some things that either happened or could have happened in time.  This can be distinguished from a form, a principle of order, that organizes or explains a set of events in time.  Thus, as reductionism takes hold of the zeitgeist, we find the emergence of projects like the application of the historical-critical method to the Bible, and "important" findings that stories in the Bible are not consistent with the empirical evidence.  We find that God cannot exist because He is not subject to empirical observation, further, the "proofs" of God are not valid because they don't correspond to our crude modern ontology and our crude philosophy of language, and belief in Revelation is irrational because the contents of the Revelation are historically inaccurate.  If we look at the second feature of ethnie, a shared sense of history, myths and customs, to the modern person this notion is viewed as completely irrational.

In its place is the philosophical discipline of ethics, modeled on geometry, where philosophers postulate certain axioms and derive certain conclusions on the basis of these axioms.  The intention of this exercise is to try an assemble something like a Euclidean ethic, whereby from certain general principles, we will be able to more-or-less derive conclusions that correspond with our basic ethical intuitions, as well as to be able to show that other people are wrong in their ethical viewpoints.  If this task could be carried out, then the principles of ethics could be derived from pure reason alone, which would eliminate the need for a concrete, particularized and received cultural understanding.  To the extent reason succeeds, it displaces revelation.  To the extent that reason fails, it necessitates acceptance of revelation as a source of morality by default (e.g. one would have to invent a God or the reasonable-equivalent in order to bring a sense of authority and respect for customs and thereby create cultural stability).  Further, if reason fails, it necessitates insolvable cultural disputes between cultural systems.  To some extent, the attack on Organized Religion by folks such as the New Atheists are predicated on the eventual "success" of these attempts, which directly relate to the question of whether God is necessary for the possibility of ethics/morality.  Of course, some philosophers, like Hume, ultimately conclude that morality amounts to cultural programming, which results in the emergence of forms of moral relativism, which come into increasing fashion in the Twentieth Century.  [As a digression, if we suppose that Goodness in the primary sense comes from God, then all things that exist derive their relative goodness in relation to God.  In this view, goodness cannot be a property of empirical things, nor can goodness a property of some things, for all things possess a measure of goodness in proportion to their nearness to God.  Thus, drawing a line between good and evil is always arbitrary.  Further, when we draw this line, if we try to generalize features of good things, we miss some of the good inherent in evil, while we ignore the evil that all good things share.  Thus, these efforts to derive the good from reason should prove fruitless, as well as being deformed by the prejudices and the distortions of the philosophers, who merely seek to rationalize their prejudices and refute the prejudices of others.]

As this trend unfolds, we get the emergence of deism which morphs into atheism.  Miracles are impossible to our students of Newton.  However, our deists like Thomas Jefferson nonetheless venerate the Bible and view Jesus as a high "ethical teacher".  Thus, there is a continuing culture based on Christendom, even while there is an attempt to substitute a morality based on scripture with philosophical ethics.  Because ethics is universal and derived from reason, and revelation is particular and derived from a supernatural entity, the cultural unity of Europe provided by Christianity becomes increasingly marginalized and viewed as inferior to the wisdom of the scientists and the bold modern philosophers.  The idea of preserving political unity on the basis of the religion of Christianity, or any religion for that matter, becomes increasingly ridiculous, although the idea of unifying the country on the basis of an ideology derived from philosophy becomes an increasing possibility.  Thus, in the Twentieth Century, we find ideologies like social Darwinism, liberalism, communism, and fascism increasingly in vogue, and a political questions come down to questions of which ideology should form the basis of a political order.  Rather than culture, stories, myths, and rituals, humanity gets political philosophy.

The other basis for national unity comes from the notion of a common descent.  European's share a common biological racial stock, that is to say, they constitute the Caucasian race.  Other countries, such as those in Africa, share a common descent from a biological racial stock, that is to say, they constitute the Negroid race.  The same can be said for Asian peoples.  Thus, difference, instead of being based on culture--or national spirit--becomes understood as the result of biological difference.  With the emergence of Darwin in the end of the Nineteenth Century, and the discovery of genetics in the Twentieth Century, we discover the creation of "scientific" racism, an idea that has fallen on hard times but which is consistent with a philosophical orientation informed by reductionism.  In fact, if we are unwilling to engage with philosophical holism, we are reductionists and naturalists to boot, how can culture difference be explained except in terms of racial genetic theories?  People react in horror to the views of James Watson, but as an atheist and genetic biologist, how else could a reductionist, geneticist come down?  After all, is it not the case that arguments brought to bear against biological racism amount to the argument that the genetic differences between racial groups fail to explain measurable divergences in phenotypes?  To a clever person, this might seem to make a case against not only biological racism, but a sub-case that calls into question the entire Neo-Darwinist synthesis--that genes do not determine morphological and behavioral differences between organism, and that random variations in genes (although important) do not explain the origin of species?  I digress from the topic of politics, but what is important to note is that racism, like the philosophical search for the foundations of ethics, allows for a de-historicized and a de-contextualized explanation for cultural difference.  Rather than understanding cultural differences as the ancient Greeks might, as a function of geography, or as a medievalist might, in terms of different forms of Divine Revelation, racism allowed for an essentialist, biological explanation.   

In modernity, European thought is again driven between poles.  Under empiricism, a person is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, which can be formed by education into any form the educator desires.  In contrast, as a biological organism, a person is an organic machine, simply playing out a genetic algorithm.  For our communist, the human is a blank slate that can be indoctrinated and educated into selfless revolutionary worker.  For the Nazi, the human being is a organic machine, simply playing out a biological algorithm, and there is no reason, other than sentiment, why we should not dismantle defective machines.  The mind/body "problem" played itself out in the differences between Communist and Nazi ideology.  Today, Communism remains "more humane" than Nazism, even though communists murdered more people, because Communism shares with modern liberalism the view that difference can be educated away.  On the other hand, Nazi ideology seems a better fit for our current age of Sam Harris-style "neuroscience", determinism, atheism, and Darwinism.  After all, if people are simply biological machines, why shouldn't the government simply kill off the defectives (especially if we believe, as Mr. Harris does, they have no real choice in the matter anyway).  In any event, with the European Enlightenment, we find another axis for social cohesion, along the axis of racial differences understood biologically, and it is clear that a shared belief in racism provides a basis for a higher unity across ethnic groups.  Historically, white supremacy has played an important role within the history of the United States in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century.  Historic immigration preferences for Europeans expressed a belief that peoples of European stock shared something in common with other Americans, and could successfully integrate themselves into America. 

At the same time, there have always been currents of anti-racism within the American Republic.  Although many abolitionists sought to free the slaves and repatriate them to Africa, with the prospect of the North's triumph in the Civil War, there was a lack of interest in the expense of following through with repatriation (and perhaps a strategic calculation that having on-going racial divisions in the South might undermine the political will for a second run at secession).  Thus, America was left with one of the recurring problems in our history, the status of Black involuntary immigrants.  During reconstruction, individuals like U.S. Grant made efforts to integrate Blacks into American society, understanding the importance of this objective toward the goal of preserving Union.  But as the Gilded Age commenced, less and less attention was paid by either political party to the fortunes of the sons and daughters of former slaves.  Despite the lack of political will to push for the civil rights of Blacks, it was clear to many leaders in the Republican Party that without the full integration of Black citizens into the American Republic, there could never be the full integration of the South into the Union.  When we consider the actions of Lydon Johnson, who did not win his way into the graces of hardened segregationists like Senator Russell without being able to "walk the walk", we have to ask what motivated Johnson?  While it is clear that Johnson no doubt harbored sympathies for the struggles of Black citizens, it is also clear that Johnson cared deeply about the South and its future.  So long as the South maintained a system of legal and de facto segregation, it would remain alien to the rest of the Union.  So long as a cultural and legal schism existed between the South and the rest of the Union, the South would remain backwards.  I suspect Johnson felt it was imperative to tackle the issue of integration forcefully and with the full power of law precisely because he felt ending segregation was in the long term political and economic interest of the South.  After all, if any man understood power and power politics in the Twentieth Century, it was Lyndon Johnson.  Further, if we look at the economic conditions post-1964 in the South, as well as the number of Southern Presidents from both pre-1964 and post-1964, it is clear he was right.  The cause of integration has made both the South and America stronger.

Returning to the question of American National Identity, since the Founding through the early Twentieth Century, there have been two primary sources that have contributed to national unity:  the Bible and the general culture of Christendom, and racism (specifically expressed as white supremacy).  Although America has never had an established national church (in fact, it is forbidden), America began as a Nation of Protestants, who shared many theological tenets in common, and the early American educational system was based on the study of the Bible.  Although in the early Nineteenth century, one can find Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Unitarians and deists, they were all educated and familiar with the Bible, and in many respects, our Trinitarian Constitutional system is in part derivative from St. Paul's theology.  The Union has always been primarily cultural, centered around the influence of a book, rather than theological, like the Byzantines.  At the same time, as we can see from the rise of nativist sentiments erupting after the arrival of Roman Catholic immigrants, this cultural understanding was not without a shared theological understanding.  Likewise, racism, in that it understood cultural differences in terms of biological differences, and de-emphasized the influence of culture and history, allowed for the assimilation of European immigrants into American society.  Obviously, the prevalence of racism and white supremacy in the South, due to its greater racial diversity in the Nineteenth Century, manifested in a less constructive way which impeded, rather than assisted, assimilation.

Although the rise of secularism amongst the intelligentsia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century began to change the national consciousness gradually over time, the Second World War exerted an important impact on the American consciousness.  The great loss of American soldiers as well as footage from the holocaust exerted a powerful influence on society.  From Aristotle, we have received the supposition that the family represents the fundamental model of political life, and that the polis, the Greek City-State, represents, in some sense, an extended political family.  Moving from the notion of the polis to modern ethno-nationalism, we gain the notion of the nation-state as one large extended family, headed by the Father, the Fuhrer.  In the post-Second World War landscape, no one missed the fact that the Nazi's effectively utilized myth and ritual to unify the nation in a quasi-religious neo-pagan blood cult.  The cult of personality, and its bloody fruit, etched their way into the national psyche, in a way that would not have been conceivable in the 1930's.

This reaction to the excesses and horrors of the Nazi's lead to three specific reactions on the part of the American left.  The first was a generalized horror and fear of particularized expressions of religiosity, and the fear that the religious impulse invariably lead to fascism, or at least, irrational persecution of religious minorities.  The second was a generalized horror and fear of expressions of ethnic and/or racial loyalty or ethnic and/or racial identity.  The last was a generalized horror and fear of the working class family structure, which was viewed a patriarchal and authoritarian.  Intellectuals like Marcuse of the Frankfurt School set out, using the ideological tool of psychology, to pathologize the working class family and working class ethnic life, which was viewed as a nascent source for the arrival of fascism.  Thus, the famous F-scale, which measures the "authoritarian" personality.  Although it may seem strange to a sophisticated person that a political orientation could represent a psychological disorder, the F-scale remains as a tool in sociology and psychology.  Nor was Marcuse alone, as we can see from the treatment of Ezra Pound for his acts of treason against the United States.  Rather than have Mr. Pound tried in a court of law for his actions, he was declared psychotic on the basis of his political views.  The "tolerant" faction of America was not prepared to treat its ideological enemies as representing alternative world-views, which for all their repugnance, might be something a reasonable person from a different historical and cultural horizon might reasonably come to believe.  (Strange in itself given that German eugenics laws were modeled on American eugenics laws, and Germany's bid for hegemony in Europe was expressly derived from America's successful bid for hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.)  Instead, ideological differences now represented "irrationality" and "mental illness."  That is to say, we live in the age of the politicization of reason.  Today, most human beings save the enlightened few are irrational, and the demos constitutes the enemy of reason, which must be purged of its irrationality by a secular educational system.  Increasingly, secular liberals equate their political and atheological ideologies with "reason" and fight rival views not with rational arguments or scientific evidence, but rather by labeling their opponents "irrational" and attributing mental health diagnoses.  In many ways, Freud laid the ideological ground work for these moves.  Psychology has always been a political science, and it has always operated as a means of legitimating elite social norms, in many way similar to the function of the Church under Byzantine Rule.  In contrast, from a more Aristotelian perspective, man is a rational animal, and presumably, man in most of his cultural and historical manifestations is rational, even if a man or a woman or a rival nation has a political or theological difference from our own.

However we choose to view these factors, what we find in the post-war period to the present are several trends.  1.)  Little to no attention in the public school curriculum to the Bible, or the ways in which Christian theology and Christian culture contributed to the American Founding or on the American conception of self-government, nor the ways these ideas influenced national leaders like Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.  The result is that the American student emerging from even a good college has little to no cultural basis for understanding the political ideas and aspirations of American leaders from the Founding to the mid-Twentieth Century.   2.)  Ethnic or racial sentiments are understood as intrinsically pathological, and are hysterically viewed as nascent symptoms of Nazi sympathies.  Political Correctness owes its moral mission in some sense to its self-conception that if nasty jokes or names are not stamped out, in time, they will inevitably metastasize into fascism.  3.)  A "moral" moral relativism which insists that any attempt to create a hierarchy of customs, for example, customs which facilitate the existence of monogamous couples working together to procreate and raise healthy children, over customs which promote promiscuity, single-parent households, or non-procreative unions, represents "intolerance."  Of course, given that this moral relativism is itself informed by a certain moral hierarchy by which it treats other moral frameworks, it is by its own logic "intolerant".  4.)  A deep fear and antipathy toward authority figures and hierarchical organizations such as the military and the police and the court system.  5.)  A commitment to hedonistic individualism and a rejection of any restrictions to so-called individual "autonomy".  6.)  A rejection of the need to submit to conscription or the necessity of bearing children to ensure the future capacity of the Nation to defend itself.  7.)  A view of America's Founders as essentially evil, racist, imperialists motivated by malice and ignorance, and a malignant and negative view of American history.  8.)  A view of organized religion as hateful, ignorant, intolerant, and bigoted possessing no redeeming social value.       

To be fair the mainstream academic left, I also have issues with the traditional influences on American national identity, in that I reject white supremacy as a legitimate or constructive principle for creating a national identity.  Indeed, although technically racial identity is not the same as ethnic identity, in that it can integrate a number of divergent ethnic identities, it shares the same basic flaws, at least in a racially diverse nation.  Moreover, given the cultural homogenization in America, whiteness almost begins to take on ethnic features, at least given the cultural polarization surrounding Hispanic migration to the United States.  I think, in general, our laws should be race neutral, although I would definitely favor departure from a race-neutral norm in certain contexts, for example, police departments should strive to make their officers reflect the ethnic composition of the neighborhoods they police.  This concern stems not from a concern for equal opportunities for individuals (it, in fact, in many cases would contradict it), but rather to maximizing harmony and sensitivity between the enforcers of the law and the subjects of the law.  On the other hand, I would not support laws which expressly take race into account in order to produce what might be considered socially-desirable outcomes for individuals.  I do not believe that we can separate the notion of social justice from the notion of the common good.  If a set of laws promotes the common good, or at least, the interests of a large majority, it has a good chance of being synthesized into a common way of life.  However, laws which expressly promote the interest of a minority at the expense of the majority (and in actuality, probably at the expense of an economically distressed minority within that "majority") are divisive, and generate an entrenched and permanent sense of social grievance.

If we look at social relations from a Hobbesian viewpoint, then we should recognize that there exist (and will always exist) a divergent set of sub-national identity groups, with undoubtedly some competing loyalties.  If we understand law, not as a set of positive laws, but as a hierarchical social order which orders these groups and these individuals in a system of complementary duties, then we recognize that each group (and the society at large) understands that it possesses a certain level of status.  Furthermore, what any effective group of elites has going for itself is that the groups it governs will fear the transfer of control to a true outsider.  Human beings will stick with the devil they know out of fear of the unknown, unless that devil abuses their privileges in unseemly ways.  Any attempt to raise the relative status of one group will provoke an intense counter-reaction from other groups with slightly higher status.  After all, elites often turn to political scapegoating in order to unify their countries, and the scapegoat is generally someone low in status.  Status protects against official repression.  Thus, raising one group, selectively over another group, invariably creates intense status anxiety in the group losing relative status.  Perhaps some people doubt the existence of political repression in the United States, notwithstanding mass incarceration relating to the drug war or the Japanese internment or even the choice of subjects for the Tuskegee experiments.  For example, if torture, under whatever euphemism, is accepted as an official policy by the United States government, it will inevitably be brought to bear on American citizens, under the same set of rationalizations that were used to justify it against non-citizens.  Further, it is in the domestic sphere that torture has its greatest political utility:  one can use torture to obtain confessions to any crime one wants by members of one's domestic enemies.  It then paves the way for show trials against domestic enemies justified by tortured confessions.  But in a relatively stable democracy, unless it metastasizes into a neo-liberal authoritarian regime like Pinochet, the people being tortured will be primarily those on the bottom of the greasy pole.  For example, in the South, before the use of torture was stamped out in law enforcement, torture was primarily used against Black citizens.  Although it would be laudable to stamp out techniques of political repression, given their constant resurgence and re-manifestation, it is politically easier to protect your own family and your own identity community from repression.

Although no group wants to be the unwitting subjects for the Tuskegee experiments, at some point, political elites will push a variation on this pattern, and whoever is at the bottom of the social hierarchy will fall victim.  I increasingly cringe at the reflexive criticism of the white working class for voting for conservative political candidates, that they are somehow voting "against their interests".  In fact, if you are near the bottom of the social hierarchy, much more than improving your own absolute social and economic conditions, it is more important to preserve your relative social and economic position, because political repression is generally directed at the bottom.  Moreover, budgets are balanced on the backs of the poor, and wars are fought primarily by the poor and the working class, while the children of the elites stay home and burn flags and protest.  Although liberals believe that they have "tamed the beast", they generally fail to acknowledge that all the paper rights limiting our government are interpreted and applied by that government.  The only real restraint on the power of government is custom, and custom can only serves as a restraint if it is supported by broad-based reverence, or civic piety, which are the enemies of the secular utilitarian mindset (we should not be surprised that communism is justified and legitimated by reference to secular utilitarianism).  Nor does democracy fully protect against scapegoating the weak, and sometimes repression against the weak is partially justified, as the people on the bottom possess the greatest revolutionary potential.  Although there is a lot of political rhetoric about the Supreme Court protecting "minorities", review of the actual history of that Venerable Institution reveal that the first endangered minority was Southern slave holders, followed by industrialist who did not want to pay a living wage, as well as individuals opposing union "monopolies and cartels" on the labor force.  When public support is behind repression of weak minority groups, like the Japanese in World War II, the Supreme Court is practically guaranteed to march in lock-step. 

The programs of the New Deal, for the most part, disproportionately benefited the white majority over blacks, and for sound and valid reasons:  you can raise the absolute level of everyone provided you do not upset the relative status of sub-national identity groups.  The Left, in the last 45 years has attempted to depart from this position, favoring special preferences for minorities, which finds reluctant support from the Right, because it is cheaper to help some rather than all.  These policies have, in fact, insured defection by large-swathes of the white working class, and resulted in falling and/or stagnant living standards for all American workers.  The reality is ethnic and racial divisions will not disappear, and even if they did, sub-national identity groups based on language, customs, sexual orientation, etc. would simply take their place.  The issue is restraining the excesses from these divisions, not pursuing policies that are inherently divisive and thereby strengthen reactionary political forces, or pursuing policies on the naive belief that all identity groups will magically disappear through education, inter-marriage and secularism.  This will only insure the emergence of identity groups focused on disputes over education, how to categorized mixed-race individuals, and groups centered around the true definition of secularism.  The role of government is first and foremost national defense and law enforcement, and the promotion of social justice, the common good of all.  Government should not concern itself with affirmatively assisting specific ethnic groups, it should leave itself to promoting the good of all, and leave it to individual communities, through their own leadership, to advance themselves.

As a result, my general commitment to a "color-blind" civic nationalism is likely to please few today.  I am against racial equality-of-outcome policies or racial preferences because they alienate the broad swath of the electorate who would be open to policies promoting greater equality and social justice.  While seemingly egalitarian on paper, in actual fact they empower the political interests of the oligarchs.  Unfortunately, one must choose between social justice and the common good or racial justice.  Moreover, one cannot even do that, because doctrinaire support for racial justice empowers oligarchical forces which collectively suppress the working classes--a racially diverse class of wage slaves is not a "progressive" vision of social justice either.  Nor is my vision going to please racial separatists or ethno-nationalists, because it is predicated on an equality of legal and political rights for all citizens, not merely those of a favored race or ethnicity.  Last, my vision will not receive a fair hearing with the oligarchs, who view "diversity" as a strength, and support the "human resources" state, the better to suppress free speech and voluntary association in the name of anti-discrimination, and  the better to divide the working classes and prevent democratic resistance to oligarchical rule.  On the other hand, "color-blind" civic nationalism was the governing philosophy of the early Twentieth Century Progressives and the New Dealers, when oligarchical rule was stripped back, and workers and citizens had an opportunity to participate meaningfully in their national political and economic life.  The bottom line is that a nation is a marriage of difference based on a common love of country, and everyone must make sacrifices for the common good.  A strong nation can never eradicate class distinctions, ethnic and racial distinctions, or religious divisions.  Excess individualism undermines patriotism, love of country, and commitment to the common good, e.g. civic dis-engagement and apathy, leaving government by default under the control of an unaccountable self-dealing few.  Ethnic nationalism, of whatever color, is a political petition for divorce.  Last, an outlook that makes difference superficial starts from a flawed political anthropology: marriage is an institution for managing real difference and building trust in the interest of creative production, not its extinction.  The obliteration of difference can only be attained through violence or civil war, and is the common characteristic of totalitarian regimes which seek to purify society of a particular class or a racial/ethnic minority group. 
    
A Nation is founded on a Covenant.  The Covenant unifies the People, and makes them one in all their diversity through their common love.  A Nation becomes free through bloodshed, revolution, and war.  So long as the dead are honored, and their sacrifice respected, there are certain doors of debate and dispute that are closed.  This is not to say that there are not dissenters, there are.  But to dissent is to marginalize yourself, in effect, to declare yourself an enemy of the People, an enemy of the Nation.  In America, there are two political positions that are beyond political debate:  one is the immorality of slavery, and the other is support for secession.  Because my blog is about an exploration of ideas, and not political propaganda, I will be politically uncorrect and note that slavery as an institution was accepted world-wide prior to recent history, and many philosophical and religious justifications can be made in favor of it.  Further, given our modern, individualistic conception of "constructed" social relations through contract, the notion of secession is perfectly reasonable.  Why should a sub-national unit, unhappy with the political system, not be able to opt for divorce?  Fortunately for Americans, our would-be secessionists are mostly crusty reactionaries, so our passions can over-ride the fact that the philosophical justification for secession is consistent with a contractual understanding of social order.  The reason slavery and secession are off the table is not the superior rationality of the anti-slavery and the unionist political thinkers, but rather because of the power of blood.  Hundreds of thousands of American men were slaughtered in order to resolve the political questions of slavery and secession, and their blood cries out from the Earth to silence the rival apologists.  If a real push for slavery or secession emerged in the United States, the real result would be more collective slaughter. 

The ultimate decider, in issues of political or cultural division, is not reason or rational consensus, but war.  We have the culture/political/religious system we have, and not another, because our ancestors triumphed over their rivals.  We live, united in agreement, that certain social questions should not broached on account of the bloody rifts such debate would open in our social order.  A civil war, involving two similar but different hierarchical social orders, expresses this clearly.  Within a social order, the law decides the dispute.  Between two social orders, only a Law beyond law, and a Hierarchy beyond the manifest national hierarchies can decide the dispute.  What else could reflect the judgment of the universal decider, reflecting the universal order, other than victory in war?  In the face of bloody defeat, the use of reason to impeach the judgment of history appears impious in its extreme.  Why would one challenge the Judgment of the Universal Sovereign?  Why would one tempt fate?  Here, we arrive at the limits of reason.  Reason operates within a language, a culture, a political order, while some avenues that reason might chase are, in fact, closed off.  Ultimately, culture, language, and politics is defined by long-term success in warfare.  The Aztec religion died off in North America, not because of the superior rational justifications of the Spanish, but because of the sword.  Orthodoxy almost disappeared from Russia in the Twentieth Century, not because Communist ideology is more rational than Christianity, but because of Communist repression.  Orthodoxy has returned to Russia, not because Orthodox Christians devised better apologetics, but because Communism, being a dessicated and godless ideology invented by man, could not compete technologically in the arms race with culturally Christian democracy, America. 

Rationalism proceeds from the view that autonomous reason, de-historicized and de-contextualized, can resolve political and social questions definitively, the way that scientific questions, with some success, can be settled by scientific authorities and institutions.  Rationalism sees itself as a humanitarian alternative to warfare, that if people only assent to what reason reveals, human beings can resolve social questions without warfare or politics.  The problem for rationalism is that even if rational philosophers could come up with vacuous abstract principles that everyone, in theory, could agree with, rationalism cannot neutrally apply those principles, that involves politics.  Does American freedom of religion apply to the Aztec religious re-constructionists?  Catholic hospitals?  What a religion is, and is not, is a political question.  What a religious expression is, or is not, is a political question.  For example, is a Christmas creche a religious expression?  Is it possible that a non-church going atheist might have a Christmas creche for cultural reasons?  Does this mean that a community that puts a Christmas creche on its commons is making an expression of a particular religion, or is it celebrating the culture that gave rise to our Freedom and National Sovereignty?  These are political decisions, and they are decided by political judgments.  Political judgments precede abstract principles in the sense that political judgments interpret what an abstract principle means in a particular context.  In this sense, the principle is defined by the judgment, not vice versa.  From these considerations, we can see that Rationalism is nothing more than an ideology, and rather than abolish warfare, it is merely an ideological tool for legitimating warfare.  War and history defines humanity, and the notion that humanity can define away war and history is a dangerous illusion.

The nation-state consists of two components:  the nation, a unifying cultural complex, and the state, which embodies the general will.  This blog is entitled "Left Nationalism" specifically because it is concerned primarily with this first component, the Nation, and not the second component, the State.  If we look to Aristotle's hylomorphism, we can say the Nation corresponds to the form, while the State, the constituted power, corresponds to matter.  Because a people regard themselves as belonging together as citizens, they regard their state as legitimate as an expression of their general will.  It is nationalism which makes the democratic state legitimate, not democracy.  After all, in America, voters are heavily influenced by mass media which is controlled by concentrated economic powers.  America has a two party system capable of competing with one another for national and state-wide office.  Certainly, there are small, usually regional, third parties, but none of them have the resources or the capacity to compete on the national level with the two parties.  Thus, before the voter gets to vote on a candidate for office, the candidates are vetted through the party system, and the candidates must obtain money and commitments from vested economic interests in order to finance a national election.  The voters determine who is elected to office, but economic and party elites determine who is given an opportunity to stand for election in the first instance.  Why should the 49% follow laws passed by representatives of the 51%?  Why should the masses follow laws passed by representative beholden to concentrated economic interests?  Why should racial minorities obey laws passed by non-minorities and that favor the majority?  Democracy surely accords the people some say in the constitution of a particular government--but from the individualist perspective, who are these people and why should I care?  I don't want the People's representative, or Bank of America's representative, I want someone who represents me and my faction.  I am not trying to say that democratic elections are bad, or that democracy does not serve important social and political functions.  I am saying that legitimacy does not flow from free and fair elections, democracy requires a demos.

Outside of a nationalist orientation, which holds that citizens are united by a common cultural covenant, I see no justification or political legitimacy for a democracy.  We speak of liberal democracy, but I do not see how a social order can be truly liberal, truly composed of a set of atomic individuals seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of other individuals, and still function as a democracy with the rule of law.  Obviously, the winners can be liberal democrats, and can support the status quo because they are winning under the rules of the system.  But the majority are always the losers by virtue of the reality of social hierarchy.  Why should they support a system that relegates them to the bottom of the heap?  Last, what of the poor?  Unless there is a sense of shared national identity, across class-lines, ethnic-lines, and religious-lines, then we are in trouble.  From the liberal perspective, a decline in a sense of national identity could be considered good, because such a decline would allow for a more pluralistic and tolerant polity, one less likely to fight wars of aggression or engage in social repression.  But this liberal anti-patriotism does not take into account the possibility that alienated and disaffected individuals will opt out of civic life, leaving government in the hands of special  interest groups, or that alienated and disaffected individuals will transfer their primary loyalty from the nation to sub-national groups.  If loyalty is allowed to transfer to sub-national groups, we will witness increasing social fragmentation, and these sub-national groups will eventually go to war with one another. 

The decline in real patriotism in the current crop of elite, as measured by their avoidance, and sometimes denigration, of military service, is significant.  The general cultural hostility to the military and to the issue of national security as evinced in the American intelligentsia is also telling.  We see increasing evidence of a country lead by and controlled by elites running the American State who have no investment in the American Nation.  What do they think their subjects will do, if their subjects come to view themselves as having no investment in the American Nation either?  What if these subjects instead see themselves as members of an Aryan Nation, or a Black Nation, or a Latin Nation, or a Christian Nation, or a Jewish Nation, or a Socialist Nation?  Will these subjects continue to submit voluntarily to the American State?  Is multiculturalism, secularism, excessive individualism, consumerism and anti-patriotism actually bringing us to a pluralistic society in which we all peacefully exchange goods and services and find our existential fulfillment in shopping?  Or are we creating conditions favorable to violent civil unrest, and possibly war?  Nationalism is fundamentally about acknowledging that one's country is unified by one national culture, and that the role of the State is to manifest the general will of the people.  It is only for this reason that a citizen submits to the State or sees the actions of the State as legitimate.

The question of national identity is central to the viability of a Constitutional Democratic Republic, because the Nation, not a written document, is the true source of the Constitution.  Although I have not, and will not address the issue of Constitutional Jurisprudence in this essay, I will note that the original justification for judicial review of laws was based on popular sovereignty, that Judges, as representatives of the People and the American Revolution, had an obligation to interpret laws in a way consistent with the will of the People and the Revolution.  The failure to protect our national identity is a grave political mistake.  For example, America has no official language, but unofficially, we speak English.  Now, I cannot say it will come to pass that the American Southwest will become a majority Spanish-speaking region.  However, if this did come to pass, it would inevitably lead to regional nationalism and secessionist sentiments, similar to what we find in Quebec or in the Spanish Bosque regions.  If this is allowed to happen, it will pose a threat to Union and national security.  Yet we find no national debate over the importance of a common national language, or about the levels of immigration we can comfortably absorb without undermining our national character.  To even utter these things, one is invariably labelled a "racist" or a "hater" (interesting in itself, given that Hispanic immigrants are the descendents of Europeans and possess cultural forms derivative from European powers).  Likewise, our current trade policies and immigration policies redistribute income from native workers to capitalists, creating greater class division and social unrest.  Yet one is a "hater" if one speaks up for the American worker, but not a "hater" if one sides with the class interests of transnational capitalists.  We can see in the so-called "Party of the Working Class", the Democratic Party, that the question of global trade and immigration are off the table, even as our environmental laws and our labor laws are gutted in the name of "free trade".  In fact, I predict that the entire welfare state, the entire system of entitlements created in the New Deal and the Great Society, will soon find itself under the knife in the name of "global competitiveness".  If the Democratic Party is the "friend" of American workers, then may God protect them from their "enemies".
       
We need to return to the question of national identity, and the question of how we can define our national identity, and protect it from threat.  The best and most humane means that I see, going forward, is a national culture that acknowledges and celebrates its Christian heritage.  When I say this, I do not mean that our elected representatives should be members of the clergy, nor do I mean establishing a national church.  Nor do I mean that all citizens must profess Christianity, or anything of the sort.  We should have religious pluralism, in the sense of independent religious institutions in this country, and we should affirm the right of religious freedom of everyone, including the right to opt out of religion.  Instead, I mean that we need to acknowledge the cultural primacy of Christianity in our National History, and insure that our educational system and our national celebrations create space for the articulation and celebration of the Christian tradition.  To claim that this violates the Non-Establishment Clause of the Constitution is absurd.  I am speaking of an education in the history of ideas and promotion of the humanities, not about forcing people to go to church.  In fact, the idea of a written Constitution derives primarily from Protestant Christendom itself, and has its parallels in the Lutheran Creeds.  Perhaps the idea of a written constitution itself violates the Non-Establishment clause?  After all, it does not derive from Confucianism or Buddhism or Traditional African Religions, it derives from European Christendom.  Moreover, Christianity is not divorced from historical processes itself, it represents at its core a fusion of Greek philosophy and the best elements of the pagan culture of Roman antiquity with the Jewish Bible and the best elements of the Jewish tradition.  In Christianity, we find the Best in the West, and it is mete and right that our children understand their own culture and the outgrowth of ideas that made their own Country what it is.  Christianity has served as the well-spring of art and culture and letters in Europe for thousands of years, and has done the same in the New World.  We need classical education, and we need education in the history of ideas focusing on Christianity, broadly conceived, because American Democracy emerged within the cultural fabric of Christendom, and American Democracy cannot exist outside of that particular, cultural fabric.  The very idea of Liberty as it is understood in the West can be traced back to the writings of St. Paul.  A comparable system cannot exist in Baghdad or Beijing because these countries have a different culture.  We need a focus on traditional American arts and literature in order to promote a sense of cultural and national unity so that we, as a Nation, share a set of common cultural reference points and can preserve our pluralistic, racially and ethnically diverse democracy. 
 
The alternative to a culture unity based on the dominant and historically established cultural complex that gave rise to the American Republic is the other strand: white supremacy, or ethno-nationalism in general.  Secularism, because of its intrinsic negativity, defined against something else, cannot give rise to stable cultural order.  It is not enough simply to be against everyone else, to inspire people you need to provide positive content.  We can look to Europe to see the fruits of secularism in the rise of ethno-nationalism.  A secular order, which suppresses cultural unity, inevitably gives rise to movements founded on racial or ethnic ties.  It is noteworthy that the dangers of rising ethnic-nationalism in Europe are much less grave for Europe because Europe has much less ethnic diversity now than 200 years ago.  In contrast, as secularism works its magic in America, we stand to witness ever greater ethnic unrest.  On what basis can we suppose America will prove any different from secular Europe?  My thinking process is fundamentally informed by a commitment to oppose racial and ethnic violence, but also by a realistic conception of human anthropology, as opposed the tabula rasa.  The American nation can define itself culturally or ethnically/racially.  In as much as so-called "progressive" forces are arrayed against creating and preserving cultural unity, they are setting the stage for racial and ethnic wars seeking a unity of blood and soil.  In so much as the "left" and the "libertarian" right thinks that the question of national identity can be ignored, they simply pass the buck to which sub-national group can attain cultural and political hegemony, and wipe out its opponents. 

Returning to my original list, I make the following observations:

1.)  We need to emphasize in the public school curriculum the Bible, and the ways in which Christian ideas and Christian culture contributed to the American Founding and on the American conception of self-government, and the ways these ideas influenced national leaders like Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt. 

2.)  Ethnic or racial sentiments are not intrinsically pathological, will not be ultimately rooted out, but must be tempered by a respect for law and order and a sense of a common national culture rooted in eternal truths.  Political Correctness is foolish, and the "Human Resources" Left is a reactionary ideology legitimating government by and for Oligarchs. 

3.)  Moral relativism and multiculturalism are incoherent, and threaten our social order.

4.)  A pluralistic, ethnically diverse society can only continue to exist if all citizens share a love for a common order, and respect hierarchical institutions such as the military, the police and the court system. 

5.)  A commitment to hedonistic individualism and a rejection of any restrictions on so-called individual "autonomy" is a recipe for national suicide.  Many societies have survived with a morally degenerate aristocracy, but such an ethos cannot and should not be mass-marketed to the working classes. 

6.)  Citizens must submit to conscription and the necessity of bearing children to ensure the future capacity of the Nation to defend itself. 

7.)  America's Founders were wise, and far-seeing statesmen, and their vision and wisdom has made America the Greatest Nation on Earth;

8.) Organized religion is integral to the preservation of national order, and a society that abandons a monotheistic orientation is destined to sacrifice its liberty in favor of pagan ethno-nationalist authoritarianism or atheist, communist totalitarianism.    

To conclude, I believe that political liberalism, used as a shield, to close off political questions that have resulted in bloodshed and which are viewed as beyond resolution, is a healthy component of a functional democratic Nation-State.  On the other hand, liberalism as a sword, used to dessicate our national culture, and replace Christianity and Nationality with Secularism and Internationalism, creates the anti-culture, which ultimately undermines political stability and promotes the transfer of loyalty in favor of sub-national cultural groups.  Thus, I remain liberal in the sense that I oppose the establishment of a national church in America, and equally illiberal in opposing the acceptance of slavery, secession and polygamy.