“ By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular Place and a particular Way of Life, which one believes to be The Best in The World but has no wish to force upon other people.
Patriotism is of its nature DEFENSIVE, both militarily AND culturally.
Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the Desire for Power.”
This Country has been Sick.
This Country needs Healing.
This Country needs Medicine.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what This Country really needs, right now -
Is a Doctor.
We Stand Up for What is Right.
We fight for Moral Reasons.
We make Law for Moral Reasons.
We wage wars on Poverty, not poor people.
We Sacrifice.
We Care about Our Neighbors.
We put Our Money where Our Mouths are, and We Don't Like to Make a Fuss
We Will Build Great Big THINGS, make Godly technological advances, explore Space - Both Inner, and Outer — cure dis-ease, and we cultivate The World's Greatest Artists and The World's Greatest Economy.
We reach for The Stars.
We Act Like Men.
” Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation–that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.
By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
But secondly–and this is much more important–I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it Beyond Good and Evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.
By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular Place and a particular Way of Life, which one believes to be The Best in The World but has no wish to force upon other people.
Patriotism is of its nature DEFENSIVE, both militarily AND culturally.
Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for Power.
The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it.
But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better.
Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism.
It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist.
To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them the objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.
It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply the ENEMIES of the USSR without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.
When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.
He may be a positive or a negative nationalist–that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating–but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs, and humiliations.
He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival on the down-grade.
But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere Worship of Success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side.
On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him.
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also–since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself–unshakeably certain of being in the right.
