Further Reflections On Nationalism

I would emphasize there are better and worse forms of nationalism, but stress that nationalist political-economic policies can be highly beneficial for the people, as opposed to neoliberalism, globalism or neoconservatism, so long as they are combined with robust democracy, human rights and freedom, and a spirit of friendliness and peace towards all people, everywhere.

Nationalism, furthmore, can be a practical matter of policy, rather than an ideology. It is merely a practical vehicle for furthering the values of freedom, compassion, ecology and peace. It needn’t be idealized, idolatrized or mythologized.

To take the investigation deeper, read Rianne Eisler’s, The Chalice and The Blade, Bookchin’s, The Ecology of Freedom, Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, and Bertrand Russell’s, Roads To Freedom, along with Tony Benn’s excellent BBC Big Ideas documentary, on Democracy.

The biggest problem now in the world, arguably, along with the inseparably intertwined issues of injustuce, war, and ecological dsstruction, is the vastly excessive and exponentially increasing inequality, in which eight individuals control over half the world’s wealth; along with the even more dangerous and disastrous problem of vastly excessive concentrations of power – the billionaire coroorate-banking have taken over, and are devouring the people and the planet, along with freedom, democracy, constitutional rule and human rights. If we do not wish for a global gulag society, a global Orwellian fascist poluce state, and a self-devouring and collapsing dystopia, followed by human extinction, then we had best halt and reverse this trend now.

In sum, I would say national democracies are preferable, by far, to globalism or empire, which are by their very nature antithetical to both freedom and democracy, and therefore, disastrous in human terms, leading inevitably to brutality, systemic violence, predations, injustice, elitism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism, or tyranny of one or another hideous form.

Therefore, for the near term, national democracies, while deeply flawed, are generally speaking the best option currently available, until human beings are mature enough to live with no government or heirarchies of power at all.

• J. Todd Ring,
  Author of Enlightened
  Democracy,
  And
  The People vs
  The Elite.