Motus Mentis

Here is some splendid clarity from John Derbyshire on the oft-maligned idea of nationalism:

I’m a nationalist: which is to say, I believe in the idea of a nation as the political expression of a particular people, of mostly-common broad ancestry, speaking a common language and cleaving to a common culture within well-defended borders.

Here’s every nationalist’s favorite quote, and that includes those of us who aren’t religious. It’s from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quote:

The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colors, and embodies a particular facet of God’s design.

End quote.

Nationalism is widely misunderstood. It is not, for example, opposed to diversity. To the contrary, it’s a friend of diversity. Nationalists want all the diverse peoples of the world to be secure in their own cultures and traditions, each in a sovereign nation of its own.

Personally I even favor a measured small quantity of diversity within nations, on the salt-in-the-stew pinciple: a smidgeon of foreign admixture adds spice, interest, and genetic variation. That’s how you salt your stew.

Nor is nationalism racist in the pejorative sense, as an expression of hostility or superiority by one race towards another. As my friend Jared Taylor says: I love my children much more than I love your children, just because they are mine. I don’t hate your children, though, or believe they’re inferior.

That clause about mostly-common broad ancestry does mean that nationalism is racist in a very general way; but it implies no hostility to anyone, nor any notions of superiority, just a fondness for one’s own way of life, and the belief ”” which seems common sense to me ”” that if one’s ancestors had been some different people, one’s way of life would be different.

That’s it exactly: “Nationalists want all the diverse peoples of the world to be secure in their own cultures and traditions, each in a sovereign nation of its own.” If you love diversity, friends, that is how you preserve it: not by mooshing everyone together so that their ancient folkways clash and grind against each other until either their distinctive, salient features are scraped away by constant friction, or until the the durable incompatibilities of their immiscible essences lead — as has so often been the case throughout mankind’s long and sorrowful history — to bitter and sanguinary disaggregation.

Let a thousand nations bloom!

Read the rest of that week’s Radio Derb transcript here.