“Nationalism cannot be the answer to globalism. It is not standing against the process, because it is literally the first step of it. Both of them believe that human beings become more equal, more free, and more modern the more you strip away the concrete communities they actually come from. They only disagree about where to stop.
The key to the demise of globalism and Egalitarianism is to strike at the root of it, the same root from which Nationalism grew out of, ‘The People.’ As long as you accept the premise that legitimacy flows up from an undivided mass called ‘The People,’ you have already conceded that this mass first must be made one, made uniform, and made interchangeable, and you are only ever haggling over how large the mass should be. And the failure of the modern Right-Wing to understand this, is a testament to the victory of Egalitarianism.”
“My question to all Nationalists everywhere is: If it was acceptable to melt a hundred regional peoples down into one national people, then on what principle do you suddenly object when someone proposes to melt the nations down in turn?”
Bret answers,
The problem here is that Biblical Christian Nationalism (CN) doesn’t desire to eliminate regionalism or familialism. The mistake of the chap above is to think that Nationalism automatically means “Statism.” CN is in opposition to statism and all forced consolidations under a Uniformitarian state. This is why Biblical CN believes in jurisdictionalism (subsidiarity). Biblical Nationalism operates in such a way that the mediating covenant institutions that is comprised of other legitimate biblical governments (families, churches, schools, guilds, etc.) are not washed away. CN takes into account the need for the one and the many to be expressed in social order. Only non Biblical CN would advocate for the kind of consolidation that is warned against above.
What is explained above is the kind of pagan Nationalism that was forced upon these united States by Abraham Lincoln and the black Republicans in the 1860s when, by the force of bayonets, the Constitution was re-written so that we no longer had a Federal government ruling over confederated states but instead had a pagan National government that had maliciously reduced the previous regionalism that had characterized America before the War Against the Constitution.
So, we would agree that pagan Nationalism is no answer to pagan globalism. We agree that forced consolidation on a minor scale is only marginally better that consolidation on a global scale.
I also agree that basing the legitimacy of the State on the consensus of a undivided mass called “the people,” is a recipe for un-Christian Nationalism. Whether it is the civil government or the church government or the family government or a regional government the supreme authority cannot and should not be “the people.” The supreme authority is God alone. God is the sovereign ruler and all other governing entities are merely stewards of God’s sovereignty. No nation can remain stable that lodges its authority in “the people,” absent of presupposing God’s rule over that people.
It should also be noticed here that this critique has a quite Libertarian feel to it. It seems to presuppose that people should never consolidate. After all, even if regional consolidations are maintained, over against National or global consolidations, who is to say that regional consolidations aren’t also evil? Continuing to take this premise to its logical end results in a individualistic Libertarian atomism, which, ironically enough, always results in Statism of one sort or another.
I quite agree then, that it was no more legitimate for the Yankees in 1861 to force the American Nation into a consolidated union than it is for the International Marxist to today forcefully consolidate the world into one vast globalism. The answer though is not to eliminate Nationalism. The answer is to embrace a Biblical Nationalism where the one (Nation) and the many (regions/families/churches/etc. in the nation) find each their proper place underneath the sovereign authority of the One and Many God of the Bible.
Thus we see that the only hope for any nation against the dictatorial impulse of fallen men both in dreams of consolidated Nationalism and in dreams of Globalism is Biblical Christianity. Only the God of the Bible can provide a social order wherein both the one and the many find an appropriate harmony of interests. Failing a Christian people all one can expect is a constant push-me, pull-you between Internationalism (Globalism) and pagan Nationalism.
As an aside, this warfare between pagan Globalism and pagan Nationalism explains the warfare that was pagan Nationalism (Nazism) vs. Pagan Globalism (Communism). The victory of either one would have been and was the defeat of a Biblical social order.
“With the [national] socialism of nations, each nation remains independent. It yields … only as much of its sovereignty as to enable the execution of the tasks that are in the interest of all and each separately [the doctrine of subsidiarity]. If we do not succeed in taking this road, we will either be given a world empire headed by a single state — or end up with international Bolshevism, which can equally be nothing but despotism. The international powers that are at work to penetrate the unanimity of the national bodies, the states, the nations, to dissolve and undermine them, are therefore contrary to nature and hostile to the divine order. p. 170. The contrary is essential: coalition, by groups, into confederacies of states, into families of nations, perhaps even here and there into federal states.” p. 172.
Adolf Hitler, from ‘Memoirs of a Confidant’ by Otto Wagener, ed. Henry Ashby Turner Jr., trans. Ruth Hein
Sorry Ron… I don’t believe the things that Politicians say if only because they say things that are convenient to say at any given time.
That’s what’s so refreshing about the Fuhrer. He was a statesman–not a politician. He meant what he said and he said what he meant. He was a man. I shall not look upon his like again.
Excellent article, thank you.