I think what you’re talking about here is the End of History. I can’t stand how everyone dismisses that book without bothering to read it or ponder what it entails. I think Fukuyama was basically right and that history really did end. History is the story of the Gentes and their never-ending clashing and mixing, their generation and their dying. And history has ended because, fearing it had proved too great a liability, even a negative ROI, we scuttled our metaphysics. This was not an irrational decision. Because the thing about history—that rich a storied cosmos for which we now feel the vaguest of yearning—is that it is, in addition to the great giver of meaning, hell. There is no gens that did not claw its way into being. I don’t know what we do with that. I don’t know if it’s possible to have a deep sense of peoplehood without suffering and contest. It does not seem ever to have happened before.
Really pleased you decided to write and publish this! Your love of of your people and country is beautifully stated. I’m personally tired of words like Nationalism being dirty words. At this point, most Westerners have too little love of their own people to ever worry about having too much. A starving man dosen’t have to worry about over eating, neither should a modern westerner worry about “idolatry of nation.”
I'm pleased you decided to post this. It's a fantastic piece and handled with great delicacy and finesse, two things frequently lacking in the defense of this idea, and it reaffirms why I love reading your work.
Being of Dutch ancestry myself, my paternal line having settled here in the 1600s, I feel a certain affinity for Amerikaner. Washington Irving once proposed the name "United States of Alleghenia," writing "I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America ... to which it is my pride and happiness to belong ... We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country; from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone ... when it first declared our national independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present titles. We might still use the phrase, ‘The United States,’ substituting Appalachia or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter), in place of America." I'm fond of being thought an "Alleghanian."
This stirred something in me, which prompted me to write my thoughts out in a short article. There’s a misrepresentation that national love can be only a moral failing in it’s exclusivity towards other nations. I think you present the strongest argument I’ve seen to this point to the opposite. Truly well done.
As a product of mass migration, I support WASP and / or heritage American self determination and I hope that we evolve in the direction of an empire instead of the outdated nation state model.
I think multiculturalism is steering toward an imperial model as opposed to a nation state model, in fact.
You display a kind of Ahavat Yisrael —a biblical concept, a mitzvah—but for your own people. Or you desire to feel and show forth that particular kind of love. Nothing reprehensible there.
Where this love gets tricky, but also more wondrous, is in the fact that the myriad *Gentes* are not all constituted in the same way. By that I mean it’s not just that the nations are many, it’s that they nation, as it were, differently to some extent. And then, one perceives that many if not most of the national identities available to one today are of relatively recent construction that is the result of precisely the sort of inversion of the state-nation hierarchical balance you decry.
In any case, the trouble I always run up against in pondering this question of identity is how to make it deep. How can one’s roots in a *gens* possess the ontological weight you want to ascribe to that belonging when—especially here in America—that belonging is more or less freely and consciously chosen, one consumer choice among others, as with one’s religion? A brand. A credential, perhaps.
What went into making the national or ethnic consciousness of yore was nearly always life conditions over which those who lived them had little agency. *Within* the constraints of culture there were great imaginations who acted and shaped their worlds. But we are not starting from that situation. We are not *within* a cultural form, or perhaps we can say the purview of a tutelary spirit, in the way those forebears were, precisely because we choose. For the freedom to choose we have given up the possibility of just that which we would have chosen. It is a very strange and unprecedented way of being in the world. I salute your efforts to grapple with it and hope you don’t regret publishing this. I see no misstep here, only honest feeling and searching of a sort that may thoughtful people are engaged in now.
Finding good *auctores* is important. Belloc, no doubt because of his dual heritage, was good on ethnos and culture. David Jones was another who pondered the matter deeply. And these were men who, like Von Hildebrand, saw up close what nationalism wreaked upon European civilization.
I am so happy you decided to write this, and to have the courage to post this. It's a tremendous task to tell this particular truth to a spiritual audience. I wish I could do this myself, but I am motivated by self-interest and resentment. I do not want to tarnish what I know to be the truth with my apparent flaws.
Natural Law was put into place by God, and it is self-evident. Everything modern from the flattening of hierarchy to the erasure of our nations, the lifeless colors so popular in our sterile homes and our boring cars, to higher abstractions and stifling of voices, to AI creating monstrosities of word and artform, poisons in our air and artificial diets, are all against His Natural Law He so lovingly structured.
May God pour out His grace on you for your integrity and authenticity, and bless your life.
I'm so glad you decided to post this, Loup. I will need to read this again, and look at some things I might have missed the first time. I'm really not educated enough to be able to say a lot on this topic, other than that this would make a very fine reading in my philosophy class that's sadly ending. Wonderful read, as always, and I see your line of thinking very clearly here.
I appreciate the charity of that response! This is a conversation that really is happening, especially among young American converts, and I thought in the end -- at least I will contribute something to the discussion. (You will have more wonderful philosophy classes to come, I am very sure.)
You definitely contributed a lot to the discussion, your time and careful writing made sure of that! My main area of study isn’t philosophy, sadly, so I only get to take three more philosophy classes (one of them with my prof right now who I love).
A further thought….
I think what you’re talking about here is the End of History. I can’t stand how everyone dismisses that book without bothering to read it or ponder what it entails. I think Fukuyama was basically right and that history really did end. History is the story of the Gentes and their never-ending clashing and mixing, their generation and their dying. And history has ended because, fearing it had proved too great a liability, even a negative ROI, we scuttled our metaphysics. This was not an irrational decision. Because the thing about history—that rich a storied cosmos for which we now feel the vaguest of yearning—is that it is, in addition to the great giver of meaning, hell. There is no gens that did not claw its way into being. I don’t know what we do with that. I don’t know if it’s possible to have a deep sense of peoplehood without suffering and contest. It does not seem ever to have happened before.
Really pleased you decided to write and publish this! Your love of of your people and country is beautifully stated. I’m personally tired of words like Nationalism being dirty words. At this point, most Westerners have too little love of their own people to ever worry about having too much. A starving man dosen’t have to worry about over eating, neither should a modern westerner worry about “idolatry of nation.”
Thanks so much. More than anything else this was a love song to my people.
I'm pleased you decided to post this. It's a fantastic piece and handled with great delicacy and finesse, two things frequently lacking in the defense of this idea, and it reaffirms why I love reading your work.
Being of Dutch ancestry myself, my paternal line having settled here in the 1600s, I feel a certain affinity for Amerikaner. Washington Irving once proposed the name "United States of Alleghenia," writing "I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America ... to which it is my pride and happiness to belong ... We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country; from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone ... when it first declared our national independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present titles. We might still use the phrase, ‘The United States,’ substituting Appalachia or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter), in place of America." I'm fond of being thought an "Alleghanian."
This stirred something in me, which prompted me to write my thoughts out in a short article. There’s a misrepresentation that national love can be only a moral failing in it’s exclusivity towards other nations. I think you present the strongest argument I’ve seen to this point to the opposite. Truly well done.
As a product of mass migration, I support WASP and / or heritage American self determination and I hope that we evolve in the direction of an empire instead of the outdated nation state model.
I think multiculturalism is steering toward an imperial model as opposed to a nation state model, in fact.
Thank you very much for writing this. This is a proclamation that we can build on. This is Mayflower scion approved. Hail St. George.
You display a kind of Ahavat Yisrael —a biblical concept, a mitzvah—but for your own people. Or you desire to feel and show forth that particular kind of love. Nothing reprehensible there.
Where this love gets tricky, but also more wondrous, is in the fact that the myriad *Gentes* are not all constituted in the same way. By that I mean it’s not just that the nations are many, it’s that they nation, as it were, differently to some extent. And then, one perceives that many if not most of the national identities available to one today are of relatively recent construction that is the result of precisely the sort of inversion of the state-nation hierarchical balance you decry.
In any case, the trouble I always run up against in pondering this question of identity is how to make it deep. How can one’s roots in a *gens* possess the ontological weight you want to ascribe to that belonging when—especially here in America—that belonging is more or less freely and consciously chosen, one consumer choice among others, as with one’s religion? A brand. A credential, perhaps.
What went into making the national or ethnic consciousness of yore was nearly always life conditions over which those who lived them had little agency. *Within* the constraints of culture there were great imaginations who acted and shaped their worlds. But we are not starting from that situation. We are not *within* a cultural form, or perhaps we can say the purview of a tutelary spirit, in the way those forebears were, precisely because we choose. For the freedom to choose we have given up the possibility of just that which we would have chosen. It is a very strange and unprecedented way of being in the world. I salute your efforts to grapple with it and hope you don’t regret publishing this. I see no misstep here, only honest feeling and searching of a sort that may thoughtful people are engaged in now.
Finding good *auctores* is important. Belloc, no doubt because of his dual heritage, was good on ethnos and culture. David Jones was another who pondered the matter deeply. And these were men who, like Von Hildebrand, saw up close what nationalism wreaked upon European civilization.
I am so happy you decided to write this, and to have the courage to post this. It's a tremendous task to tell this particular truth to a spiritual audience. I wish I could do this myself, but I am motivated by self-interest and resentment. I do not want to tarnish what I know to be the truth with my apparent flaws.
Natural Law was put into place by God, and it is self-evident. Everything modern from the flattening of hierarchy to the erasure of our nations, the lifeless colors so popular in our sterile homes and our boring cars, to higher abstractions and stifling of voices, to AI creating monstrosities of word and artform, poisons in our air and artificial diets, are all against His Natural Law He so lovingly structured.
May God pour out His grace on you for your integrity and authenticity, and bless your life.
Thank you.
I'm so glad you decided to post this, Loup. I will need to read this again, and look at some things I might have missed the first time. I'm really not educated enough to be able to say a lot on this topic, other than that this would make a very fine reading in my philosophy class that's sadly ending. Wonderful read, as always, and I see your line of thinking very clearly here.
I appreciate the charity of that response! This is a conversation that really is happening, especially among young American converts, and I thought in the end -- at least I will contribute something to the discussion. (You will have more wonderful philosophy classes to come, I am very sure.)
You definitely contributed a lot to the discussion, your time and careful writing made sure of that! My main area of study isn’t philosophy, sadly, so I only get to take three more philosophy classes (one of them with my prof right now who I love).