Ramblings on nationalism, religion....

The idea of the autonomous nation/state is something that is rather unique and new in the long history of the Western Mind, or Faustian Man, if you will. Old medieval feudalism was hostile to the very notion of nationalism in any form. The object was always a pining for, a romanticism for the ancient Roman Empire's revival with many political thinkers of auld Europa. Medieval thinkers entrenched in their status quo were the reactionaries of their day; the assertion of some that nationalism has it's roots in the 'left' is not at all unfounded. Rightists have traditionally thought of political organization within the grounds of empire and kingdom until the 18th and 19th centuries when the feudalist system had its great unravelling. The birth of the United States of America was the catalyst.

Concur with some conservative thinkers that democracy per se is not what republics, sovereign nation/states are supposed to be about. Democracy, democratic elements in our own Republic came later, we evolved into it. Our Bill of Rights is based on liberty of citizens;checks and balances in our governmental structure. Our Constitution is geared to check the power of both the Few and the Many so that tyranny does not result from either side. As a liberal - a National Liberal - I firmly believe based on observable phenomena that this harmony is way out of balance,the economic elites in particular. Naturally, I am not anti-democracy but often it is not a cure-all for whatever plaques us within our Republic. Economic democracy, however, can be utilized to check the power of the economic elite. Another thing is to ban ALL lobbyists from Capitol Hill - even lobbyism that I agree with. Our Congresspeople are there to represent us, the Voter, not some high flung special interest group that uses the threat of electoral funding to buy our public servants to vote on laws that specifically benefits them. But we economic and civic nationalists have to resort to this lobbying ourselves in the meantime if things are going to be turned around. If they are not, start waving bye-bye to the Republic. There are signs that our side is gaining some ground, but the edifice of globalism from both the Right and Left is hardly beaten;they're wounded. Hopefully, we are analogous to Muhammed Ali vs. Foreman in the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle and we're roping the dope? That is my most optimistic angle at this moment, and that might wax of romanticism.

Yea, the general Left's hostility to nationalism is quite in error given that civic nationalism, at least, has it's roots there. The American nationalist tradition was from the onset peaceful to other nations and there not a bit of militarism in it. Perhaps the most nationalist President of the 19th Century was John Quincy Adams and he smacked the knuckles of those that wanted to go abroad and seek dragons to slay. His Secretary of State, Henry Clay, tried to form a consensus with the newly independent Latin American republics, a forerunner to FDR's "Good Neighbor" policy. John Quincy Adams was said to be the most intelligent man to sit in the Oval Office, and he was well-traveled on top of being well-read. Ironically, Quincy Adams was one of the most *Hamiltonian* President of them all, and his own dear old dad thought Alexander Hamilton to be the Antichrist to the end of his days.

What the Republic direly needs is a revival of this civic nationalism as companion to economic nationalism. This nationalism is the transmission fluid of the Republic. We're inhabitants of the planet Earth, but citizens of our respective Republic, a sovereign nation/state wishing good-will to all the global nations and not demanding that they adopt our 'way of life'. It's actually none of our business what kind of internal political- economic system another nation has as long as they do not directly attack American interests, sovereignty. Neither is it another nation's business what our internal structure has. Isn't this a good policy for all nations to have in international relations? It's not even all that idealistic, but solid pragmatism I always thought.

Said civic-economic nationalism can marginalize as requisite the natural enemies of the sovereign Republic - NeoCon imperialism, globalist laissez-faire and purist *free-market* reverse- Marxists. On the Left, there are the multicultural ideologues from the generation of 1968 steeped in their Frankfurter morass who have not the Republic at heart by any means, either.On the illegal immigration crises, as we all know, this cultural-bolshevist left is on par with the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal. As a National Liberal, both camps are my sworn enemies. The hard left calls people like me "social-fascists"; the Dittohead-RightRantRadio lobby quite assures me that I am a envious leftist in the Leninist mode who wants to shoot every kulak/businessman in the country and confiscate everyone's wife, girlfriend, house, car and toothbrush in the name of levelling egalitarianism. News to me.

Why the hell would I want Bill Gates's toothbrush?? And I wouldn't trade my Chevy pick-up truck for any limo that is out there.

Then you got the Religious Right. As an unbeliever in evangelical/fundy Christianity, and since I think that biological evolution is a fact, folks like Pat Robertson thinks that I am behind a Manichean satanic plot to turn the youth of America into gays and lesbians, atheist practitioners of witchcraft, anti-American Trotskyites who want to kill their parents and make every female get a coerced abortion of their fetus....okie dok.

Well, some of my best friends have been orthodox Christians, and I used to be one myself. I'm just as annoyed with some evangelical atheists like Chris Hitchens and Richard Dawkins who insist on atheism to make a human to be a full human being. If religion is indeed a *Mind Virus* not all its properties are all malignant, though it has caused and is now a lot of calamities in the world. There is often none so dogmatic and wrapped in religious thinking than a zealous anti-religionist. Both camps of opposing Fundys detest agnostics like me as well, I've noticed.

A Republic we have if we can keep it.......