History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce

No I hate Marx, on several levels (ah I'm kidding Karlly-boy, I love you, I just hate your murderous ideology), but I got to admit he occasionally, when he wants to, he can turn a nice phrase (of course when he doesn't want to, you can end up with something like Das Kapital, which 99% of the world can bear reading, and 1% of the world pretends to read).

But whenever you think of Napoleon III, nothing seems to fit better. Yet, that typical assessment misses how important Napoleon III really was to world history.

Just on the bare bones:
He brought down the Second Republic of France, furthering the French tradition of chronically unstable and periodically radical governments.

He reignited foreign adventurism by helping to push forward the Crimean War. While this war can be looked from a purely Russia-Ottoman standpoint, the entire 19th century and most of the 18th century were constant Russia-Ottoman conflicts, what made this one unique was the French and British military intervention (as opposed to later diplomatic interventions), which owes itself in a great deal to Napoleon III.

He furthered the idea of colonialism for prestige and honor + the idea of colonial paternalism in his policies in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Middle East.

He brought European politics back to the Americas with his intervention in Mexico.

He helped destablize the European power-balance by encouraging the emergence of Italy and generally backing nationalism movements and lobbying for a first place of France beyond the Concert of Europe.

He was perhaps the first of the modernizing conservatives. Essentially radical in their embrace of modernity and their embrace of nationalism, essentially conservative in their views on rights and on personal values. The basic tenant of figures like Napoleon III, who would haunt the late 19th century as well as the whole of the 20th century, was that the nation must be made great and strong, while the people must be kept orderly and moral.

In Napoleon III, there is the model for more than 100 years of brutal modernizers who did it all in the name of the nation. In that company, he does seem like a little bit of a farce. But he created a modern but unstable France, he helped create a nationalistic but unstable Europe, and he helped create a world being consumed by the need for glory, honor, and a place in the sun.

So in the end, history repeated itself twice as tragedy.

Things sometimes are as they are

It is an odd world with borders and all. I feel like many nation-states have been searching for "organic" borders but truly that rarely exists. Most states are the result of empires which forcefully included several ethnicities or are the result of colonial administrative units which did the same. The exceptions are largely in Europe and the Americas, but even there there is massive controversy in many cases. Usually the only areas where controversy over borders is week is where borders have existed in their current form for a hundred or so years. This is pretty rare however when you think globally, so people are bound to be upset by borders and claim that this land was ours historically, or this land has a demographic for us now, or this land had a demographic for us 80 years ago. The truth is demographics change, sometimes forcefully, sometimes non-forcefully, but they always change, and in the end we have to just get used to it. Ultimately the only way to have borders fit populations is to have some world body draw up new borders across the world (because like I said most countries don't have borders that fit with their national demographics), expel all the minorities (usually a process that involves much carnage and heartbreak), and then repeat every so often to account for changing borders. Or we could live with the borders we have, maybe making an exception for massive human rights violations in an area where most of the population favors independence (not just where most of the population is a certain ethnicity). Just a thought.

July 4th

Happy July 4th! God Bless America!

I say that not because of any particular political position, rather because I love this country. I realize that a country is an imaginary object, well, perhaps imaginary is the wrong word, but it is a mental object. Countries do not have any physical reality beyond what people are willing to enforce them with. And they only enforce these realities because the country exists in their mind. It's all in the head. But that doesn't mean that a country doesn't matter.

The United States of America is a country, a mental object and not a physical one, and yet it still matters to me. I am not mystical about countries or ethnicities, I do not believe that they have a special spiritual essence of their own that requires protecting. But the term United States of America is not meaningless to me. It is a community, it is a collection of sometimes inexpressible associations, it is a jumble of ideas and concepts, that all come together to form something beautiful. A country is like a novel or a movie, it is an imaginary object, but that doesn't stop it from being loved. But there is also the community aspect, the aspect of how this imaginary object, although interpreted differently by everyone (sometimes slightly differently, sometimes radically differently) binds us to other people through our common love of it, and it encourages us to love each other. Those two aspects, the beauty of the imaginary object, and the encouragement to love the community are why I am proud to be patriotic and in love with America.

I know how easily though, this beautiful idea of love of country can be twisted into something horrific, monsterous, inhuman. Afterall nationalism fueled Nazism, nationalism launched a million failed economic, political and social experiments that left millions upon millions dead, nationalism has blinded people to the excesses and war crimes of their leaders, it has prompted people to murder their brothers without mercy. I am a student of history and I know of the burden of history borne by the word country.

Yet, I think much of that has to do with the twisting of passion. Previously I wrote about how religion has been used to justify horrors but that this is really due not inherintly to religion, but rather to passion in general. I'd apply the same rule to nationalism. Afterall, the most murderous (although perhaps not most horrific) ideology of the last century was Communism, an explicitly non-religious, and supposedly non-nationalistic ideology. When we are passionate enough, it is easy to use that passion to justify our worse insticts, but moreover, it is easy to say, well, the idea that I'm so passionate about is so important that it is worth killing for. From there the road to murder is easy and from murder mass murder can flow. Nationalism can be twisted into great evil, great hatred, but at its heart is love. The love an idea, the love of a community.

The key is to use that love inclusively, not exclusively. Love the country, love the community, but do not hate other countries or other communities. Instead of treating nationalism as a matter of choosing one country to adore and others to detest, make it a gift that you give to one idea, one community. But even that is not enough, sometimes what is good for the country (although given that a country is a hard-to-define, ever-shifting, abstract concept with an ever-shifting, ever-changing community attached to it, what is good for a country is often very, very difficult to find and define) and what is good in general conflict. In such a case, it is imperative that we remember that while country might be a matter of affection and belonging, our core beliefs of right and wrong must come first. We must always remember to choose what is right even when it opposes what is good for our country.

As I wrote previously, I think of myself as Christian first then American, and that is a representation of the fact that while I love America dearly, Christianity is at the core of my beliefs, the core of my conception of right and wrong and so it must always come first before my nation. That's why for all those Muslims who say they are Muslim first, then their nationality, hey good for them. In the end, nationalism I think, when properly used, when properly embraced can be a great positive, but when it opposes what we know according to our core values is right, we must fight for what is good, even if it is against our country.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!