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A Divided Foundation
A political theory designed to understand human beings as they are in reality, and not to tell us stories about the adventures of some fantastic creature invented by philosophers, cannot avoid this capacity of the human individual to recognize the aims of the collective as his own.
I’ve been reading Yoram Hazony’s book The Virtues of Nationalism lately. I’ve also been reading Reason’s abortion articles and Ricochet, and a host of other things.
As a result, I’m struggling with one of the assumptions Hazony makes about human nature and I think he greatly takes for granted the need for a moral framework for it to persist past childhood… that is the natural inclination to view a collective group as an extension of oneself.
Indeed, the very love that he evidently feels for his wife and children, and for his parents, and for brothers and sisters, and that moves him to protect them when they are in danger, is nothing other than another name for this same urge to protect the integrity of his self—for these loved ones have been embraced, insofar has his own consciousness is concerned, within the rubric of his own self, and are experienced as if they were a part of him.
This is the primary element of tribalism, however it is even more primarily the foundation of family.
He makes some great points… that how we view family is that they are a part of ourselves and we care for them as if they were ourselves. It has biblical support, but is not necessarily biblical. This concept is present in Exodus 24 (?) Concerning the freeing of a slave who married and had kids while a slave, it’s in I Corinthians’ assertion that a husband and wife are the same body, and it’s in Peter’s admonishment of failing to care for your own makes one worse than an unbeliever.
However, our modern concept of individualism has so rotted out this natural inclination to view others around us as an extension of self that we can’t even argue ourselves out of a paper bag when it comes to the moral imperative of women not aborting their own babies, where there should be a moral imperative to protect as if it were her own self. In fact, if we view the baby as an extension of the mother, transgender arguments does away with the arguments against harming your own body (an assumption made in I Corinthians)!
I’m reading his book and am finding myself sinking into despair at how far gone our culture is that what was once taken for granted as morally understood no longer is at all. We have no agreed upon moral assumptions on which to build arguments on.
Published in General
In general, my thought is that if what I do within the framework of my being a free individual actually is the cause of harm to others, that’s a problem I need to figure out how to fix.
The basis of Nationalism is at its heart familial relations. Those who are part of your tribe are those who are related to you directly or who are connected by a direct relation through marriage. Nations are extension of those tribes. They are the people who are in essence your 5th cousins or who are married to your 5th cousins. That is the basis of the Israeli nation, their claim to a singular familial origin in Abraham. They are a Nation because they are all related. But there is no morality, creed, or ethos that goes along with that relation. Familial bonds exist irrespective of philosophical unity they are a matter of objective reality. If one looks at ancient civilizations and political systems one sees how the need for familial connection played a role. Alliances were forged through marriage because marriage created the objective connection between two groups. Two tribes became one by intermarriage between their members.
But such an existence is impossible for the American Nation. It is too large, to diverse, to be a classical nation in the way the Jews of the Bible are a classical nation. But luckily America itself proves that one can make Nations out of other things than blood relations. One can make nations out of creeds too. Within such nations you can have classical nations exist so long as they also maintain the unifying creed of the supra-nation.
I think our problem here will be linguistic for we don’t easily distinguish between creedal nations and familial nations. My preference would be to have familial nations simply be called nations, and creedal nations be referred to as states.
Specifically with regards to Israel, that isn’t true.
Generally, Hazony and DeMuth argue there must be some quality that is strong enough for a nation to identify with in order to unite while also being weak enough that there still exists the distinctive groups that make up the nation.
Hazony absolutely believes that language, religion, and values must be shared for such a collective to form, but the principle ingredient that brings them all together is shared adversity* and facing an external threat together.
It’s also why he argues uniting the world can’t happen, because we would need an external threat for it to actually work… and unless we get invaded by aliens (or the return if Jesus!) I don’t see that happening…
*Black America is absolutely it’s own nation in America and it is unlikely to ever assimilate. It my ally with another nation, but its shared adversity is very strong… while also being weak enough to be victim to internal tribal warfare.
Interesting post, Stina.
Where is Peter’s admonishment about caring for one’s own ?
Sorry! Its 1st Timothy 5:8. For some reason, I keep thinking its Peter who said it because he says some very provocative things about family.
So you are arguing the segregationists were right?
All of those things are incidental to the relationship aspect of family. They share religion, language, and values because they are closely related and such things are propagated through families naturally. The point to be made is that Nationhood doesn’t require good values, or valid religion, and language is ultimately arbitrary (one is as good as another).
There is a titanic difference between recognizing the value to society of having a moral consensus on a lot of key points, versus trying to create that moral consensus by demanding that everyone adhere to the same religion. In this country we have had a moral consensus from the Founding until recently. That consensus has not been that everyone must adhere to the same religion. On the contrary, freedom of religion has been a part of that moral consensus. Along with freedom of speech and conscience, a recognition that the rights of man derive from the rights given by God (or nature) to the individual and not from the King or the state, a respect for the rule of law as embodied in small-r republican political institutions, limited government which derives its just power from the consent of the governed and which has the goal of securing the individual rights of citizens rather than controlling and commanding those citizens, free market capitalism, and open scientific inquiry unconstrained by religious dogma. In other words, we have had a moral consensus formed on the basis of Enlightenment principles. The very same principles that Stina constantly denigrates. There is someone here who is trying to undermine our shared moral consensus, and it ain’t me.
Your comment, AP, accepts Stina’s premise that the only way to have shared moral principles is for everyone to adhere to the same religion. That is poppycock, and neither you nor Stina has offered a shred of evidence that this is true. Stina claims to have history on her side. On the contrary, history is awash with societies that have imposed a single religion on their people, and those societies have uniformly been abysmal failures. Mostly they destroy themselves by going to war with the guys next door who don’t share their religion. It’s still true of Islamic societies today. And I can’t believe that you would want any part of that.
I’m arguing those who willingly segregate are within their rights and understandable.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to grasp:
Top down collectivizing is wrong.
But people naturally, through free association, collectivize and there’s nothing wrong with that.
You have 3 things here:
1) good values – this is a judgement call. It isn’t about good values, but shared values. And as families grow and distance, shared values might be shifted. One family married into another nation and adopts the values of that nation and their descendants are no longer recognizable.
2) valid religion – another judgement. It isn’t a matter of being valid, but shared. This defines the moral foundation and what is acceptable from the personal level. And differences here create deep rifts. See EO vs Catholic, Catholic vs Protestant, Shia vs Sunni, Judaism vs Christianity.
3) shared language. I don’t know how you think this is the weakest one. It is ultimately the only way to communicate. Without a shared language, there is no understanding.
This is so full of strawmen I don’t know where to begin.
First of all, I pointed to one specific moral underpinning – the morality of attachments or bonds to other people. I argue it is being lost.
I pointed out such bonds are biblical, but I also said that it does not need just the bible to rest on.
I have not said anything about government mandating anything, but I am attacking a cultural way of phrasing language and emphasizing certain philosophies that undermines this particular moral value.
And it’s this moral value that has so eroded that we can’t even counter a pro-abortion argument equating a mother killing an invading fetus with a homeowner killing an invader.
Once you (or anyone else) drags abortion into a discussion, all useful communication ceases. Which is why I never discuss abortion on Ricochet. But I will try to respond while leaving the issue of abortion aside. So I ask you this: Other than abortion, is there any way in which you believe familial ties have eroded in this country? Do mothers no longer love their (born) children? Have kids stopped loving their Grampas? Do husbands and wives no longer cleave to each other? If so, I certainly haven’t noticed. It’s not true in my family, I promise you. Nor in any family I know. (Yes, there are divorces. Sometimes marriages fail. That’s a tragedy, but it is hardly anything new.)
It seems to me that your only argument to support your claim that family ties are dissolving is the existence of abortions. It is futile to argue about that. But I do wonder: If all of those aborted babies were carried to term, and then put up for adoption, would that persuade you that there are strong family ties at work? If so, I would disagree. In my opinion, a mother who gives away her child is not demonstrating her commitment to family ties.
I address family ties because you said you were talking about families. I am curious, though, why you keep using the phrase “other people.” If you are talking about families, why don’t you say “families”? If you are talking about something else, why don’t you tell us – who are these “other people”?
The argument is two fold.
The part Bissey quoted was specifically about how biblical family ties were. He misunderstood what I was reaching for in that part.
However, I also think there is a morality to our connections to others in our community. Those immediately near us. I’m just not ready to make that argument, because it builds off the family argument.
And if the family argument can’t be made, there’s nowhere to go from there.
I am avoiding putting your follower on the spot because it was a comment from him that made me realize this moral assumption isn’t a given and has me seeing it in other arguments by other people, because HE DOES question the morality of caring for family. I’d have to dig out his comment, but it does exist.
Stina this is excellent! Spot on.
You’re really setting yourself up here. The divorce rate in our country today is relatively high, compared to the past. Among fathers, absenteeism is relatively high, and is perhaps the major cause of most other social ills. And that’s just starting with the obvious facts everyone knows.
The very fact that so many people support the rights of mothers to kill their own children indicates the sad state of the strongest family tie we know. You’re wrong about adoption, as well. Even a mother who opts for adoption, instead of slaughter, demonstrates at least enough concern for her own flesh and blood to refrain from killing the child.
I don’t think that I demanded that anyone adhere to the same religion. I don’t think that Stina did, either. I do think that America worked well, for a long time, because the overwhelming majority of the citizens shared a common Christian faith and world view. You even note that we had “a moral consensus from the Founding until recently,” but fail to notice that the breakdown of that consensus was caused by the loss of a generally common faith. I think that you are very wrong about calling these Enlightenment principles.
We sometimes use the term “Enlightenment” to include the ideals of a representative republic based on Protestant Christian values, as was advocated by Locke and the Founders. Most of the “Enlightenment,” however, was a horror — Voltaire and Rousseau leading to the French Revolution and Napoleon; Hegel and Marx leading to Communism; Marx, Nietzche, and Heidegger leading to the Nazis.
[Cont’d]
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The Christian faith does not work well when enforced, because it is fundamentally about personal connection with God. It can be encouraged and supported by sound public policy. Much of our public policy has been actively hostile to the faith since approximately the 1940s.
The results have been worse that you think, Larry. Family breakdown is a disaster. Around 70-75% of black kids in America are born out of wedlock, and I’ve heard that the white rate is now over 30%. I think that all of these problems are tied to a breakdown in traditional sexual morality.
Qeustion for Larry.
Do you see a solution to get back the country we are loosing ?
The only solution I see is a national revival. All voluntary of course. Not everybody obviously, but a significant portion of the populus.
No, not really. Not a practical solution, anyway. There are some things we can do. Getting control of our borders, for example. Because you can’t have a consensus on moral values if you are constantly importing millions of people who don’t share those values. And certainly we would have to remake our so-called educational institutions, which do not educate but rather are indoctrination centers for the most toxic ideology seen in the western world since Stalinism. I don’t really see how we can hope to have shared moral values if we continue to teach an entire generation that all of those values are evil. So no, I don’t hold very much hope.
It’s not that I didn’t “notice” it. I just don’t believe that is the cause.
If you don’t recognize the things I listed as being Enlightenment principles, then we can’t have a very productive conversation because we are not speaking the same language. If you have some different word you prefer to encompass the items on my list, you can tell me what that word is. The one thing my list is not is a list of religious principles.
In my mind, there is a strong link of individualism to Christianity. The so-called ‘golden rule’ describes that connection and it appears to be unique to Christian doctrine. Greed and narcissism are individual behavioral traits that operate contrary to that rule. Individualism is necessary for humans to accept Christ as their Savior. The range of behaviors available to individuals runs the gamut from good to bad. What is chosen is what counts. I think what you are saying about the corruption of individualism is no different from the corruption we see in collective societal policies, in other words, they both are taken to extremes that result in evil behaviors.
Yet our nation could actually be strengthened by immigration, if it was not allowed in ever increasing numbers, and if the Plan from Above was not to create more divisiveness.
People who point to the historic embrace by Americans of immigration fail to point out that in the 1800’s, it was an absolute dictate that the immigrant population must adapt to the prevailing culture. Now it is the reverse. Attend any SJW meetings, and you find that the strongest of current day memes is this one: it hurts the brains of the newly arrived to have to learn our language. So don’t even think about it, unless yo want to prove how mean and lowly a human you are.
And secondly, it improves our intellect to learn their language.
I wish I was making that meme up, but I’m not.
Edit: I didn’t catch your drift initially but we’re in agreement.
Individualism as you describe it is the belief that people are only responsible for their own actions… meaning Mary can’t be blamed for Carla’s mistake even though they are both women. Tommy can’t be blamed for Joe’s sins just because he’s his son.
However, I have seen individualism used as an excuse to do whatever one wants because it’s your life and nobody else’s. As if our actions do not bear natural consequences for others.
For instance (because it is an easy example), Joe had a one night stand with Carla and Carla had an abortion. We all focus on Carla, but what of Joe? His actions were wrong to… being careless about who he has sex with. As a result, his kid bears the brunt of his indiscretion. His actions affected someone else, while not being responsible for Carla’s actions. The “Individualism” I see on display absolutely argues that we can do whatever we want without care for how it affects others around us. In fact, we even deny our actions affect anyone.
This is not biblical and it is not moral. Even as it stands against the golden rule – “love your neighbor as yourself”. Basically, love those around you as an extension of yourself.
Maybe AP is right, that this is not the American tradition of individualism. That this narcissism comes from the French revolutionaries (it wouldn’t surprise, as Rousseau is not treated with harsh skepticism in 11th grade english). However, this French version absolutely exists in our modern discourse and denying it only undermines the American tradition.
I think this puts us pretty much in agreement. Just like so many other terms these days with differing definitions depending on who is using it.
Edit: I’m adding this to clarify my agreement with you and I guess AP. I think the French (Rousseau) version is displayed frequently in our corporate environment and Wall St with the sole focus on profits (short-term or quarterly tells the story well) and the influence on the public, and especially government, is enormous. This has taken over the public and higher education field with exactly such a focus on the individual advancement made available to administrators at the expense of those needing to be educated.