The Nation State

This post follows on from the earlier one on patriotism.

There are those who say that the days of the nation state are over and that henceforth we should live under the banner of one humanity by which they mean a humanity which adheres to egalitarian doctrines in which the only differences allowed are ones that submit themselves to the prevailing dogma. Spirituality of a sort would be permitted but it would preferably be non-theistic and certainly have to fall into line with the official political orthodoxy which would be unquestionable. There are others, of whom I am one, who think that this is a tactic to separate human beings from their roots so that they are more easily malleable and better able to be shaped to the requirements of a One World system of government which would present itself as benign but which would really be about total control. To this end all traditional loyalties are to be destroyed in the name of unity, and people are presented with a shiny new and sophisticated ideology to which everyone must subscribe. As always, the real powers deceive the well-meaning but naive by hiding their true agenda behind noble sounding words with which it seems no decent person could possibly disagree.

The idea of the nation state needs to be broken because it resists this orthodoxy by giving a focus for identity to something that conflicts with it. Thus it must be presented as divisive, out of date and probably racist too, and obligingly, because when you suppress the natural expression of something it reappears in a deformed and exaggerated state, groups spring up that do indeed tick all these boxes. However that does not mean that the principle in question is as described. The distortion of a truth is the distortion not the truth. Do we define a thing only by its negative aspects? Is Christianity only the Inquisition? Is marriage only divorce?

This is why mass immigration is now so much encouraged. New arrivals are naturally not going to have much feeling for the past of a country but it is the past that gives that country its identity. When that connection is weakened so is the sense of identity and a new one based on the universalist, humanity is one, modern ethos can be built up. People without a past are more easily controlled by the powers that be, whether they be political, economic or whatever, and they can be more readily herded into the direction desired by those powers. A new direction is not always a bad thing, of course. It all depends on what the direction is. The introduction of Christianity to the West was clearly a very good thing but now the situation is precisely the reverse. The agenda is the destruction of Christianity or any form of religion that points human beings away from the preoccupations of this world and towards the sense that life here is part of much larger field of existence, and promotes the idea that one's values should be based on the reality of that larger field not the small segment of it in which we currently live.

A nation state is probably the largest unit with which a person can feel a real sense of belonging. This is not just an imagined ideal, as in the airy dreams of the ivory towered intellectual, but a truly felt sense of participation which has depth and roots, blood and soul. One based in the earth as well as the mind. A real home unlike in the globalised world where, as they say, no one is a foreigner but no one is at home either. One humanity may seem a pleasant idea but it has no substance for it has no real distinguishing characteristics and nothing concrete to define it. It is just an abstraction. There is no individuality and what we love is individuality. The Frenchness of France, the Indianness of India and so on. This is not to say that humanity is not one. It very definitely is and in today's world should be seen as such. But, at the same time, it is made up of different constituent parts and its multiplicity is just as important as its unity and should not be destroyed in the name of the latter any more than the reverse should be the case. Are we so blind that we cannot see the virtue of the two existing together? I like to think of the Trinity as a pattern for everything and, for me, it certainly gives us a clue as to how things should be in the context of one world and many nation states. The one and the many are two sides of the same coin and neither should be neglected for the sake of the other.

Although often described as such, the nation state, or better put, the country, is not really a political entity. It is a cultural thing, certainly, but at a deeper level it is a spiritual thing. It can, indeed it should, change and grow but this growth should be faithful to the inner reality of which the country is the outer expression. If it is not there will be a rupture between inner and outer as is the case with virtually all countries now. This can only lead to disharmony within the nation and instability among the people. In this context it has to be said that England is increasingly losing its connection to Albion. One can only presume this is deliberately engineered so that we accept the brave new world being prepared for us and do so gladly, thinking it an improvement on the ignorant past. Let us hope there are enough inhabitants of England who can keep that connection alive in their hearts until the times be more propitious for its expression.

None of this means that present day nation states will not be fundamentally altered in the future. That is all part of the natural way life unfolds. But the motives of the forces which are ultimately behind the attempts to deconstruct them today are to do with power and control despite the humanitarian tone of the way their case is presented to the public. For the sort of oneness that is being promoted now is not a spiritual oneness but a distortion of that for non-spiritual ends. The devil is able to corrupt anything and, as Shakespeare tells us, 'can cite scripture for his purpose'.