I think anti-nationalism is largely the by-product of the immense cynicism and anti-patriotism spawned by the World Wars. It was such a huge shift in popular ideology that I'm surprised that it still exists on any sort of noticeable scale (though the fact that it goes hand-in-hand with the cult of personality probably explains any lingering presence).

Possibly I'm talking out of my arse; this isn't really my area of expertise. I'd be interested to see what the PolSci majors have to say.

I think that in the developed West (W-Europe and North America, not Balkans etc.), the aim of nationalism has mostly shifted. WWII was all about nationalism as nationalist supremacy and irredentism; our nation / culture is superior and should rule all the lands it claims (still an issue for the less developed parts of the world). Today, it's about creating an exclusionary identity. No more focus on gaining territory, or ruling others, but in excluding the "other" from the nation. Hence the immigration / isamophobia debates in nations like France, the Netherlands and the US. And in the case of the US, keep in mind that what is called nationalism in the rest of the world is there "patriotism". The US is one of the most ultra-nationalist nations around.

Nationalism isn't dead, it's just focusing on something else right now.

>>12340

Polisci major here, you hit the nail on the head there Anon.

Personally I'd say nationalism can have its benefits, but when it gets to the point of "bahaha we're better than everyone else so stay out of our borders!!!" (which unfortunately is nearly always the case) it has ill effects.

>>12341

As an actual scientist, the very notion of your field of study referring to itself as "political science" is every bit as offensive as "Scientology" and "Church Of Christ Scientist". It seeks to bolster its own legitimacy through usage of the word, but only devalues science. Restraining order please.

Nationalism is tribalism, and politics is religion by another name. Arguments from authority, celebrity worship... completely irrational, it's a junk yard for those whose only areas of expertise are "people skills" and baseless self-promotion. It's a high school popularity contest writ large, by and for the same awful people.

>>12342

Ohohoho, someone's got their knickers in a twist.

Normally when asked what I study I tell people quite simply "politics" as I agree with you that there's hardly anything scientific about political "science." I only used the term bc >>12338 expressed his interest in seeing "what the PolSci majors have to say."

That being said, history and politics are my two passions; in fact, I find them to go hand in hand. Civilizations would not be able to thrive without law, and well-crafted law can be among the most beautiful of mankind's creations.

While the trade of politicians may be "a high school popularity contest," I'd argue that studying law for the sake of studying, for the sake of appreciating its inherent beauty and awesome power, is not a waste of resources; as a scientist, would you not agree that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a worthwhile pursuit?

personally I study history because political science is too often the breeding ground for retardation, and I'm opposed to culling of access to ideas, or people, and for the culling of credibility for certain ideas as they do indeed lack merit, and a person is not "for" anything that I personally necessarily decide

free agency, the concept of free will, liberty are all interactive with each other, and while technically in the face of scientific determinism it appears to be bunk, the fact of the matter is even in such a case, chaos theory provides an answer to why these things are useful

to think there's anything spectacularly inherently special about an individual nation is pretty stupid, however a certain amount of pride, akin to the pride of even existing is laudable and reasonable

but let's not start treating a certain nation or individual as god here

and there's no needing to have nickers in a twist to notice that what's called patriotism is in fact tribalism and it IS in fact akin to scientology and church of christ scientist, and christian science, and faith healing, and so on


this isn't to say there is no legitimate scientific approach to politics, but it is probably safe to say that what everyone knows of when they think of it, is bunk and shit or simplistic

of course, this may end up being equivalent to genetics and biology, in their eugenics phase during the 1920's, but even there it was pretty clear that the whole eugenics program was fairly illegitimate and based on very ignorant notions of natural selection and just how it might work

I've also seen what tribalism and the whole us vs them dynamic does when it's let off it's leash like a mad dog

let's not forget that the origin of nation states comes from the 30 years war, and the unification of germany comes from the prussian's militarism, and let's not forget tibet's issue because of chinese nationalism/race related drives towards dominating all sino types in the region as part of their own "manifest destiny" type of things

or the actual manifest destiny that led to mass genocide

it's a holier than thou attitude and I've never found that to be much of a help to aiding others and one's self at the same time, only helping one's self at the expense of others en mass and writ large, to use the same phrase as the other guy did


sure, blood is thicker than water, and your family can come first, but it's stupid to think that others will simply lay down and die for you and if you want to bully others in your ignorance you'll find they're willing to give you enough pain that you just can't carry on that way if you want to live even reasonably

there's a point, where, honestly, people just give up on supporting you for such self destructive and mass destructive purposes, and move on

this closed state bullshit is what donald kagan called hubris, it is arrogance (pride basically) but a certain kind, it is the kind that can only be backed up by violence

and civil societies, while they CAN partake in such activities, choose against it for their own good

but this doesn't mean they can't snap at you and be even a speed bump or obstacle that, if it even slows you down a bit, because of how fast you need to go, how aggressive you need to be, just to keep up that veneer of unity or worthiness or righteousness, stomping people and then moving on as quick as possible to distract people


well...

since I'm sure that the whole greek elections thing is common news by now, that the neo nazi party got 7% of the popular vote roughly apparently

I'll tell you to look up some fiction

"the prophet of truth" - from halo: harvest

what america has been doing lately and the lack of support for it world wide now

the demise of britain's empire and collapse of conservatism because of margaret thatcher and other jackasses

adam smith's warning about the vile maxim of the owners of mankind, which says little about conspiratorial intent and is more just a mode of behaviour, which could easily be ignorant and still successful at it like a child manipulating their parents

the collapse of the soviet union

bush's being elected out


rabies describes the ignorant pompous attitudes well, and I'll point out that might does make right, but you can't have might unless you have support, and if fear's the only driver then you'll find it only works so far, and eventually, it's the rats that keep struggling, if only for the chance to know they existed, if only to give you a scar to remember them by if no one else will or can, or if only to have revenge to revoke one's own existence for impinging on theirs

then you'll start to see why nationalism isn't very good, because it's "my survival is the most important so I'll just consider myself and give myself "the right" to have special reasons and magical thinking"

even the most peaceful individuals won't stand for that, when push comes to shove, and you know what?

that's the way sociopaths behave, and they don't know it, and they get away with a fair bit, but they sure as hell get punished all the same

dawkins has a great bit where he describes something like naives, cheats, and grudgers

nationalism is the cheats version, grudgers are the anti-nationalists, and naives are the ones who have yet to learn about it

another, simpler way of putting it is

if you've got a little country screaming about how only a certain kind of person should exist, you'd better watch out because most of the world might have a lot of people that they're friends and family with that aren't on that list

and they couldn't give half a shit about a nationalist's "heaven on earth" without those people

and they won't stand by and watch others destroy the world as it is, that they might not love entirely, but they're not willing to see it go either, just because some little cunt bitch is a nihilist looking for meaning in life and looking in all the wrong places

all this dynamic is made possible because we're talking about interactions between humans, who can interbreed and interact on relatively the same level, and it's best you not forget that if you wanna do well

questions? :)

>>12346
You made me do a brain. You seem learned, I've just stated reading a book called Larzousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History. Is it worth the read? Also what do you think of the current socialist regimes in south America? Venezuela in particular.

>>12346
Why do you hate punctuation?

>>12349
He doesn't hate punctuation. He just hates periods.

He probably ate at the Y during red tide.

>>12343 here.

Apologies. Half a dozen of my close childhood friends were all poll-sci majors. None of them know the first fucking thing about any of topics they profess to be an expert on, and every time they get to talking it makes my skin crawl. I've asked them what it means to know something, what is knowledge, what is an informed decision worth vs... etc, and all I ever get is essentially "whatever popular opinion says". If I didn't hear the same shit out the mouths of every attorney and politician, I'd be more optimistic about where the US is heading, but..

I actually can imagine society without law, because law is essentially a few people deciding upon a rule of human behavior that's applied universally to the many, a construct built upon at least three seriously flawed premises with terrible track records of application. Society without law is exactly what we get when we amass 20 research scientists in a room. Their pursuit of knowledge trumps ill-fitting laws made by ignorant people for dubious and often nefarious purposes.

Much like religious zealots really only respect the severely nonsensical ancient laws of their gods, those who dedicate their lives to the scientific pursuit of knowledge must ignore arguments of authority and respect only the laws of nature. ...unless you're working on a US grant. Then you do what they say. ...otherwise, you go to a country that values your research. ...which is why we lost the particle physics game, the energy game, and are losing bio as well.

The US is strawberrying itself hard.

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>>12350

straight up yo. oh shit I fucked up

well, fine, here, has a yale lecture, I watched the whole damn thing, and another one I like is donald kagan's lecture series on ancient greece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a6j17VWhBc&feature=relmfu

and a picture I made out of straight up boredom, I don't know what kinda meme it is, but if you can see those two saying it, the third suddenly doesn't look so great does he now?

>>12390
Sure, if you didn't know anything at all about who these people were, what they did, and what their intentions were.

I fully expect to hear that slogan again, most probably by a modern-day US conservative against welfare, immigrants, or healthcare. It is the bourgeoise place to toil and be taxed on their own labor, like the slaves they are. What did Romney just call it, the "dignity of having a job". Yea, being trapped in a system of indentured servitude is really dignified.

>>12394
>Yea, being trapped in a system of indentured servitude is really dignified.

because being trapped in a system of indentured 'entitlement' servitude is MORE dignified.

>>12395

Who said anything about being entitled to anything? As an antisocial asshole who puts in wayyy more than I get out of this country, I'll own the conceit of the self-reliant. ...assuming everyone else will be self reliant too. But don't be so quick to toss entitlement around. The do-nothing people at the top & bottom both feel entitled to each others slice of the pie. Both have their crappy reasons, but rarely ever address the fact that they're incomplete people, unable to provide themselves with their own food shelter & clothing for survival. This is the legacy of civilization. Hooray for specialization, allowing and now encouraging you to be an idiot.

>>12397

you are absolutely correct, I am in fact one of those people who is on the bottom with a certain degree of just that

however I was raised in that kind of environment, and I'm even now only beginning to really learn what it's like to not have that

the USA has been consistently playing along the lines of nationalism since it's inception, and howard zinn and noam chomsky have argued and pointed out numerous things that would definitely explain why the USA does imperialist things from the getgo, like I said, manifest destiny

many loyalists came to my country of canada during/after the revolution, due to fleeing or being kicked out, we've had our own fair share of things

many draft dodgers came to this country as well

the war of 1812 is an example of british and united states imperialism clashing over canada

however the natives were the primary losers as they were the proxies by which both sides fought a lot by and after the war expansion westwards by both groups occurred, further harming the native populations


that was 200 years ago that war

you guys in the USA don't know much about what it's like to have different nations within the same country, in canada here we have quebec as a sort of nation, english canada as a sort of nation, and various aboriginal groups as nations

there's lots of friction but we don't bomb the shit out of everyone all the time because our governmental approach is to provide a UN style framework for our own, and I suspect the provincial system allows for greater swathes of land to have similar laws and the fewer numbers of players in terms of governments that have to talk allows for some higher degree of homogenization of the laws without allowing domination by ottawa, which is our version of washington


even as many of us complain about stephen harper, he's done nothing NEAR what US congress has done that people hate, and in fact, much of what we don't like, is that we think he's relying on the USA to do the dirty work the way the USA was using turkish prisons to say it doesn't torture, or guantanamo bay


to argue that it's not illegal so it's okay, which many government supporters do when it does torture and indefinite detention and other tyrannical things, is to say "diplomatic immunity" like the bad guy from lethal weapon 2

so, I'll say this

indentured "entitlement" servitude does not mean to say "I have a right to a decent life"

it means "I have the right to decide for others what a decent life is"

if one compares the two, corporate CEO's/government officials compared to even let's say.... welfare queens and hipsters?

one can see that it's easily preferable to have many hipsters for the same or lower cost than CEO's

has nobody ever heard the term power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?


bias and selfishness are far too costly to ignore for positions of great power

I guess what I'm saying is that those "entitled poor" are more numerous but far less dangerous than entitled elites

I include intellectual elites, I include political elites, I include business elites, religious elites, social elites

in a large way, everyone is selfish given the chance, in many ways

to guard against the greatest abuses is the primary excuse for government, and I will point out ye olde smedley butler quote


I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

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anti nationalism is a product of the way
we are starting to less see our self's in the west as a unified country. we act like this is just a random assortment of people around us that we share no ties to. In the east most of the hyper educated still have this cultural identity so you see them as very proud in there country and are very pro Chinese/south Korean/Indian
Not hurr durr usa is number one nationalism but a sense of belonging and conman ties that is often the base of staunch nationalism