Friday, January 20, 2017

Trudeau's post-nation

Justin Trudeau is the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada and Canada's current Prime Minister. A reader alerted me to something he said in an interview with the New York Times late last year. It illustrates perfectly where the logic of liberal principles leads us to:
Trudeau’s most radical argument is that Canada is becoming a new kind of state, defined not by its European history but by the multiplicity of its identities from all over the world. His embrace of a pan-cultural heritage makes him an avatar of his father’s vision. "There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada," he claimed. "There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state."

This is where liberal civic nationalism leads to: to the "postnational state". In other words, a liberal civic nationalism cannot uphold a national identity at all.

Let's go through the steps to get to this end point. The Western nations were initially based on a shared ethnicity, i.e. some combination of a shared history, language, culture, race, religion and so on. There was, at least, a mainstream ethnicity from which was derived that nation's core identity - a sense of "peoplehood".

Unfortunately, the logic of liberal first principles disallowed this kind of national identity. Liberals believe that the highest good is individual autonomy, by which they mean a liberty of the individual to self-determine their own identity and values. Therefore, liberals see predetermined identities in a very negative light: they are described as chains or fetters on the individual. And, of course, the traditional national identities were predetermined - they were based on things we do not get to choose, but that are inherited. Therefore, our ethnicity had to be made "not to matter" in terms of what we might choose to do or to be as an individual. You could not "discriminate" in public policy in any way based on a person's ethny, even if it were to uphold something as important as a national identity. There was no way, in terms of liberal principle, to uphold the traditional national identities.

And so liberals chose instead to implement a "civic nationalism". This type of national identity was based on citizenship, with shared values derived from liberalism itself (equality, openness, tolerance, non-discrimination etc.).

But this was never going to be a stable form of national identity. Anyone from around the world can become a citizen under this model, which means that over time the nation will become increasingly diverse. The deep form of identity and belonging that was fostered under the traditional model will gradually decline.

What you are eventually left with is a group of diverse people inhabiting the same state, which Justin Trudeau admits is a "postnational state" without a core identity.

Goodbye nation and hello to competition for power, money, status and resources amongst a variety of groups.

10 comments:

  1. T2's 'post nation' is just treason and complicity in White Genocide.

    This is a crime, not a 'policy option' and those doing it must be held accountable.

    Canada has a whole division of treasonous thugs: MSM, bureaucrats, and politicians.

    ITs an ugly nation now. All smiles for the cameras though.

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  2. This is the same guy now under investigation for getting flown by private jet (along with his family) to spend New Year's on a billionaire Muslim's private resort.
    This despite him being super excited Canada is welcoming in a major milestone.
    Apparently he thinks it's all ok because his family and the billionaire's family have been friends since he was a little boy.
    Nothing to see here.

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  3. Of course this is all based on a (false, I believe) belief that all races are the same in terms of intelligence and temperament. The Liberal belief is that the societal civilizational level won't change with new peoples.

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  4. The term "Western Nations" represents a transition to this propositional form of nation or geographic space. The European nations, collectively called Christendom, were founded on blood and soil in a hierarchical nation headed by an aristocracy and monarch with attachment to land ownership. By virtue of this affinity with the land, the monarch and aristocracy were motivated to guard the land and peoples of the nation.Europe was thus a monarchical society governed by King or Queen and Church. This preserved social stability but limited the power of the industrialists and bankers who had to operate with constraints. A small minority wanted to overthrow this old order and the Reformation, enlightenment and revolutions followed.

    The colonisation of the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand created different types of societies. Founded by Freemasonry, these societies were based upon Masonic ideals of the Enlightenment; Liberty, Fraternity, Egalite. The term "Western civilisation" is an invention which describes the ideological, propositional nations and not historic Europe.

    The revolutions in Europe which deposed or killed the monarchs and devastated the aristocracy were aimed at transforming the European nations to ideological states controlled by oligarchs and international capital rather than Church and King in the same manner as the colonial states.

    The initial migrants to the colonies were white Christians who created the new country in a similar but not identical culture to the European nations from whence they had fled. However subsequent waves of immigrants will destroy this.

    The takeover of the Western nations by international finance is complete in the Anglo Saxon nations and almost complete in Europe under the rule of the Euro. In essence these states are held captive by oligarchs who are mobile, have no attachment to land or people and have no interest in preserving anything except their own raw power. This necessitates the reduction of the mass of the population to debt slavery and Third World status.


    The removal of hereditary aristocracy rooted in land gives rise to oligarchic financial rule. The former provides stability, the latter cannot as capital is mobile and business unstable. It looks as though we are coming to the end of the enlightenment experiment with its potential collapse into chaos and strife.


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    1. Chaos and strife seem inevitable. It is very likely to be of a sufficient magnitude to take the oligarchs down with it.

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  5. Interesting Mark. Trump's "nationalism" seems to be citizen nationalism i.e. what Steve Sailer calls "citizenism" whereas the democrats (and many Republicans) want to extend citizen nationalism to the world in which case it can't be called nationalism any more.

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  6. "There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada," he claimed. "There are shared values..."

    The shared values argument has always been nonsense of course. It's also sinister. It implies that anyone who doesn't share those warm-and-fuzzy feel-good hippie-dippy values is an outcast, or even an outlaw. It implies that any political dissent is illegitimate.

    You cannot have a nation with shared values unless those values are enforced, either by coercion or naked force. If the only thing holding the nation together is shared values then they absolutely must be enforced. Totalitarianism, whether of the hard or the soft variety, becomes essential. The only way to ensure absolute tolerance is through absolute intolerance of dissent.

    The Soviet Union under Stalin had shared values.

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    1. The way I look at it it's an attempt to create a kind of global pseudo-liberal orthodoxy. The 'shared values' always include at least some important contemporary liberal attitudes; notably tolerance as an overriding virtue, a respect for diversity and inclusion as inherently good things, and respect for 'freedom' and 'hard work.'

      If I were to say that being Australian means you respect hard work, honesty, freedom, tolerance, diversity, and inclusion; would any self respecting virtuous liberal type disagree? What if I just replaced Australian with Canadian? Any disagreement? What if I said this it what it means to be British, or a Kiwi, or American, or German, or Swedish? How many liberals will disagree strongly with anything I have said? Obviously there are language and citizenship barriers, but these are not descriptive of an identity.

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  7. To me, reading Trudeau's blather sounds more like a 'happy version' of the coming Balkanization of Canada.

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