by Yael Tamir
Second, as no country is culturally, ethnically, or religiously
homogenous, the place of minorities must be secured. The fact
that they do not share the ruling national ethos, culture, or lan-
guage should not be used against them. Respect for the rights
and choices of others should be consolidated internally as much as
it is respected internationally. Meeting the social, economic,
and cultural needs of the vulnerable without cultivating fear and
hatred is necessary if we are seeking new solutions rather than
new victims.
The nurturing of national identity should thus be comple-
mented with actively fostering empathy for citizens who are not
fellow nationals. Emphasizing the role of the state as a homeland
180 • Chapter
21
ought to reinforce rather than negate the state’s contractual basis
and the benefits that come with it. Indigenous people, minori-
ties, immigrants, or foreigners all have a right to be defended and
respected. Unlike civic nationalism, liberal nationalism does not
ignore the role of identity and membership; hence, it is inherently
attentive to (rather than dismissive of) the disadvantages associ-
ated with being a minority and seeks sways of ameliorating them.
Third, the desire to reduce animosity and allow the different
social classes and national groups to live together despite inevi-
table tensions demands that all citizens feel they are fairly
treated. Felt injustice is one of the strongest motivations for so-
cial violence. Consequently, social risks and opportunities must
be distributed in just and transparent ways. Most important of
all, the less wel - off should not be forced to carry an unfair share
of the social burdens and risks. Whatever policies are agreed on
and adopted— from a generous immigration policy to changing
the structure of the economy— the resulting burdens and ben-
efits should be distributed in ways that empower the weak and
restrain the power of the privileged.
Last but not least, it is important to revive a sense of social and
political optimism and collective pride that allows individuals
and societies to envision a better future for themselves and for
the coming generations. Nothing makes a society more brutal
than a sense of despair that cannot be mitigated.
What I am therefore suggesting is to rebuild societies on the
basis of a mélange of values and ideas borrowing from different
schools of thought in order to create an untidy but decent and
workable compromise. Such a compromise may not fit the as-
pirations of theoreticians, yet it reflects the complexity of human
nature and of social life. The ideological modesty advocated
earlier alongside a combination of realism and idealism may pro-
duce the necessary cure.
A Race to the Bottom • 181
To realize the relative validity of one’s convictions, Isaiah
Berlin argued, and yet to stand for them unflinchingly is what
distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian: “To demand
more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical
need; but to allow it to determine one’s practice is a symptom of
an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political
immaturity.”14
Our responsibility is to act in a wel - balanced way. Whenever
asked how much of each value we should pour into our ideologi-
cal hodgepodge, Berlin would say: “just the right amount.” He
believed it was our moral and civic duty to make our own judg-
ments. As there is no one, true answer that could be revealed in
a moment of enlightenment rooted in either pure reason or
religious revelation, it is for humans to think and act. With no
recipe book to describe how a good society should be con-
structed, it is up to us to make our society better. This is why
freedom is essential for those constantly seeking bearable and
livable compromises.
Each idea presented in this book could and has been taken to
the extreme. Compromises and middle- of- the- road solutions
are less common and not very popular these days. The emer-
gence of extreme forms of nationalism, affiliated with xeno-
phobia, racism, misogyny, and anti- Semitism, shows how easy
it is to cross moral lines. But the dominance of neoliberal hyper-
globalism and the injustice it creates show that too. The fact that
both brutal neoliberalism and xenophobic nationalism have
pushed us to the edge means that both should be restrained and
balanced, their inner values adjusted and reshaped to meet the
needs of the twenty- first century.
It would be a tragedy if nationalism— with its tremendous
creative and productive powers— were left in the hands of ex-
tremists. Open- minded liberal democrats, social democrats,
182 • Chapter
21
and justice- seeking individuals must learn to harness nationalism
to their cause, creating a more just social order, closing socio-
economic gaps, while providing people with a cultural and
normative reference to live by.
The gloomy future many predict we are heading toward may
actually be a beginning of a much-needed correction that will
make it the best of times for many more individuals than just a
thin privileged elite. Nationalism is a too powerful and flexible
tool to be given up; it should be endorsed and reshaped to fit the
needs of the coming generations. It would be no exaggeration
to say that the political stability of modern democracies depends
on the emergence of such a new equilibrium that makes room
for care, loyalty, and belonging on the one hand while taming
ethnocentrism and xenophobia on the other. The swing from
neoliberal hyperglobalism to extreme right- wing nationalism is
a devastating one. The biggest challenge of the century is to stop
the ideological pendulum half way, offering a social contract
that balances human rights and freedom with social solidarity
and group identity. Historically, the right balance has rarely been
found, but there is no task more important than its pursuit.
Notes
A Personal Note
1. Yuli (Yael) Tamir, “Class and Nation,” in Cultural Diversity versus Economic Solidarity: Is There a Tension? How Must It Be Resolved? , ed. Phil ippe Van Parijs (Brussels: Deboeck Universite, Francqui, Scientific Library, 2004), 152, 154.
Chapter 1: The New Nationalism
1. Michael Moore, “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win,” Michael Moore, https://
michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/.
2. One should emphasize the fact that this book traces processes in the devel-
oped world. I am well aware of the fact that different processes happen in other parts of the world, and I make no attempt to analyze them as they are far beyond my
expertise.
3. I borrow this concept from the excellent work of Dani Rodrik. See Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
4. Thomas Nagel, “Moral Lack,” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 34.
5. I am looking at nationalism in the West. Differ
ent processes happen in other regions of the world. For an excellent analysis of developments in India, see Maya Tudor, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2013.
Chapter 2: Never Say Never
1. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Picador, 1993), 192.
2. Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2013), 337.
3. Between 1945 and 1949 eleven new states were established: Vietnam, Indonesia, and Korea (north and south) (1945), Syria (1946), India and Pakistan (1947), Burma, Sri- Lanka, and Israel (1948), and Bhutan (1949).
4. Alvin Powel , “How Sputnik Changed U.S. Education,” Harvard Gazette, October 11, 2007.
184 • Notes to Chapter 2
5. Jaromír Navrátil, ed., The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Docu-ments Reader (New York: Central European University Press, 1998), 288– 89.
6. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” National Interest 16 (Summer 1989): 3– 18, at 17 (PDF).
7. Fukuyama, “End of History?,” 1.
8. Fukuyama, “End of History?,” 1.
9. Lucy Prebble, Enron (London: Methuen Drama, 2009), 113– 14.
10. Jongsoo Lee and Hyunsun Yoon, “Narratives of the Nation in the Olympic
Opening Ceremonies: Comparative Analysis of Beijing 2008 and London 2012,”
Nations and Nationalism 23, no. 4 (2017).
Chapter 3: Untidy Compromises
1. Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
2. In my book Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), I highlight the similarities between these competing ideologies, arguing that we should find a way to include some of their fundamental values even at the price of some theoretical inconsistencies.
3. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 39– 40.
4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 137.
5. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: Norton, 2012), 186.
Chapter 4: The Two Faces of Janus
1. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, 4th rev. ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 49.
2. Mark Lil a, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (New York: New York Review of Books, 2016), xi i.
3. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 14.
4. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 41.
5. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 48.
6. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 22.
7. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 18.
8. Cas Mudde, “Why Nativism, Not Populism, Should Be Declared Word of the
Year,” The Guardian, December 7, 2017.
Notes to Chapter 6 • 185
9. Jan- Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 8.
10. Müller, What Is Populism? .
11. Müller, What Is Populism? .
12. Mudde, “Why Nativism, Not Populism.”
13. Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 17.
14. Uri Pasovsky, “Prof. Dani Rodrik Declares: Leftists, It’s Time to Be Patriots,”
Calcalist, August 3, 2017 (Hebrew).
Chapter 5: Nutopia
1. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 24.
2. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 10.
3. Canadian Council of Refugees, 2017 immigration level.
4. Benjamin Barber, “Liberal Democracy and the Cost of Consent,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 67.
5. Margaret Canovan, Nationhood and Political Theory (Cheltenham, England: Elgar, 1996), 69.
Chapter 6: Living beyond Our Psychological Means
1. Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 2nd ed. (London: Pimlico Press, 2013), 173.
2. The most important texts on this are to be found in Charles Taylor’s two volumes, Human Agency and Language and Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
3. In a religious or authoritarian culture this process of internalization is of lesser importance, as one is expected to follow orders or commands; not so in the modern world where personal autonomy is a virtue.
4. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 192– 93.
5. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 40– 41.
6. Isaiah Berlin, “Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx, and the Search for Identity,” in Against the Current (London: Hogarth Press, 1980), 255.
7. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 156– 57.
8. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 157.
186 • Notes to Chapter 6
9. Roger Brown, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, 1986), 541.
10. Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams, “Social Motivation, Self- Esteem,
and Social Identity,” in Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances, ed.
D. Abrams and M. A. Hogg (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), 28– 29.
11. Sigmund Freud, “Why War?,” in Character and Culture (New York: Norton, 1971), 145.
12. Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for Times of War and Death,” in Character and Culture, 117.
13. Cited in George Kateb, “Notes on Pluralism,” Social Research 61 (1994): 8.
14. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 31.
15. Roger Brown, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, 1965), 574.
16. W. G. Austin, “Justice in Intergroup Conflict,” in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. S. Worchel and W. A. Austin (Chicago: Nelson- Hall, 1986), 153.
17. For a brief description of the experiment see Brown, Social Psychology, 535– 39.
18. Brown, Social Psychology, 533.
Chapter 7: Nation Building
1. Christine Emba, “Liberalism Is Loneliness,” a review of Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen, Washington Post, April 6, 2018.
2. Michael Winerip, “The New Man and the Me Decade,” New York Times, September 21, 2012.
3. Winerip, “New Man and the Me Decade.”
4. Other ways of thinking, especially religious ones, can also play the role of a particular content provider, but their discourse is much more dangerous as it drives us away from the political sphere to the realm of the divine. Debates with holders of religious beliefs are very difficult to settle as their basic set of presuppositions is grounded in a different rationality that considers a mix of advantages that calculates benefits in the realms of life and afterlife. For further clarification of this complex issue see Yuli Tamir, “Remember Amalek, Religious Hate Speech,” in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Death, ed. Nancy Rosenblum (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Michael Walzer, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolution and Religious Counterrevolutions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).
5. Anthony D. Smith, “Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the
Reconstruction of Nations,” Nations and Nationalism 1, no. 1 (1994): 18– 19.
6. There are some free riders too, and people who feel their nation should be otherwise represented. Hence the fact that a nation is formed does not mean that the debate ends; in fact it is only starting.
7. Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?,
” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 8– 22.
Notes to Chapter 9 • 187
8. Renan, “What Is a Nation?”
9. The story first appears in Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington the Great: Enriched with a Number of Very Curious Anecdotes, Perfectly in Character, and Equally Honorable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen (Augusta, GA: George P. Randolph, 1806).
10. Virginia S. Thatcher, ed., The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language (Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1980), 180.
11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 6.
12. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 46.
Chapter 8: National Creativity
1. Milan Kundera, “Die Weltliteratur: European Novelists and Modernism,”
New Yorker, January 8, 2007.
2. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), 229.
3. Anthony Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 160.
4. Wil iam Shakespeare, Henry V, in The Complete Works, ed. W. J. Craig (London: Magpie Books, 1993), 491. Although this text was written in a prenational era, it has been used repeatedly in later periods to arouse national feelings and foster national commitments.
5. Winston Churchil , in a speech delivered in the House of Commons, June 18,
1940.
6. Ernest Renan, Qu’est- ce que c’est une nation? (Paris: Colmann Lévy, 1882), 27.
7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 201.
8. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
9. Shlomo Zand, introduction to Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Tel Aviv: Resling Press, 1990), 8 (Hebrew— my translation).
10. Milan Kundera, Identity (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 45– 46.
Chapter 9: This Place We Call Home
1. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 92.
2. Yuli (Yael) Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), chapter 5: “The Magic Pronoun ‘MY.’ ”
3. Conor Cruise O’Brien, “Nationalists and Democrats,” Times Literary Supplement, August 15, 1991, 29.
4. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 7.
5. Genesis 11:6– 7.
188 • Notes to Chapter 9
6. Note that the term ethnocentric— putting one’s ethnic group at the center—