You might want to look up the American Civil War. It lasted from 1861 to 1865 and some 600K people died. That's what happened the last time any states threatened to secede from the Union in the US of A. It's also a pretty well-known bit of history.
That was about secession, though, not misbehavior. In fact, arguably it proves the point; after the US civil war there was a period of 'reconstruction', which largely failed, and then the southern states carried on doing pretty much whatever they felt like for the next century.
EDIT: As mentioned below, desire to misbehave was certainly at the root of the secession, but in practice even after the war was won the federal government wasn't able to impose its will particularly effectively.
No it was not. The Civil War was about states wanting to abolish federal laws they didn't support such as those that impinged upon the right to keep slaves and take them wherever they wanted to(see Western Expansion.) How could that be considered anything but "misbehavior"? Secession was simply the byproduct of this.
Oh, sure, but afterwards, the federal government wasn't able to impose its will particularly effectively. It's really hard to see reconstruction as anything but a failure.
I don't disagree however my posts were in context to the OP's assertion of "what would US of A do with a rogue Texas? nothing." And clearly the US did something. Also as disappointing as Reconstruction was it was in fact responsible for creation of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution aka the "the Reconstruction Amendments."[1] The important of which can not be overstated. Surely those should be factored in to any judgement of "failure", no?
Again, though, the 15th in particular just wasn't enforced for about a century in the states concerned. The civil war probably provided impetus to pass these very important amendments, and that, as you say, shouldn't be understated, but they weren't particularly effective in a reasonable timescale. Going back to the original point, more or less the entire south were rogue states to a much greater degree than Hungary, for a very long time.
The war started well after states started seceding and even then only in response to a military attack by the south. So it's not quite the example you portray it to be.
The secession convention meeting in Charleston, South Carolina occurs on December 20, 1860. Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Let's see that's 3.5 months later. And for 3 of those 3.5 months the US has a lame-duck President in James Buchanan whose cabinet was also famously split oh the issue. Lincoln isn't inaugurated until March 4, 1861. Further, the attack on Fort Sumter is just the "official" start of the war. It's not like nothing was being done by the Union in the interim. Far from it. As early as January 5th of 1861 hundreds of troops and provisions were sent to fortify the Sumter garrison. Lastly on April 4th Lincoln tells his southern delegates that he intends to attempt to resupply Fort Sumter. This is understood by the Southern states to be a declaration of war. So yes I think this is exactly the example I portray it to be.
Don’t underestimate energy companies ability to bring in a ton of state firepower to keep their bottom line intact - that’s one of the main lessons of the 20th century.
In this day and age, don't people like you read/watch some world history? What you are saying seems so narrow-minded (ignoring the racist undertone), it makes me confused.
It's precisely a studying and understanding of history which makes me so.
Perhaps people like you would do better to engage in conversation where you might learn something you don't know rather than throw out your classic epithets
So, to be clear, you studied and "understood" history and came to the conclusion that nationalism is a good thing. How? It's clear that I don't agree with you. I think you must be too isolated from some nice people to be so furious about other people.
We can circle back to the psycho analysis later if you so desire, but I'll be sticking to the topic at hand for the time being.
You seem to have made a connection between nationalism and being furious about other people. I respectfully disagree that there is a necessary relationship there.
I have no ill will against other people. I would like people who share my culture to govern me, and I would not like people of my culture governing people of a different culture. They can govern themselves and we can govern ourselves. We can share ideas, trade, sport, etc., But multiculturalism within borders is an inevitable failure and globalism is an inevitable failure
I find that despite my national background, there are tons of people in my country whose ideas and principles I don't share, and lots of people from other countries/cultures that I would team up with anytime.
Drawing a line primarily along cultural lines means ignoring or downplaying all of the other lines that other people might find similarly important or more so.
Why would I bias my decisions about people over other people just because they grew up within a few hundred kilometres of me? Why would I prefer helping a bunch of deadbeats from my own country over a bunch of promising bright people from halfway across the world? Because they'll stand up for me in return?
Because it's always one team against another? Fuck teams. There are my immediate friends, and outside of that I'll fight only for principles, not arbitrary teams. Everyone's a different person in their own right. Everyone deserves to be treated as who they are, not where they're from. (Cue Backstreet Boys.)
Having written this, I think it's worth pointing out the main flaw that I see in nationalism: it's that it uses culture and nations as a proxy for principles, as opposed to digging for the actual principles underneath.
As an example, I stand for freedom of speech, in the form of a diverse, largely independent set of publishers and authors that allows me to make up my own mind by exposing me to different viewpoints. Many Western countries have a better track record at this than authoritarian countries. But this doesn't mean that I'm on Team "The West" - if my country drops this value, I'd rather drop my country than my values.
If my country thinks that skin color or wardrobe of a person is more important than what that person is saying, I'd rather drop my country than team up against that person.
If my country decides that Islamic Law or autocratic dictatorship is a better form of government than democracy, I'd rather drop my country than abandon my principles.
It's great to be in a shared space where you agree with everyone. The question is, when you eventually disagree (because you don't get to choose what your neighbors think, and because nationalism is just a proxy for actual values), then are you going to follow your principles, or do you let your nation and culture dictate what your principles should be?
>the main flaw that I see in nationalism: it's that it uses culture and nations as a proxy for principles, as opposed to digging for the actual principles underneath.
I think the problem that you are going to run in to is that culture and nations as a proxy for principles works pretty well since those things are highly correlated. Unless you have a strong civic identity that aggressively assimilates and ensures respect of those civic norms, you have an inevitable clash that just becomes a question of scale.
>If my country decides that Islamic Law or autocratic dictatorship is a better form of government than democracy, I'd rather drop my country than abandon my principles.
In your hypothetical, how exactly would this situation come about? You should be able to venture a guess.
> Unless you have a strong civic identity that aggressively assimilates and ensures respect of those civic norms, you have an inevitable clash that just becomes a question of scale.
I'd like to suggest multicultural cities such as Toronto as an example that preserving cultural backgrounds and integrating with the rest of society aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You have a broad mix of people from (among others) European, East Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds here and while all of the usual discussions are alive and well (left vs. right, urban vs. suburban, immigration vs. bubbling), people's cultures are just not the main issue dividing people. You'd think that with a lot of Muslim immigrants, Canada would have larger problems with value differences, but guess what, most people are just people and want a good life for themselves and their families. Nothing new here, move along.
The point is that full-on assimilation isn't necessary. Celebrate shared values. Celebrate diverse backgrounds and differences, too. I don't have to tell a Muslim woman that she can't wear religious clothing, just like I don't like it if her husband tells her the opposite. I can just grab food with the two of them and discuss tech, ethics, religion and whatever, just like with regular people, because they are regular people. The kids just see a lot of different ways of people living their lives and learn that it's okay to be different.
> In your hypothetical, how exactly would this situation [Islamic Law / autocratic dictatorship] come about?
Recent history suggests that there is a template: a politician gets voted into office, gets drunk on power, finds a common enemy and sells it to the people, changes elections and eventually the constitution to remain in power, kills the independent press, persecutes opposition leaders and intellectuals with dangerous ideas.
Turkey and Hungary are well on their way. Russia has arrived. Iran and China went the revolution route, that works too, although probably requires more of a flawed system to begin with.
Globalism is inevitable, you cannot stop it. You should rather get used to it. The fact that you get anxious by ideas penetrating your culture means that globalisation works. It is like my Romanian grandfather telling me how bankers should have been punished in 2008. Which would have never and it will never happen because that's how the world works. The alternatives are far too costly and our global capitalism does not allow it. Get used to it, neighbor.
Only death is inevitable and even that is not that certain.
I am saying this as a person, who likes the science fiction level of species level organization ( vs geographical nation-state ), where we pay with universal credits and basically have few of the issues inherited from the olden days of 2021.
Nationalism gets a bad rep now precisely because it has accomplished many of its goals and is a part of many European states and now the nationalists get confused with the extreme nationalists.
Before nationalism, most European states were monarchies "answerable by God". Now it's dominated by countries with a single people/single language/single religion. Minority rights are important, but a minority should never be in charge of the majority as it was under the Austrian Empire for example (a.k.a as the Jail of Nations).
It's sad that reactionaries are trying to undo this and slowly turn the EU into another Austria, which will inevitably be dominated by the Germans and French.
I'm certain that every Romanian sees Vitkor Orban as a wolf in sheep's clothing. The protector of interests for V4 group through unethical means and corrupted politicians. Hopefully, sanctions will follow soon. Masking local interests of a few corrupted individuals with nationalism is borderline criminal.
>Hopefully nationalism crushes this perverse anti Western virus
Being totally against the EU, i think full on nationalism is wrong too. We life on one big spaceship and with that, we should have one organizing (not governing entity) like the UN was once meant to be.
EU is built on the European thought at least, it is the child of Christianity, strongly influenced by Greco-Roman world sprinkled with some Germanic austerity. No wonder why countries with Muslim minorities cannot join the Union. UN would never work because what binds Europe together is exactly this shared Christian past starting from the division of Catholic and Orthodox Church and ending with Protestant thought. Even if our European elite act as religion does not play a role anymore that is simply not true. Christianity is the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history. Even the increasing number in the West today who have abandoned the faith of their forebears, and dismiss all religion as pointless superstition, remain recognisably its heirs. From Western France to Eastern Romania, the legacy can be felt in everything, from language to cuisine, from architecture to music. Imagine that those countries are on opposite sides of the EU but they both speak a Romance language.
You do realize that Islam is essentially a Christianity’s sequel, right?
Also, your mistaking Christianity - which is doing just fine in the western world, probably better than ever - with its degenerate form of fundamentalist groups, based mostly on hate, eg homophobia. This is most visible in Poland - which is very Catholic, and definitely not Christian.
