Here is the scene in Paris just six months ago, after the French (ahem) National Team clinched the FIFA World Cup.
Posted on 11/14/2018 7:31:13 AM PST by Brilliant
...French President Emmanuel Macron publicly condemned nationalism as “the opposite of patriotism” as self-proclaimed nationalist Donald Trump looked on stonily...
However tangled its history, nationalism is an important force in global affairs that world leaders should respect. Mr. Macron’s disdainful remarks made for good headlines, but his inability to appreciate the role of nationalism in world politics exemplifies the failure of imagination at the root of many of Europe’s troubles.
The instinctive antinationalism of leaders like Mr. Macron is rooted in the belief that Western Europe is the real Europe and that its history is a universal history with lessons equally compelling for the rest of the world. These egotistical beliefs are so deeply held among elites in Western Europe that they are often unconscious.
In fact, the lessons of World War I were not the same everywhere. In Eastern and Central Europe, the war demonstrated the value, not the dangers, of nationalism. It broke the transnational bureaucratic empires that denied Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs and many others their freedom.
After World War II, the subjugation of these peoples in another multiethnic, bureaucratic imperial system, the Soviet bloc, confirmed their belief that the cause of nationalism was the cause of freedom. The Eastern and Central European countries that joined the EU did so because they believed membership in a prosperous Western club would, along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, preserve their national independence. They were escaping the ideological transnationalism of the Warsaw Pact, not signing up for another round of rule by “postnational” bureaucrats...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
In the U.S., World War I never had the social and cultural impact that it did in Germany and France. Both the Civil War (in which as many as 750,000 Americans were killed) and World War II (418,500) loom much larger in American historical memory than World War I (116,500). The lesson of the 20th century for many Americans was that nationalism is a good thing. Nationalism unified the ethnically and religiously diverse American people at home and enabled the U.S. to triumph in two world wars and the Cold War.
Postnationalism is a Western fantasy, not a global trend, and no lasting peace can be built on such a shaky foundation. China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey—these countries and many others are as nationalistic as France was in 1910, and their nationalism is shaping a new reality in world affairs that puts both European and American security increasingly at risk.
Mr. Trump instinctively understands this...
If the American and European establishments had understood the importance of nationalism to the coherence of their own societies as well as the architecture of world order, Mr. Trump might still be producing television shows... The longer mainstream leaders remain blind to nationalism’s importance, the more chaotic the world is likely to become.
This writer is a liberal, but in this case, he's right... at least partly.
These are good points that ‘progressives’ cannot comprehend - either out of ignorance or willfulness. Maybe in time, some will come to a better understanding.
In this case...a journalist only needs to go back to de Gaulle and his “Vive la France” statement, and find the true French character. Everything done by de Gaulle...was set to the strategy of nationalist France (even kicking the US military out in the 1960s).
Whatever Macon has attached himself to...is draining out his popular support every single day. They’ve got four years remaining on his ‘ticket’ before the next election...but I don’t see him rising much above 20-percent from this point on.
Faux pax? More like jumping on a pile of dung and kicking it around.
Ironic, as the French are hard-core nationalists; anything non-French is crap, and they eagerly tell you so. Go visit and try to find a heartland restaurant with English-speaking staff; good luck. I know service guys that go there and they feel the cold attitudes toward the non-French (apparently they bite their lips with muzzies). Heck, look at the attitudes in French-Canada territory, same French national egotism.
France can go to hell. Time to pull out of Europe and re-station our troops on all our borders. Nato can cram it and defend themselves with one operational F-16 in Germany and a half dozen F5’s in Turkey. They won’t last 5 minutes against the Russian armed forces.
So, what is the difference between International Communism and post-national progressivism? Gender confusion?
For sale: WWII French army rifles. Never fired, only dropped once.
WWI was not cause by nationalism. It was caused by the early 1900s versions of globalism.....empires, and entangling military alliances. Add in a healthy measure of monarchy and there it is.
That catastrophe for the world would not have happened under nationalism. Nationalism is where individual nations pursue their own rational self interests, and meet other nations on that level in trade and other interactions.
Globalism caused WWI.
I said that Britain needed “Brexit” in 1914.
They shouldn’t have been concerned about the continent, while they still had their Empire. Germany was not a threat to the British Empire.
And if Britain had stayed out, we would have stayed out.
Yurps don’t understand that the rest of the world - yes, very much including America - is not like them AND DOES NOT WISH TO BE LIKE THEM. Its the latter point that they really cannot grasp. They’re too insular, too myopic and too chauvinistic though to realize that they are not the center of the world anymore and haven’t been for quite some time.
Most of the rest of the world is religious, does have capital punishment, does believe in the nation-state, is willing to defend their nation-state, does not fetishize environmental concerns, does believe in gender roles, and much of the rest of the world at least does not believe in socialism. All of the above is anathema to Yurps. They’re the oddballs, they’re the ones who are out of step with the rest of the world - not Americans.
Russia doesn’t want to invade europe despite the neocon and NATO fantasies. The Ruski ground forces are about 360,000, compared to around ten times that number during the cold war.
Besides, taking over the EU would be a nightmare. Lets say you did it and won, and now you are there running Germany, France, etc. Congratulations on the mess of whiners, welfare queens, lazy workers, and moslems you have inherited.
I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
Ike didn’t trust deGaulle and didn’t let him know of any war planning ahead of time.
“In the U.S., World War I never had the social and cultural impact that it did in Germany and France.”
Yeah, except for hardening in concrete every nutty progressive idea Woodrow Wilson ever had. From the FBI, to our debased currency, to the national security state, etc. We encounter WWI every single day. WWI is where we stopped being anything resembling the America the founders gave us.
Macron pines for the Austro-Hungarian empire.
de Gaulle also supported Quebec separating from Canada.
French poodle/sockpuppet.
Macron pines for Napoleon.
Here is the scene in Paris just six months ago, after the French (ahem) National Team clinched the FIFA World Cup.
Thank goodness for the Louisiana Purchase. Else this guy might have been our neighbors.
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