Category: Fleming

The words nationalism and patriotism are often confused, and even when political theorists draw a contrast, the result is often a distinction without a difference or a bizarre twist of meaning that defies everyday usage.  The modern concept of nationalism (just like the concept of internationalism) took shape during the French Revolution, which implemented Rousseau’s theory of the general will and continued the process of centralization inaugurated by the monarchy.   According to 19th century nationalists, the will of the nation, defined as an historic community of blood and tongue, had to find expression in a common and unified state. ...

The discussion of human rights limps along on the Forum: Political theories are often too abstract–too etherial to stand fast in the high winds of everyday life.  Let us turn to some everyday topics where human rights might be invoked.  I’ll put a simple one on the table, and others, I hope, will up the ante.  Once upon a time it was assumed that parents were obligated to provide for their children’s education, either by teaching them at home, paying for the private schools they sent them to, or, by the later 19th century in some parts of the US,...

“Citizen of the world,” as I have explained, was a phrase picked up from the Stoics and adopted by intellectuals like Voltaire and Adam Smith.  The coupling of Adam Smith with Voltaire is bound to annoy “conservative” defenders of capitalist ideology, but a few words on his globalist tendencies may help to explain why Republicans were so quick to condemn any attempt to defend the American people from predatory multi-national corporations. Smith is frequently invoked as the godfather of the free-trade globalism advocated by both American political parties today, and although this is hardly fair to a man who wrote...

When a French intellectual looked in the mirror in 1600, he saw a Frenchman and a Christian where he would have liked to have seen a Greek pagan.  Since the Church was still powerful, few intellectuals were as mad as Giordano Bruno, who was justly burned at the stake in 1600, for his neopagan notions.  Instead, the intellectuals became sly and ironic.  From Montaigne on, intellectuals began subjecting Catholic France to imaginary visitors from Latin America, Persia, and China, all of whom expressed astonishment at the silly religion, false reverence to the king, and loyalty to the great nation.  

And must the Senator from Illinois
Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes?
This brazen gutter idol, reared to power
Upon a leering pyramid of lies?