IS NATIONALISM GOOD?
By Travis Hardin May 2005
Originally published in the newsletter of North Alabama Mensa

I hope you had a chance to read the two original articles on fascism that I drew from for last month’s column. The sources were listed at the end.

A majority of Mensans I am acquainted with have expressed they do not believe the factual claims of religion. Nearly as many seen wary of political power and skeptical of the stated motives of the powerful. We can speculate that both skepticisms are correlated with intelligence. But it is the distancing of oneself emotionally from previously unquestioned beliefs – seeing a thing from the outside that has been formerly seen from the inside – as much as intellect, that opens the mind to critical inquiry.

Distance reveals, in the case of religion, the observation that people adopt the religion of their own community. Because this is true all over the world, religious preference is not a preference – it is an inculcation. Conformity, not objectivity, sustains a person in traditional belief systems.

The same observations can be made for nationalism, defined as exalting one nation above all others, and promoting its culture and interest as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

It is conformity to the group one is born into, not objectivity, that can explain how large numbers of people of every intelligence level suppress themselves – their own logic and their own impulses toward good will – to fear what their leaders falsely tell them to fear: Today’s citizens respond by voting and walking in lockstep toward war against “them” because they are not “us;” toward centralization of power in the hands of a few who prefer war to peace; in short, toward their imminent fascist future.

How is it that people submit to the thrall of the sweet drug of nationalism and enjoy it so much they are afraid to face life without it? While they’re enjoying it, the world around them can be ignored while it is being destroyed.

In "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894) and other writings Leo Tolstoy indicts patriotism as a false sentiment and demonstrates that it and war have nothing in common with the true interests of the masses or with the precepts of Christianity.

In "Patriotism and Government" (1900) Tolstoy similarly concluded that to eliminate the violence of governments only one thing is needed: people should be made to realize that the feeling of patriotism, which supports violence, is a bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral. It can be eradicated, he points out, only when men are educated through Christ's teaching that it is wrong to kill. (Introduction To Tolstoy's Writings by Ernest J Simmons)