Nationalists

“ A few years ago we saw in Ireland the extraordinary spectacle of persons being prosecuted for cattle-driving and similar offences, while those who openly incited them to crime escaped with impunity. We saw judges from the Bench complaining in vain that the real offenders were not brought before them, and criticising openly the negligence and partiality of the Crown. If the Nationalists, whose influence then paralysed the aims of the Government, ever get supreme control of the Executive, we are certain to see these abuses revived on a still more shocking scale. ”

“ Let us then seize the present moment, and establish a national language, as well as a national government. Let us remember that there is a certain respect due to the opinions of other nations. As an independent people, our reputation abroad demands that, in all things, we should be federal; be national; for if we do not respect ourselves, we may be assured that other nations will not respect us. In short, let it be impressed upon the mind of every American, that to neglect the means of commanding respect abroad, is treason against the character and dignity of a brave independent people. ”

“ This is seen most crudely in the case of what is called nationalism. Nationalism, in theory, is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and traditions, form natural groups, called "nations," each of which ought to be united under one central Government. ”

“ A year ago, when one wrote of nationalism as a dangerous and dividing sentiment, of national sovereignty as a nuisance, of the pre-emption of this or that area of the world’s surface and of this or that supply of necessary national material in the interests of the exploiters under this or that flag as a method of crippling and wasting the whole economic life of mankind, one felt that one was writing and thinking in an almost hopeless minority. All the world seemed to have gone nationalist and exclusive. ”

“ The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. ”

“ One scheme of government after another is lifted up to be cast down—tyranny, oligarchy, slavery, commercialism, communism, parliaments, theocracies. The great warriors and the great statesmen are alike entombed in the ruins of their empires. ”

“ Our state governments, in which few such guarantees have been successfully evolved, have again and again oppressed the minority; but, with hardly an exception, the national government has been true to its purposes. ”

“ How much more sublime is the idea of forming a great nation, by a chain of republicks, subordinate to publick good, than by a chain of satraps subordinate to imperial will, or of chartered companies subordinate to selfish avarice? Such a system stands upon national interest. No people, except ourselves, have seriously attempted to make this interest the basis of civil government. ”

“ To the outside world we have proclaimed our democratic ideals, our moral support of the different people of Europe in obtaining representative government. Have we been as just to our own citizens—to the Negro? ”

“ We want men of original perception and original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality, namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race, can act in the interest of civilization. Government must not be a parish clerk, a justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the state, the absolute powers of a dictator. ”

“ Your encouragement to the Revolutionist and men of no religion of Europe—Your condemnation of the National party or parties, and influence given to Sectionalism and the fear of rendering yourself unpopular in the North—has had a great weight in bringing about the present deplorable state of our Country—You have even advocated revolution here, in order to be consistent with your language upon European affairs, forgetting that there is no rule without an exception, and the principles of the Constitution. ”

“ So the Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity. ”

“ The spirit of patriotism is universal and is ever increasing in fervor. The public questions which now most engross us are lifted far above either partisanship, prejudice, or former sectional differences. They affect every part of our common country alike and permit of no division on ancient lines. Questions of foreign policy, of revenue, the soundness of the currency, the inviolability of national obligations, the improvement of the public service, appeal to the individual conscience of every earnest citizen to whatever party he belongs or in whatever section of the country he may reside. ”

“ It is now at last plain that, in this new-fledged patriotism which can see national union only in “undivided Empire,” no place is found for the country of the man whose birth and deeds we this day remember. ”

“ With the erection of the state had come the notions of the subjection of some men to the power and authority of others, the consequent loss of the unity of the race, and the replacement of the love of humanity with nationalism, or patriotism. ”

“ The leaders, which comprehend what was previously known as the State Rights Party, and is much the lesser class, seek to break down National Independence and set up State domination. With them it is a War against Nationality. ”

“ Nationality is not a thing of sharp outline, any more than any other political conception, and community of interest, the management of common concerns over a long period of time, has triumphed over differences so potent as those of race and creed. ”

“ For then, in course of time, came the movement historians call nationalism, a movement which subordinated church to state, the faithful to the patriotic, a movement which made of God at most a national hero. ”

“ The patriotic American, mindful of the honor of his country, asks himself with anxious interest how the spectacle of the passage of our National Government from the control of one party to that of another will strike these keen observers, and how their experiences, communicated to the world, will affect the standing of this Republic in the opinion of civilized mankind. ”

“ What is this dreadful Nationalism? It is a reversion to a primitive type of patriotism—the narrow feeling which makes men regard all those who live in the same place, or who speak the same language, or who are supposed to be descended from a common ancestor, as brethren; all others as foreigners and potential foes. ”

“ This supreme National sentiment overpowering all considerations of local interest and attachment, is the assurance that our country will live forever, that all difficulties, however menacing, will yield to the challenge of popular intelligence and patriotism, and that the glorious record of the past is but the morning ray of our National greatness to come. ”

“ Already had an imitative spirit, captivated with the splendour, but copying the errors of a great nation, reared up in every part of the continent self created corresponding societies, who, claiming to be the people, assumed a control over the government, and were loosening its bands. ”

“ In one case, nationality is founded on the perpetual supremacy of the collective will, of which the unity of the nation is the necessary condition, to which every other influence must defer, and against which no obligation enjoys authority, and all resistance is tyrannical. The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and of existing rights. ”

“ Third comes nationalism. The government should help and guide the weak and small racial groups within its national boundaries toward self-determination and self-government. It should offer resistance to foreign aggression, and simultaneously it should revise foreign treaties in order to restore our equality and independence among the nations. 5. The program of national reconstruction shall be divided into three periods:- First the military period ”

“ This idea of nationalism, instead of being an early and now obsolete idea, is a recent and a noble idea. What the common life of the home is to the father and mother and children, through poverty and childbirth and fame, that is the life of a nation to its citizens. ”

“ As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils! ”

“ The sudden conversion from international Democracy to Nationalism is easily explained. Modern states have become democratic, and democrats—but they alone—find it easy to feel comfortable and patriotic in such a milieu. ”

“ But it lies at the root of civilisation; it has its noble as well as its ignoble side; it is the mainspring of both nationalism and internationalism; it is the force which supports governments, and the force which violently disrupts them. ”

“ Look how one of my aristocratical antagonists, who quietly keeps house in France, where I was not permitted to pass, and who, a tool in other hands, would wish to check my endeavours to benefit my country, because he would like to get home in some other way than by a revolution and into a republic—look how he, from Paris in London papers, dares to scorn the idea that America could pretend to weigh anything in the scale of European events. ”

“ The conception of the State always yields [Pg 274] the leadership more and more to that of the nation in the history called political, and 'nationality' substitutes the names of 'humanity,' 'liberty,' and 'equality,' and all the other ideas of the preceding age that once were full of radiance, but are now dimmed. ”

“ The truth is that we have ceased to be a nation; we have forgotten nationhood, and have become a conglomerate of classes, parties, factions, and sects. That is the disease. The remedy consists in reconstituting ourselves as a nation. ”

“ While other nations, precipitated by the rage of ambition or folly, have, in the pursuit of the most magnificent projects, riveted the fetters of bondage on themselves and descendants, these republicans secured their political happiness and freedom. ”

“ NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY; NATIONAL ORIGINS Whatever the contemporary or the logical relation between nationality and democracy as ideas and as political forces, they were in their origin wholly independent one of the other. ”

“ In the tense years which preceded the Literature Revolution the American people separated into two hostile parties: the Tories, or Loyalists, who supported the mother country; and the Whigs, or Patriots, who insisted on the right of the colonies to manage their own affairs, and who furnished the armies that followed Washington in the War of Independence. Then, when America had won a place among the free nations of the world, her people were again divided on the question of the Constitution. ”

“ But the one universal expression for the entire community is in nationalism, the assertion of selfhood as a people. Religious revivals no longer draw the mind of the mass people. But the idea of nationality sweeps them. ”

“ Remove from European states, as they are and have been during the last hundred years, the occasions of conflict, the sources of apparently competing interests, which arise in one or other of the ways mentioned,—either from the mistaken view of state-interests which a privileged class inevitably takes, or from the presence in them of oppressed populations, or from what we improperly call the antagonism of religious confessions,—and there would not be or have been anything to disturb the peace between them. ”

“ And if the oppressed of any nation wish to throw off their shackles, they have the right, without the interference of any other; and, with the first and greatest of our Presidents—the father of his country—I trust we are prepared to say, that "we sympathize with every oppressed nation which unfurls the banner of freedom." ”

“ Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen, and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of her neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and with fear. ”

“ Nationalism today is a unifying force inside the frontiers of the 140 nations that presently litter and clutter the earth. Beyond each frontier, however, nationalism has become one of the most divisive sources of misunderstanding, controversy, disruption and conflict presently cursing mankind. In the exercise of their sovereignty the oligarchs who make policy and direct procedure in each sovereign state put national interests first. ”

“ The national interests may be directed internally or externally; they may be conservative or progressive, aggressive or defensive in character. All this naturally accounts for certain variations in the types of nationalism. ”

“ But whatever may be our situation, whether firmly united under one national government, or split into a number of confederacies, certain it is, that foreign nations will know and view it exactly as it is ”

“ While America's summons was answered without question by the citizenship as a whole, it is to be remembered that during the three and a half years of our neutrality the land had been torn by a thousand divisive prejudices, stunned by the voices of anger and confusion, and muddled by the pull and haul of opposed interests. ”