MOSAIC: Nationalism and Future of Western Freedom. PART III

T. Belman. In essence this is the struggle Israel has waged since its founding. In 1896, Herzl launched the effort to create a Jewish state. It was the age of nationalism. That age ended in WWII when nationalism was discredited to be displaced by universalism, United Nations, European Union, multiculturalism, diversity, and globalism. All these forces have attempted to destroy Zionism, the last bastion of nationalism.

Not only has the nation state been discredited but so has the nation.

Thankfully nationalism is coming back as witnessed by Brexit, the rise of Trump and the rise of nationalistic parties in Europe. The state of Israel is a testament to its virtues.

THIS PROFOUND ESSAY WILL BE PUBLISHED IN SIX PARTS.

A conflict is brewing over the shape of the international order. It centers around an idea—a biblical idea—long thought discredited by political elites.

By Yoram Hazony, MOSAIC

The flags of the European Union and the United Kingdom. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.

PART I
PART II

III. The Rise of the Protestant Construction

The Westphalia treaties gave a new, Protestant construction to the West. Although the settlement was not officially accepted by the Catholic Church—Pope Innocent X called it “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and devoid of meaning for all time”—in practice it re-founded the entire political order roughly along lines that had been articulated by the English and Dutch Protestants in the previous century. Under this Protestant construction, the political, religious, and cultural life of Europe was rebuilt upon two principles.

  1. Legitimate Government as Protector of the People. First, the king or ruler, if he is to rule a nation by right, must devote himself to the protection of his people in their life, family, and property, to justice in the courts and the maintenance of the sabbath, and to the public recognition of the one God—roughly, the biblical Ten Commandments given at Sinai, which Luther and Calvin regarded as a natural law that could be known by all men. These precepts were seen as providing the minimum requirements for a life of personal freedom and dignity for all. A government that could not protect these things would have failed in its most basic obligations to the well-being of the people and would have to be replaced.
  2. The Right of National Self-Determination. Second, nations that were cohesive and strong enough to secure their political independence would henceforth be regarded as possessing what later came to be called the right of self-determination, by which was meant the right to govern themselves under their own national constitutions and churches, without interference from foreign powers. Thus, while it was accepted that there exist natural minimum requirements for maintaining a civilized society, and that these, in line with the first principle, were binding upon all governments, it was not expected that all nations would become as one in their thoughts, laws, or way of life. Even the most optimistic speeches of the biblical prophets recognized that the diversity of nations was a permanent feature of mankind, and that differences would remain in the ways civilized peoples pursued the basic requirements of freedom and dignity.

In the context of 17th-century Europe, this meant that some nations would be monarchies while others would be republics. It meant that different nations would have different forms of national religion, as well as varying provisions for the protection of minority religions. It also meant that different nations would manifest different degrees of personal freedom in various areas. The Dutch Republic, for example, might offer an exceptional degree of personal freedom of expression, with the result that science, trade, and publishing would naturally flow to Amsterdam from other nations more skeptical of the value of such openness. What made this possible, however, was not a doctrine enumerating a list of “universal rights.” Rather, “the ancient customs and privileges” of the Dutch people themselves were said to be responsible for their country’s special regard for intellectual and religious freedom.

 

The two principles of the Protestant construction were not entirely new. The idea that a ruler must serve as the protector of his people had existed in various forms throughout the history of Christendom. Already in the 12th century, Catholic political theorists like Honorius of Augsburg and John of Salisbury, relying on the Mosaic law in Deuteronomy and the descriptions of the Israelite kingdoms in the books of Samuel and Kings, had articulated this explicitly. But the second principle—permitting each nation to determine for itself what constitutes a legitimate ruler, a legitimate church, and appropriate laws and liberties—brought the Christian world for the first time into dialogue with the biblical vision of an order of independent nations. And it was this principle that set the world free.

The moral minimum of the Ten Commandments and the biblical ideal of national freedom are designed to reinforce one another. In the eyes of the prophets of Israel, a nation whose rulers will protect their people and pursue their well-being is capable of an extraordinary degree of internal loyalty, pride, and cohesiveness in the face of hardship. Internal brotherhood and justice, the prophets believed, is the necessary prerequisite for national longevity and for the capacity to resist foreign encroachment.

Yet, at the same time, the two biblical principles stand in tension with each other. On the one hand, the idea that there are natural standards of legitimacy higher than the dictates of any particular government means that nations cannot rightly do whatever they please; they are always subject to judgment by God and man, and this necessarily makes government conditional. On the other hand, the principle of national freedom strengthens and protects the unique institutions, traditions, laws, and ideals of a given nation against the claim that they must be overturned in the name of doctrines being promoted by the advocates of a universal church or empire. While the existence of a moral minimum is recognized, interpreting how this minimum will be expressed is taken to be a right of every independent nation, each approaching the issue from a unique perspective rooted in its own historical circumstances, experience, and insight.

By permitting a diversity of constitutional and religious arrangements, the Protestant order provided national “laboratories” for developing and testing the institutions and freedoms we now associate with the Western world.

The tension inherent in maintaining both principles of the Protestant construction imparted a unique dynamism to the nations of Europe, releasing a storm of dormant energies and fostering a stunning degree of experiment and innovation in government and theology, economics and science. By permitting a diversity of constitutional and religious arrangements within different countries, the Protestant order also provided national laboratories for developing and testing the institutions and freedoms we now associate with the Western world. And the contest among rival national perspectives went far beyond political theory and theology. English empirical science was fueled by outrage over the deductive character of the Cartesian method—which the French, in turn, insisted was the only truly “rational” way to advance science. German philosophy likewise thrived on the belief that British empiricism was a grand catastrophe, and that Immanuel Kant’s idealism would save us all.

The same could be said for virtually any field, including the arts and culture, in which European civilization made significant advances. In each case, rival achievements and points of view, recognized at the time as being distinctly national in character, were proposed as being best for humanity as a whole—spurring others to imitate what they saw as successful even as they incited renewed efforts to rebuild defeated approaches more intelligently so that they might fight another day.

None of this is to say that post-Westphalian Europe was some kind of idyll. The Christian national states were constantly resorting to war over territories and trade, a habit that cannot but strike us as a willingness to accept gratuitous bloodshed. These states—including Britain and the United States—also long maintained unconscionable racialist arrangements and institutions, and placed a variety of barriers before the participation of Jews in national life. Moreover, even as the English, Dutch, and French insisted upon the Westphalian principle of national independence and self-determination within the European context, they were all too ready to devise reasons for maintaining colonial empires based on the conquest and subjugation of foreign peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. And one could easily add to the list of practices from that period that we would and should find objectionable.

Yet for all its evident shortcomings, the argument for the international order introduced into Europe in early modernity remains strong. As an order based on the principle of national freedom, it gave unprecedentedly beneficial political and religious form to the Western nations: a form that provided a sound basis for the eventual remediation of many of its deficiencies. In time, the Protestant principle of national freedom did put an end to Europe’s overseas empires. And in so doing, it brought about the founding of new national states around the world, among them the United States of America and, perhaps most remarkably of all, a restored Jewish state of Israel.

September 8, 2016 | 1 Comment »

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  1. Islam doesn’t accept Westphalian world order. Hill, Trial of 1000 Years: World Order and Islamism. If a neighboring state places barriers to the growth of Islam, the Islamic State is entitled, in Quranic philosophy to “resist” the activities of the state — but the jihad is not an attack, it is “resistance”. “This stands logic on its head”. Myers, Quranic Concept of War. US Army War College http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/articles/06winter/win-ess.pdf