A brief, perfectly balanced post at Mangan’s pulls together HBD and political history into the suggestion that nationalism is just a phase we’ve been going through.

… the paradox of nationalism is that the same forces that led to its development are leading to its denou[e]ment. But what is to be done about that I don’t know.

Some quality comments there too. You’re all welcome back here after checking it out, with any relevant responses and arguments.

Nationalism is the one modern progressive ideology that gets off the hook far too easily in NRx circles. (And “what is to be done?” is Lenin’s question, adopted from this guy. It shouldn’t be proscribed, but it should definitely be subjected to disciplined suspicion.)

Robert Kaplan explains ‘Why East Asia Alienates Intellectuals':

… East Asia is a rebuke in major respects to the humanist project. It is prosperous and successful, with the latest postmodern infrastructure and technology; yet at a macro political level it is consumed less by universalist ideals than by old-fashioned ethnic nationalism. China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and so on are deeply conscious of their own ethnic identities, which carry within them clashing claims of sovereignty in the South and East China Seas, as well as elsewhere. East Asia shows how exclusivist mindsets need not be confined to poor, post-communist populations or poverty-stricken peoples with tribal or sectarian differences. East Asia is a flagrant example that sustained capitalist development need not necessarily lead to universal values.

Modernization without ethnomasochism isn’t something the Cathedral wants to understand.