If we lose nationalism, we will lose living wages, our national culture and eventually even our race.
If we look at the historical process that formed the nation-state, it seems clear to me that several strategic and economic factors were at play that resulted in creating the nation-state as we understand it.
The first was war.
It started with Napoleon. Napoleon rocked the world with his ability to raise armies. His brand of French Nationalism turned the entire country into a recruiting pool for his armies which went out to conquer Europe. Before that, war was mostly fought with professional armies.
But guns changed everything. They democratized war. You didn’t need highly skilled and extremely expensive knights to win a battle. Some peasants with guns could achieve the same results.
Under Napoleon, within a few years, the embattled and impoverished country of France was transformed into a military powerhouse that rocked Europe to its core.
Why? Well, it’s complicated. But let’s keep it simple for now.
Basically, Napoleon tapped into something that didn’t exist in Europe at the time.
He tapped into a dormant Nationalism that slumbered in the hearts of the French people. And they loved him for it.
All of a sudden you weren’t just a nobody serf serving some lord that you had never met who might not even be French. All of a sudden you were a “son of France.” All of a sudden you were a citizen and you were part of something greater than you, but also something that demanded sacrifice from you in return.
Men go crazy over stuff like that.
Napoleon was seen as a progressive and the revolutionary sentiments he embodied were seen as dangerous by the decadent European aristocracies so they fought to suppress the ideas of nationalism for a long time.
But absolutely no one could deny the absolute raw power of nationalism unleashed.
Napoleon didn’t need professional standing armies full of mercenaries. He could simply put the call out and conscript hundreds of thousands of willing young men to go fight in his armies. Soon, all the decadent leadership of Europe gradually followed in Napoleon’s footsteps and began dabbling in nationalism so that they too could field massive armies.
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