THE FACTOR OF NATIONALISM

In my posting, Grading the “End” (April 14), I gave my take on John Mueller's judgment of the Fukuyama Thesis which proclaims the “end of history.”¹ By the “end,” Francis Fukuyama was foreseeing a lack of major conflict – such as liberalism vs. communism – that has marked much of what has constituted our history on this planet. The philosopher Hegel's theory of history was based on such conflicts. Mueller's article was meant to evaluate Fukuyama's Thesis using the subsequent events within our nation and the world since the thesis was first published (1989). I promised in the prior posting that I would revisit this topic because what Mueller has to say relates to two forms of liberalism: the more pure form fostered by the mental construct, the natural rights view, and the approach supported by the liberated federalism construct – a view this blog has promoted.

While my prior posting addressed the expansion of liberalism at the expense of other ideologies, this posting looks at the “challenge of nationalism.” That is, does a rise in nationalism present a threat to ideological agreement among nations? Does extreme advocacy of national ambitions provide motivation to promote or heighten conflicts between nations or within nations made up of varied nationalities or ethnicity – such as we are currently seeing in east Ukraine? It is possible that conflicting ideological claims can be but a mask of sorts, a rationale for deep seated hatreds that have existed for centuries between nationalities or ethnic groups.

Let me, for those not so familiar with the terminology, review the meaning of nationalism. My first thought when I see or hear the term is the following adage: “my country, right or wrong, my country.” This saying encapsulates the feelings we associate with extreme nationalism. It is an irrational devotion to one's nation no matter what its leadership is about. Of course, infamous leaders in history counted on prevailing nationalism in their nations to garner support for their nefarious deeds. The twentieth century will probably go down as the century when nationalism ran amok. The more one studies, for example, the motivations that led to World War I, one can appreciate how destructive a force nationalism can be and how tragic. But, as I elaborate below, there are degrees of nationalism and it is helpful to investigate what varying levels of this emotion can mean for a nation and its people.

So, we have relatively recent history demonstrating the role nationalism has played in producing “history” as Fukuyama uses the term. What about now? Does the presence of nationalism threaten the ideological peace we have been experiencing since the fall of communism?

A turn of events that brought up the nationalism factor was the breakup of Yugoslavia. There, we saw nationalist groups go at it and shatter the domestic peace the communists were able to maintain while they held power under Marshal Tito. Once he died, nationalistic forces began their destructive activities. But were these conflicts what they appeared; were they initiated by ethnic groups who wanted to separate from the other ethnic and national groups? Was the villainous force nationalism? Mueller reports that the conflict in Yugoslavia was actually started by demagogic pols with ambitions. They, in order to stir up an unstable political environment, began stoking ancient hatreds among small bands of “opportunistic predators.” Mueller describes the predators as criminal and bandit gangs. Nationalism did have a role in the conflict getting out of hand, but not as a force advocating disunity. Instead, it was the lack of nationalism, particularly among Yugoslavia's army, that sealed the fate of this relatively young nation. The armed forces refused to fight and therefore there was no adequate force to quell the violence.

It was less a clash of civilizations [ideological traditions] than a challenge of thugs, in which ethnicity or nationalism became something of an ordering or sorting device that allowed people to determine which gangs were more or less on their side and which ones were out to get them.²

Mueller points out that if the clash of civilizations – that is, the clash of ideological traditions between the East and West – were the underlining foundation of the Yugoslavian civil war, then the cessation of violence in 1995 should have been short- lived since the area is right on the “fault line” between the civilizations. Yet this has not been the case; peace has prevailed and the area has flourished.

Mueller further points out that nationalism has been a force for advancement. He cites Germany and Poland as countries that needed national pride to encourage the sacrifices necessary in order to meet the challenges that the fall of communism presented. In Germany, the case with which we are more familiar, lives were significantly affected by the dismantling of communist rule in East Germany. By all reports, today Germany is leading Europe in terms of its economy and other social conditions. The BBC reports: “Germany rebounded to become the continent's economic giant, and a prime mover of European cooperation.”³ In no small measure, national pride, not to the degree of irrational obsession but to the degree that a healthy desire to work toward national advancement, is prevalent.

It is this latter degree of nationalism that liberated federalism strives to encourage. I prefer the term patriotism instead of nationalism when referring to this unifying function. It is a sense of partnership in a national endeavor, writ large, that a civics program should aim to approach, not through propaganda or coercion, but through appropriate investigations, discussions, and emulations. It is the function of liberated federalism to suggest the questions that lead students to consider those aspects of national concerns related to societal welfare. It is the assumption that if students are asked to investigate and reflect on appropriate questions, they will derive the appropriate sense of nationalism or good old levels of patriotism.

1Mueller, J. (2014). Did history end? Assessing the Fukuyama thesis. Political Science Quarterly, 129 (1), Spring, pp. 35-54.

2Ibid., p. 42.

3See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17299607 .

THROW THE DICE

In case you missed my last posting – something easily rectified by hitting the archival option – I wrote about how the climate warming issue is bound to affect all of us before long. This state of affairs would seem to present sufficient motivation for a whole universe of interests to push the government to issue policy that would address the harm that the scientific community claims fossil fuels are causing our environment. Yet the policy has not, to date, been forthcoming. Why? Because there is not enough public demand, even from the monied interests that are already beginning to take on the costs associated with global warming. I mentioned the farming industry, homeowners, businesses in towns wracked by tornadoes, and those areas on our eastern seaboard, like South Florida, that have or are in danger of facing damages from rising ocean levels that are estimated to cost in the trillions of dollars. But the lack of political pressure is what it is. Therefore, Congress doesn't feel it necessary to act.

The Obama Administration has been trying to initiate legislative action to no avail. But it seems to have hit on a possible way to bypass Congress. Using a 1970's law, the Clean Air Act, the Administration promises to start a regulatory response to the rising levels of carbon dioxide – seen as the main culprit in causing climate warming. This will be announced in June; at least, that's what the media is reporting. In looking at this proposed course of action, we can put some numbers to the collective costs that inaction will accrue. This is because of the law's provisions.

The first thing to note is that when the law was passed, carbon dioxide was not recognized as particularly hazardous. The law's Section 111(d) has the ingenious language that protects us from unknown pollutants in the future. Well, today we are in the “future” and carbon dioxide has been found to be a pollutant when pumped into our environment in excess. As it is, our global economy is emitting 36 billion tons of carbon into the environment per year. This is a sufficient enough amount to motivate thirty countries to put into effect carbon-pricing laws. The use of the Clean Air Act has led to development of a cost estimating model so that we can put a price tag on the damage. This model is called the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model or DICE.

The use of the DICE model has placed the cost of carbon dioxide pollutants at $20 to $30 in economic damage per ton of carbon. Using the $20 figure, the yearly cost amounts to $720 billion a year. At the $30 figure, the total goes well over $1 trillion a year. Either way – and keeping our focus on economic damage which overlooks the other human costs associated with extreme weather – we can ill afford this kind of self- imposed cost.

Will the implementation of this old law solve the problem? That is an open question. One, the provisions of the new policy are not yet announced. There will probably be a carbon tax scheme of some sort to encourage lower levels of fossil fuel consumption. Two, the law was not written with the current conditions in mind. The law doesn't even mention carbon dioxide as a pollutant; conditions have changed since the '70s. Three, to date, the law has not been used in this way – the approach has been called the forty-year old virgin. And it will impose new costs. But are these costs greater or less than what inaction promises? “[O]ne way the E. P. A. will justify the new regulation [entailed with the Administration's plans] is with an analysis showing that the economic benefits of the climate change rule would outweigh the costs.”¹ And the basis of this effort will be the analysis experts will conduct using DICE.

If a civics teacher were to incorporate this information into his/her lessons so that students could look at the extreme weather issue, students could be asked such questions as: is the implementation of a law that is over forty years old – before we had knowledge of the factors affecting the problem – the prudent and legitimate way to address this issue? Is it a way for the executive branch to overstep its authority? Is the problem area so pressing that immediate action is justified and gives the President the legitimacy to act in this way? These are questions that get at the basic constitutional division of power and deserve serious consideration. Considering them in the context of a contemporary issue area that promises to affect all of us gives the resulting lessons an immediacy that could solicit the student's active participation in the national debate over what the government's response should be. If this is the result, then the clamor for new policy will be enhanced.

1Davenport, C. (2014). Brothers work different angles in taking on climate change. The New York Times, May 11, front page section, pp. 1 and 18. The quotation is on p. 18. Facts concerning the Clean Air Act and its implementation are derived from this article.