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.
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