Michael Gove: the virtue of the nation-state

An excerpt from British Conservative MP Michael Gove's new book, Celsius 7/7:

. . . our security depends crucially on a recognition of the vital importance of maintaining the nation state, as ideal and reality. The nation state, as organizing principle of political life, is central to Western thought and achievement. If political authority is to be exercised fairly, scrupulously and for the common good, then it has to be held accountable . . . . The nation state is the political community that most effectively allows for the exercise of accountability.
      Within a territory bound by common ties of language, history and culture, political leaders are able to make an appeal for shared sacrifice, whether it is asking for the taxation necessary to help the poorest or, at moments of greatest peril, calling on citizens to risk their lives to defend others. Without those common ties, appeals to sacrifice will not resonate, calls to forfeit individual freedom for the greater good will not receive a ready answering call. And without a common understanding of who we are, and why we stand together, political leaders cannot lead.
      If we grow tired of a leadership . . . we need a mechanism to effect an alteration in course. The only effective mechanism that human nature and history have shown can allow such a change to take place without civil strife is the operation of liberal democracy. And the only political community in which liberal democracy has flourished—can flourish—is in a nation state. Because it is only in a nation state that leaders and citizens enjoy a sufficiently strong bond of fellow feeling, where the conversation between them can be made intelligible to both sides through shared experience, aspirations, language and assumptions (pp 74–75).

One probably cannot generate much patriotic spirit through such "universalist" arguments—arguments which do not appeal to any love of one's own particular nation; but perhaps one might persuade intellectuals at least to stop trying to destroy that spirit.

(Revised post)

(See also A case of nationalist idolatry)