A case of nationalist idolatry

Here is what is, to all appearances, a remarkably clear instance of insane, power-worshiping, destructive nationalism of the kind embraced by the Nazis. It comes, however, from Canada in 2005. The Epoch Times then reported that

. . . support for [Major-General] Zhu [Chenghu]’s nuclear threat against the U.S. is alive in Canada’s Chinese communities, where many who grew up under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda view the statements as proof of their homeland’s new strength.
      The “New Horizon,” a tabloid-size periodical produced by the Chinese Professionals Association of Canada (CPAC) ran a story on page 3 of its August 5 edition praising Zhu’s speech.
      “Zhu Chenghu’s theory of a nuclear war for the first time vividly describes how hundreds of cities east of Xian and in America could be destroyed,” the article said.
      “This can be seen as the nuclear ideal and goal of the Chinese people since China first developed nuclear technology. The nuclear force is the power of a state, and the power of a state cannot lack a goal.”
      CPAC claims membership of 20,000 Chinese professionals in Canada, ranging from accountants to zoologists. The organization was part of a recent welcome dinner for China’s new ambassador to Canada.

The maximum power of a state is paramount, even if the only opportunity for exercising it is in wiping out most of the state's own population centres. A reductio ad absurdum of nationalism.

(See also Simone Weil and nationalism)

St. Augustine: Roman patriot?

Samuel Dill, though a Christian, admits that there is some truth in the ancient Pagan charge that Christianity, especially in the highly ascetic form which it assumed in the latter Roman Empire, sabotaged Roman civilization. He cites, for example (Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, p. 10), St. Paulinus's letter to a Roman soldier, encouraging him to give up the service of the beleaguered Empire in favour of that of God. "In this epistle the ascetic ideal is expounded with a breadth and absence of qualification which shock and amaze the modern reader . . . . Christian obedience is boldly represented as incompatible with the duties of citizenship and the relations of family life. The love of father or mother, of wife or child, the desire for riches or honour, devotion to one's country, are all so many barriers to keep the soul from Christ . . . . The soldier is a mere shedder of blood, doomed to eternal torment . . . . If [asceticism] was the highest form of Christian life, as its devotees proclaimed it to be, then Christianity was the foe, not only of the old religion, but of the social and political order which Rome had given to the world."

St. Augustine, perhaps the most influential Father of the Western Church, was greatly concerned to rebut the pagan charge that Christianity had led to the downfall of Rome. Unlike Paulinus, Augustine denies that the Gospel is opposed to war waged justly and mercifully. Roman cultural decay predated the coming of Christ; Christian virtue provided a way out from decadent Roman vice. Christianity protected Rome even in defeat, since the barbarian conqueror of the city of Rome was a Christian and "respected the altars of the Christian basilicas" (p. 55).

Yet, Dill points out, Augustine did not satisfactorily reconcile Christianity with Roman patriotism. Augustine, "a true Roman at heart", is proud of Rome's past and her great achievement, the welding of the West into a single people. At the same time—much like Simone Weil—he views Roman history largely as one of crime, of brigandage writ large. The Roman gods were real, but they were demons.

How could a true Christian be proud of such a past? Rome may have been chosen by God for Empire, but to admire her for this, one would have had to admit at least some goodness in her motives: one does not admire a criminal for accidentally bringing about some benefit completely opposed to his intention. (Believing in the existence of Rome's "demons", one would have had to admit that they were not entirely evil. This would presumably have meant an approach to paganism. Apparently, only once the pagan gods have died can a Christian consistently admit some goodness in pagan culture.)

The Brussels Journal on democracy and the left-Islamic alliance

Two interesting posts up at the invaluable BJ. Here, Paul Belien considers the implications of Eastern European disaffection with democracy, as exemplified by the rioting in Hungary. If politicians lie in democracies, is it because the voters do not want to hear the truth? "The welfare state corrupts the voters, the voters in turn corrupt the politicians, and the politicians corrupt the voters even more by maintaining the welfare state. It is a vicious circle, which can only be broken when the welfare state collapses under its own inherent deficiencies. This will happen as soon as the money runs out with which the Santa Claus state finances the gifts and benefits that its corrupt electorate demands. That moment may be nearer than we think. Belgium, the archetype of the corrupt welfare state, is falling apart . . . "

In Patterns in the Politics of Extremism, George Handlery notes that the left-Islamic alliance now seen in Europe, which is somewhat mystifying to conservative observers, can actually extend even to Islamic countries such as Yemen, where Islamists and Communists recently allied to defeat the government in an election.

Update (9/30): Here is a more in-depth look at the vicissitudes of the Leftist-Islamist relationship, from Fred Halliday of the London School of Economics.

Simone Weil and nationalism (4)

Some comments on Weil

Weil's proposed Christian nationalism is in most respects an attractive idea, and something resembling it should doubtless be encouraged. However, it seems likely that such a nationalism, if it had to stand on its own, unsupported by more traditional nationalistic motives, would prove to be somewhat feeble. Yes, it is a good thing to value a country as a means to the satisfaction of the needs of individuals, and to treasure it all the more because of its fragility in the face of historical forces. On the other hand, regarding a nation solely in such utilitarian terms is perhaps insufficient to produce a citizenry who are disposed to sacrifice themselves on its behalf. Nor, probably, is everyone capable of appreciating the beauty inherent in fragility.

In renouncing the admiration of power, Weil is probably making a serious mistake. If we do not admire strength, we may not bother to cultivate it, even if it is necessary as a means to other ends we do support. It is natural and healthy to admire strength and to wish to be strong. The key, as classical ethics (as described by Josef Pieper, for example) would recognize, is to subordinate strength to higher purposes, rather than to idolize it as the supreme end; this is true on the national as well as the personal level. We ought to acknowledge that power, physical or otherwise, is a gift and a responsibility, rather than something that is created by and at the disposal of our own egos. Admittedly, to look on power in these ways may be difficult, especially where our grasp of higher values is shaky, as nowadays. Perhaps the Romans suffered only limited harm by deifying national power, because they were for most of their history polytheists, and so could keep other gods in mind as well.

Weil's attitude to the Romans strikes me as wrongheaded and dangerous (though it is apparently also backed by another major thinker, Bernanos). It is reminiscent of those leftists who denounce as "fascist" everything to their right on the political spectrum. Rome was not Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was revolutionary; Rome was profoundly conservative. Nazi Germany's "thousand-year Reich" was a mere advertising slogan; Rome really did endure for a thousand years and more. Rome had a concept of justice, even if it was inferior to ours in some respects; the Nazis jeered at the name of justice. Rome contributed a knowledge of government and law to the world; the main scientific contribution of Nazism was probably in the theory of manipulation of minds through propaganda. The power-lust of Rome in its age of imperial expansion did not extend to the totalitarian organization of life.

In rejecting the cultural legacies both of pre-Christian Rome and of Judaism, Weil is in effect espousing an etherealized Christianity, one that has no foundation in worldly existence—though she does open the possibility of restoring such a foundation by accepting the Greek side of the classical inheritance. It has been pointed out by F. Schuon, for example, that Christianity is an esoteric religion that has been extended to the masses. Such a religion is probably viable only in combination with an exoteric foundation, which might, in the case of Christianity, be drawn either from classical culture or from Judaism. What happens if one rejects this foundation? One is then left with an extremely demanding religion whose requirements few people are capable of meeting. Such a religion scarcely distinguishes between the radically evil and the ordinary: both fall short of the critical level necessary for salvation of the soul. In practice, the consequence of this is that the adherents of the religion, unwilling to face the prospect of near-certain failure, will falsely claim to have reached the high spiritual level the religion prescribes. That is, they will go about aping the behaviour of saints. This "spiritual deception" (as the Orthodox Church would term it) seems always to have been a hazard in Christianity, but it may be an even worse one in a post-Christian society that is unconscious of the Christian sources of its basic beliefs. (If it is unaware of its Christian roots, how can it become aware that the version of Christianity it is working from is defective?) We in post-Christian society have rejected the serious study of ethics—which we could obtain from the discarded classical component of our cultural heritage, by turning towards Judaism, or perhaps from the non-scriptural traditions of the older churches—but are left with a few fragmentary Christian ideas such as "turning the other cheek" and the equality of souls. Attempting to apply these ideas in a political context, by imposing them on the average citizen, is likely to prove disastrous. "Turning the other cheek", for example, will turn into the institutionalization of cowardice. Weil's Christianity seems to be much more seriously held than than the ethics of most contemporary liberals, but it might turn out to have much the same effect if one tried to make it the basis of the political system.

One "esoteric" aspect of Christianity is its emphasis on inward thoughts and motives rather than merely on outward actions. If one attempts to apply the Christian standard of purity of motive to national history, one runs into difficulties. Most historical deeds, Weil would undoubtedly agree, are probably not performed out of pure motives; also, it is difficult to uncover other people's motives, especially those from the scantily documented past. There may be a tendency systematically either to overrate or (as more recently) to undervalue the motives of figures in the national history. It would seem necessary, in describing a patriotic national history, to concentrate on concrete actions, without worrying much about the motives behind them. But Weil would presumably not find this to be adequate for encouraging a true Christian patriotism.

It seems to be generally accepted that great historical accomplishments are usually brought about by people whose motives are probably, for the most part, rather sordid and short-sighted. Weil's understanding of Christianity apparently excludes such accomplishments from the category of the admirable. It is of no account, for example, that the Romans united the known world into a single peaceful and ultimately Christian society: they were motivated primarily by self-glorification, so their achievement is, spiritually speaking, merely a useless by-product of sinful worldliness. This is not, however, the only possible Christian interpretation of history. One can also regard a nation which accomplishes something great, even if out of obscure and probably not very laudable motives, as a chosen instrument of Providence. "By their fruits ye shall know them"—not by their motives as interpreted by long-distance psychoanalysis.

Is not the possession of such a Providential role a legitimate basis for national self-respect? If one's culture has achieved great things, this should suffice to oblige one to fight to preserve it, without demanding to examine the inward states of the architects of those achievements, to see if they pass muster with one's own refined moral sensitivity—a sensitivity which incidentally is very cheaply purchased when one only needs it for debunking heroes, not for individual self-examination. This is not the only basis for a legitimate patriotism, but it is one that seems to be missing from Weil's patriotic palette.

The fruits of bureaucratic benevolence

From Samuel Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, London, 1898, p. 234 (a book recently cited in the Ottawa Citizen):

The system of bureaucratic despotism, elaborated finally by Diocletian and Constantine, produced a tragedy in the truest sense, such as history has seldom exhibited; in which, by an inexorable fate, the claims of fancied omnipotence ended in a humiliating paralysis of administration; in which determined effort to remedy social evils only aggravated them till they became unendurable; in which the best intentions of the central power were, generation after generation, mocked and defeated alike by irresistible laws of human nature, and by hopeless perfidy and corruption in the servants of government.

. . . CONTINUE

Dill believes that socio-economic mismanagement on the part of the state was the direct cause of Rome's collapse (though he also points to a cultural malaise which might, in turn, have been the reason such mismanagement went unchecked). He argues that although there was a widespread aversion to and contempt for military service in the latter days of the Empire, what military forces the Romans did retain continued, right up to the end, to be markedly superior to their barbarian opponents, on a man-for-man basis. Rome had simply wrecked the economic foundation necessary to support an adequate military establishment.

In 356 an immense multitude of the Alemanni inundated Eastern Gaul. Julian, the future Emperor, who was then a mere youth, with no previous training in the art of war, was in command of only 13,000 men, of whom few were veteran troops. Yet in a very short time not an enemy was left in Gaul, and the victors were carrying the war far into the heart of Germany . . . .
      Of the same character were the great invasions of the opening years of the fifth century. A great army under Radagaesus, which, according to the lowest estimate, numbered 200,000 men, crossed the Alps and penetrated into Etruria. That the government regarded the danger as serious, may be inferred from the edict which called the slaves to arms. Yet Stilicho, with a force of only 30,000 regular troops, and some Hun and Alan auxiliaries, signally defeated that great host . . . .
      The invasion of Attila in 451 was probably the most appalling danger, in respect to the numbers of his motley host, which the Romans had had to face for ages. Aetius had only a handful of troops under his command, and although he was able to rally to his support Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians, and Saxons, yet the credit of defeating that fierce and crafty power, which had reduced all central Europe to vassalage, must be awarded to Roman daring and organisation. In the last days of the independence of Auvergne and of the Western Empire, a mere handful of troops under the gallant Ecdicius, and raised by his own resources, kept the Visigothic army for months at bay, and the Romans showed in this final struggle an almost contemptuous recklessness. (pp 240–242.)

Simone Weil and nationalism (3)

A Christian patriotism?

The Nazi menace served to concentrate the minds of Weil and others, not only on the dangers of European nationalism, but on the need to preserve a patriotism strong enough to resist foreign aggression. France rapidly disintegrated when invaded by Germany, despite having a military force that was on paper strong enough to defend herself successfully. It is widely acknowledged that this failure reflected a deep malaise in French society that developed in the years before the war, a malaise that left the French divided and uncertain whether they had anything worth risking their lives to defend.

Weil attempts to describe a form of patriotism that does not violate her conception of Christian morality. First, it would recognize that the nation had no value in itself, but solely as a vital medium benefitting its inhabitants. Human beings have basic needs (some of which Weil describes in unfamiliar ways) which can be met only with the help of the state. We should support the state only as a means of fulfilling our unconditional obligations to look to the needs of our fellow human beings.

These obligations are to all human beings, not just to our fellow nationals; thus, any action by the state that unjustly hurts foreigners is to be opposed. In this respect, Weil would seem to agree with our contemporary liberals who regard the state as a kind of local representative of the interests of mankind in general, with no special duty to its own citizens; at any rate, this conclusion is certainly derivable from Weil's argument. Weil seems to deny the natural feeling that we owe more to fellow-citizens than to the inhabitants of unfamiliar lands on the other side of the globe. The concept of universal moral obligation is, I think, a view with a respectable Christian pedigree. Only now, however, do some people in positions of power seem to be using it to justify their policies.

Regarding one's country as a "vital medium", Weil persuasively points out, would avoid the "contradictions and lies which corrode the idea of patriotism." One would no longer regard the country as uniquely valuable, but would acknowledge the legitimate interests of other such vital media. One would also recognize that one's country had been produced by causes in which both good and evil were mixed up. Since one's country would no longer be considered an absolute good in itself, it would be unnecessary to pretend that its history was unblemished. It might even be of lesser value than those societies formerly existing in its territory, which had been destroyed in the nation's drive to power; nevertheless, since those societies cannot be reconstructed, the existing nation is the only available "vital medium", and it must still be considered precious. This temperate form of patriotism would, however, encourage political decentralization as a means of partially healing the wounds formerly inflicted on distinct local cultures. It would also support limited internationalization of political power. The cult of the nation-state, by contrast, is opposed to both of these forms of diminution of national power.

Weil's other major proposal is that Roman-style patriotism, the pagan worship of national power, should be replaced by a Christian compassion for one's country. She regards Joan of Arc, who said that she felt pity for the troubled kingdom of France, as the great model for this alternative patriotic ethic; also, Jesus demonstrated it when he wept over the fate of Jerusalem. As St. Joan showed, such compassion does not preclude warlike energy. As a man is capable of heroism in the protection of his children or aged parents, so should the citizen be capable of heroism in the defense of his imperilled country.

The key here is that Weil's Christian love is a love for fragility, and perhaps beauty. One can love what is fragile, but one will not idolize it; love for the strong is inherently idolatrous. We are permitted to love fragility and beauty in the world, but worship of strength must be reserved for the supramundane. One has the choice of loving France for her apparent permanence or as something which may be destroyed; patriotism must be restricted to the latter form. (One might note here that this also "solves" the problem of nationalism in small nations. It is ridiculous to idolize one's country when it is small and insignificant in the world—though this has not stopped people making the effort—but it is relatively easy to regard such a country as vulnerable.)

Weil believes that this new form of patriotism must be inculcated by reforming the system of public education. If children continue to be taught to admire greatness of the Roman type, if we continue to honor (in Weil's view) essentially evil men, not only do we give those men exactly the kind of victory they sought, we also invite our most energetic children to emulate them.

As far as I can see, Weil does not succeed in putting together a reformed educational program, though she makes some interesting suggestions in this connection. One problem she discusses is the need to recount genuinely good acts in our national history for us to emulate: without the study of history, there can be no patriotism. The difficulty is that few such actions are good enough to meet Weil's moral requirements; moreover, most such events will go unrecorded. In French history, for example, she can come up only with the examples of Joan of Arc and of those little-known Catholics of Béziers who sheltered heretics at the cost of their own lives. Besides eking out what little true goodness there is in the historical record, students will therefore have to be taught to love that which has disappeared from the record, Weil proposes. Such a suggestion seems to lend itself to ridicule. In lesser hands than Weil's, such a concept is also likely to produce "people's histories" which serve us up with pseudo-heroes who are not morally outstanding, but merely mediocre in their accomplishments.

Simone Weil and nationalism (2)

Weil's condemnation of conventional patriotism

Weil points out that patriotism or nationalism, for all its importance in human affairs, has been written about very little (at least in French). Conventional wisdom (see e.g. Reck-Malleczewen) has it that patriotism only appeared with the French Revolution, but patriotic feeling was often very intense in the Middle Ages; patriotism is a modern development only in the sense that in the Middle Ages the object of patriotism was not the nation-state exclusively, but could shift between one's village, town, province or "nation" (France), Christendom or mankind. The French Revolution cemented a purely national patriotism both by abolishing local and Papal rivals to national authority and, Weil says, by transforming monarchical absolutism, which over the centuries had produced a great deal of suppressed anti-patriotic feeling among the French, into republican rule. "Those who had been French by force, became so by free consent." (Those inhabitants of the Vendée not slaughtered by the Revolutionary armies would probably have had a thing or two to say about that.)

The (more or less) free consent of the governed does not, however, guarantee the benign character of the modern kind of patriotism. Such patriotism is directed towards the State, despite the cold, unlovable character of that State, because the State tends to kill off every rival object of political affection. This lack of attractive alternatives exposes all of us to "moral torment". In destroying rival institutions, the State also "eats away the moral substance of a country. The German state is strong because it is new." (Rauschning would agree with this, at least in the German context.) The worship of an all-powerful centralized State is nothing more than "loveless idolatry".

Weil would go further than this. Not only is French- or German-style State-worship idolotrous; so is the love of one's country, one's people, if it is turned into an absolute good. Weil believes that Judaism, with its idea of the "chosen nation", is guilty of this form of idolatry. (Indeed, she speaks as though tribalism did not exist before the Jews came along. A similar criticism might presumably also be aimed at the English or Americans, who traditionally did not regard the State as all-important, yet similarly regarded themselves as exceptional nations. Clearly, however, it is difficult to tell in such cases where proper self-regard ends and idolatry begins. It is reasonable to argue that the Jews, the English, the Americans and various other nations besides have all had unique, important contributions to make to the world.)

Further, a people or any other collectivity for Weil has no real existence, or at any rate none comparable to that of the human individual. She claims that Plato "found the right expression when he compared the collectivity to an animal." Patriotic love for one's collectivity, for its own sake, is therefore as debased as adoration of an animal. A rather vicious animal, in fact: "The superior prestige of the nation is bound up with the exaltation of war. It furnishes no motives for action in peacetime except in a regime which constitutes a permanent preparation for war".

Patriotism also entails idolatry of the (collective) self, a practice cultivated by the ancient Romans, Weil's other bête noire. This is pride, and so the worst of all sins in Christian terms. "In the soul of a Christian, the presence of the pagan virtue of patriotism acts as dissolvent." The French pro-Catholic Right of the 1930s, for example, was corrupted by the view that patriotism trumped morality. There ought to be no pride in empire—or at any rate not in the French empire, since empire-building is not part of France's national vocation (which incidentally is "thinking on behalf of the world", Weil believes).

Weil sees no essential difference between the conventional patriotism of her own day, as seen for example in France, and the Nazi type of nationalism. Both are based on the worship of national military power. She emphasizes this basic point by going as far as to claim to admire Hitler for having the courage of his convictions, in contrast to the more inhibited citizens of liberal countries, who do not go beyond "a base submission of the mind" before the idol of national military greatness. "Once one recognizes something as being a good, one should want to seize it. Not to want to do so is cowardly." (This was a fairly dramatic way of putting things considering that Weil was at the time employed by the Free French government.) Hitler was the natural product of a society whose popular writers held up as role models such figures as the Roman dictator Sulla.

Simone Weil and nationalism (1)

Simone Weil, a French "unbaptised Catholic" of Jewish background who died in 1943 in England, at the age of 33, is considered by many to be a brilliant writer and a saint, one of the few great spirits of the age. Her saintliness is questioned in this essay, however, which points out that she chose to impose (ultimately fatal) hardships on herself, ostensibly out of compassion for suffering proletarians and for Frenchmen under occupation; yet, when the position of French Jews became unpleasant, she reacted by protesting to the authorities that she did not deserve to be classified as Jewish. T.S. Eliot, in his introduction to Weil's The Need for Roots, admires her soul and her intellect, but also criticizes her as something of a universalist on the one hand and a Marcionite heretic on the other; that is, rather than seeing Christianity as standing out by its superiority to the other major religions, she saw Judaism—together with the religion of the ancient Romans, whom she also hated—as exceptional in its inferiority. She avoided close relationships and her personality appears to have been marked by an intense self-loathing.

The Need for Roots, which she wrote just before her death, is a wide-ranging attempt to lay the foundations for a new political order in France. It contains a great deal that seems to be unwise: for example, she wished to suppress the work of authors who published demonstrably incorrect statements, even though this would surely have had the effect of eliminating all books of any interest—in particular her own, which is full of dangerous generalizations, and has to be regarded as a fertile source of hypotheses rather than of truths. Nevertheless, even if one regards the book as nonsense, it is of significance because it represents in rather pronounced and clearly argued form some of the beliefs about nationalism which have become prevalent since World War II. Weil was admired by some of the leading writers of the postwar period (see the link to the essay above), so it is a reasonable guess that her attitudes to nationalism have been not just indicative, but influential in intellectual circles. The book also contains some interesting, though to my mind very incomplete, ideas about how one might construct a Christian alternative to traditional nationalism. I will ignore here the large amount of material in the book that does not seem to bear on the question of nationalism.

Don't you wish you lived in France?

Apparently, if you're in charge of a major French television network that broadcasts blatant lying propaganda, but some impudent little bloggers threaten to expose you by using the new-found power of the Internet, you can simply have those pipsqueaks hauled into the Palais de Justice for a trial! Cool! And no inconvenient right to a trial by jury to worry about, either—it'll be judges who will be deciding whether the upstarts' political views are acceptable. Full story at The Augean Stables, via Pajamas Media.

Amis on Islamism

Does this indicate a sea-change in British attitudes? Martin Amis has a lengthy and informative (as well as elegantly written) article on Islamism in the Guardian-affiliated Observer, no less. Quote:

It is painful to stop believing in the purity, and the sanity, of the underdog. It is painful to start believing in a cult of death, and in an enemy that wants its war to last for ever.

(He also deals in passing with mainstream Islam and religion in general, regarding which he has questionable opinions. But these are not the focus of the article.)

More on Orwell and nationalism

While on the subject of Orwell and nationalism, mention might also be made of Orwell's essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, in which he has a few more things to say bearing on nationalism.

Orwell perceived a potentially dangerous anti-Semitism among the English, held in check by English standards of civility and by an awareness among educated English at that time of the shamefulness of harbouring anti-Semitic feelings. So, Orwell would presumably not have been surprised by the current bubbling-up of anti-Semitism in an England which has both lost much of its civility and been subjected to incessant anti-Zionist propaganda from much of its media. The source of English anti-Semitism, Orwell says, was not actual or imagined outward Jewish characteristics, which were used merely as rationalizations of a deeply-held dislike. The true source of the antipathy is mysterious, and difficult to study because of the reluctance of investigators to admit to and examine their own irrational hatreds; Orwell believes that it is some form of "neurosis". On the brighter side, the English have never been strongly opposed either to intermarriage with Jews or to Jews' playing a role in public life, according to Orwell. Being Jewish was a personal handicap in English society, but not an insurmountable one.

Orwell goes on to claim that anti-Semitism is a "manifestation of nationalism", which he also sees as a mysterious pathology, due, as it were, to the lack of some "psychological vitamin" in modern civilization, and afflicting all of us with the "lunacy of believing that whole races or nations are mysteriously good or mysteriously evil." British intellectual nationalism has virtually disappeared; but if it should reappear, a Continental (anti-Dreyfusard) kind of anti-Semitism might well gain a foothold in Britain.

This blanket rejection of nationalism does not seem consistent. In his essay on nationalism (see previous post), Orwell contrasts patriotism to nationalism, yet believes that patriotism entails the belief that one own country is the best in the world. But under the terms of the essay on anti-Semitism, it seems to be implied that such a belief should be rejected out of hand, as "lunacy". This would appear to condemn not only nationalism, but patriotism as defined (somewhat unsatisfactorily) by Orwell. Actually, it seems more lunatic to believe that one's own country is the best in the world than it does to have a visceral antipathy to some other group of people. In ordinary life, belief in one's own absolute personal superiority is generally a sign of insanity; merely having a visceral antipathy to someone else might be neurotic, or it might prove to be a justified intuition. It is of great importance to examine this antipathy—not necessarily to reject it, but to see whether it ought to be rejected. If one refuses on principle to believe that other peoples can genuinely be "mysteriously . . . evil", a position which Orwell gives the impression of adopting, one may be leaving one's own culture open to destruction at the hands of another. (To avoid misunderstanding: I am not referring to Jewish culture, which seems to me admirable.)