A classical mistake

Over on The Telegraph, Simon Heffer is having a poke at Labour's record on individual liberty.

We live in a country where harmless people taking pictures of cathedrals are warned off by police invoking anti-terrorism laws; where the same legislation is used to regulate the positioning of wheelie bins; where smoking is banned even in public places whose owners wish to allow it; where the hunting of vermin is banned even on the land of those who wish to have it hunted. All these invasions of individual autonomy have taken place since 1997.

All fair points and quite true. Heffer goes on to describe how a book about liberalism has forced him to think about such things and wonders how it is that liberalism has such a bad name these days.

Well, first of all - it doesn't. The term "liberal" is indeed used as a derogatory term by US conservatives, but beyond that relatively small band of people it is generally seen as a positive thing. Heffer points out that "Mrs Thatcher was a 19th century liberal" and goes on to describe himself as a "Gladstonian liberal".

As Heffer rightly notes, 19th century, Gladstonian liberalism was very different from the liberalism of today. Today, "liberalism" generally means progressive liberalism which is simply a form of socialism (but one that avoids the stigma of the term socialism) which employs the tools of political correctness and the "rights" of victim groups to push cultural Marxism on to an unsuspecting people.

What Heffer forgets though, is that the form of classical liberalism he refers to took root during the time of the nation state. This is a crucial point to understand about classical liberalism and individual liberty as I will now try to explain.

To have individual liberty and "autonomy" you need to have sovereignty - the power to make the decisions that affect your "territory" - in this case, your person. The further that sovereignty is removed from an individual, the less autonomy they will have. In any form of society, no individual will have complete autonomy - even if there is no organised system of government - because there are always others that you may have to defer that autonomy too whether it be members of your immediate family or the "tribe". This is a simple natural state (even primitive animals defer autonomy).

In the historical rise of a civilised society, that autonomy is deferred to various levels - from the individual to the family. From the family to the parish. From the parish to the county and from the county to the nation. Through each stage, the autonomy of the individual decreases. The only thing that binds it together throughout each stage is the culture - the shared values, traditions and institutions of the society.

Deferment of autonomy is an historically bottom up process. It begins with the individual and rises up through the various levels of societal structure. The governed defer autonomy to the government. This is why the nation state is the ultimate conclusion of society as it is the top level of society that can exist for any given culture (which is also why "multiculturalism" can not work and will eventually lead to the break up of a nation).

Classical liberalism took root during the time when the nation state had risen to prominence throughout the world. It worked only because of the nation state - it can not work in a form beyond that as that relies on a top down process where the governors defer autonomy of the governed, not vice versa - and where it does not defer autonomy it imposes its requirements on a people regardless of - and often against - their culture.

This is what we are seeing with modern progressive liberalism. We are seeing the imposition of rules and laws which go against our national culture - and this is resulting in the erosion of traditional British liberty. Those rules and laws increasingly come not from our government, but from various unelected and unaccountable corporate bodies of bureaucrats - the UN, EU, WTO etc.

Classical 19th century liberalism worked as well as it did only because of the existence of the nation state and only within the context of a nation state. People like Heffer who suppose that the same principles can work on a global context fail to understand the basic principle of individual liberty - the deferment of autonomy is a bottom up process and only acceptable amongst people with shared values, traditions and institutions - i.e. a shared culture.

People like Heffer want their cake and to eat it too. They want the social and personal benefits that are derived from the nation state at the same time as they want a globalised "laissez faire"* economic system - but they can't have it both ways. If you have this globalised economy, then you will need to accept that some global authority is going to decide what you can and can not do - regardless of your historic national, cultural traditions - and you have to realise that this "authority", once established, is never going give you any of your personal autonomy back and will only take more and more of it away.

* It's worth noting also that the term "laissez faire" also rose to prominence with the nation state and was only used in the context of a national economy.

Power hungry

After all the suffering and hardship endured by Britons during World War Two, it was a cruel twist of fate that the winters that followed the end of that conflict were amongst the harshest and coldest on record and, with a national shortage of fuel, even relatively wealthy people, such as George Orwell, resorted to burning furniture to keep themselves warm.

However, at least the government of the time had a perfectly reasonable excuse for failing to meet the needs of the people for power - we'd just come out of a hugely expensive and incredibly destructive war. The government of today has no such excuse.

Ofgem are warning that "families face "unaffordable" energy bills and power cut" in a few years time unless £200 billion - yes, billion - is spent now to improve power supply and storage. You don't have to be George Osborne to work out that this puts Britain in something of a financial pickle.

Our energy suppliers are mostly foreign. They really don't give a damn if fuel bills are "unaffordable" - it just means they make more profit. They don't give a damn if British industry is crippled by power cuts - it just means they make more profit. These companies are not going to spend billions of pounds on our energy infrastructure unless there is something in it for them - and making less profit is hardly an incentive.

The "dash for gas" might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, anything that meant we didn't have to rely on bolshy British coal miners has got to be a good thing, right? Wrong - particularly if it means we have to rely on unstable Russian gas oligarchs, mad Middle East mullahs and dodgy French engineering.

We need to take back control of our energy supply and generation. We need to make sure that we can provide for our energy needs without relying on foreign support or favour. We need to realise that wind farms are never ever going to be able to provide this even if we carpet the whole of the United Kingdom in the ugly monstrosities.

We need to take back control of energy supply, generation and distribution. We need to make ourselves as independent in meeting our energy needs as it is possible to be. To do this we need four things.

First we need to re nationalise our energy industry entirely. Secondly, we need to give up this ridiculous pursuit of "renewable" supply which is currently incapable of providing us with the energy we need. Thirdly, we need to modernise our existing coal fired power stations and build lots more. Fourth, we need to make long term investment in skills and technology that will enable us to build our own nuclear power plants for the future.

Two of those we can do quickly. We can take back control of our energy industry relatively easily and we can withdraw from the pursuit of renewable nirvana in no time. The coal fired power stations will take a little longer as we not only need to build them, but we have to restore our coal industry as well. However, it will buy us enough time to do what is necessary for the fourth requirement.

Because that is the really long term goal. Those people who want us to go nuclear now are not living in the real world. The problem with that is that there isn't enough nuclear expertise to go around - and Britain is virtually devoid of it. Furthermore, such is the dire state of our education system that we are unlikely to be able to produce people with the skills and brains to do it ourselves - and reliance on foreign skill is not what I want because it is not good for Britain.

So, in the interim we keep what coal fired plants we have going. We build new ones. We re-open coal mines and dig new ones. That will give us the energy we are going to need for the next 20-50 years - because it will take at least that long to restore our education system to the extent that we are able to start, once more, producing the best of the best in engineering, design and technology.

The right tools for the job

I don't understand why it is that just because I'm a conservative I shouldn't be in favour of nationalised industries. I think it's partly due to the fact that people still wrongly assume capitalism to be a political system - even though it clearly is not - and therefore, if you are even moderately right wing you must favour private enterprise over state owned industry.

I really don't see this as being the case. Capitalism is simply an economic system which is used, by and large, by virtually every kind of government there is regardless of whether they are left or right wing. It is used because, although far from perfect, it is by far the most effective economic system there is - but that should not distract us from its shortcomings which are many.

I think it was Churchill who said that democracy was the worst kind of government there is apart from all the others - well so it is with capitalism and economic systems. Just as you need to have effective checks and balances on democracy you also need to have effective checks and balances on capitalism too and, as I have always maintained, this can only be done effectively within a national context.

The thing is, private enterprise is not always the best way forward for certain industries. The Victorians understood this which is why the Royal Mail was a state owned industry as that was the only way a universal, nationwide service could be maintained - as a state owned monopoly. Could it be done better by a private enterprise? Almost certainly where the service is profitable - but most definitely not where it isn't.

You won't be surprised, therefore, to learn that I totally oppose the sell off of any part of the Royal Mail and believe completely that it should remain a state owned industry More than this, I believe that the services provided by the Royal Mail should once more become a monopoly as this is the only way to enable Royal Mail to regain much of the profitable areas of its business that it lost out on to private companies who get to cherry pick what they can offer and to whom.

I have similar views, as I've noted before on the railways. The only way you can ensure that you have a fully integrated and universal rail service is by making the whole damn network - track, stations, rolling stock etc. - a state owned monopoly. I know people point to the British Rail of the seventies as demonstrable proof that this won't work - but that ignores completely the realities of that time with underinvestment and all too powerful and militant unions.

I'm also in favour of the utilities being state owned - water, gas and electric - for the same reasons. Beyond that I'm more or less in favour of everything else being open to private enterprise free market capitalism

However, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes free market capitalism and private enterprise fails and when it does I believe it is the duty of a national government to step in and help out in certain cases - particularly in industries which are vital to our economic and national well being.

I think this is especially important in key manufacturing and production industries such as defence, car/truck manufacture, coal and steel, aerospace, shipbuilding and other major, "heavy" industries.

Let me make it clear that I would always prefer - if and when possible - that these industries would not be state owned and open to the vagaries of free market capitalism (but, as always, within the context of the nation - I'm just not into the whole global free market thing which, as I've made it clear elsewhere, is going to be a monumental disaster for the west in general and Britain in particular).

However, if capitalism is failing to deliver what we require from these industries then I believe it is right and proper for the national government to step in and either take over ailing companies or, if we are completely lacking in a certain field , start new companies to fill the void.

I would hope that this would be done always with the intention of privatising those companies when it is prudent to do so - but with certain provisions that they must remain wholly British owned and with measures in place to prevent aggressive takeovers of other companies in those sectors which would once more reduce competition and leave the resulting conglomerate as a private monopoly.

I don't believe this is left wing "socialist" thinking - I believe it is a sensible policy for any government to pursue. These industries are vital to a nation as they are often the lifeblood of the innovation and technological advancement that drives a national economy forward. They are also vitally important to our education system as these major industries need quality graduates and skilled workers.

It's one of the most overlooked failings of our education system that one of the reasons the quality of education has declined so significantly is simply that there isn't the same need to produce highly educated school leavers anymore. The law of supply and demand is just as important in education as it is in selling televisions.

State owned industry, conservatism and a fundamental belief in free market capitalism are not mutually exclusive. Far from it - it makes eminently good sense for any government to keep all available tools in its tool box and to be prepared to use them if and when necessary. And sometimes only one tool will do the job right.

Give me back my country

I don't understand what's happened to British politics. I mean, I've no doubt that politicians have always found ways to scam the system or abuse their powers, but once they got found out they at least used to do the honourable thing and resign - except Kings, of course, but they don't really count as politicians.

These days the word "honour" means nothing to the men and women that inhabit parliament - it's all about getting power and retaining it at all costs. Having said all that, the reality - as I alluded to in the first paragraph - is that politicians and sleaze have always gone together hand in hand.

The thing I really don't get is the way the media make such a meal of it. Of course it is an issue and it is right to hold the government to account, but it seems to me that politicians - and political parties - can do pretty much whatever they want regardless of the damage it does to our nation and the media will just shrug their shoulders.

How else can you explain the lack of disgust at the explosion in crime, the destruction of our societal values, the demoralisation of our once great institutions, the debasement of our education system, the collapse of our industrial base and the complete eradication of our heritage?

All of these things have happened over the last 50 years and they have happened under the direction of our political masters, but the media don't seem to care - but a politician getting caught slipping through a £10 expense bill for porn is a major issue?

The Major government was a complete disaster, but it wasn't the political incompetence that did for them in the end - it was David Mellor dressing up in a Chelsea kit for nookie with some tart that killed off the Conservatives. It looks as if the same thing may be what kills this Labour government - although that is still far from certain. Cameron's Conservatives may be ahead in the polls, but considering what is going on it's not much of a lead and the Tories are making little headway.

Why can't we start caring about the things that really matter again? I'm often accused of wanting to go back to the fifties (or even back to Victorian times!) and, to be honest, sometimes I think why not? What was wrong with a low crime society? What's so bad about a country where most of what we buy is made in our own factories or grown in our own fields? What's so bad about high streets which are different all over the country and full of character and charm rather than clones devoid of warmth or welcome?

Britain was a better country in the fifties than it is now. We were polite, well dressed and well mannered. Progressives argue that it wasn't so good if you were a knocked up teenager in need of an abortion or a gay man looking for a one night stand - I don't care. For the majority of people it was a decent country to live in - one where it was safe to walk the streets at night and the police were allies of the law-abiding majority.

As I've said before, the point of government is to do things which benefit the majority of the people - not to look after minorities. As soon as you start doing that you get groups lining up to be given consideration and the result of that is not a unified nation, but a collection of disparate groups competing for attention. That's how nations collapse.

Are things better now? Crime is worse, education is a disgrace, unemployment is a curse, health care is haphazard at best, industry is disappearing, agriculture is in crisis and the only solution our ruling elite can offer is more of the same.

Would I swap all my material things for a chance to go back to the sort of country we had back then? You bet I would. I like my computer and all the modern gadgets we have now, but I'd give them all up for a country that had the values and societal strength that my parents enjoyed.

Give us back our country, you progressive bastards and shuffle off to Cuba or some other communist haven you adore so much. I've had enough of you.

At last! Someone in the media "gets" it!

And I'm delighted to see it's someone as respected as Niall Ferguson.

Suppose that a government can have any two of the following things, but not all three: globalisation, in the sense of openness to international flows of goods, services, capital and labour; social stability; and a small state. Or, to put it differently, conservatives can pick any two from an open economy, a stable society and political power – but not all three.

Ferguson points out - as I've been saying - that globalisation always leads eventually to a major collapse of the economic system. He claims it is every 50 years - personally I believe it is much quicker than that. Globalisation in its current form has only been happening for the last 15-20 years and that was the case before the previous global depression and the one before that (and both previous periods of globalisation were preceded by the emergence of a new communications technology that allowed for globalisation). But I'm not going to argue the specifics with Ferguson - the point is that he confirms my own thinking that globalisation ALWAYS ends in a major economic crisis. But I'm a nobody and Ferguson is a respected economic historian - so I'm just glad that my view is not completely off the wall.

Ferguson also goes on to confirm my own belief that globalisation is often seen as an instrument of conservatism, where as I believe that it is actually an instrument of socialism. After all, what is globalisation if not a redistributive system for wealth? Wealth flows out of the established economies to the developing economies as manufacturing and industry is relocated to those countries where labour is cheap and plentiful. The established economies maintain an appearance of affluence by resorting to huge amounts of credit and the credit bubble begins. Eventually this credit bubble gets too big, the whole thing goes "pop" and depression strikes.

As Ferguson also points out, when the major economic crisis does strike, socialists immediately turn to their preferred Keynesian economic model based on big government and regulation to stem the collapse of globalisation - and it always fails. So globalisation is not conservative.

I'd even argue that it is not "capitalist" even though it has the appearance of it. Ferguson points out that globalisation creates market "distortions" which are the very antithesis of capitalism. Capitalism will only work successfully if the market in which it operates is either totally free or totally even.

This is why it works so well within a national context where a government can assure an even playing field for all competitors, prevent anyone gaining an unfair advantage through lower labour costs or lighter regulation and protect against the emergence of monopolies. As soon as you take capitalism out of the national context you lose those capabilities - the markets are distorted and, eventually, the system fails as the markets try to "even" themselves out.

Given that we've never had a "free market" in the modern era (the last 1000 years or so) that means that either workers in Indonesia, for example, gain the same rights, pay levels and protection that we in the west do - or vice versa. Do you really want to earn a dollar an hour for a 60 hour week?

OK, OK - having said all that and despite the fact that I'm delighted that someone as respected as Ferguson both agrees with me and has come out and said it, the truth is that Ferguson argues that rather than give up on globalisation we should sacrifice social stability. I understand what he is saying, but I would argue that it is actually the worst option.

You see, Ferguson suggests that social change is relatively pain free - and it can be if framed within a national context and perpetuated through social mobility (as he suggests), but with globalisation you don't have that national context and, once again, you don't have the capacity as a nation to manage it. All the social mobility is taking place elsewhere - in China and India - but this impacts here through unrestricted immigration, job losses, fractured communities and, as Ferguson notes, social instability. The eventual result of that - as it was in the thirties - is social instability on a global scale and that leads, eventually, to global conflict.

Ferguson is right that you can have any two from globalisation, social stability and a small state - but he is wrong to suggest that social stability is the one we have to sacrifice. Actually, I don't even totally agree that you can have globalisation and a small state because the global regulatory burden will impose conditions on national government - just as our membership of the EU has contributed to the state growth by imposing directives which require implementation at national level.

Globalisation is not conservative because it leads to social instability and a big state. It is not capitalist because it distorts markets and creates monopolies. It is not democratic as it leads to corporatism and takes power away from the electorate. Apart from all that, it is downright dangerous as it leads to economic meltdown and global conflict.

I don't want it and I have no idea why anyone does.

Are they thinking what I'm thinking?

Seems they might be at last.

The country is displaying early symptoms of being trapped in a so-called “debt deflation trap” where families find themselves pushed further and further into the red every month, according to a Bank report published today.

As the article points out, there are remarkable parallels with the Great Depression, but - like all the other published articles about this current economic crisis - fails to point out that the motivating factor behind both this current dilemma and that of the Great Depression was the illusion of affluence created by globalisation.

Until this is recognised then there is not the slightest possibility that we can recover from it. The longer we leave it, the harder it will be.

A national economy when managed in a national context is a self-sustaining thing. You have a population with needs and wants - food, power, goods - and a national economy will build up to provide for the needs and wants of its population. This creates agriculture, manufacturing and industry. Supporting that infrastructure will be the service side of the economy - retail, banking, insurance and so on.

It should be recognised that the service side of the economy is nothing more than a supporting structure for the main part of the economy - production - and not a self-sustaining entity of its own, unlike production. This is why it was always a foolish gamble to place so much emphasis on turning Britain into a service led economy and one that was bound to fail.

Not only are nationalised economies self-sustaining, they are self-correcting as well. As long as you keep managing the economy within the national context and maintain a healthy productive sector you will always be able to manage downturns and keep them relatively modest - but as soon as you try to become part of a globalised economy you are heading for a major and spectacular failure and it is this that we are now seeing come to fruition.

Globalised economies can not work for a number of reasons. First there is the disparity between working conditions and wages which creates market distortions which national governments can not manage (whereas, within the national context, they can).

Those market distortions and the lack of national controls on imports means the loss of the productive sector in your own nation and a flood of very cheap imports. At first, this seems like a good thing as we can buy more with less - but as we are seeing it also feeds a consumerist boom.

The consumer led boom leads to the financial services sector seeing the opportunity to make lots of money and that leads to the kind of irresponsible lending which we have seen over the last decade. This irresponsible lending leads to even more debt - personal, corporate and national - and creates a self-inflating bubble which, eventually, goes pop.

Well, that bubble has now popped - as it always does - and the consequences will be dire for most of us. Those countries which will be least affected by this will be those countries that still retain a productive economic sector as the main part of their economy which allows them to manage their economy within a national context.

Those that will do worst will be those countries that have given up their productive sector in the misguided belief that they can be the service capital of the world. Guess which category we fall in to?

Is it any wonder then that Gordon Brown is doing his utmost to ensure that the world does not turn to protectionism. He'll fail - they will. They'll have no choice eventually and many of them - our EU partners included - are already doing so.

As I've said before, the result of this and previous governments (the Tories are just as culpable) misguided economic beliefs which were driven by their equally misguided political beliefs of progressive liberalism will be the ruin of Britain.

The euro will outlive the EU

It's a curious thing - opinion on the EU currency, the euro. Over the last couple of months we've been hearing various people such as Nick Clegg saying we need to ditch the pound and join the euro, while on the other you've got people saying the euro is finished.

Personally, I don't subscribe to either view. Oh, don't get me wrong - I agree with Heffer that reality is going to bite the europhiles on the nose pretty damn hard. The fact is that the countries which have tied themselves to the single currency have deprived themselves of the main mechanisms they would normally have used for managing their economies in the recession.

Quite why Nick Clegg thinks we should commit economic hari-kiri right now is beyond me, but the fact that you hardly ever hear from him now - the Lib Dems preferring to put forward the much more likeable and sensible, Vince Cable - demonstrates just how out of touch EU apologists like Clegg are.

I do believe that one or other nation will pretty soon withdraw from the euro and I do believe that that will cause a domino effect. Once one does it, more will follow, but the euro itself will continue even when the only country that uses it is Germany. I expect, by then, it will be called the bundeseuro or euromark, by then - but essentially it will still be the euro.

The EU, though, is finished. As member states stagger and reel from the repeated economic blows this crisis is dishing out, the EU is remarkably silent on what they plan to do. All they can manage is to mouth platitudes about unity and how we must not allow protectionism and nationalism to rear its ugly head once more even as France introduces protectionism and Germany does everything in its power to ensure German jobs for German workers by refusing to allow immigration from recently joined east European EU states.

Instead, all the EU can do is ensure our economies will crumble by insisting on ludicrous taxes and restrictions on carbon emissions to save the world from "man-made" global warming even as it becomes evident that the world stopped warming a decade ago and may well be entering a prolonged and severe cooling phase - as the climate tends to do from time to time.

The EU won't survive much longer. As this crisis deepens the member states will look elsewhere to improve their circumstances and, slowly, but surely the empire will collapse.

Patriotism, nationalism and social conservatism are not "extremist"

Over the last few weeks and culminating with the BNP victory in Kent this week there has been a lot of talk in the media regarding the rise of nationalism - most of it entirely inaccurate.

There is a tendency among the self-appointed elite in Britain to smear nationalism as "extremist", but the reality is that the vast majority of people are nationalists. Wales and Scotland both have nationalist parties which enjoy considerable support and success - the SNP is the governing party in Scotland. Does that make them extremist? Of course not. It is not because the vast majority of British people are extremist - it's because they are patriots and patriots tend to be nationalist.

I very much doubt that anyone, anywhere wants an extremist government - all they want is a normal, sensible political party that will put the interests of their country and their people first. It's not enough for the leaders of those parties to say they will, they have to demonstrate that they are - and the simple fact is that none of our mainstream political parties do.

Unlike the people of Scotland and Wales, the English have no nationalist party to support. The British people as a whole only have a choice of two nationalist parties - the BNP and UKIP.

UKIP can -and have - manage success in EU elections as this is their major campaign issue (some say their only issue - but that's a little unfair), but they have a major problem making inroads into our mainstream politics because they are mainly positioned to the right of politics - and therefore appear to the majority of voters as an alternative to the Conservatives.

Conservative voters are as patriotic and nationalistic as any, but it is not Conservative voters who are mostly affected by the issues of nationalism. It isn't them who are losing their jobs, homes and streets to foreign immigrants. It isn't their towns and cities which are being turned into foreign enclaves which the indigenous people no longer feel comfortable living in - it is the working class.

Despite what the politicians and media say about the BNP being "extreme right", the politics of the BNP are a mixture of what would have been considered left of centre fifty years ago and mixed with a heavy dose of social conservatism one can understand why that would appeal to Labour voters. With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that the BNP are gaining ground in Labour heartlands as it is principally traditional Labour voters who have suffered from our political parties selling out to trans-nationalism.

If our political parties are truly concerned about the rise of "extremist" parties then their is a simple course of action. Stop pandering to the political elites and start listening to your people - we are socially conservative, patriotic and nationalist and will vote for parties that reflect our views.

A love of one's country, a belief in one's culture and a determination to maintain that nation and culture are not extremist views. Patriotism, social conservatism and nationalism are natural beliefs for the vast majority of people - they just want a party to reflect those beliefs. The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems no longer do - who else are we going to vote for?

Balls of confusion

Ed Balls is suggesting that the global depression could lead to a resurgence in fascism which, given the authoritarian nature of our current government, is kind of ironic.

What Balls is trying to do is equate "nationalism" with fascism - but they are not the same thing. It is true that those fascist regimes we most usually think of - Nazi Germany and 1930's Italy - were nationalistic as well as fascist, but it's also worth remembering that Britain was also a nationalist country up until relatively recently and the USA remains hugely nationalist, but neither were or are fascist.

Nationalism and fascism are two separate political concepts - and like many political concepts they can co-exist. The general view - propagated by the left - is that fascism is nationalism with a racial element, but this is something I disagree with. In my view, fascism is socialism with a racial element. The best way to describe this is by looking at two nationalist countries and comparing them - the USA and China.

Yes, the USA is nationalist - strongly so. It is, effectively, at the point Britain was at around 50 years or so ago (yes, Britain also used to be strongly nationalist) and is now facing many of the challenges that Britain faced back then. Whether it will come through those challenges better than we did remains to be seen.

China is also strongly nationalist. Like the USA, China arrived at the nationalist state through a revolutionary war, but unlike the USA China applied the ideology of Marxism as the political doctrine while the USA reverted to liberal democracy.

If you now compare the two states for the elements of fascism you will find that China meets most of the criteria - authoritarian, dictatorial head of state, oppressive state, crushing of political dissent, intolerance of government criticism, intrusion of the state into individual freedoms, intrusive state surveillance on the people, an informer society (to the extent where family members inform on other family members) and a single party political system.

Compare that to the USA and, although many leftists will disagree, none of those things exist in the USA. So both are nationalist, but China is far more fascist than the USA even though it has no racial criteria in its nationalism. The USA once did, though - but even when it did it still wasn't a fascist country! Do you see the difference? Even though the USA once had a strong racial element and was also a nationalist country it still wasn't fascist, while China which has no racial element to its political ideology is very much, in every other way fascist.

So what is the difference? The difference is, of course, authoritarianism. but because of the nature of socialism - the requirement for the state to take more control over peoples lives - socialism always leads to authoritarianism. So both socialism and fascism share a key element - the only difference between the two is that socialism does not include a racial element (at least, not an expressed one. The only significant difference between the USSR and Nazi Germany was that the USSR never actually admitted to wanting to exterminate the Jews - although they had a pretty good go all the same).

So fascism is not nationalism with a racial element - it is authoritarianism with a racial element. Balls suggestion that fascism could rise once again is, presumably, based on a concern about the possible rise of the BNP, but although the BNP have a clearly expressed racial element to their policies, I've seen nothing in those policies that would lead to authoritarianism - so they would not be fascist.

Indeed, the BNP (if you believe their policies) appear committed to real democracy based on popular sovereignty and political plurality - which, combined with significant, constitutional checks and balances on political hegemony, are all essential to avoid authoritarianism - and that stands in stark contrast to the party Balls supports.

If, in the incredibly unlikely event, the BNP were to win a General Election there is nothing to suggest in their policies that we would become an authoritarian nation - and therefore we would not become fascist. Racist - possibly, fascist - no. Of course, the BNP could be lying about their intent, but unless they get elected we'll never know.

What is certain, however, is that if we continue along the lines we are currently on we most certainly will become authoritarian. We're halfway there already and if the continued erosion of our true democracy, political plurality and constitutional checks and balances continues unabated then we may soon reach the point of no return (or rather, no return without significant upheaval).

I am a fervent nationalist. I believe that the nation state is the ultimate development of a community - a people with a shared language, history, heritage, traditions and culture. I believe that race is no barrier to membership of that community - only the willingness of an individual to accept the things I mentioned - language, history, heritage, traditions and, most importantly, culture.

I know this is not a problem for many (if not most) Indian Asians, black Africans and Afro-Caribbean's who originate from countries which share many of those things with Britain thanks to the legacy of empire and I know that many (if not most) have no desire for Britain to change any of that. They are happy to be British within the confines of British culture because, essentially, that is what they are used to anyway.

I also know that it is impossible for a single nation to be multicultural. A single nation depends on having a culture - the norms, practices, traditions and laws - which all accept, but you can not have two different cultures competing for the same space. Either one will come to dominate the other - leading once more to a mono-cultural nation - or the nation will divide.

This has been a long post - sorry about that, but it is something which I feel very passionately about. I'm fed up with toerags like Balls painting nationalists as "fascists" when nationalists are nothing of the sort. Nationalism, in the context of a liberal democracy, is a good thing. We have nothing to fear from nationalism, but lots to fear from authoritarianism - and that is the road on which Balls and his like currently have us headed.

Cameron, Tesco and the price of carrots

Tough talking from Simon Heffer in today's Telegraph as he says that Cameron's "moral capitalism is no better then socialism".

Let us mark one thing: that a Conservative victory some time in the next 16 months will have nothing to do with the alternative that party offers to the electorate, other than the specific alternative of its not being the Labour Party.

I generally agree with Heffer's assessment of Cameron and the Tory party. Nor do I fundamentally disagree with Heffer's interpretation of capitalism already being moral, but I do have issues with what he writes. Particularly this.

I can only construe from his words that this is a world where, for example, there are more corner shops and fewer Tescos. But why is Tesco so powerful? Because its customers, exercising their free will, have made it so.

Well, not quite as it happens. Although it is true that Tesco customers are indeed exercising their free will, they are not doing so in a free and fair market.

Tesco has been around since 1919 - and for most of those 90 years was just another grocer. It's sudden leap in the last 20 years or so from being just another supermarket to the dominant force in high street consumerism is not due to buyers exercising their free will, but to the rise of globalisation, corporatism and international trade regulation.

Before we joined the EU and subjected our trade to the whims and ministrations of various unelected bureaucrats things worked more or less like this. Our farmers grew produce - lets say carrots - and grocers competed with each other to buy those carrots. Because Tesco were competing with other grocers to buy those carrots it ensured that our farmers got a fair price for what they grew. If Tesco couldn't get what they needed they'd have to buy elsewhere and pay import duties making their carrots slightly more expensive than home grown carrots - but the people they bought from still received a fair price for their carrots all the same.

Fast forward a few years and those restrictions have gone - and with it the internal competition for home grown produce. Now Tesco can force British farmers to sell at a much lower price or they will take their business elsewhere. Because British farmers are required to sell their goods at much lower prices than they otherwise could, this means that foreign suppliers who make up the shortfall have to reduce their prices as well - no one gets a fair price for their carrots anymore.

The other thing is that Tesco, being a large corporation can lobby internationally and skew the market in its favour - something independent grocers can not do. Tesco bypasses the instrument of democracy and goes straight to the real powers - the corporate bodies that dictate the regulations by which international trade happens; the EU, WTO, UN and so on.

There is no doubt that we have benefited from this in terms of lower food prices, but at what cost to our economic viability? Personally, I believe that we have done considerable damage to our long term future which will take a long time to put right - and the longer we put off doing something about it, the harder that will be.

The sooner we start moving back to being an independent and largely self-sufficient nation again the better our long term prospects will be. Neither Cameron nor any of the other mainstream political parties are offering that as an alternative so it may take some time yet.

The waiting game

Another day, another globalist whining about "protectionism".

The “Buy American” dispute really matters. At stake is whether the world economy retreats into protectionism and economic nationalisation, setting back recovery from the recession.

The base assumption there is questionable to say the least - that economic nationalism would set back recovery from recession - and Riddell compounds that by comparing Obama to FDR.

Yet FDR was an economic nationalist, believing that the answer to the depression lay at home, not overseas. Originally, he backed an economic conference in London to “supplement individual domestic programmes for economic recovery, by wise and considered international action”, the same aims as now.

As we all know, FDR didn't back "wise and considered international action", but decided that the answer really did lie at home. And who is to say he was wrong? By the time that economic conference took place in London in June 1933, the 1929 recession had turned into a full blown depression that had already lasted four years with no sign of ending in sight. Hitler had already come to power and the world was heading towards a world wide conflict.

Riddell also misses the fact that 1933 is considered to be the turning point in the depression - it certainly was for the USA - after which production began to rise sharply and, with it, the economy and confidence. It took a few years for that to filter through the rest of the world, but there is no doubt that 1933 was the point at which recovery began and that recovery was US led and that was due to FDR's policy of economic nationalism.

The root causes of the thirties depression are exactly the same as they are today. Globalisation creating a credit boom and huge, unsustainable corporate and personal debt that eventually led to the collapse of the banking system and subsequent massive intergovernmental debt. Sound familiar?

By the time of the London conference, the world had already gone through four years of depression hell - affecting the USA as much as anyone - there had been major political upheavals across Europe and Japan, strongly protectionist before the depression started, had been largely unaffected by the economic upheavals and thus emerged as a major political and military power pursuing an aggressive Imperial expansion programme.

All that happened in just four years. Are we going to wait that long again and watch the world dissolve into chaos once more or should we do something now?

What are we waiting for?

Get set for depression

This is going to last years.

You know, there have been two previous major depressions since industrialisation - the first midway through the second half of the 19th century and the second coming between the wars in the 20th century. Both had three things in common.

One - each was preceded by a period of "globalisation". Two - each was preceded by an expansion of credit leading to unsustainable debt. Three - the first two happened because of a period of relatively free international trade for 20 years or so before hand.

Indeed, there have been, since industrialisation, only three occasions when "free trade" existed in any accepted sense - the two occasions mentioned above and the last 20 years or so.

Oh, I know that the economists have argued for decades about what caused the depressions and haven't been able to agree, but sometimes those immersed in the detail really can't see the wood for the trees.

I'm certainly no economist and I'm not denying that my opinion is based more on a "gut feel" than any knowledge - but, to be brutally frank, the opinions of economists haven't been worth much either in light of recent events.

What I do know, however, is that those nations which came through the last Great Depression relatively unscathed were those nations which had resisted the temptation to join the international free trade bandwagon. Only those nations with strong protectionist trade policies and a high degree of self sufficiency were able to ride out the depression with very little damage to their economy.

I still believe in capitalism, free trade and free markets as the principle mechanism for internal (national) economic policy, but remain convinced that a nation has to protect its industry, agriculture and businesses from foreign challenges otherwise that nation is going to affected strongly by a depression when it hits. And I remain convinced that depression is the inevitable consequence of international free trade.

This isn't about xenophobia, it's about being British and putting British interests first. I believe that is the right thing for a British government to do - and that a French government should put French interests above all others, a German government should do what is right for the German people and so on.

I don't believe we, as Britons, owe the world any favours regardless of any historical slight real or imagined. Nor do I believe that any other nation owes us any favours either. The only thing special about our relationship with the USA is that we both had a shared strong belief in the fundamental principles of democracy and how those should be applied. That has diminished considerably in the last 20 years thanks entirely to the fact that we, in Britain, thanks to our membership of the EU, no longer hold those principles that strongly.

The eurozone is dominated by France and Germany and now those smaller nations in the eurozone are finding out that the euro is being used to support the interests of those nations ahead of their own. I don't blame France or Germany for doing that - I would hope that we'd do the same if we were in their position (thank God we aren't!).

If I am right - and it is a big if - and we are about to enter a major depression then there are going to be some seismic shifts in geo-politics over the next ten years. The euro will be the first thing to go as smaller nations look to regain control over monetary policy. Oh, it might survive as some Franco-German currency, but other than that it is dead and buried if we enter a depression.

I also believe it will mean the end of the EU as there will be a sharp rise in nationalism and protectionism. As a nationalist and being anti-EU as I am I welcome that, but would rather we didn't have to go through a depression to achieve it. Worse still, I fear that a depression will mark a rise in extremist nationalism which is something I most certainly do not want.

The general opinion of nationalism is that you are either a civic or ethnic nationalist - but I don't think I'm either. I'm something in between - and I believe that most British/English nationalists are the same. I'm not opposed to immigration - just opposed to unrestricted immigration and multiculturalism.

I don't take the view that you can't be black or Asian and British - being British is more of a state of mind than a skin colour - but key to that state of mind is acceptance of and integration into the British culture. What I am certain of is that you can not be black, white, Asian or green with yellow spots and British if you subscribe to different, non-British cultural values. Oh, and I don't believe you can change the culture either - not substantially. As I've said before, if you try to then all you will do is create a divided nation and that will, eventually, shatter into a number of smaller nations.

Britain was always a nationalist nation up until relatively recently and we always managed to maintain that nationalism with the world renowned British qualities of tolerance and fair play. I would hope that if, as I am predicting, Europe does revert to nationalism again, we in Britain would rediscover that British nationalism and embrace it. No, it's more than a hope - I believe that our history of democracy and social conservatism will ensure that we don't become an extremist nationalist nation.

Unfortunately, most of Europe doesn't have that history of democracy and social conservatism. Many parts of Europe have a history of being extremist and reactionary which does not bode well for the future of continental Europe if - as I suspect - depression grips the world and the EU collapses.

All of this is supposing that the recession turns into depression and, personally, I can not see how that can be avoided right now. And having said all that, I still believe - even if we do manage to avoid a depression - that the EU will collapse anyway. It would just take a little longer.

These are worrying, but interesting times.

Moslem only!

Anyone still in any doubt that the so called "multicultural" society is leading to certain "cultures" being given special treatment above that of the indigenous culture should look at this.

A grieving family have been prevented from holding a funeral service for a close relative at the weekend because they are not Muslim.

Sheffield City Council said it did not allow funerals to be held at weekends, except for Muslims because Islam deems that the dead must be buried as soon as possible.

Martin Green, senior bereavement services manager for Sheffield, said the council's policy was in line with that of other local authorities.

He said: "The council recognised the specific cultural and religious needs surrounding burial and has been offering an extended burial service to the Muslim community.

One rule for us - special treatment for Moslems. Welcome to England in the 21st century.

When are we going to wake up to what is happening to our nation? This has to stop. More than that - it needs to be reversed. No more "positive discrimination" no more "cultural sensitivity" - if people come to our nation they should respect our laws and our customs or go somewhere else.

Would you allow a guest in your home to rearrange the furniture, chuck out stuff they don't like, redecorate your bedroom to their taste? Of course not - so why do we think we have to be so bloody accommodating to foreign cultures in our home land?

Next time some dozy liberal tells you that we should do more to welcome foreign cultures - get their address, walk into their house and do what you want. They don't allow smoking? Tell 'em your culture requires you to smoke. They don't like you wiping your backside on their Egyptian cotton bath towels? Tell them your culture doesn't allow you to touch your arse with paper. See how they like it when their home is invaded by foreign ways - because that is what is happening here in England.

This has nothing to do with tolerance - it's about having backbone and not being spineless apologists. It's about having some pride in our own history and culture and restoring the confidence of our nation - a nation which has an unparalleled history of fairness, equality and tolerance.

Good God! When did we become so pathetic? How could a nation which stood firm and alone against the malevolent threat of Nazism and the might of National Socialist Germany have decayed so completely in such a short space of time?

Our current generation of politicians have betrayed us. Every one of them. They are not fit to govern - they never will be. If something doesn't change soon we will become a nation of subservience ruled by petty bureaucrats and jobsworths who are completely incapable of performing the first duties of government - to protect and preserve this nation, its people and its culture.

Don't blame capitalism!

I've got a bit fed up over the last week with reading or hearing comments about how the credit crunch is a "collapse of capitalism". It isn't anything to do with capitalism - except superficially. Capitalism is an economic principle - not a political ideology - which is founded on the belief that the means of production remains in the hands of the individual and that the producers are able to trade freely in "markets".

First of all, there has been no such thing as a free market for some considerable time. Secondly, the financial sector is nothing to do with capitalism -except, as I said earlier, superficially. Even communist states have banks which loan money to various organisations - including wholly state owned ones. I suppose because that generally means raising "capital" it is assumed that that must be "capitalism" - but it isn't in the real sense.

Also, the real cause of the problem is plain old fashioned greed - and greed is most definitely not the preserve of capitalist societies, but is prevalent in every sort of society. It is a natural human weakness and demonstrates exactly why the Utopian society which socialism strives to deliver is unachievable. If poverty can be relative - so can greed.

Nor is it due to a lack of regulation. Some of those companies that have nearly gone to the wall are the most careful to abide by stringent regulation - such as Sarbannes-Oxley. One of the features of regulation, though, is the law of unintended consequences. In other words, a regulation brought in with the best of intentions can often have dire repercussions. I'm not saying this is the case in this instance, but I have no doubt that the more you regulate, the more people will find ways to work around it.

The reason for the credit crunch is the same reason we have enjoyed a global economic boom over the last 10-12 years. Technology and globalisation. Technology that meant it was possible to move money instantly across borders and over thousands of miles at the touch of a button. Globalisation which meant that national economies were interconnected in ways that had never been seen before.

But there is a third reason as well. Corporatism.

Corporatism is the regulation of markets by unelected transnational or supranational bodies. Globalisation is the result of corporatism (aided by technology). It is the regulation imposed by these groups - the UN, World Bank, EU - which places burdens of cost and expense on companies which are trying to compete with larger, more powerful businesses. As a result of regulation, these smaller businesses either go to the wall themselves or are swallowed up wholesale by the larger companies who are much more able to absorb the cost of regulation. Regulation intended to keep markets "fair" and accountable, inevitably results in those markets less competitive and less free. Globalisation, by the way, is not capitalism either.

I'm not opposed to regulation - it is a necessary evil in my opinion - but I am opposed to "one size fits all" regulation which requires a small restaurant in Solihull to abide by the same regulations as a multinational corporation. This is why it is important for a nation to retain the ability to regulate itself. It is vital to keep the internal market as free as possible and just as important to impose restrictions on foreign markets. Some might say this is a socialist principle, but actually it is simple nationalism.

Please do not confuse political ideology with economic principle. It is worth noting that China, although it has embraced capitalism as an economic principle, remains not just politically socialist, but staunchly nationalist. It has an internal market considerably more free than anything in the western world, but places huge restrictions on foreign markets. As a result, not only is China largely insulated from the effects of the "credit crunch" it actually appears set to benefit from it at the expense of the nations which have signed up to transnational corporatism.

Capitalism has not failed. This is the usual economic cycle - which Gordon Brown foolishly boasted that he had abolished - and the downturn will, eventually, be followed by an upturn. What has failed, though, is globalisation, but more than anything it is a failure of trans-nationalism and supra-nationalism.

Defence of the nation (3): Nationalism versus internationalism

In the 21st century, nationalism is now a dirty word in Britain. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first reason is that nationalism is most often equated to racist, fascist regimes similar to the Hitler regime and the second is that nationalism is the ideology that socialism needs to defeat to achieve its objective.

One of the left's most stringent beliefs is that the world would be a better place if we all adopted socialist principles. This belief is given as the reason why the Soviet Union failed - that it would have succeeded if only we'd all become part of the Soviet Empire - and this objective is what lies behind progressive liberalism. The term "progressive" often conjures up the image of "making things better" and this is a deliberate use of the term - to imply that "progressive" doctrines are making things better coupled with "liberalism" to imply freedom. But the real ethos behind the term "progressive" in the political context is the other meaning of the word - moving towards a goal - and the "liberalism" sought by progressive liberals is the freedom to usurp nations in their determination to reach that goal - and that goal is a single world government. For the purpose of this post, I am calling that goal "internationalism".

In the early days of left wing ideology, nationalism was supported as a step towards the goal of internationalism even though, as Marx himself noted, capitalism was an integral part of creating a nation state. It was the Marxist view that nationalism was a step towards the ultimate goal of internationalism and the socialist utopia. Nationalism was considered by Marx to be a means to an end and not, as Renan believed, an end itself.

Once nationalism had become established, in the west at least, it was then and only then that the left turned against it. The baton had, by now, passed from Marx to Lenin and it was he who said "The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them".

So the goal of socialism is to create a situation where nations are "merged". To do this, the left have developed techniques to create "interdependency" and have used various instruments to achieve this. One of the more obvious instruments is the NGO (non-governmental organisation) which are used to create causes which require international cooperation. Some of these causes are real - because the NGOs were, at first, acting independently (though driven by the same ideology) - but recent times have seen certain causes deliberately engineered to create interdependency – anthropogenic global warming and environmental concerns being the most obvious – and have resulted in close collaboration between NGOs and supranational organisations.

At the start of this post, I mentioned that there were a couple of reasons why nationalism is considered a dirty word in Britain today. It is important to understand that it is the left that dominates political thought, the media and has institutional control in Britain today.

Looking at the first of those reasons, there is no doubt that the Nazi regime was utterly abhorrent, but it is wrong to attribute the disgusting objectives of that regime purely with nationalism. Nazi Germany was only superficially nationalist as it was also strongly imperialist with a strong desire to conquer and dominate other nations and, perhaps most overlooked today, it was internationalist with a stated objective of "uniting Europe" in a powerful political and economic union. Sound familiar?

More than this, though, the Nazi regime was socialist (statist) with strong central government obsessed with controlling the people to the nth degree. Remarkably, the harm perpetrated in the 20th century by a couple of rogue "nationalist" states has been scrutinised obsessively and yet with very little consideration given to the other aspect of their cause - socialism. The fact is that the common link between most of the world's most barbaric regimes and their collective atrocities in the 20th century has been socialism and not nationalism. Even so, it is wrong to suppose that all socialist regimes are barbaric and brutal just because many were, just as it is wrong to suppose all nationalist regimes are extreme and racist just because one or two were.

At the outbreak of WW2 virtually every major nation was nationalist - but in the conventional sense. Britain was strongly nationalist as was France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Japan, Australia, Italy and, of course, the USA. The USA remains nationalist today - nationalist in the original sense of the word. Nationalism was the predominant ideology of the early 20th century because, as Renan noted, the nation state was the culmination of the endeavours and struggles of a people - and by the beginning of the 20th century most western nations had reached their culmination. Their were some minor border disputes - as there are today - but on the whole the western nations had become pretty settled

The second reason why nationalism is considered a dirty word is the hypocritical way that nationalism is portrayed in the MSM. Whenever it suits the MSM, nationalism is a cause to be supported - for Bosnians, Kosovans, Palestinians and many others – but it will be “nationalism” under the guise of "freedom" or "self-determination" It won’t be referred to as nationalism - but where it threatens the goal of internationalism is it is a cause to be pilloried.

In 1849, Karl Marx wrote in the New Rhenish Gazette that "England will only be overthrown by a world war, which is the only thing that could provide the Chartists, the organised party of the English workers, with the conditions for a successful rising against their gigantic oppressors."

Ignoring the rhetoric, Marx was proved largely correct. Although Britain was apparently successful in defeating it's enemy in the Second World War, the actual outcome for Britain was the victory for socialism that Marx envisaged and Britain became a socialist nation and has remained so ever since. Unfortunately for Marx, his belief that the defeat of England to socialism would be the final step towards socialist world domination was stymied by the emergence of the USA as an even more potent nationalist political force.

The nation state is not just the culmination of a peoples struggle and endeavours as claimed by Renan. It is also the bulwark that lies between individual liberty and freedom and an unelected ruling class obtaining global hegemony. Of course, there are many out there who still believe that a global political ruling class is a goal worth pursuing, but one only has to look at the UN or even the EU to see where that would lead. Corrupt, bureaucratic, undemocratic and sclerotic. To see where that would ultimately take us to, one only has to look at the defunct Soviet Union - the last great internationalist paradise.

Defence of the nation (2): Nationalism versus statism

This is the second part to my post on nationalism.

A second part! Oh no - I hear you cry. Or not. Will it be the last part - you'll have to wait and see.

In the first part, I concentrated on what nationalism and the nation is. This time I’ll explain what makes a nation and how nationalism differs from statism (socialism). By the way, I put socialism in brackets just so that everyone understands what I mean by state and statism in the context of this post. The state can big or small without being socialist, but statism – in my view - is the socialist extension of a state.

A nation is built up from a number of different hierarchies. Many nations developed over centuries, some were created virtually over night, but no nation exists that does not have the fundamental hierarchies that form the building blocks of nationhood. These hierarchies are complex and shifting, but can be summed up in one word - communities.

Community is not society, by the way. A society is a loose collection of people who share a common interest, whereas a community is a more tightly knit group of people who share a common will - and as you will remember from my first post, it is this common will that ultimately makes up a nation.

There are several levels of community which go to make up a nation. At the top of the hierarchy, obviously, is the national community and beneath that are regional communities (counties), urban communities (towns and cities), rural communities (villages and farms), neighbours and, ultimately, family.

The family is the key component of a nation - the first expression of a peoples shared identity. Without that first expression of shared identity there could not be nations which is why, as a nationalist, it is my belief that defence of the family - and family values - is key to creating and maintaining a healthy nation.

Unsurprisingly, the term "family values" and even "family" is contentious in this day and age, but for me, in this context, it simply means the traditional family with traditional gender roles and moral values based on Christian principles. Anything that undermines these values undermines the nation. It is for this reason that I oppose things like marriage between homosexuals - or even the suggestion that co-habiting couples constitute a family. They do not. They constitute a relationship, but not a family.

Equally, it is my view that anything that strengthens the family and those values strengthens the nation - and as someone who believes in nations and nationalism I obviously believe that this should be encouraged as a priority. Preferential treatment must be given to the traditional married family in any way it can above all other forms of relationship - because this is what makes a nation strong. Those familial ties are what binds communities together and strengthen that shared identity - the national identity - and if those ties weaken and break then so does the national identity and with that goes the cohesion that binds societies together.

This brings me to the concept of nationalism as opposed to statism. The state is not the nation. The state is the mechanism of a government of a nation. Nationalism is driven from the bottom up - the will of the people to meet their needs expressed through their communities beginning with the family. Statism is the top down approach - the will of a government expressed through the mechanisms of government as it attempts to meet the needs of the people. Allow me to expand on those two points for a moment.

With nationalism, if the people have a need they take the responsibility to meet that need. At familial level that need might be to eat - so food is bought and cooked. At a rural level, that need might be to educate the local children - so a school is set up and staffed. At town level that need might be for clean streets, so a waste collection service is set up and funded. At city level that need might be for crime prevention - so a police force is set up and funded. At county level that need might be to travel between towns, villages and cities - so a transport system is set up and funded. Finally, at national level that need might be to defend the people from aggressive outsiders, so borders are defined and protected. That is nationalism - local communities taking action to meet their needs. Nationalism is actually driven by local issues which mean that the people are not only more involved in their communities - and therefore their nation - but they are also more responsible and more likely to participate.

Statism takes all that responsibility for action away from the local people. Instead of the people deciding what they want - the state decides for them. Instead of local people working together to meet the need, the state does it for them. However, because the state has to be a broad brush - meeting the greatest need for the greatest number, instead of pinpoint targeting, meeting the localised need for a localised group - it can not meet those needs as well as the bottom up approach of nationalism. Furthermore, instead of people being more involved, more responsible and more likely to participate they become remote, unconcerned and apathetic.

The more that the responsibility is taken away from them, the more apathetic they become.

Nationalism is the expression of the shared will of the people - from the traditional family right the way up to the nation itself. It is the most local of ideologies driven by local solutions to local needs for local people - and the essence of democracy in action. The further away you take the responsibility for those needs being met by local people, the less interested they are in participating in democracy.

Defence of the nation

I am a nationalist. No, I'm not a BNP supporter - at least, not yet - rather I am someone who believes that the nation state is the ultimate expression of common identity for a people.

Nations and nationalism (and nationalists) tend to get something of a bad press in this day and age - which is a little unfair seeing how the nation state has been the foundation of modern western democracy.

It's not particularly easy to pin down nations and nationalism as concepts due to the various different ways they are defined. The post-modern view of a nation is as an "imagined community". Imagined because it is impossible for everyone to know one another - but then that is true of most cities, towns and even many villages. You do not need to know everyone - or have interaction with them - to be part of a real community.

What makes you part of that very real community is not whether you know them or not, but that when you do meet you are able to communicate, recognise the common traits and differences and identify - or not - with them.

As definitions go, I prefer that of Ernest Renan ....

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. Man, Gentlemen, does not improvise. The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion.

Before going on, I must point out that I do not agree with everything Renan says about nations or races, but I do find that his definition of a nation is the one most consistent with my own viewpoint. There is much to admire about Renan's definition, but the part that sticks in my mind is that last sentence - that the nation is the CULMINATION of a long past of endeavours, sacrifices and devotion.

The culmination, the end, the high point, the pinnacle.

So, far from being an imagined community or even, as in the modern view, a political construct (a relatively recent definition which is designed to give legitimacy to those most un-nation like states such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia or, of course, the EU) - a nation is the ultimate expression of a peoples shared work and sacrifices.

A nation exists because the people want it to exist - not because the state demands it - and can only exist as long as there is a people, a demos, to want it.

Nationalism is also prone to a multitude of definitions, but, for me, Renan's definition encompasses nationalism as well as nation. Nationalism is the "will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form".

That is nationalism. It's nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear. It is the ultimate expression of a peoples will and, because I believe that the will of the people is the single most important thing in humanity, then as far as I'm concerned, far from being something to deride, loathe or mistrust, there is no cause more noble in mankind.