(I feel the legitimation of the tribe and the nation-state are among the central ideas of tradconservatism. One reason these ideas aren’t “racist,” of course, is they apply to all tribes and nation-states.)
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[url=http://www.ozconservative.com/changingnations.html]Here’s[/url] Mark Richardson:
[i]”What forms the basis of a national identity? Conservatives would answer that ethnicity does. Real historical ties of [b]ancestry, language, culture and religion[/b] are what give people a deeper feeling of a common identity. Liberals, though, reject ethnic identity. […] Liberals prefer the alternative of a civic nationalism, in which we form a communal identity through a common commitment to liberal political practices and values. This is the form of nationalism which is now dominant in Western societies. […] Can civic nationalism provide a viable form of national identity? There are reasons to think not.”[/i] (Emphasis added.)
Mark Richardson [url=http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2004/10/conservatism-capitalism.html]again[/url]:
[i]”The focus of President Bush is on allowing the free market to do its thing. People are held to act according to economic self-interest, and government exists to allow them to do so. Placing restraints on such behaviour for some higher good, such as the preservation of a distinct national tradition, is not even considered. President Bush has made the free market the ultimate end of politics, and as a consequence he believes it to be a positive thing for Mexicans who want more money, and American employers who want cheaper labour, to ‘mate up.’ He does not mind if this radically transforms the national identity of the USA.”[/i]
[url=http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002688.html]Here’s[/url] Lawrence Auster:
[i]”If a previously all-white country admits non-white immigrants in any appreciable numbers, certain consequences inevitably ensue. One of them is that the historic identity of the country, which no one had ever questioned or worried about before, suddenly becomes a[/i] problem, [i]something[/i] bad, [i]a ‘stereotype’ that ‘no longer exists,’ but (says Timbuktu, a racially mixed hip-hop artist born in Sweden) ‘still exists in the minds of some people.’ “[/i]
[url=http://vdare.com/williamson/rediscovered.htm]Chilton Williamson, Jr.[/url]:
[i]”Four and a half centuries [before St. Augustine] Cicero, in[/i] [url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/cicero-republic1.html]The Republic[/url] [i]([/i][url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0806525371/vdare/103-2030590-1387017]TCB[/url], [i]Chapter 4) had anticipated him in his enthusiasm for the national state in all its particularities. ‘[b]The good life,[/b]’ Cicero argues, ‘[b]is impossible without the good state; and [so] there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state.[/b]’ Not, however, just ‘[b]any kind of human gathering, congregating in any manner, but a numerous gathering brought together by legal consent and community of interest.[/b]’ For Cicero, ‘[b]a state should be organized in such a way as to last forever. And so the death of a state is never natural, as it is with a person. … Again, when a state is destroyed, eliminated, and blotted out, it is rather as if … this whole world were to collapse and pass away.[/b]’ “[/i]