by Rod D. Martin
July 9, 2019

The anti-Brexit Economist newspaper publishes a story entitled “Conservatism is fighting for its life against reactionary nationalism”. Which is about what you’d expect from our “betters” as they demand we conform our long-held beliefs to theirs.

By nationalist, of course, they mean a community larger than a town but smaller than the planet having the right to govern itself. Seems conservative enough to me, and I bet to you also. But not, of course, to the Theresa May, Bill Kristol, Max Boot wing of what they pretend to be “conservatism”.

Before it became faddish to define that idea as entirely racist, the left claimed it was merely Luddite, pitted against “globalism”, which many took to mean an increasingly interconnected world, something that is also (mostly) good.

But that’s not what the left meant at all, then or now.

The left hates nationalism not because it is the opposite of a shrinking world but because it’s the opposite of something much older: imperialism.

Indeed, it is nationalism which broke up all the old empires, supranational entities in which foreign elites ruled without reference to or consent of their subjects.

And from the First International to the USSR to the EU, that is precisely what the left has sought to create. Only the titles are different.

They hate nations because they hate freedom.

The Economist, of course, doesn’t realize that’s what it’s advocating here, or through its full throated support of the Remainers, while it libels everyone in every country who fought for and won their freedom in the last century, from Croatia to Kenya, from Jerusalem to Jakarta. 

The useful fools never do.

— Imperialism originally appeared as a Facebook post by Rod D. Martin.