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3/08/2018 1:10 am  #41


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

@Clinias
It's emotionally difficult to answer your questions, because they are embarrassingly dumb. Your Marxism and Christianity question involves a false analogy.

You are saying that since Marxism is incompatible with nationalism, therefore those who say Christianity is incompatible with nationalism have the same goals as Marxists.

Well, Hitler didn't smoke, therefore those who advocate non-smoking have the same goals as Hitler. This is your fallacy.

I say that Christianity is incompatible with nationalism relying on verses such as, "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also" and "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:29, Galatians 3:28) Putting your nationality or nation to the same level as your Christianity is incompatible with this.

Clinias wrote:

Again, God says, "Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled [diverse, in other translations] seed". As St. Paul extrapolated the verse about muzzling the oxen treading the grain to pertain to the clergy receiving recompense for their labor, this verse, connected to the second, surely can be extrapolated to condemn the propaganda of diversity and multiculturalism by the American Catholic hierarchy, right?

Please understand rather sooner than later that when you have "American" there, it makes your whole point completely ridiculous. USA is not a nation-state the way e.g. Poland can claim to be. USA was created by British colonists and populated by various European ethnicities with diverse affiliations by expulsing natives and adding Africans to the mix.

USA is diverse from the very beginning. Its history is a history of population growth by immigration and territorial expansion by conquest and annexation. It's as antithetical to a nation-state as can be.

By the way, are anti-miscegenation views and laws biblical/Christian?

 

3/08/2018 5:48 am  #42


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

Clinias wrote:

FZM wrote:

 I don't really understand what you mean when you use the terms 'race' and 'nation'. So what do you mean by race and nation? How should we differentiate between different races and different nations?  

This thing about "race", and "nation" is only an English thing. A native Greek speaker would not be using those words! This is a sign of creating a problem that is provincial and has no bearing in other cultures. A native Greek speaker reading his Bible would constantly see the Greek word "ethnos" He has no trouble understanding that term. In the classroom or talking to his friends he would use the term "ethnos". He is NOT confused over his own language! This problem is peculiar to only the Anglosphere! So trying to make a mountain out of a molehill which only exists in the Anglo-sphere is very superficial. Russians probably don't have this problem either. They wouldn't be using Latin or French words in their academic articles either!
 

​A reasonable number of French and some German words found their way into Russian in the 18th-20th centuries so there is a word 'natsiya' in Russian. Probably more importantly the more usual word for people or nation is different in Russian to the word for race. As far as I know this is true in German too. (And, as you have pointed out, it exists in all the Romance languages). An argument that there is no room for distinction between the terms nation and race on the basis that in Septuagint/koine Greek there aren't different words for nation and race is not strong.

​I think the more important issue is how individual nations are identified and on what basis they are considered distinct and separate from other nations though. When you were presenting your definition of race and nation earlier, it seemed like national/racial identity was rooted in genetic inheritance? So nations or races would be groups whose members share a certain genetic inheritance that members of other nations don't share.

​On the other hand, the example of the Doric and Ionian Greeks seems to make nation or race dependent not just on language but dialects of a particular language. And, another example you gave, about Western Europe in medieval times, nation seemed to be presented as the same as kingdom; a feudal king and his subjects constituting a nation. 

​Unless there is close overlap between dialect, shared genetic inheritance and constituting a kingdom at a certain period of time, this will amount to a confusion or a serious proliferation of possible nations/races. This in turn has an impact on the meaning of the 'soft genocide' idea.

Clinias wrote:

I guess the simple practice of working to one's tribal/national best interests is incompatible with Christianity?!?!

​It depends what the best interests of the tribe or nation are considered to be and how focusing on them influences behaviour to people identified as belonging to different nations. C.f. condemnation of ecclesiastical nationalism by the Orthodox bishops in 1872:

We renounce, censure and condemn phyletism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers which "support the holy Church and the entire Christian world, embellish it and lead it to divine godliness.”​


 

 

3/08/2018 6:02 am  #43


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

seigneur wrote:

Please understand rather sooner than later that when you have "American" there, it makes your whole point completely ridiculous. USA is not a nation-state the way e.g. Poland can claim to be. USA was created by British colonists and populated by various European ethnicities with diverse affiliations by expulsing natives and adding Africans to the mix.

USA is diverse from the very beginning. Its history is a history of population growth by immigration and territorial expansion by conquest and annexation. It's as antithetical to a nation-state as can be.

By the way, are anti-miscegenation views and laws biblical/Christian?

​There may be issues even with Poland depending on how nation is being defined. I think in linguistic, cultural, shared history terms the Soviets did ensure in 1945 that the current Poland was like a model nation state. In genetic inheritance terms though, the long history of the larger more multi-ethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Polonization as Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians etc. took up speaking Polish and Polish culture to join the ruling classes might mean that they are hard to distinguish from present day neighbouring nations.

​Since the 1990s Poland has also had this policy of issuing Polish cards to citizens of neighbouring states (Belarus, Ukraine etc.) that used to be part of Poland before 1939, if they could prove any Polish ancestry or connection to Poland (i.e. were of Catholic faith). As far as I know these cards make it possible to live and work in Poland and are like a fast track to citizenship. So there are a good number of Western Ukrainian and Belarusian immigrants currently living and working in Poland.  
 

 

3/08/2018 7:55 am  #44


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

FZM wrote:

​There may be issues even with Poland depending on how nation is being defined.
 

Yes, there may be, if you look for issues very hard. The fact remains that Poland is among the most homogenous nations in the world. As is Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech, and most of the other countries in that region. Ukrainians, Belarussians and Lithuanians in Poland's history do not add any significant variety, because they are linguistically related and racially indistinguishable.

There are some nation-states worth the name in Europe. The American continent has nothing even remotely resembling that and all white-skinned nationalist sentiment is totally out of place there, as is the belief that the so-called founding fathers established USA on Christian values. USA is no more Christian or "promised land" than any other country.

 

3/08/2018 10:05 am  #45


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

Now, there is a discussion. Now, people are laying their cards on the table. Now, there is some knowledge being passed around. FZM seemed to me to play dumb, but now I see the guy is quite knowledgeable about Central Europe and Orthodox teaching. A lot of good points laid out that we all should get to.
-----------------
First, there are a lot more parameters to throw out there in part of this discussion for consideration--which has to put into the hopper. I put out a paper on the many forms of genocide and posted it earlier in this thread. Only one person availed it. Philosophy is about Knowledge. And when people don't want to learn more--they can not come to the truth, or apprehend it, understand it. 

I sense an undercurrent in the thread and that is Libertarianism. Libertarianism is quite favorable amongst many Catholics. I believe Dr. Feser is a Libertarian. Libertarianism is an ideology of individualism. That runs counter to race/nation. It is on purpose that way. Again, I guess I am the only one to bring up Aristotle's scientific observation on the essential character of man--and that is being a "Social Animal".  The Greek word is "politike" and many translators and others calque the word into "political", but that is not the meaning of the word in Greek. The word in Greek means "social". 

[1253a] [1] and self-sufficiency is an end, and a chief good. From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it (like the “ clanless, lawless, hearthless
” man reviled by Homer,[url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a#note1]1[/url] for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover of war’) inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece at draughts. And why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we declare, does nothing without purpose; and man alone of the animals possesses speech. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well (for their nature has been developed so far as to have sensations of what is painful and pleasant and to indicate those sensations to one another), but speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state. (ref: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a 

Here is the pertinent verse: "And why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear."  The Bee is a Herd animal. The term "gregarious" means "living in flocks". The term "politike" in Greek means "social" in English and is furthered by the word "gregarious" as Herd. That is the hidden meaning behind the word. Aristotle finishes the paragraph with "family" and "city-state". A Family is a Herd. A city-state is a herd. 

What is the word "idiot" come from?

It comes from the Greek meaning "individual". Those that did not want to participate in the political, or social, life of the polis were called "idiotes" which moved into the English language as a pejorative "idiot". 

Aristotle goes on about those that are "clanless" and "hearthless" as "low in the scale of humanity". 

In the paper I posted on the many forms of genocide, the holding of  anarchism, Americanism, Libertarianism, and any and all forms of the ideology of individualism are acts of soft genocide. Anarchism, Americanism, Libertarianism, Individualism is all about breaking the social bonds. That we are all individuals having no responsibility to our racial groups. That is genocide, my friends, albeit soft genocide. 

See in a Section called "Practical Philosophy", Aristotle must surely be brought up. And what also does Aristotle posit as the core of being a "social animal"?  L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E. What did I post earlier, that categorizing language leads one to racial and sub-racial categories. Language and race go-together. It is part of being "Social", being part of the Herd. 

All forms of Individualism, the teaching, preaching, advocating, promoting, individualism of any sort is genocidal. The word "idiot" is what an individualist is. Nature moves all things into self-sufficiency. And Individual is NOT self-sufficient and so is automatically damaged, automatically dysfunctional. Libertarianism is being "idiotes".

We are BY NATURE, Herd animals. We are, BY NATURE, racial animals. We are, BY NATURE, nationalistic. We were created that way by God, and Aristotle, being a true philosopher, teaches the truth. 
 


"We are not in the world to give the laws...but in order to obey the commands of the gods".
~ Plutarch, priest of Apollo at the Doric Temple of Delphi.
 

3/08/2018 10:13 am  #46


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

seigneur wrote:

FZM wrote:

​There may be issues even with Poland depending on how nation is being defined.
 

Yes, there may be, if you look for issues very hard. The fact remains that Poland is among the most homogenous nations in the world. As is Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech, and most of the other countries in that region. Ukrainians, Belarussians and Lithuanians in Poland's history do not add any significant variety, because they are linguistically related and racially indistinguishable.

​My point was that the homogeneity of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania etc. is a relatively recent phenomena, post 1918 and post 1945 and that it is something that has been consciously engineered. (Find all the linguistically and culturally homogenous nation states existing in the area of present day Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Czech and Slovak Republics, Ukraine etc. on a 1917 map.)  Incidentally Marxists 
played a prominent role in engineering it. 

​Lithuanian language is distinct from Polish and the other Slavonic ones. In the past Ukrainian nationalists have found sufficient grounds for thinking they are different to Poles to engage in anti-Polish genocide, with the Poles replying in kind. 

I don't know what genetic studies of the area might turn up.


 

 

3/08/2018 10:31 am  #47


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

FZM wrote:

seigneur wrote:

FZM wrote:

​There may be issues even with Poland depending on how nation is being defined.
 

Yes, there may be, if you look for issues very hard. The fact remains that Poland is among the most homogenous nations in the world. As is Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech, and most of the other countries in that region. Ukrainians, Belarussians and Lithuanians in Poland's history do not add any significant variety, because they are linguistically related and racially indistinguishable.

​My point was that the homogeneity of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania etc. is a relatively recent phenomena, post 1918 and post 1945 and that it is something that has been consciously engineered. (Find all the linguistically and culturally homogenous nation states existing in the area of present day Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Czech and Slovak Republics, Ukraine etc. on a 1917 map.)  Incidentally Marxists 
played a prominent role in engineering it. 


 

Good point, but tendentious and irrelevant to my point (because every point is in a wider context to have relevance). Poles have been in what's now Poland (named Poland for a millennium at least) for as long as human memory and historical record goes. Did Marxists engineer it to be this way? In comparison, current so-called Americans are recent immigrants and they'd do well to be aware of this.

ETA: To make it very clear what my point was, if you missed it: There are objective characteristics to determine a country's nation-state-ness from "pure" to "diverse", the characteristics being linguistic, racial, and historical at least. By these measures, USA and Poland are very different. You say Poland is somewhat mixed too. The answer: Of course there is a foreigner in every country and when you go far enough in history, it was inhabited by different people, but when we get back to my point, which was to compare USA and Poland, then USA is far more diverse, its timeline is significantly shorter and its history is a story of mass extermination of natives by mass immigrants/invaders, while Poland is as homogenous as it gets in this world, and has been so for about a millennium, admittedly somewhat depending on how you draw the territory.

Last edited by seigneur (3/08/2018 12:38 pm)

 

3/08/2018 12:50 pm  #48


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

seigneur wrote:

Good point, but tendentious and irrelevant to my point (because every point is in a wider context to have relevance). Poles have been in what's now Poland (named Poland for a millennium at least) for as long as human memory and historical record goes. Did Marxists engineer it to be this way? In comparison, current so-called Americans are recent immigrants and they'd do well to be aware of this.

​The Soviet leadership drew out the current borders of the Polish Republic. Polish people were present in all the areas within the border but in parts so were other ethnicities in numbers (the parts in the West taken from Germany for example). Nearly all the Germans were removed to the new Germany; many Poles (or those who had adopted Polish ethnicity) who had lived further East, also for many centuries, were moved from their homes and placed in areas from which ethnic Germans had been removed. This made places like Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine more ethnically homogenous, when they hadn't been for centuries. (The Germans had already eliminated the Jewish communities). I think the post-war Communist Polish government promoted the strands of Polish nationalism favourable to a homogenous mono-ethnic state and downplayed the kind of nationalism which aspired to recreate something more like the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

​Your point about most Americans being recent immigrants is valid. But even what seem like 'model' European nation states have quite mixed histories going back even 100 years.   
 

 

3/08/2018 1:21 pm  #49


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

FZM wrote:

​Your point about most Americans being recent immigrants is valid. But even what seem like 'model' European nation states have quite mixed histories going back even 100 years.   
 

Yes and yes. And what is *your* point? That there are no nation-states? That everybody is deluded about their ethnicity, about to what country, language, or race they belong, or to what degree they have adapted to wherever they happen to live?

Yes, some are delusionally puffed with white pride in countries that are relatively recent conquests from other peoples and races. Then again, there are nations that were always roughly as they are now, as far as can be reasonably determined. Whether to be proud of it is another question, and in my view the answer is no, because whatever the history of your country or nation and whatever the colour of your skin, it is all accidental.

All that said, being a good citizen is the same requirement as being a good neighbour, in the Gospel sense of "neighbour". This is my opinion.

Last edited by seigneur (3/08/2018 1:24 pm)

 

3/08/2018 4:14 pm  #50


Re: Is Christianity compatible with nationalism?

Immigrants?  Hardly. America WAS NOT SETTLED BY IMMIGRANTS! 

That is only Masonic-Marxist propaganda BS. 

What was Maryland, New York, Vermont and others called?

C-O-L-O-N-I-E-S.

The Anglo-Saxons that came over were COLONISTS, colonizing North America--because they came over in UNITS. It was an invasion of Northern Europeans who COLONIZED North America. 

Let's use the historical nomenclature. 

Why are you using, saying America is a land of immigrants? Because they want to legitimize massive amounts of immigration. There was "no state" that granted "immigration" in America. The Europeans just moved in. The American Indian moved into North America the same way. They moved from Asia, across the Bering Strait into North America. They were NOT immigrants but Colonizers. 

Colonizers set up their own government. You immigrate to another state that accepts you. 

The misuse and abuse of language is unethical. And for those "catholics" to adopt propaganda terms and use propaganda is inexcusable and wrong. Your viewpoints are NOT based on Truth but on Ideology. That is why you are abusing words. 

There were the Thirteen Colonies---NOT the Thirteen Immigrancies. 

Evil. 

Last edited by Clinias (3/08/2018 4:59 pm)


"We are not in the world to give the laws...but in order to obey the commands of the gods".
~ Plutarch, priest of Apollo at the Doric Temple of Delphi.
 

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