Ever since Crog the Caveman decided to smack Grog the caveman upside the head so he could take Grog's shiny stone, rulers have been using virtually any excuse they can to motivate people under them to go die horrible deaths to increase the ruler's personal power. I don't care what your most dearly and deeply held ideological pillar is, someone has almost certainly used it in the past to convince people to kill other people in the name of that belief. Saying "We must fight for the glory of the Fatherland!" is not substantively different than saying "We must fight to protect the Emperor!" or "We must fight to kill the heretics!" or "We must conquer this country to civilize them" or whatever else people said. To quote the intro cinematic to Fallout 3,
Since the dawn of humankind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything: from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage.
Yes, the weapons in WW1 were more devastating than anything humanity had used on itself before. But, so were the Ottoman siege cannons that brought down the walls of Constantinople. And so were the hordes of Mongolian horsemen that established the second largest empire this planet has ever seen (second only to the British empire). And so were the longboats of the Norse raiders that let them pillage much of Europe with impunity for centuries. And so were the Roman legionnaires that ground multiple existing great civilizations into the dustbin of history. And so were the chariots that dominated warfare in early human history. And so was Oog the Caveman's decision to tie a sharp rock to the end of his stick.
Technology always advances, and with weapons it pretty much always means that you can kill more people faster. Even ignoring the nukes and concentration camps, what was seen in WW2 made WW1 look like a nice day in the park. Stalingrad alone saw nearly 2,000,000 casualties between both sides, and Operation Meetinghouse left 100,000 (mostly civilians) dead, and over a million homeless in a single day.
And technology has kept advancing. Korea saw napalm bombs being dropped on military - and sometimes civilian - targets, literally burning people alive. Parts of Southeast Asia are still feeling the impact (both environmentally and medically) from the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. These days, we've got conventional firepower on an unimaginable scale - the basic US Navy Arleigh Burke destroyer can carry up to 90 Tomahawk missiles, which are 1000lb warheads with a 1600 KM range - and unconventional firepower that was unimaginable even a couple decades ago, like the Predator Drones and cyber-weapons.
Carthaginian troops slaughtering Romans at Cannae so Hannibal could fulfill the vow he made his father, French knights charging to their deaths at Agincourt due to a couple nobles squabbling over who is the rightful king, Japanese pilots launching kamikazi attacks to protect their divine emperor, and a guy sitting in a cushy chair pressing a button to blow up someone half a world away in the name of I don't even know what anymore, fighting terrorism? promoting democracy? cheap oil? something else? are all functionally the same as the men dying in the mud on the banks of the Somme. The tools change, the rationales change, but the end result is always the same. Young lives getting snuffed out in the dirt because someone in charge convinced them that they needed to go kill other people. Nationalism is just one item in the long list of excuses for war, it is nothing special.
This is a very thorough and intelligent post. It is also reductive, which I suppose is necessary when issuing a defense of something - nationalism - that has become indefensible (in lefty clown world). Still, at some point you need to differentiate based on merit. Morality consists of drawing the line somewhere.
Tell me what I said wrong... Patriotism was used to get people to enlist and be sent to their deaths while the rich sat in their comfy chairs... Nationalism/patriotism can be used for good: uniting people and to improve their lives but can also be used to to deceive people like in WW1...
Nationalism/patriotism was used by the government to send people to their deaths through the idiotic trench warfare, so i don't see the issue....
Ever since Crog the Caveman decided to smack Grog the caveman upside the head so he could take Grog's shiny stone, rulers have been using virtually any excuse they can to motivate people under them to go die horrible deaths to increase the ruler's personal power. I don't care what your most dearly and deeply held ideological pillar is, someone has almost certainly used it in the past to convince people to kill other people in the name of that belief. Saying "We must fight for the glory of the Fatherland!" is not substantively different than saying "We must fight to protect the Emperor!" or "We must fight to kill the heretics!" or "We must conquer this country to civilize them" or whatever else people said. To quote the intro cinematic to Fallout 3,
Yes, the weapons in WW1 were more devastating than anything humanity had used on itself before. But, so were the Ottoman siege cannons that brought down the walls of Constantinople. And so were the hordes of Mongolian horsemen that established the second largest empire this planet has ever seen (second only to the British empire). And so were the longboats of the Norse raiders that let them pillage much of Europe with impunity for centuries. And so were the Roman legionnaires that ground multiple existing great civilizations into the dustbin of history. And so were the chariots that dominated warfare in early human history. And so was Oog the Caveman's decision to tie a sharp rock to the end of his stick.
Technology always advances, and with weapons it pretty much always means that you can kill more people faster. Even ignoring the nukes and concentration camps, what was seen in WW2 made WW1 look like a nice day in the park. Stalingrad alone saw nearly 2,000,000 casualties between both sides, and Operation Meetinghouse left 100,000 (mostly civilians) dead, and over a million homeless in a single day.
And technology has kept advancing. Korea saw napalm bombs being dropped on military - and sometimes civilian - targets, literally burning people alive. Parts of Southeast Asia are still feeling the impact (both environmentally and medically) from the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. These days, we've got conventional firepower on an unimaginable scale - the basic US Navy Arleigh Burke destroyer can carry up to 90 Tomahawk missiles, which are 1000lb warheads with a 1600 KM range - and unconventional firepower that was unimaginable even a couple decades ago, like the Predator Drones and cyber-weapons.
Carthaginian troops slaughtering Romans at Cannae so Hannibal could fulfill the vow he made his father, French knights charging to their deaths at Agincourt due to a couple nobles squabbling over who is the rightful king, Japanese pilots launching kamikazi attacks to protect their divine emperor, and a guy sitting in a cushy chair pressing a button to blow up someone half a world away in the name of I don't even know what anymore, fighting terrorism? promoting democracy? cheap oil? something else? are all functionally the same as the men dying in the mud on the banks of the Somme. The tools change, the rationales change, but the end result is always the same. Young lives getting snuffed out in the dirt because someone in charge convinced them that they needed to go kill other people. Nationalism is just one item in the long list of excuses for war, it is nothing special.
This is a very thorough and intelligent post. It is also reductive, which I suppose is necessary when issuing a defense of something - nationalism - that has become indefensible (in lefty clown world). Still, at some point you need to differentiate based on merit. Morality consists of drawing the line somewhere.
Suck my massive futa cooooooock
Tell me what I said wrong... Patriotism was used to get people to enlist and be sent to their deaths while the rich sat in their comfy chairs... Nationalism/patriotism can be used for good: uniting people and to improve their lives but can also be used to to deceive people like in WW1...