Bibliographic entry:

Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations

Kohr's book is an obscure one, out-of-favor with the elites who have favored and prospered under the regime of large, centralized nation-states. Kohr makes a pationate, well-articulated case for small nation-states. Big nations make big wars, small nations make small wars. Kohr also notes that it is the big world powers which constitute the major obstacle to peaceful international cooperation.

Extended personal commentary:

The conventional wisdom among the elites is that humankind is on an inevitable road of progress: family -> villiage --> tribe --> city-state --> nation-state --> federation/empire --> one-world govt/New World Order. This is viewed as a good thing. But is it really good, and is it really inevitable?

Y2K may well prove to be major monkey wrench thrown into the works of the NWO juggernaut. It might also be noted: if this progression towards larger and higher levels of political consolidation is such a good and inevitable thing, then how does one explain the break up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia? How does one explain the rise of the Parti Quebecois, the Scottish National Party, and the Plaid Cymru? Could it not be, perhaps, that peoples of one distinct and cohesive ethnic group do not really like to be in a permanent minority status under the thumb of another dominant ethnic majority? Is it not possible that each distinct group of people wants to have significant autonomy and sovereignty over their own communities and their own lives?

Are big, expansive nations really good things? Would a one-world government really be a better thing? Those of us in the U.S., Canada, and Australia (with the exception of the Quebecois, a few Dixiephile southern seccessionists, and most native/aboriginal peoples) would probably view our extensive nations as good things, having contributed to a large degree of national economic progress and a good standard of living. However, it must be noted that the experience of these three nations has been very much exceptional up to now. The normal tendency throughout most of world history is for larger and more extensive nations to be the products of and condusive to a centralization of power in relatively authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. Even in the U.S. (as well as Canada & Australia), some of us have been watching in alarm as the central government has grown larger, amassed more power, and has become ever more intrusive into the daily lives of every person. Some of worry if our constitutional liberties will continue to survive much longer. From the long view of human history, the prognosis is not good.

There is no guarantee that small nation-states are more productive or protective of individual liberties. One need only think of places like Cambodia, Rwanda, North Korea, Cuba, etc. to recognize that excessive power can be accumulated in the hands of the government and abused, regardless of the size of the nation. However, compare the death and destruction caused by a Pol Pot with that caused by a Hitler or Stalin. The one great advantage of a small nation state is that its size does serve to LIMIT the amount of damage which a power-hungry madman can cause.

I would also tend to agree with Kohr that small nation-states also tend to be more conducive to and congenial with the nurture of civic virtue and healthy local communities. It is unlikely that Switzerland would have been as successful as it has been in maintaining its limited government and maximum liberties if it were a large nation the size of Germany, for example. It is important to note that in the U.S. experience, each of the original 13 states were relatively small, and all were virtually autonomous, sovereign nations. Kohr is correct in pointing out that the federal union would not have been formed if one or two of the states were very much larger than the others. It was difficult enough as it was, given the difference in size between Virginia and RI. Fortunately, there were a multiciplicity of regional interests added to the mix, and thus the constitutional deliberations were successful in creating a viable and lasting formula for federation. Note that it was only when the regional interests were distilled down to the single difference of slavery, and the two regional groupings of states were of close to equal size, that a rupture came.

I think that it is fair to say that today it would be impossible for us to create a document like the U.S. Constitution and successfully federate under principles with adequately limited government power to preserve individual freedoms and local autonomy. Our nation is too large, our local communities have been stripped of too much local autonomy and homogenized into the national culture, and the requisite civic virtues are no longer being cultivated. If the constitution is suspended during a Y2K-related national emergency, then I am afraid that the prognosis is not good for the restoration of liberty under a constitutional regime across the entire extent of the present U.S. This is one "Humpty Dumpty" which I am afraid will not be able to be put back together again. The prospects, in my opinion, will be far better for smaller regions, if they are able to devolve, secede, and form autonomous or sovereign nation-states -- especially if these are regions in which community life, traditional values, and civic virtues are still relatively strong among a large segment of their populations.

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 13, 1999

Answers

Another interesting take:

"Civil War II : The Coming Breakup of America"
Thomas W. Chittum / Paperback / Published 1997

Just one review from Amazon.com:

Belongs on any list of important reads for the new decade. The current consensus view of America's future is that we'll continue to be a happy prosperous melting pot, and that economic growth will offset the combined effects of the unfunded age wave and the massive new influx of foreign immigration.

I'm a classical liberal and I deeply, truly wish that would come to pass. I'm still looking for ways in which that optimistic outcome can be helped along.

But virtually no one is talking about the possible consequences if we fail to do that. Nor is there any discussion of the possible causes of failure, or of the likelihood that things could come apart in rapid and ugly fashion.

No one except Tom Chittum (and Peter Brimelow in "Alien Nation") is daring or even bothering to ask hard questions of this type. And that in itself scares me. As Chittum notes, the US is now a multicultural imperial power. All such nations in history have disintegrated violently.

Failures which are avoided are most often the ones that have been anticipated. But America's not running any downside scenarios for itself other than in these small books. Big mistake.

I live in CA, right on top of the San Andreas Fault, but that's trivial compared to the new demographic and cultural and linguistic and economic fault lines I see opening all around my community. And that's not the future. That is today's reality.

Some of Chittum's analysis can be faulted. I do not share his political position, which is pretty far out on the right as far as I can infer. I would also bet on a long period of political infighting long before shooting would start.

But I learned some unsettling things from this book that I didn't know before. The facts check out. If you want cotton candy, look someplace else. If you want a hard look at the USA in Y2K plus 10, read Chittum.

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 14, 1999.

Another book of note is "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Sir Wm Rees-Mogg (also authors of "Blood in the Street" and "The Great Reckoning."

Their books are historical analysis of nation states and economies, and projections therefrom.

I got really jazzed after reading "The Sovereign Individual" as they project the breakup of the huge nation states, and a proliferation of what I would call "boutique" mini-states catering to productive, freedom- and privacy-seeking individuals.

While many of their projections in their books have come to pass, unfortunately the working out of their latest is spotty so far

About the only hope I see is that Y2K crashes the big states, but then would we have the infrastructure that their projections depend on?

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 14, 1999.

Just a reminder -- the review in the post about Chittum's book is a QUOTE from a reviewer in Amazon.

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 14, 1999.

I'm willing to be that most of human evolution was carried out in a time when people lived in groups of 50 or so, with sporadic contact with outside groups. Thus, if you buy into the idea that there are subtle genetic influences on our social behavior, we are hard-wired to function best in "tribes" or "clans."

The nation state or even the city-state isn't something to which we've fully adapted. Probably the only evolution that humans have experienced since settling down in agricultural societies is in the immune system and in ability to digest a wider variety of food. Sociobiological evolution probably hasn't caught up.

Thus, in the future (ignoring y2k), I see the revolution in communications as a return to "tribal" style social organization, with the power of the state diminishing in importance. Why? It's only natural! If y2k were to hit really really hard, this would also be the inevitable course. Perhaps a "crash" type event is something that will simply expose the extreme vulnerability of the nation state to our own fundamental nature.

By the way. Has anybody read John Updikes recent book _Toward the End of Time_? One of the themes in there is a "rerturn to the wild basics" of human nature after America has experienced a collapse of the government following a nuclear attack by the Chinese and a y2k- induced financial disaster.

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), August 15, 1999.