Reply #13: Mixed bag. [View All]

[bemildred]

I keep getting cognitively disconnected by some of the linkages he makes, but there are some good points too.

An example of what I criticize:

"The nation-state is the only reliable vehicle in modern times for preserving the heritage of a people."

This is bilge, "heritage" is transmitted by active, living culture, usually in the complete absence of any state apparatus with an interest in the subject; and in fact Jewish heritage has been so transmitted for most of its existence, and far more reliably than most.

There is also nothing to show that the presence of a nation-state does anything to help preserve or transmit culture, although they have been shown to have a propensity to meddle in the interests of the ruling elites. States in general have a remarkably poor record of protecting their citizens or of lasting any great length of time themselves; and those that have become stable nation-states never start out that way, it is an achievement of integration, as France or Switzerland, not a process of centralization of some homogenous group in some one spot.