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I suspect his list of “countries worth defending” is paper thin in both time and space, as if political morality only started 70 years ago.
Liberal internationalists are almost all like this. It’s terminal recency bias.
It’s like that meme about liberals lecturing Christians about Jesus; “No, I don’t believe in your backwards ideas, but if I say the right things you might do what I want.”
Substitute The Nation for Jesus and you’ve got it pegged; in reality they don’t think any nation is really worth defending on its own terms, they never have, and they never will. It’s total anathema to them. When pressed, they don’t even think The Nation exists or should exist, or they believe in it in only the vaguest, wishy washy terms.
I don't really see the issue with having a short list of "countries worth defending"
My list is incredibly short, and it's getting shorter as western nations/political elites signal clearly that their values and mine are becoming more and more at odds
Basically every historical country isn't worth defending as of 2025, because human society and norms have changed since then, and now they'd be outdated.
If I lived in the 1800s, I'd like the countries around then, and shit on the countries from 1600 for being backwards idiots. But I don't live in the 1800s so instead I look down on them for being backwards idiots. I imagine the people of 2200 will feel that way about us.
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Correct. Individual human beings are worth defending as an end in themselves; all organisations, from the nation to the East Cupcake Middle School Parent-Teacher Association, have value as a means to an end. (cf. Immanuel Kant).
I disagree. Institutions and memeplexes exist in a positive or negative feedback loop in relation to its constituents, it’s not unidirectional like an impossibly neat organizational chart; not only is the whole more than the sum of its parts, but the sum of the parts are a function of the sum of the whole.
Individuals and institutions push and mold each other and they have values independent of each other but separately the whole equation shifts.
When I was younger I saw as criticism of globalism & neoliberal economics a term; “Autistic economics”. I laughed when I saw it at first but I think there was a there there in the criticism.
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