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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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I won't take mere decades as evidence of durability here, on historical clocks it should at least be 100 years to transcend the realm of suspected expedience.

Your argument is that Nationalism has a worse record for international cooperation than Progressivism/Blue/Globalist Ideology, correct? If so, asking for a century's record seems to me to define away the discussion. Communism as an official system didn't last a hundred years, so the China-Vietnam-Cambodia wars don't count, presumably the USSR violently suppressing Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia and making repeated attempts on Tito in Yugoslavia doesn't count, And Angola's civil war doesn't count. Likewise the numerous civil wars/purges/whatever-we-call-mass-killing-your-own-citizens. And as you note, Nationalism itself isn't actually much older, maybe 50 years more, and you've said the US and Britain don't count because they're the same country. I'll note that once we're past Napoleon, Britain and France seem to hang together fairly well; ending up on the same side in two world wars and the cold war ought to count for something. But overall, if you draw your standards of evidence in this way, it seems to me that I probably can't demonstrate a solid record of nationalism being good for cooperation, but likewise you can't draw a solid record of it being bad at it either. By your reckoning, it seems not enough time has passed to draw any conclusions at all.

I would argue a looser standard, and point out that we do actually have around two centuries of nationalism and around a century of Progressivism as large-scale reigning ideologies, and I would much, much prefer the nationalist experience across that time.