April 5, 2003
Quote of the day
Nationalism, of course, is intrinsically absurd. Why should the accident - fortune or misfortune - of birth as an American, Albanian, Scot or Fiji Islander impose loyalties that dominate an individual life and structure a society so as to place it in formal conflict with others? In the past there were local loyalties to place and clan and tribe, obligations to lord or landlord, dynastic or territorial wars, but primary loyalties were to religion, God or god-king, possibly to emperor, to a civilization as such. There was no nation. There was attachment to patria, land of one's fathers, or patriotism, but to speak of nationalism before modern times is anachronistic.
William Pfaff
The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism
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