In its purest form, liberal internationalism holds that a man may live anywhere he wishes and owe no particular allegiance to any people, place or society. In theory, although not in practice, it is an imagined universe in which the individual is supreme in his atomistic and egotistical desires and the national state no more than an administrative adjunct to his life. (In practice, the liberal internatlist says that you may behave as you wish provided your behavior meets politically correct values.)

If liberal internationalism was merely the eccentric philosophy of those without power it would be no more than another utopian curiosity. As it is the present ideology of Western elites it is a positive danger. Through their control of politics and the media they have sufficiently translated into reality this fantasy of the world as a place of undifferentiated settlement to the point where is has severely disrupted every Western society. The engines of the disruption have been immigration on a grand scale of peoples unwilling or unable to assimilate, 'globalization' of trade and industry and an elite propaganda regime, totalitarian in its scope and intent, designed to decry native Western cultures and de-culturalise native Western populations by denoting them knowledge of their past, whilst promoting the interests and cultures of the immigrant. To these ends, Western elites have abused their control of the law, the media, public policy and state education. They have created a situation whereby no one may hold a public position without at least paying lip-service to their creed. 

Why is liberal internationalism dangerous? 

The liberal internationalist view of the world is vicious because it is completely at variance with the social instincts of Man, which invariably express themselves in some form of tribal organization, whether that be a band of 50 people roaming the plains of Africa 10,000 years ago or a modern nation of many millions. Men have an absolute need to feel part of a community with which they identify naturally and ideally wish to possess a territory which they can call their own. That is why empires invariably decay and nations are virtually indestructible, short of an act of genocide. 

In short, treating a country simply as no more than a convenient place o residence is a short and certain route for social disaster. Ultimately a nation state only exists because its inhabitants both have a shared sense of identity (the nation) and a willingness to defend the interests of the country, including in extremis fighting for the country. Destroy that and you destroy the integrity of the nation state. The ultimate consequence of no sense of place is no place

The value of the nation state 

A homogenous society, a true nation, engenders a natural loyalty amongst its members: a society in which ethnic groups compete for space, the type of 'multicultural heaven' envisaged by the liberal elite, results invariably in a first loyalty to the ethnic group. 

Beyond the natural sympathy and cultural sharing which glues together a nation, the nation state is also the only social vehicle for delivering a degree of democratic control to large societies. Such democratic control in turn allows the nation to retain its integrity by such measures as restricting immigration. 

As a society becomes ethnically fragmented, it loses its natural ballast. Citizenship becomes the only thing which liberal international governments can hold to as a unifying force. But citizenship is a conscious human construct and is no substitute for the natural loyalty engendered by the tribal loyalties of the true nation. 

Citizenship and nationality are often treated as synonymous. This is an error. A man or woman may be both a citizen of a state and a member of a nation. But he or she can equally be a citizen without belonging to either the nation or nations that comprise a state and may be a member of a nation which either has no legal status within the state, for example English, or is a nation situated outside the state of which the person is a citizen, for example, an Indian immigrant to the U.S.A. or Great Britain. 

The cartoonist Ronald Searle expressed the difference during a recant interview. Searle has lived in France since the 1960s, yet when asked whether he would take French citizenship if it was the only way of remaining in France he replied: "If they said you can only stay in France if you become French I'd say, 'Not possible. It's like saying P.G. Wodehouse should be French. You can't simply put on a nationality like a jacket. I remain extremely English whatever happens." (Sunday Telegraph, 28th September 2003). The nation is the totality of individuals within a given shared community, the natural sociological expression of the individual will. Citizenship is merely a legal ticket to exist and reside in a place.

It makes both moral and prudential sense for any society to both secure the loyalty of its people with guaranteed privileges which are not extended to foreigners and to reduce the opportunities for social friction. IN a free society where the individual has to decide to give his or her loyalty the utility of such privileges is much greater than it would be in a dictatorship. In a democracy it makes not merely sense for a government to secure and better the condition of its people, it is a necessity. 

The modern, industrialized nation state such as Great Britain confers great privileges on those who are part of it. It provides a secure environment based on the rule of law, a decent material standard of living, healthcare and education free at the point of use and, in the form of the welfare state, a safety net for those who fall on hard times. It is, in short, a very efficient life support system which most people in the world are desperate to become part of, by hook or by crook. 

Destroying loyalty and cohesion

But these benefits have been steadily eroded over the past 50 years by mass immigration, the movement towards free trade and the growth of international treaty obligations, most notably Great Britain's membership of the European Union. The effect of these changes has been to increase social discord by:

• Introducing foreign and unassimilated elements into British society;
• Exporting jobs;
  
  
• passing effective political control on many major issues from Westminster to bodies such as NATO and the WTO or the European Commission.      

The nation state has failed the British in these matters. Thus, we can see that the state owes more to its citizens than such things as maintaining order, defending its borders and providing welfare provision. It must provide the social structure within which they can be achieved. 

If either immigration or the export of jobs--both under the control of governments--make a man redundant or force down his wages, the affected individual can scarcely be blamed for feeling that his government is not merely failing to represent his interests but is actively damaging them. What incentive does that man have to feel in absolute commitment to his own society? He will be bound by his ties of family, friendship and cultural imprinting, but what he will not feel is any sense that he is something more than a human atom. 

More fundamentally, if an elite constantly tells the mass of people that heir culture is worthless and their history shameful, whilst constantly promoting the interests of immigrant peoples and cultures, it inevitably has the effect of creating disorientation in the mass of people and weakening national cohesion. 

Reciprocity

The primary duty a democratic government owes is to those it represents, that is those who vote it into power and their dependent children. If the interests of these clash with the interests of foreigners, whether resident in the country or abroad, the interests of foreigners must come second. 

How is a democratic government to meet his duty? It must strive to create the circumstances in which a society is most prosperous, peaceful and secure, both physically and psychologically. I suggest that these are the ideal requirements:

• to maintain a clear distinction between natives and foreigners. That requires a strict control of immigration;
  
  
• to protect the industry and commerce of the country sufficiently both to provide employment and for strategic reasons of self-sufficiency in vital goods and services; 
  
  
• to spend taxes in ways which directly benefit only the country and its members;
  
  
• to ensure the maintenance od democratic institutions, in particular by avoiding entanglement in international treaties which emasculate democratic control; 
  
  
• to facilitate the promotion of a knowledge of the country's culture and history above all other cultures and histories.

Conversely, there are ideal requirements of the member of the nation state, viz:

• the individual should feel himself to be a natural member of the nation;
  
  
• the individual should not see himself as part of a group which owes its first loyalty to that group rather than the nation;
  
  
• the individual should giver preference to his fellow countrymen;
  
  
• the individual should defend his nation against foreign abuse; 
  
  
• the individual should be willing to sacrifice his own interests where these clash fundamentally with the interests of the nation -- most dramatically he should be willing to fight and die if the homeland is attacked.

Generally, the individual should always act to protect the interest of the nation. The interest of the nation can be normally determined by simply reducing any given national choice to the analogy of a persona l choice in the individual's private life and asking what the individual would do in such circumstances. 

The obligations of government and the individual described above are the ideal for the security of a nation sate. Of course, no society will ever achieve such perfection, but the nearer a society approaches the ideal the more secure the society and the happier its members will be. Conversely, the further it strays from it, the closer it will come to fragmentation and even civil war. 

Robert Henderson writes from London. This essay was first printed in Right Now! magazine (December 2003/January 2004). It is reprinted with kind permission.