State of Repentance

You will recall Gen Liu Yuan's statement (surely picking up some top-spin in translation) that 'a nation-state is a power machine, made of violence.' And von Clausewitz's 'War is a continuation of policy by other means' is quoted so often it has almost lost its impact. The two are not so far apart.

A nation is 'an imagined community' in the words of ... Benedict Anderson. It is a group of people holding together by a mental image of what 'we' are like, an imagining that is more for our own comfort than a way of truly recognising / handling the multitude. In the hayday (heighday? Hey?) of the Labour Movement, this thin social fabric was challenged: 'workers of the world , unite!'


A state is the institution a nation clothes / shapes itself with - a manifold of laws, customs, authorities, disciplines - all the institutions.


All the foregoing applies pretty well regardless of the national character or the type of state instituted. I am interested, though, in the chafing I and many others feel in applying these definitions to western democracies. All nation-states, of course, evidently possess these attributes, and have picked up a good deal of speed and power, often through violence. The chafing is that, at heart, we think the nation-states we're part of aim to embiggen the smallest man, that they (the states) have been humbled again and again since magna carter, cromwell and restoration, glorious revolution until stable constitutional democracy is left.


Liberal means not putting too much weight on our personal definition of nation - in fact, being so sceptical that everyone in your land is a neighbour, however different.  Democracy means not putting too much weight on the state - in fact throwing the bums out regularly. Australia, as a liberal democracy, is a repentant state, the best kind.

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