American Politics Discussion Thread

[BING_XI_LAO]

 As a reminder its dangerous to just assume things when making arguments. 

Oh absolutely, wouldn't want to hinge an argument on one single data point anyway, and at least I only said "most likely". Given the proximity in time and place, it is highly suspicious, and alternative explanations could easily be politically-motivated chaff.

I think ethnic-based nations can still claim to be more stable, though it is a hard thing to quantify the comparative empirical evidence for.

Which countries would be ethnic-based nations in your opinion?

Well most of them come to think of it. Even the US with its high ideological element from the founding also saw itself as Anglo-Saxon for a very long time, then as European. All (?) of the post-USSR splinter states. I even think the Byzantine Empire was effectively a Greek nation-state, given that they had a much easier time holding and reclaiming territory when it was Greek-speaking; the second biggest loyal or part-loyal ethnicity was the Armenians and even they weren't happy about the 1045 conquest of Armenia proper nor did they submit to Constantinople in the case of Armenian Cilicia even though it was closer to the Greek heartlands.

Anyway, how would you compare the stability and peacefulness of the ethnic-defined vs the values-defined nation? The Armenians and Azeris weren't at each other's throats under the USSR but was that really because of values or just because the ruling ethnicity dwarfed both of them? Yugoslavia was in a better state than the divided Balkans, but however useful values and non-racial ideology was, wasn't it also backed up by the fact that the Serbs basically dominated that state and decided they didn't need to press their advantage overmuch?

EDIT: (I was about to apologise for blurring the lines with my comments about the Byzantines, implying they were ethnically defined just because they were Greek in practice. But then I remembered comments from an Emperor saying "We are hellenes..." in some writing he put together, I might be able to find which but don't recall.)

[BING_XI_LAO]

Further thoughts - I don't think an ethnic definition to a state necessarily incites ethnic conflict. Of course it does over contested regions with other states, but internally, it might actually help ethnic relations, if one ethnic group has already claimed a strong position of political supremacy which they intend to defend and which looks hard to attack. Romania's Hungarians aren't going to be causing any trouble any time soon, because they are located right in the centre of the country not on a border. The Romanians have made it clear that they won't be allowing an autonomous region and that's the end of the matter. In practice I think that's how to solve ethnic conflict, either separation into separate states, or one ethnicity gets into a very strong position and decides not to abuse that position.

The values definition leaves constant room for turmoil IMO, as the values shift and as what is considered just for each group gets argued over.

[Miguelito]

Over the last weeks I've had phases of binging the acoup history blog, and this one seems to fit here: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collection...-a-nation/

As a German I can ask myself what our common birth myth is. I think the classical ones, like Arminius or Barbarossa, or even 1814 or Sedan, are lost on the vast majority of people - so probably 1945, with a sprinkleof '89/90? Goes in line with the officially propagated consitutional patriotism. Is Germany an "ethnic-based nation" considering that there are at least two of them for "ethnic" Germans?

The people that we call the Byzantines managed to understand themselves as the Romans while not controlling Rome and only marginal to no territory in Italy at all, so I'd argue that there was a pretty strong ideological component in place.

[MJW (ya that one)]

   

Current map. Don't expect anymore updates because it would just be reacting to polling which is boring. The bar at 270 to win glitched out so I removed it. The map is 52 GOP-48 DEM

Ratings: I don't give percent. It's about how I feel.

Solid: I don't see how this team doesn't win. I could be wrong though so this is not called "Safe". Also no-one is ever Safe because of scandals and such; see LA-02 @ 2008.
Likely: This team should win, but could plausibly lose
Lean: Clear edge
Tossup/Tilt: If I were serious I would just use tossup ratings because where to tilt things is too subjective. Tossup: Everything Else. Tilt: I guess this team wins.

States that need more explanation:

NV/AZ: AZ should be to the right of NV but Masters sucks and I think he win nomination because the other guy who could win isn't talking about Rittenhouse.

NH: I'm very sure that Bolduc wins nomination because he has a year head-start and has the Trump lane all to himself. If that doesn't happen the GOP has to be okay because he overcame that and it would go to Tilt D. Hassan used to be super popular but now she's just generic D. So Likely D with Bolduc seems too harsh after what happened in VA but he would push it.

MO: I'm aware of the scandal the frontrunner has but it won't matter with no real DEM in the race. This happened because no-one wants to be curb-stomped in 2028 after a worthless freshman term. It would matter in a state like PA but Sean dropped anyway...

CO/IL: CO is very hard to win because you getting sent a ballot, even if you don't request it, negates the enthusiasm gap. But it's getting so bad for DEMs that weird things can happen, like winning CO and other blue states. OR and IL would clearly be the least hard and the GOP Senate Committee targeted them. OR's incumbent is strong, so it won't happen there.

AK: DEMs have no chance this year (10% Trump win in 2020) so this is RINO vs MAGA. MAGA would be colored black. I'm very sure that the DEMs don't try here after VA and allow Murk to get into the final round. But I could be wrong about that or DEMs sucking it up and voting for her anyway.

Overall rating: Tilt R, getting very close to lean. Winning 2/3 Tilt states isn't that hard. But just one more, or turning one into a Lean R, would do it.

[Bobchillingworth]

There is one case where I'd be okay with something like what you're saying, about a nation based on values - Switzerland (which of course has three languages and two sects of Christianity). But the reason I'm okay with that is because the Swiss civic and republican values are both specific to that country, and are extremely solid and well-established. Modern liberal ideology isn't specific to one nation and it isn't solid and well-established in any of its local manifestations (because it keeps changing dramatically). If the definition of the word "nation" were as you say, then I feel the term becomes too vague to be useful any more. A state based on ideology is more commonly characteristic of empires.

Also the states which I have citizenship in and feel I'm a member of those nations - well they have rejected having a state religion or an ethnic definition. So are they defined by liberal ideology? Then, as a non-liberal, I don't belong to those nations, but a total foreigner who imbibes lots of American political media does belong. I think this is a reductio ad absurdum.

To be clear, the description of a "nation" I've presented isn't just my personal interpretation, but also what is commonly understood to be the actual definition of the word (though some of the most widely used dictionaries are even less specific).

You're being too rigid in your understanding of what constitutes an ideology, and incorrectly assuming that terms like "nation" and "empire" are mutually exclusive. Nations can have more than one defining attribute. The United States and Canada share certain general characteristics in terms of "western values" and culture, though I'd hardly say they're the same, but they also have substantially different histories and notable contrasts in prevailing ideologies, which make them distinct.

There's no reason why two nations can't have some aspects in common while diverging in others. Even if you want to argue that nations should be primarily defined by ethnicity, there's plenty of nations which are largely comprised of the same ethnicity but are still distinct from each other (Ex: North and South Korea, divided by ideology, political systems, and history. Or, if Yemen formally splits again, it will be divided on sectarian grounds).

A good number of nations also have a single demographically dominant ethnic and/or religious group, but still explicitly reject the concept of a state religion and do not define themselves as specifically belonging to a particular ethnicity, such as China or most Western nations.

If you don't subscribe the core ideologies of the countries you have citizenship in, then you are still legally a citizen, just lacking nationalist sentiment which aligns with the foundational principles of the state. I suppose Sunni Kurds in Iran may feel similarly.

Sure, ideology is necessary and useful to keep multi-ethnic states together, but current-day egalitarian liberalism is completely useless for such purposes, since it promotes resentment and explicitly mandates racial discrimination by law (I'm referring to affirmative action measures). Most likely yesterday's Waukesha car attack was racial terrorism spurred by liberal media coverage of the Rittenhouse case. You also have a resilient Islamist presence among Europe's muslims, S.A.'s politicians singing "kill the boer", and so on (the last one interests me because I have relatives there, not just because it is a useful example). I think ethnic-based nations can still claim to be more stable, though it is a hard thing to quantify the comparative empirical evidence for.

I think these statements reflect your particular political biases, rather than observable reality. "Egalitarian liberalism" isn't necessarily some sort of panacea, but to say that it's utterly useless at keeping multiethnic states from collapsing flies in the face of history, the political sciences, and the current state of the world. It would be more accurate to say that ethnonationalism and sectarianism often drive conflict and separatism, which is why nations based primarily on those principles tend to cause regional instability.

And, again to be clear, I'm not saying that having a nation with ethnicity as a foundational principle is necessarily a bad thing; I can't think of a good reason why, say, Mongolia shouldn't exist as the homeland of the Mongolian people. Applied broadly however the concept does cause factionalism and strife where collaboration would be mutually beneficial.

[Charriu]

I even think the Byzantine Empire was effectively a Greek nation-state

I would avoid calling the Byzantine Empire a nation-state. For one what others already said that they themselves considered themselves Romans and a continuation of the Roman empire. But more importantly the concept of nation and nation-state as we know it is fairly young (17. and 18. century). By using that term for forms of organization before that time one is easily led to apply all that comes with the term on these kingdoms, republics and other forms of organization, when the people of the past had totally different concepts and visions of organization.

[BING_XI_LAO]

To be clear, the description of a "nation" I've presented isn't just my personal interpretation, but also what is commonly understood to be the actual definition of the word (though some of the most widely used dictionaries are even less specific).

Originally nation comes from natus, - "birth", ethnicity was stil lthe biggest concept back in nationalism's heyday with the formation of nation states, and the modern definitions still reference it from what I can see. That said words do change in meaning over time and I don't mind that, the question is whether the word is still descriptive and useful afterwards.

You're being too rigid in your understanding of what constitutes an ideology, and incorrectly assuming that terms like "nation" and "empire" are mutually exclusive.  Nations can have more than one defining attribute.  The United States and Canada share certain general characteristics in terms of "western values" and culture, though I'd hardly say they're the same, but they also have substantially different histories and notable contrasts in prevailing ideologies, which make them distinct. 

There's no reason why two nations can't have some aspects in common while diverging in others.  Even if you want to argue that nations should be primarily defined by ethnicity, there's plenty of nations which are largely comprised of the same ethnicity but are still distinct from each other (Ex: North and South Korea, divided by ideology, political systems, and history.  Or, if Yemen formally splits again, it will be divided on sectarian grounds). 

I may have stated my position vaguely as I jumped into an argument. I do think nations can have more defining points than just ethnicity, but these things get less reliable as they become less essential to who a person is. So ethnicity and religion are reliable, culture is somewhat unreliable given how rapidly culture is changing these days, and then mere ideology or values can only be taken seriously IMO when you're talking very well-established things like the institutions of Switzerland.

I do think nation and empire are mutually exclusive, yes. You don't? In fact my definition of an empire is that it consists of multiple nations, with one nation ruling the others, and perhaps I would use the term federation where the different nations have a relatively more equal footing. Of course though France still ruling over some Pacific island or two and French Guyana doesn't make it an empire. What's your example of a state that's both a nation and an empire?

A good number of nations also have a single demographically dominant ethnic and/or religious group, but still explicitly reject the concept of a state religion and do not define themselves as specifically belonging to a particular ethnicity, such as China or most Western nations. 

China does have "Han ethnicity" which is 90% of the population - higher than the 65% that speak mandarin. It also has a state-promoted ideology (socialism with Chinese characteristics) which contains a vision of society, moralises about virtue, and which in the past was hostile to religions because they occupied much of the same psychological space. They still have to suppress Falun Gong and they take measures to constrain what other religions can get up to politically. Conveniently for what I'm trying to imply here, apparently they even use a term which can be translated to "heresy" to refer to Falun Gong. So I think China acts as if it had a state religion anyway. Of course Socialism with Chinese characteristics is an ideology, not a religion, but it does have a broader purview than Western liberalism which thinks it can assimilate all religious practices without having to clamp down on them.

Western nations were defined with an ethnic and religious core from their founding all the way to the modern era. By the time they dropped those definitions, Western nations were already extremely well-established. The full consequences, whether positive or negative, cannot have yet developed. I think therefore they are not useful examples for you.

I hope I am not being dishonest, slippery, or moving goalposts with any of the above arguments; if I am it's because we are discussing both definitions, and how those definitions play out in practice; and I am arguing that in the absence of an explicit commitment, a state can (and perhaps must?) still manifest an ethnic and religious core anyway. So it's kind of unavoidable to have some vagueness going on.

Sure, ideology is necessary and useful to keep multi-ethnic states together, but current-day egalitarian liberalism is completely useless for such purposes, since it promotes resentment and explicitly mandates racial discrimination by law (I'm referring to affirmative action measures). Most likely yesterday's Waukesha car attack was racial terrorism spurred by liberal media coverage of the Rittenhouse case. You also have a resilient Islamist presence among Europe's muslims, S.A.'s politicians singing "kill the boer", and so on (the last one interests me because I have relatives there, not just because it is a useful example). I think ethnic-based nations can still claim to be more stable, though it is a hard thing to quantify the comparative empirical evidence for.

I think these statements reflect your particular political biases, rather than observable reality.  "Egalitarian liberalism" isn't necessarily some sort of panacea, but to say that it's utterly useless at keeping multiethnic states from collapsing flies in the face of history, the political sciences, and the current state of the world.

I gave a couple of examples, what are your counterexamples? Would have been great to have some political scientists armed with AR-15s to guard those cheerleaders in Waukesha. Or maybe rocket launchers.

How do you think China's assimilation efforts would go if they started constantly telling the minorities that the Han Chinese were in a constant invisible conspiracy against them in the socioeconomic field? I still don't know a huge amount about Chinese attitudes but I optimistically assume they are only interested in "direction of travel", not on neurotic and hateful comparisons between groups.

It would be more accurate to say that ethnonationalism and sectarianism often drive conflict and separatism, which is why nations based primarily on those principles tend to cause regional instability. 

And, again to be clear, I'm not saying that having a nation with ethnicity as a foundational principle is necessarily a bad thing; I can't think of a good reason why, say, Mongolia shouldn't exist as the homeland of the Mongolian people.  Applied broadly however the concept does cause factionalism and strife where collaboration would be mutually beneficial.

Israel comes to mind when you mention regional instability and ethno-nationalism. Maybe it can be used as an example because it's an extreme case, where the themes of this discussion are painted in vivid colours? Basically the question would be, would it be helpful for Israel to drop its definition as the state of ethnic Jews? Personally I don't think so, because it might result in things like "Right of Return", with loads of Arab descendants returning to Israel and turning into just another Middle Easter Country where non-muslims are gradually (nor not so gradually, like when the US helpfully destroyed Iraq) eradicated. But that's just another left-vs-right assumption, the left sees Israel as aggressive and the Arabs as deserving concessions, for the right it's the Arabs who are aggressive and therefore it's Israel which should receive concessions in order for a peace to be reliable.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I even think the Byzantine Empire was effectively a Greek nation-state

I would avoid calling the Byzantine Empire a nation-state. For one what others already said that they themselves considered themselves Romans and a continuation of the Roman empire.

Well they also knew they were Hellenes, and it's possible the term romaioi ended up being an ethnic designation, though I am just assuming that. Rather like how Romanian is now a slavic ethnic group. 
Could we figure anything out from the Turks founding the Sultanate of Rum? Were they using the term to refer to land, or were they aware of taking on the mantle of Rome? If they took on the political mantle of Rome but the Greeks were still the ones called romaioi, then that means the term had become an ethnic designation for Greeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_t...%BF%CE%B9)
According to wikipedia,

The secular use of Hellene revived in the 9th century, after paganism had been eclipsed and was no longer a threat to Christianity's dominance. The revival followed the same track as its disappearance. The name had originally declined from a national term in antiquity, to a cultural term in the Hellenistic years, to a religious term in the early Christian years. With the demise of paganism and the revival of learning in the Byzantine Empire it had regained its cultural meaning, and finally, by the 11th century it had returned to its ancient national form of an "ethnic Greek", synonymous at the time to "Roman".

But more importantly the concept of nation and nation-state as we know it is fairly young (17. and 18. century). By using that term for forms of organization before that time one is easily led to apply all that comes with the term on these kingdoms, republics and other forms of organization, when the people of the past had totally different concepts and visions of organization.

I think it beggars belief that it would take as long to figure out nationalism - which is just politically applied tribalism - as it took to figure out world-circumnavigating ships and the equations of gravity. I don't think ethnic nationalism was invented in that period; it merely received an intellectual development, but the underlying instincts were always there and relevant to the states of the past. The real development was the falling away of Christendom-spanning Papal authority as well as the reduced stature of monarchs. Once you remove the throne and the altar, all you have left is blood and soil. So ethnicity became the obvious organizing principle, which it hadn't been in the mediaeval era; but I think it was still active in the mediaeval era, it's just that back then it competed with equally strong feudal and religious loyalties. Alongside all the highly multi-ethnic feudal states, you also have ones which obviously represented nations - the Kindgom of Armenia, the Kingdom of Georgia, of France (founded by a tribe of the same name), of England (names goes back to the tribe called the Angles), and a few others.

EDIT: just found a quote from the same wikipedia article that sides with my views quite nicely:

The second Emperor of Nicaea, John III Doukas Vatatzes, wrote in a letter to Pope Gregory IX about the wisdom that "rains upon the Hellenic nation". He maintained that the transfer of the imperial authority from Rome to Constantinople was national and not geographic, and therefore did not belong to the Latins occupying Constantinople: Constantine's heritage was passed on to the Hellenes, so he argued, and they alone were its inheritors and successors.

A mediaeval king asserting the supremacy of ethnicity over political state-legitimacy?

Though who knows, apparently that letter was discovered in 1872 and the wikipedia page must be crawling with greek nationalists. Could be fake.

EDIT2: did some digging, it never got much attention in English but here is a greek language source (install a google translate browser extension for it)
https://www.impantokratoros.gr/F20A9610.el.aspx

Εκείνο όμως πως αγνοήθηκε, ή και αν δεν αγνοήθηκε, πως παρασιωπήθηκε, το ότι μαζί με την σοφία που βασιλεύει σε μας, κληροδοτήθηκε στο δικό μας γένος η κοσμική αυτή βασιλεία από τον Μεγάλο Κωνσταντίνο, ο οποίος φρόντισε να προσθέσει στην εξουσία το σεμνό και το τίμιο, δια της ανταποκρίσεως στην του Χριστού κλήση; Διότι ποιος απ’ όλους αγνοεί ότι η κληρονομιά της διαδοχής του μεταβιβάστηκε στο δικό μας γένος και εμείς είμαστε οι κληρονόμοι και διάδοχοί του;

But what was ignored, or even if it was not ignored, how it was paralyzed, that together with the wisdom that reigns in us, this secular kingdom was bequeathed to our nation by Constantine the Great, who took care to add modesty and modesty to power. honest, by responding to Christ's call? Because who among all is unaware that the inheritance of his successor has been passed on to our genus and we are his heirs and successors?

"γένος " is unambiguous, it means relatives, race etc.

[Bobchillingworth]

I do think nation and empire are mutually exclusive, yes. You don't? In fact my definition of an empire is that it consists of multiple nations, with one nation ruling the others, and perhaps I would use the term federation where the different nations have a relatively more equal footing. Of course though France still ruling over some Pacific island or two and French Guyana doesn't make it an empire. What's your example of a state that's both a nation and an empire?

Ah, surely you would agree a nation ruling over other nations is still a nation? There can be nations within larger nations, such as Native American reservations in the United States.

For examples of empire nations, I'll give you two; ancient Rome and modern Ethiopia (technically not an "empire" post 1971 or thereabouts, but it's a nominal change). Of course Rome broke apart and Ethiopia is on the verge of doing so as well currently, but in either event you have sustained efforts to unify multiple nations under a broader national concepts, such as culture, religion, and systems of governance.

China does have "Han ethnicity" which is 90% of the population - higher than the 65% that speak mandarin. It also has a state-promoted ideology (socialism with Chinese characteristics) which contains a vision of society, moralises about virtue, and which in the past was hostile to religions because they occupied much of the same psychological space. They still have to suppress Falun Gong and they take measures to constrain what other religions can get up to politically. Conveniently for what I'm trying to imply here, apparently they even use a term which can be translated to "heresy" to refer to Falun Gong. So I think China acts as if it had a state religion anyway. Of course Socialism with Chinese characteristics is an ideology, not a religion, but it does have a broader purview than Western liberalism which thinks it can assimilate all religious practices without having to clamp down on them.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I believe you are agreeing with my point; regardless of its relative efficacy compared with Western liberalism, however you care to define that, the modern Chinese nation defines itself primarily through ideology and culture, and not as being an ethno and/or sectarian state. Western values certainly aren't the only option for nations bound by ideology.

Western nations were defined with an ethnic and religious core from their founding all the way to the modern era. By the time they dropped those definitions, Western nations were already extremely well-established. The full consequences, whether positive or negative, cannot have yet developed. I think therefore they are not useful examples for you.

I think you are conflating the concepts of de facto and du jure. Regardless, I can't agree with casually dismissing decades or centuries of history, as well as the current state of the the majority of Western nations, as simply an experiment whose results have yet to be seen. Were that the case, could we not then say that the concept of Western ethnostates is clearly a failed one, given its almost universal inability to sustain itself into the contemporary era?

I hope I am not being dishonest, slippery, or moving goalposts with any of the above arguments; if I am it's because we are discussing both definitions, and how those definitions play out in practice; and I am arguing that in the absence of an explicit commitment, a state can (and perhaps must?) still manifest an ethnic and religious core anyway. So it's kind of unavoidable to have some vagueness going on.

It's only natural for the grounds of an argument to shift over time, particularly as the topics of a debate take shape and evolve. I'm fairly sure I would find most of your beliefs to be odious at best, but this has thus far been an interesting discussion.

I agree that, in concept, a nation can effectively be based on ethnicity, even if not explicitly stated to be the case. I disagree that this is necessarily so for all nations (or states, if we're using the terms interchangeably, as many do). I also cannot concur with the implicit assumption of ethnicity and religion as being comparable, as the former is an inborn quality (one can argue the margins of what people make up what ethnic groups, but one's heritage is biologically determined), while the latter is, in my opinion, just another form of ideology and therefore changeable.

Oh, and here's an argument for you- I'll also argue that "race" as a concept is in fact another form of ideology, being vaguely defined and socially constructed.

I gave a couple of examples, what are your counterexamples?

This seems obvious to the point where I wonder if we have some sort of miscommunication, but for examples I cite every existent multiethnic nation with a representative form of government and constitutions enshrining what would be broadly accepted as liberal values.

As for your examples, catastrophizing rhetoric aside, I'd hardly call any of those compelling evidence of the alleged inability of liberal ideology or egalitarianism or whatever to be an effective national principle for multiethnic states.

That said, I do disagree with those on the left and in academia who dismiss assimilationist rhetoric as though the concept itself is offensive. All nations face the human tendency toward factionalism and the universal force of entropy, and therefore must confront them by assimilating their populations into their national character, lest they sow the seeds of separatism. I'm happy to argue however that it's much easier to assimilate a notional citizen into an ideology or culture than an ethnicity.

Would have been great to have some political scientists armed with AR-15s to guard those cheerleaders in Waukesha. Or maybe rocket launchers.

How do you think China's assimilation efforts would go if they started constantly telling the minorities that the Han Chinese were in a constant invisible conspiracy against them in the socioeconomic field? I still don't know a huge amount about Chinese attitudes but I optimistically assume they are only interested in "direction of travel", not on neurotic and hateful comparisons between groups.

Speaking of miscommunications, I am unsure what you are trying to argue here, for either the statements about Waukesha or the "constant invisible conspiracy" of the Han Chinese. My best guess is that for the former you are implying that the incident was motivated by racial hatred, and therefore indicative of some sort of systemic failure on the part of egalitarian liberal values or somesuch. If that's the case, I disagree with both your assumptions and conclusions. As for the purported conspiracy, I really don't know enough about Chinese society to debate this point further, to the extent that I understand the argument to begin with, and it seems clear to me you don't either.

Israel comes to mind when you mention regional instability and ethno-nationalism. Maybe it can be used as an example because it's an extreme case, where the themes of this discussion are painted in vivid colours? Basically the question would be, would it be helpful for Israel to drop its definition as the state of ethnic Jews?

That's an interesting example to discuss. First, my understanding is that Israel's stated Jewish character is based on religious ideology rather than ethnic grounds, ex. a person who would be considered ethnically Jewish in the U.S. or Europe who does not practice the faith would not be considered "Jewish" by Israeli authorities in being able to apply for things such a marriage license, while a devout Ethiopian Jew would, though I admit I may be mistaken on the particulars here.

Regardless, I think that the ideal path for Israel would have been to pursue a policy of aggressive assimilation of the population within its de facto borders into a national ideology based on the principles of democratic governance, pluralism, and religious tolerance, while still publicly maintaining its stance as being the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people (but not exclusively so). Don't think that's really practical at this juncture though, so I suppose I agree with you that ethno-sectarian nationalism may be the best option for state stability, though it's alienating the substantial non-Jewish Arab and Druze Israeli populations.

Kind of a tangent, but also relevant to the broader discussion, you're not wrong to refer to Israel's neighbors as being Arab ethnonationalist states (also sectarian, but set that aside), but while "Arab" is an ethnicity, it can be easily broken down into other distinct ethnic groups; Levantine Arabs, North African Arabs, Gulf Arabs, etc., and then those groups can be further divided, such as within the Levant having Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and so on. Point being, factionalism is inevitable, even with nations defined largely by ethnicity.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I do think nation and empire are mutually exclusive, yes. You don't? In fact my definition of an empire is that it consists of multiple nations, with one nation ruling the others, and perhaps I would use the term federation where the different nations have a relatively more equal footing. Of course though France still ruling over some Pacific island or two and French Guyana doesn't make it an empire. What's your example of a state that's both a nation and an empire?

Ah, surely you would agree a nation ruling over other nations is still a nation?  There can be nations within larger nations, such as Native American reservations in the United States. 

For examples of empire nations, I'll give you two; ancient Rome and modern Ethiopia (technically not an "empire" post 1971 or thereabouts, but it's a nominal change). Of course Rome broke apart and Ethiopia is on the verge of doing so as well currently, but in either event you have sustained efforts to unify multiple nations under a broader national concepts, such as culture, religion, and systems of governance.

What I meant was that a nation-state can't be an empire-state; but that's just a matter of choosing to define nations ruling over exterior territories as either nation-states or empires, depending on whether the exterior territories are significant or not. Also now I can't remember what the point of disagreement was here.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I believe you are agreeing with my point; regardless of its relative efficacy compared with Western liberalism, however you care to define that, the modern Chinese nation defines itself primarily through ideology and culture, and not as being an ethno and/or sectarian state.  Western values certainly aren't the only option for nations bound by ideology. 

Seems fair to me!

Western nations were defined with an ethnic and religious core from their founding all the way to the modern era. By the time they dropped those definitions, Western nations were already extremely well-established. The full consequences, whether positive or negative, cannot have yet developed. I think therefore they are not useful examples for you.

I think you are conflating the concepts of de facto and du jure.  Regardless, I can't agree with casually dismissing decades or centuries of history, as well as the current state of the the majority of Western nations, as simply an experiment whose results have yet to be2 seen. 

Liberalism shouldn't be congratulated for the success of its Western heartlands when those heartlands already ruled nearly the entire world and had created the modern technological era by the time they became liberal. That's like congratulating Communism for industrialising Russia when that would've happened anyway. I do think Liberalism boosted economic performance, but it still inherited the most powerful and advanced civilised states in the world to begin with. Even its adherents can see that on a decade-by-decade basis its ideology and manifestations are altering, so liberalism still hasn't reached a final form, which means its full consequences can't be judged yet.

I think the West is a doomed society for various reasons, but to avoid getting into a massive rant from a soapbox I'll just bring up North Korea vs. South Korea's birthrates. NK is a shithole with a 1.9 birthrate and SK is a super-wealthy capitalist paradise with a 1.06 birthrate.... so NK has a fairly stable future existence, while the South Koreans are in a geometrical decay disappearing from history. Ultimately I blame this kind of thing on wealth, not on a specific ideology, but I don't think individual freedom helps to ameliorate decadence.

Were that the case, could we not then say that the concept of Western ethnostates is clearly a failed one, given its almost universal inability to sustain itself into the contemporary era? 

Oh it definitely had a failure of being intellectually weak. Even the Third Reich, which would've defined a whole era of history had it survived WW2, seems to have had a pretty weak intellectual foundation. That's a rather different weakness from internal stability though. The racial paradigm of politics is alive and well, but that's a broader topic too.

It's only natural for the grounds of an argument to shift over time, particularly as the topics of a debate take shape and evolve.  I'm fairly sure I would find most of your beliefs to be odious at best, but this has thus far been an interesting discussion. 

And I've been censored online enough times by leftwingers to hope to return the favour someday. But only because if you're not censoring you're not playing to win. Nothing personal!
Also it's nice that you can can engage with my ideas and treat them as my own, I hate when people go overboard calling the other person biased or indoctrinated. I hope to still be a cringe edgelord though.

I agree that, in concept, a nation can effectively be based on ethnicity, even if not explicitly stated to be the case.  I disagree that this is necessarily so for all nations (or states, if we're using the terms interchangeably, as many do).  I also cannot concur with the implicit assumption of ethnicity and religion as being comparable, as the former is an inborn quality (one can argue the margins of what people make up what ethnic groups, but one's heritage is biologically determined), while the latter is, in my opinion, just another form of ideology and therefore changeable. 

Well religion and language are hard to change, they are more fundamental and enduring than culture or ideology.

Oh, and here's an argument for you- I'll also argue that "race" as a concept is in fact another form of ideology, being vaguely defined and socially constructed. 

Do you also think genetic distances and clusters are a social construct? The racial categories are a social construct, but they are useful and accurate to the underlying reality.

I gave a couple of examples, what are your counterexamples?

This seems obvious to the point where I wonder if we have some sort of miscommunication, but for examples I cite every existent multiethnic nation with a representative form of government and constitutions enshrining what would be broadly accepted as liberal values. 

Why would you cite EVERY existent multiethnic nation with a representative form of government??? Surely there are plenty with too much ethnic disruption to be cited as favourable examples?

As for your examples, catastrophizing rhetoric aside, I'd hardly call any of those compelling evidence of the alleged inability of liberal ideology or egalitarianism or whatever to be an effective national principle for multiethnic states. 

Well it is a difficult topic to argue on, because we would get into the weeds about specific events, which is boring and unproductive. For example I think the obvious assumption to make with the Notre Dame fire is that muslims did it and the state covered it up for political reasons.

That said, I do disagree with those on the left and in academia who dismiss assimilationist rhetoric as though the concept itself is offensive.  All nations face the human tendency toward factionalism and the universal force of entropy, and therefore must confront them by assimilating their populations into their national character, lest they sow the seeds of separatism.  I'm happy to argue however that it's much easier to assimilate a notional citizen into an ideology or culture than an ethnicity. 

Then you are not so unrealistic after all. Since the main thing that made me flip out at l1brulism in this conversation was its current anti-majority and anti-assimilation attitudes.

Would have been great to have some political scientists armed with AR-15s to guard those cheerleaders in Waukesha. Or maybe rocket launchers.

How do you think China's assimilation efforts would go if they started constantly telling the minorities that the Han Chinese were in a constant invisible conspiracy against them in the socioeconomic field? I still don't know a huge amount about Chinese attitudes but I optimistically assume they are only interested in "direction of travel", not on neurotic and hateful comparisons between groups.

Speaking of miscommunications, I am unsure what you are trying to argue here, for either the statements about Waukesha or the "constant invisible conspiracy" of the Han Chinese.  My best guess is that for the former you are implying that the incident was motivated by racial hatred, and therefore indicative of some sort of systemic failure on the part of egalitarian liberal values or somesuch.  If that's the case, I disagree with both your assumptions and conclusions.  As for the purported conspiracy, I really don't know enough about Chinese society to debate this point further, to the extent that I understand the argument to begin with, and it seems clear to me you don't either. 

The comment about armed political scientists is just me being snide about the political sciences and implying they're useless.
The "constant invisible conspiracy" is my description of "white privilege" ideology, I guess CRT is the same thing too. It was again snide of me to just refer to it as a conspiracy theory without making it clear what I even meant, sorry.

As for the Waukesha attack:

With the amount of anti-white racial animus posted on Darrel Brook's social media, combined with the closeness to the Rittenhouse trial courthouse, and the nature of the victims, it seems pretty rock-solid to call this racial terrorism motivated by recent media coverage.
Two pics from his social media:

Darrel Brooks viewed whites as the enemy of his race.

Seems like Darrel Brooks fulfilled his promise.

The Rittenhouse trial didn't have to be defined as part of racial politics; it could've been defined the incident as beginning with a deranged man screaming "kill me nigga", who was also paedophile with a history of anally raping multiple 10-year-old boys, along with other arsonists with criminal records. They got mad because a young man put out the dumpster fire that they may have been about to use to blow up a petrol station - in the young man's secondary home town where his father and other relatives lived. They chased him and got shot while they were trying to murder him, knocking him down, hitting him with a skateboard, running up to him with a drawn pistol.

Instead, the liberal media chose to relentlessly incite racial hatred over the case, which combined with the baseline of racial incitement which they constantly engage in, resulted in this Waukesha terror attack. The terror attack is far, far, bigger news than the original Rittenhouse case, and it shows that leftwing commentators deliberately lie in order to incite mass murder. They must get the "Andrew Anglin" treatment - banned from all social media, bank accounts closed, websites taken down, put on the no-fly list, and so on. It's nothing they don't advocate for their political enemies. It's what a serious country like China does when people persistently incite racial animosity - time to learn to code in a re-education facility.

Israel comes to mind when you mention regional instability and ethno-nationalism. Maybe it can be used as an example because it's an extreme case, where the themes of this discussion are painted in vivid colours? Basically the question would be, would it be helpful for Israel to drop its definition as the state of ethnic Jews?

That's an interesting example to discuss.  First, my understanding is that Israel's stated Jewish character is based on religious ideology rather than ethnic grounds, ex. a person who would be considered ethnically Jewish in the U.S. or Europe who does not practice the faith would not be considered "Jewish" by Israeli authorities in being able to apply for things such a marriage license, while a devout Ethiopian Jew would, though I admit I may be mistaken on the particulars here. 

I think they even use genetic testing sometimes, and I also think there was some controversy about how irreligious all the Russian Jews who came in the 1990s were. But Judaism itself has an ethnic component anyway.

Regardless, I think that the ideal path for Israel would have been to pursue a policy of aggressive assimilation of the population within its de facto borders into a national ideology based on the principles of democratic governance, pluralism, and religious tolerance, while still publicly maintaining its stance as being the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people (but not exclusively so).  Don't think that's really practical at this juncture though, so I suppose I agree with you that ethno-sectarian nationalism may be the best option for state stability, though it's alienating the substantial non-Jewish Arab and Druze Israeli populations.

Well there's two questions here: is there more stability when Israel maintains a Jewish demographic majority? And, does Israel need to define itself as Jewish in order for the policies that maintain that majority to remain in place? I think the answer to both questions is "yes" - if Israel dropped its ethnic definition (which I think is a recent controversy) then that would delegitimise the policies relating to demographic strategy, such as aliyah, and they would be cancelled in due course.

Kind of a tangent, but also relevant to the broader discussion, you're not wrong to refer to Israel's neighbors as being Arab ethnonationalist states (also sectarian, but set that aside), but while "Arab" is an ethnicity, it can be easily broken down into other distinct ethnic groups; Levantine Arabs, North African Arabs, Gulf Arabs, etc., and then those groups can be further divided, such as within the Levant having Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and so on.  Point being, factionalism is inevitable, even with nations defined largely by ethnicity.

Good point!