What’s Wrong With Nationalism? by Anthony Esolen

It is a mark of piety to love the place of your birth, to prefer it above other places, to want it to be itself and not just like everywhere else.

By Anthony Esolen. American Greatness, February 13, 2023

CATEGORY: First Principles   TAG: Civic Culture

TITLE: What’s Wrong With Nationalism?

SUBDECK and EXCERPT:  It is a mark of piety to love the place of your birth, to prefer it above other places, to want it to be itself and not just like everywhere else.

Pope Francis, along with many other commentators on current affairs, has condemned nationalism. I might join these commentators, if I knew just what they were talking about. What is a nation?

When I was backpacking through Italy in 1985, I found myself having dinner with another young fellow in Assisi, and we got to talking about Italians and their loyalty to the paese, the village or town or, to stretch things a little, the general region where they were born. You are a paesano not if you speak Italian, and not if you are a friendly sort, but if you come from the same place. He was a Florentine, and I, of course, was and remain an American. …