“National Conservatism”

The NatCon's aka NatCs are not even trying to hide the fact they are full on fascists

We can all see where this is leading...

I believe the Blues Brothers approach to dealing with Nazis was effective…

Germans ‘mucked up’ twice.

Christ almighty that’s bad.

Yeah, I sort of feel 'mucked up' is a bit of an understatement.

'Dear Jews, sorry we mucked up! Lots of love, ze Germans'

True enough

In respect to the first it can be a positive force, encouraging people to perform public service or pay their taxes for the common good.

Even otherwise quite bright people struggle with cultural relativism.

I think Nationalism is a by-product of that.

The logical thing to do in the summer of 1940 would have been to come to terms with Germany, as Halifax proposed. Such terms would not have included the occupation of Britain, so we were never actually fighting for our own freedom. Likely terms would have been the restoration of German colonies lost after 1918 and possible restrictions on the royal navy.

With a free hand in the east, and greater access to raw materials, including oil, Germany would almost certainly have taken Moscow in 1941. It was fairly close as it was.

What if your country is none of these things to you? What if you're not comfortable with the culture? What if you find football tedious and never go to the pub?

This is the difference between nationalism and patriotism, imo - nationalism supposes and enforces a set of values and a (supposedly) common identity. Britain equals football, cricket, rugby, curry, fish and chips, pubs. The implication (which I'm not specifically levelling at you, btw, more at the concept) is that if you don't like football, cricket, rugby, curry, fish and chips and pubs, you're 'not British'.

And this feeds into other levels of 'discourse' (heavy quote marks) where anyone not accepting of some aspect of the status quo is a dangerous outsider who hates his people and/or his country, because if he didn't he wouldn't want to change it. I am quite happy describing myself as a patriot, but I am certainly not a nationalist. There's loads of stuff I don't like about British culture and identity and how it is expressed (and plenty of stuff I do like, to be clear), and loads of stuff I'd change about what this country does and how it does it. But because I feel an illogical attachment and liking to this collection of rocks in the top-right corner of the Atlantic and the people on it, and because I go all weepy at the final chords of 'Jerusalem', I want to do these changes to make it better (by my view).

That's a key difference between progressive and conservative nationalism as well, that is especially relevant here. The later is nearly always about reaching back to some semi-mythic past and recreating it in the present, or the expression of some sort of ancient and inherent 'national values' that they see as being under thread from recent change. It's reactionary, romantic and emotional and not actually based on any material analysis.

Still not quite seeing what this has to do with patriotism being the mainspring of British effort in WW2? You say yourself that we were never actually under direct threat. As a nation we were fighting for long-term strategic political and economic interest and undoubtedly due to some big-picture defence of certain values and a certain way of life. But I very much doubt many boots of the ground, sea and air really fought primarily through a love of country. Individuals very rarely do.

tut tut you won't win many brownie points here with that attitude young man. Only other countries are allowed to address this problem as there's nothing worth saving here, any opinion against the contrary and you are a fascist.

I sentence you to 12 months of white self loathing training by reading the Independent, MSNBC and Frankie Boyle content.