Security Blankets

Those who complain most loudly about the modern nation-state nevertheless leap to its defense at the mention of other possible arrangements. They have many elaborate scenarios in which the state, properly constituted, properly restrained, and run by the right sorts of people with the right sorts of education and the best of intentions, serves only those functions that they believe it properly possesses. The qualities we mock in American liberalism, the FDR syndrome, the idea that a skilled managerial class will resist the temptations of power that come with centralizing a government for tens and hundreds of millions of people, aren't actually limited to managerial liberals. Even self-described libertarians ultimately subscribe to the idea that the problem with government is that it's not run by our kind of people. Mention the devolution of the nation-state and everyone is suddenly a Hobbesian.

Take the argument, advanced by some in the comments of this post that in the absence of a countervailing liberal state order, the muzlums will kill all the womenfolk. That's an exaggeration, but not much of one. It's a tendentious contention to say the least, but for the sake of argument, let's grant the point. We get rid of the Capitol, pull down the White House, break up the states, and so forth. Big Ben gets shoved into the Thames. The Elysées palace gets firebombed. We're all living in our own little enclaves. The per capita prevalence in certain communities of "honor killing," of female genital mutilation, of the stoning to death of queers and adulterers, etc., modestly increases.

I for one am untroubled by such an outcome. It seems to me infinitely preferable to a world in which one singular state entity has the capacity to wipe out all human life. It seems to me vastly better than a world in which aircraft bomb civilian neighborhoods from beyond the reach of retaliation as part of international economic and social engineering schema. Any argument that proceeds from the base assumption that the modern nation-state is necessary so that each precious mustard seed of a person can grow into a mighty oak is utopian and self-refutingly ridiculous. Anarchist sentiments--mine, anyway--do not begin with the assumption that smashing the parliaments and armies of the world will bring an end to human ills and atrocities. It begins, instead, with the idea that it would substantially decrease their terrible scope and scale.