On 2/1/2017 4:01 PM, juan wrote:
"The question still remains, how comes such a thing as "a nation" to exist? How do millions of men, scattered over an extensive territory --- each gifted by nature with individual freedom; required by the law of nature to call no man, or body of men, his masters; authorized by that law to seek his own happiness in his own way, to do what he will with himself and his property, so long as he does not trespass upon the equal liberty of others; authorized also, by that law, to defend his own rights, and redress his own wrongs; and to go to the assistance and defence of any of his fellow men who may be suffering any kind of injustice --- how do millions of such men come to be a nation,
Usually through tribalism, ethnic identity, ideology, or shared religion. Religion is how Mohammed did it. And what happens if men do not come to be a nation, or just cease to be nation, perhaps because of loss of tribal or religious identity? Bloody shovel has an interesting tale on this topic: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/trade-and-peace/ “You know, this tribe I got the milk from. They have no leader, no man above all of them. They would be very easy to conquer, we could grab their stuff and have an easy life”. Big brother approved of the suggestion, and just on getting back home, he recruited a bunch of able bodied men, put Bodonchar on command of them, and rode forward to conquer the tribe of the Uriankhai. They stole their livestock and their women, killed the men and enslaved the children to work for them. Bodonchar was a great hero, he had tens of sons born from the concubines he captured, who went on to found the various tribes of the Mongol people, among them the great Gengis Khan, who looked up on his ancestor Bodonchar, the great hero who destroyed the tribe that had been giving him milk when he was needy. Rotherham shows us what happens when outsiders have more social cohesion that you do, more asabiyyah than you do Enemies take your women, your land, and your stuff. Whites got ethnically cleansed out of Detroit and the inner city. White Swedish chicks get pregnant by brown or black Muslims and white male taxpayers who cannot get laid pay for other men's children. A people with high asabiyyah, like the pagan Icelanders, can get by without a central government, provided that they are proud, brave, and valiant warriors, but when Christianity arrived, things fell apart. Something like anarcho capitalism worked for the pagan Icelanders, because they had a state religion without a state, because their religion gave them strong social cohesion. When universalist Christianity arrived, anarchy stopped working.