Politics & Education – Published Letters and Articles
Preface
These are the published letters and articles relating to Politics and Education which Stephen Bush and on a few occasions his wife and son have written over the years to the press and other journals of record.
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The fundamental political philosophy behind the publications on this page of the website may be termed:
NATIONISM
While there is bound to be overlap in the practical application of any two philosophies to human affairs, nonetheless “nationism” as defined below, is seen as being in opposition to the predominant social and economic ideology of the 20th century, namely:
EGALO-LIBERALISM
In varying degrees, with the exception of the USA before the Second World War, all the elected governments of the Western world have subscribed consciously and subconsciously to this ideology.
Nationism
By nationism we mean a philosophy which sees that a world of seven billion people has to be broken down into some hundred sovereign groups[1] albeit connected by international legal and trading systems, whatever the degree of globalisation of technology and trade.
Stable sovereign nations are characterized by a metric composed of five fundamental features. These are predominantly:
- one clear majority race[2];
- at most three common languages in general use;
- common history and institutions across their peoples
- compact geography of the nation’s territory;
- a single integrated economy.
The degree to which each of these features is present will, when added together, show how stable a political entity such as a nation actually is. Roughly speaking, a score of greater than 3.5 is needed for a self-governing nation to endure more than 3 generations.
Apart from primitive tribes, nations are, after the family itself, the most durable of all self-governing groups of the human race.
Nationism holds that membership of a nation is thus based collectively on these five features. Individually there is an implicit contract in which the privileges of an individual’s membership are maintained by the collective strength of the nation in return for duties to the nation performed by the individual. Obeying the law is the most fundamental of all duties required of the individual.
The first principle of nationism is that it puts the durability of the nation and the interests of its individual citizens before all others’ interests. Personal kindness towards fellow citizens and respect for those of other nations is a second basic principle.
To give practical effect to these principles, the prime duties of the government of a nation are (1) ensuring that every citizen has a job contributing to their nation’s welfare, and (2) protecting its citizens from dangers arising beyond its borders. For Britain, the effective discharging of both these fundamental duties rests above all on the systematic application of new knowledge to the production of tangible things and their sale both at home and overseas. Economic principles of free trade and competition, though respected, are subordinate to these overriding duties of government.
Egalo-liberalism
Egalo-liberalism as an ideology covers a wide spectrum of attitudes, but as a first principle it regards all who happen to be within the geographical boundaries of a given territory at any time as having the same equal rights as actual citizens of that country. The English judiciary is a particular, very potent repository of this aspect of egalo-liberalism. The socialist end of the egalo-liberal spectrum naturally lays most emphasis on the “egalo” part of the ideology, particularly as applied to issues of race and gender equality. More generally egalo-liberalism sees the pseudo egalitarian legal structures of the European Union as a prototype government and a long-term model for the world as a whole.
The second fundamental principle of egalo-liberalism sees the unconstrained movement of capital, knowledge, and people across the world, irrespective of the nations or industries affected by it, as fundamental to maximizing the welfare of humanity as a whole. Undiluted egalo-liberalism does not therefore seek to prefer one nation or people to any other, although in British practice its egalitarianism end tends to focus on the presumed interests of working women and ethnic minorities.
In economic terms, the modern conservative end of this political spectrum lays most emphasis on the “liberal” part, particularly as applied to matters of industry and commerce, mitigated by substantial measures of social protection.
End Notes
[1] Sovereign and sovereignty are much abused words. By a sovereign group we mean one whose government alone can pass and enforce laws on its members. There is no such thing as “shared sovereignty” though you can have “partial sovereignty”, i.e. sovereign in some areas of government, but not in others. EU countries thus have partial sovereignty.
[2] The words “ethnicity” and “ethnic” have largely replaced “race” and “racial” in the academic literature and official publications like those from the National Statistical Office. Absurdly though, in the operation of the antidiscrimination laws, “race” and “racial” are used to denote national distinctions having no real racial element at all, e.g. English, Scottish.
Most people perceive black Africans, South Asians, Chinese, Japanese, white people as being of different races and it is that common usage sense which is being invoked here. The most authoritative account of this and a myriad of issues arising is the book “Race” by John Baker, Oxford University Press, 1974, now sadly out of print.