24. Thierry Baudet and the nation-state - Yves Decock - Comments on the World, its History and Future

27 september 2019

IN 2012 the Dutch politician-philosopher Thierry Baudet published “The Significance of Borders”. In that book he intended, as the sub-title of the book mentions, to demonstrate “why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States”. While I believe that that proposition itself might be correct, the argumentation or “proof” provided by TB is not convincing, even wrong.

But first this. In his preface TB explains that the current mainstream idea that the challenges posed by globalisation require a supra-national response and therefore the abolition or dampening of nation-states, is wrong. Yes, global challenges exist and they require global responses, but these responses will have to be pre-discussed, agreed upon, defended and executed at the level of the nation-state. He calls this “international cooperation on the basis of accountable nation states” sovereign cosmopolitanism. I agree with this sovereign cosmopolitanism and it explains why safeguarding and strenghtening nation-states is essential in order to manage globalization.

Back to our main topic. For Baudet, the Representative Government and the Rule of Law have in common that “the people” have to be represented in respectively a parliament and a Supreme Court. This requirement pre-supposes the existence of a “we”, a coherent mass, a nation. He quotes Paul Scheffer who wrote in 2007 : “Without a ‘we’, it won’t work.”

This reasoning does not convince me at all. The classic liberal democracy is precisely an institutional structure which enables conflicting views and interests to interact and clash. The strength of the liberal democratic model is that it allows diversity to live together. Was there a “we” in the past ? There were Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, Social-Democrats and Communists. In that sense there has never been a “we”. And at least in theory we can simply enrich this system without changing it fundamentally : we can add new branches or pillars next to the existing ones : a green branch, a Muslim branch and a nationalist party. Also the Supreme Courts never represented a “we”. In many cases the decisions by Supreme Courts are transparent about who voted in favour of and who voted against fundamental discussions in society.

Having said this, I do not exclude that our societies need to maintain a minimum of cohesion but I am (certainly at this moment) hesitant to state how much cohesion our societies require. Based on my own book I believe that a minimum level of cohesion requires at least a common language, at least to be able to have a discussion on important items.

In this context I also present the following quote by Paul Morland at the end of a book review (FT of 24AUG2019 – The new demography) :

“For liberals who are relaxed about immigration and ethnic change, it is now incumbent upon them to come up with ways in which a coherent society can be formed from people of different backgrounds. Just as a nationalist sentiment was required to form the warfare states of Europe over the past two hundred years, so something new will be needed in its place if the welfare states of today are to survive in anything like their current form.”

Evidently, Paul Morland is mistaken. “Relaxed” liberals will not take any initiative because they do not see any problem at all and believe in the self-organising forces in society. The initiative to ensure a minimum level of coherence of society will have to be taken by less “relaxed” people.