A credal nation
Or ethnic observations and race, tribe and class revisited. There’s the error of phyletism, a nationalism that degenerates into ethnocentrism and racism, but the proposed solution, a nation as a set of principles/abstraction, can be just as bad because it depends on a state for its existence and often really means upper-middle-class/liberal Protestant/SWPL values forced upon everybody else (can you say anti-Catholic?): ‘Please, no more incense in church or garlic in your food!’ Today the SWPL like the latter (it’s ‘authentic’ — exotic — and thus cool) and their churchgoing parents don’t mind much if you play high church but please, no more garlic in your theology, or sure, you can believe that stuff as long as it doesn’t go against modern received opinion in any way. The ‘Speak English!’ of the Noughties. From Tea at Trianon.

Immigration revisited
From Hoosier Musings