Accurate Assessment

 I hate to say this is accurate, but....  when too many stars align, power grabs become way too easy.  It's a proof of the truism "We're all serfs now"

Social Cohesion Capital Leeches

 You can either view most pop media as a new de facto, inquisitional type of priest class, or simply as social cohesion capital leeches.

I suspect the true believers are more the priest class type. Rachel Maddow and most BLM komissars come to mind here. Stetler, Cuomo and others seem to me more the leech type.  Pelosi and most Establishment types strike me more as grand inquisitors who do it for the power and sheer joy of power exercise.  True Stalinist personality types, who are at best rationalizing things 'for the greater good' as per most modern movie arch villains.

The leeches worry me the most.  You can't get rid of the spread of true believers and power hungry inquisitors.  Once you get too many leeches though, things fall apart quickly.  Social cohesion capital is a very slow renewing resource - akin to coal & oil.  You don't get it back in a generation. And once the civil wars get going and you fall down polity sizes (i.e. down to a lower adaptive group level of societal organization), you don't claw your way out of it easily.  How long did it take the Egyptians to get back on their feet after their post-kingdom collapse?  The Mayans?  The western Romans?  The eastern Romans?  It's something to look at.

The US got back on their feet after their Revolutionary civil war, and their 1860's civil war.  But, they had space to expand.  Right now they're in a much different space.  WHile some may see it as globalist growing pains, I tend to see it as empire collapse pains.  Time will tell which it is. Most of the markers strike me as growth of two new and distinct sub-contintental nations.  The tearing down of old national symbols, the growth of new national anthems, new meta-narrative histories (1619 project), the xenophobic rejection of competing ethnies, and the desire for new rule of law, all strike me as the hallmarks of nationalism.  These tendencies may be clothed in globalistic rhetoric, but I think its specific type of globablism is more akin to "expanding the size of one's dominion (and hence power)" more than it is true globalism.  The infighting between the religiously committed globablists and the "BLM" nationalistst will be interesting to see.   How that turns out will depend on how a power hungry figure like Pelosi, who in many ways resembles a cowardly version of Constantine, plays out.  Unfortunately, I don't see her or most like her as having any real moral backbone. Hence I think they will destroy, but won't have the insight to make it a creative destruction as per Constantine.

Nationalism as a result of Sufficient Internal Migration?

How did nationalism and nation states arise? Smith's standard text "Nationalism" presents the standard historical and anthropoligical views.  He even mentions kin-based biology and gene-culture co-evolution. Too bad he, like most historians and anthropologists dismisses it.

But, like all good books, most rewards come from the muses they inspire rather than the direct knowledge they impart.  Smith's brief description of Gellner's 1960's - 19080's theory of nationalism was one such muse for me.  From what I understand, Gellner's nationalistic origin theory is abased on reconciliation between an urbanizing proletariat and established urbanites (elites & proletariat).  When combined with a literate society, coordination took the form of nationalism and nation states.

From a gene-cultural multilevel selection lens, this actually seems OK.  Could sufficient migration levels within a loosely coupled ethnie during a religoius-political Great Awakening cycle produce an adaptive group and moral Big Brother (List & Pettit type) that was happy to stick to fixed boundaries?

I suspect internal migration, not based on expansionist conquest might be key.  Seeing loosely coupled people as part of the same adaptive group would require some sort of meta-narrative bind.  I'd suggest Scott Atran's work on religion makes sense here.  You need some quasi-factuals to bind people and serve as low cost commitment displays.  These would also serve as a guide to understand the moral Big Brother, provided of course you had a sufficiently primed cultural background to correctly do so.

The missing piece is non-expansionist tendencies....

Could this be where progressive religion comes in?  For instance, early Christianity seems to have made hay with the idea of Salvation and universalized divinity.  Everyone is a son of God. Everyone can be saved.  By treating others as yourself (or at least not like chattel) you then save yourself.  While this ideology eventually turned into imperialism, I would suspect it started out very pluralistic.  I also suspect this general class of cultural proclivity is highly adaptive as it sets up selection for higher levels of organization.

The problem comes from Progressivism's Pandora's box.  One everyone is seen as human as your in-group, then there's not much stopping you from destroying other groups for their own liberation. I think we're in that phase right now. That's the neo-catholic idea I discussed the other week.

The piece that needs explaining is why the first nations would remain internally focussed.  I suspect the answer is in "just the right levels of internal migration relative to cultural disparities".  This seems akin to the very narrow solution space 1970's group selection needed to operate within in order to be theoretically possible.  I believe D.S. Wilson showed that this very narrow, improbable, solution band is actually where groups reside.  My guess is that some fitness (wealth) transfer from governments or elites back to commoners is part of the stabilizing solution. And, that pluralistic tendencies combined with just the right amount of inward focus caused by narrow-band migration levels produce the necessary solution space for non-expansionist Nationalism.

But I could be wrong.  However, while improbable, it just feels right for some reason....

The Protestant revolution did something 

Moralized Quasi-religious Politics

 It's nice seeing smart thinkers finally coming around to fuller understandings of how politics has now been infused with religion - specifically the next great evolution in world religion, Wokeism.

Destabilization is often a feature not a bug

 

Destabilization often isn't a problem - it's a feature. You just have to look at it from the right lens, and over the right time frame.

Think Mao, Stalin, Luther, Constantine, AOC, BLM,

https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/

Nation Building - By Splitting US' Old Weak Federal 'Empire'

 The latest book Ive been reading on nationalism is Anthony Smith's 2nd Edition of Nationalism.  I like it a lot more than Hazony's Virtue of Nationalism.  But, the two are very different beasts. 

Here's a quote from Smith that makes me think that the fracturing of America down tribalized political lines is not a simple flash in the pants idea...

"The nation, in the eyes of nationalists, can be described as a community of history and destiny, or better, a community in which history requires and produces destiny - a particular national destiny.  This idea of destiny carries far more emotional freight than notions of the futures....  For nationalists, the nation's destiny is always glorious, like its distant past; indeed, the golden past, hidden beneath the opporessive present, will shine forth once again, through the regeneration of the tru spirit of the nation by the yet unborn."

In evolutionary language, Smith is describing a grand (moral) meta-narrative.  More specifically, I think, it is a grand meta-narrative quasi-fable that also encodes the 'scripture' necessary for List & Pettit moral Big Brother alignment.  That is to say, the stories nationalists tell about their nation contain enough moralized "data points" for the emergence of a strong Big Brother group agent.  If you don't understand the cultural milieu in which the stories are situated you probably won't pick this up.

I suspect this is what is happening with the Democratic Black nation in the States.  They are heading down the road of nation building within the US' imperial carcass.  That is the deep reason you see Trumpists labelled as insurrectionists and deplorable 'others'.  It's not just superficial racism (equity).  It's part of the evolutionary process of weak empire splitting. 

In fact, the more I read in Smith, the more the US' current politicalization reminds me of Protestant Catholic splits in the1600's.  There Protestants created a new meta-narrative fable out of the ashes of imperial-Catholic feudal empires.

Eating Their Own Just Means You Need a "Unifier"

 The study of the use of Christianity to win ancient Rome's intra-elite conflict is very apropos today.  The big lesson is that Constantine, an outsider from Britain, used Christianity to purge his political opposition and filter out the elite classes by taking advantage of a Great Religious Awakening cycle and turning it into a politicized inquisition.

Thus when you see Woke groups devour their own, don't get cocky, it just means that someone will soon figure out how to become a unifier in chief, taking the opportunity to bring various sects / cults together along a strategic path of their own choosing.  The politicalization of Christianity (in its various political epochs) went the same way

Implications of our new Compliant Natures

 Gene-culture dual inheritance theories suppose that stabilization to major polity size changes occur as a result of stabilized gene-cultural traits.  In other words, Scots accept English rule once enough fiercely independent people get selected out of the population (due to war) and a critical mass of more compliant traits stabilize in the population.  Stabilization may occur just on the cultural level. But long term polity size stabilization usually requires a decent amount of selection at the genetic level (i.e. a sufficient frequency of "agreeableness" genes (or at least the genes which directly or indirectly correlate with agreeable personalities) in the population).

Covid lockdown compliance has sown us just how compliant modern populations are to hitherto egregious authoritarianism.  It's hard to imagine a 17th century Scot agreeing to Sydney's "only one person can leave the house each day" policy.  Nor can one imagine 1940's American's agreeing to universal mask mandates for an illness with a 0.002% fatality rate for 20-49 year old folk.  The Swedish epidemiologist responsibilty for that country's voluntary restriction strategy was stunned at how easily people across the classically liberal world went along with Covid authoritarianism.  I have to say, it stunned me as well.  You think there would have been at least a few spectacular immolations as crazed individuals were fined and jailed. Indeed, the most chilling part of Covid is the awareness that 1930-1950 illiberalness wasn't an aberration.

Indeed, I think it is safe to assume that Covid compliance suggests that the gene-cultural traits required for a new level of governmental authoritarianism are broadly prevalent in Western society.  Some countries, like the US, remain uncertain, but that is likely a function of US's de facto status as a dual confederacy under a dying weak federal empire.

This has some major implications.  It means that the next polity shift, presumably into pan-nationalism, is more ready than almost everyone supposed.  Meme's like "there is no planet B", and "we're all in the climate fight together", have unexpectedly fertile ground upon which to play and evolve.

But the gene-cultural shifts which enable higher polity size changes don't unidirectionally produce benevolent governances.  Indeed, I'd suspect that insight into the "progressive" world's compliance means that a both good AND foul intentioned authoritarians will use newfound population level compliance traits for rather nefarious ends.

This seems to be the fear of "Great Reset" folk.  There is a real fear that a Trudeau fop will pull a Covid lockdown for "climate change" or some other pan-national issue.  The goal may be good. But it will be hard to disentangle moral intent from its illiberal smokescreens. "We'd love for you to all travel to the polls to vote, but because of Climate, you'll all have to do it from home.  And trust us on the results... We know BIPOC folk don't have tech access, so we'll just have to excuse some equity corrected fudges..."

In fact, I'd imagine there are hundreds of ways authoritarians will leverage newly discovered compliance limits.  The "my body my choice" wall is basically broken.  Adult seatbelt laws come to my mind as where this line first died.

Indeed, I wonder if in 20-50 years we might not look back on Nazi Germany, Communist Russian, and Maoist China as the first big signals into a new era of compliance enabled authoritarianism.  If so, Orwell's ideas of pan-national leagues "newspeaking" draconian policy changes at the drop of a hat isn't so far away.  You'll just believe it is for the greater good.  Most of those who would see otherwise are probably genetic relics who are only partially able to overcome the cultural pressure put on them to shut up.  But, even if their resistance comes through on occasion, the social platforms they need to be heard are locked up.  Even physical "town squares" are now locked up and permitted according to "right think" identities.  Proud Boys (or equivalent) can't protest, because "safety"! You know what Antifa (or equivalent) will with your identity-based instigation. It's your own fault for being so extreme!

Weak Empire Splits

 For a couple of years I've been mentioning how the United States, as a de facto weak empire is ripe for a split to smaller polities.  This is exasperated (facilitated?) by a rapidly growing population, increasing levels of diversity, tremendous draws on social cohesion capital, and a very long de facto border (due to foreign entanglements).

This survey seems to suggest the idea is getting more and more likely. 

A read through some liberal Mormon blogs got me convinced that fairly educated professor types have absolutely no inclination to compromise with respect to governmance and political morality.  Neither do Trumpers.

Other than very dramatic policy swings from one administration to another (like disbanding the FBI to purge it, then recreating another one every election swing), there really is no alternative.  You are going to have to kill one side to silence them.  The right currently thinks this is exactly where Biden's military purge, "extremist" databases and "Great Reset" are headed.  The racist anti-white genocidal language doesn't help much.  The other side is convinced Trumpists are authoritarian Nazi's who are only be held back by media righteousness and social peer pressure.

The only way to let each side be themselves is to split the country apart.  The best bet here is to produce two voluntary confederacies.  This would require some state border re-alignments.  For instance, eastern Washington, Oregon and north East California would go Red.  Parts of Arizona and New Mexico and maybe Colorado would go blue.  The rest is easy to figure out.

I'm afraid that is the only viable pluralistic option there is.  Neither side is willing to be subject to the rules of the other.

This stat shows how close to reality this likelyhood now is

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/shock-poll-two-in-three-southern-republicans-want-to-secede-from-the-united-states/

A Fairly Accurate Assessment

 Here's a fairly accurate assessment of how half the country feels about politics - The establishment has taken over all governance and governance related institutions and have openly subverted the most patriotic into a de facto serf class.  It seems far fetched, but matches my read on these folks, and my read of the cultural traps and cycles which are unfolding

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x

— MartyrMade (@martyrmade) July 8, 2021

 I think I’ve had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x 

 Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they’ll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they’re not particularly attached to them. 2/x 

 Here are the facts – actual, confirmed facts – that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan’s July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x 

 These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x 

 Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x 

 This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff – who were on TV saying they’d seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t – all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x 

 At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn’t make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov’t when it didn’t happen. 7/x 

 We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele’s source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x 

 Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution – agencies, the press, Congress, academia – gaslit them for another year. 9/x 

 Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov’t destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x 

 This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x 

 GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x 

 It’s hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov’t as a conspiracy… Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don’t stand for the Anthem. 13/x 

 They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov’t official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x 

 The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they’d be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x 

 This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true. 16/x 

 They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x 

 They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don’t. It’s a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x 

 Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 19/x 

 Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn’t just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 20/x 

 Re: “fake impeachment”, we now know that Trump’s request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden’s $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 21/x 

 Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a “mistake” – but, ya know, the election’s over, so who cares? 22/x 

 Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr’s laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn’t have been banned. 23/x 

 Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x 

 The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, “no fair!” That’s how they felt about Romney’s “binders of women” in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x 

 And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 26/x 

 Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 27/x

 Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange – the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc – but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x 

 Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr’s laptop would’ve been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would’ve been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x 

 Even the courts’ refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They’ll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he’ll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x 

 It’s a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were “protests”, but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x 

 Forget the ballot conspiracies. It’s a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x 

 They knew it was unconstitutional, it’s right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn’t see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn’t implied, it was direct. 33/x 

 a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x 

 They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov’t is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might’ve kept him alive. /end  

Yoram Hazony's Virtue of Nationalism

 Hazony's main novel point in his book on Nationalism is the idea that the post 90's globalist ideology which is now wedded with Woke progressivism functions as an illiberal catholicism. Just like 5th, and 15th century Catholicism couldn't contemplate the non-ubiquity of its morals, globalist political Wokeism does the same.  There's simply no way there isn't a god, and there isn't anyway these aren't his judgments and precepts.  They're just too correct not to be. The arrow of progress is clear and only a fool, who would call the sun black, would disagree.

One of Hazony's challenges is his inability to reference cultural group selection. He argues that nationalism is the best unit of organization, but has to resort to handwaving to make his arguments.  Kingdoms are too dictatorial and warlike. Globalism is too over reaching and hence too authoritarian.  But, the only reason we're in this current state is because gene-culture evolution has temporarily positioned us here.

Near page 90 Hazony does try to address the "right size" issue using non-technical adaptive group logic.  Large groups must elevate ideology about the tribe.  Doing this requires tribes, and the individuals that make up tribes, to subvert their needs and desires for the large group's conformist ideology.  This is how the larger group orientation becomes adaptive.

The small group orientation, which he reduces absurdo to anarachy, is adaptive because individual needs are knowable. The people to whom you give quid pro quo loyalty to, can therefore repay you in kind. Inefficiency is small because of small world network dynamics (i.e. Everyone is part of a node where members are well known and association is voluntary.  Brokers connect to other nodes via scale-free patterns).

WHY DOES A LARGE GROUP ORIENTATION REQUIRE IDEOLOGY AS ITS CONFORMING PRINCIPLE

This of course begs the question why ideology is the necessary conforming principle (when existential physical threat is absent).  I suspect the answer, undoubtably, leads back to List & Pettit group agents.  

Before getting to group agents, it is certainly possible to say that ideology is likely to function as a costly commitment display.  Some views are certainly adaptive (think Christian inter-member charity). but other views are certainly irrational (at least superficially so, especially over short time frames and individual rather than population level aggregations).  Scott Atran's "In Gods We Trust" tends to this type of logic.  A little bit of counter-factualness mixed with the right balance of immediate/obvious adaptive benefit and long-term/obfuscated adaptive benefit produces an perfect cultural group evolution solution.

Hazony of course doesn't take this track.  That's fine.  This line of reasoning comes across as "just so" logical cherry picking.  Instead, Hazony suggests large group orientation and small group orientation revolve around two attractors: self-selecting anarchist-like groupings, and universalistic globalism which is morally authoritarinistic.

I'd tend to interpret these poles as strange attractors. That's basically how I operationalize the topology of cultural group selection.  But, this again begs the question why the large group orientation has to be both universal and ideological.

UNIVERSAL and IDEOLOGICAL

Hazony's answer seems to be that only ideology can bind non-related kin with no common heritage nor culture.  This is the standard lesson of French revolution curriculum and the standard logic of christian era monotheistic world religions.  But, such answers seem entirely unconvincing to me. Such answers are like saying a cold is sniffles rather than viruses.  So, what are some possible deeper reasons why the large group / universalistic globalism is so based in unquestionable moral universalism?

Hazony suggests that once you break down xenophobic tribal barriers, you tend to fall into an assumption that "everyone is human".  This seems demonstrably false.  One race may consider another race "human" but another "un-human".  Technological elitism justified this pretty well in the 17th to 19th centuries.

Rather, I suspect you need List & Pettit group agents (or equivalent) to explain what is going on with catholic universalistic progressive globalism.

Group agents emerge from random policy decisions. Individuals infer a moral interpretation of the group's decision in order to better predict future positions. Such a moral based heuristic is also exceptionally good at spotting freeloaders and edging the group and its members through Atran's religious like dynamics (which are of course very adaptive - see Atran and D.S. Wilson).  Exceptions to the group agent's morality are usually interpreted as a testing and purification processes.  Thus rather than causing cognitive dissonance, rebound to the inferred moral position actually strengthens commitment.  Rebound to slightly different positions is usually interpreted by individuals as an interpretational fault on their part.  Hence the need for the "right" level of ambiguity in the group agent's essence (think the Catholic mystery of the trinity, etc.).

GROUP AGENT: EQUALITY & OPEN MEMBERSHIP

The question then becomes what type of group agent fits nationalism (ie. what are the group agent's primary moral properties & focus)?

I suspect the proper nation-state enabling group agent has two main moral characteristics

1. open membership (within reasonable bounds)
2. equality

Open Membership

Open membership based religions were a feature of the bronze and iron ages. No one batted an eye if you went to a city and made a donation to a certain temple. These temples weren't religion in our modern sense.  They were more like political-moral think tanks (i.e. Lincoln Foundation, or  Dems for Open Borders).  When the monotheistic religions emerged during the axial age, things changed.  Conversion was something more than acquiesce to a certain god's legitimacy and power (amongst a large pantheon of beings and competing meta-narrative fables).  Conversion entailed a new level of illiberalism.  It wasn't that your god was strongest and therefore had domination rights, it was that every other option was wrong and heretical to nature and logic itself.

This came hand in hand with a substantively different kind of proselytization.  You weren't just convincing opposing tribes of your god's legitimacy, and hence really just doing military diplomacy via meta-narrative and religious symbols. Rather, proselytization was about ensuring the right ideology was followed so damnation could be avoided.  Military politics was icing on the side.  Converted muslims could still rebel against a king. But rebelling against Islam was categorically different.  Religion supplanted governance as the prime organizing factor (they always lead and pace each other).

This meant that religious membership eventually evolved to be quite open.  Pretty much anyone could join Christianity. In practice I suspect there was actually a set of necessary but not sufficient factors that had to be met (i.e. 8 of these 10 factors or so and you were worthy to join).

So I assume the nation-state group agent emerged from this open membership morality. Anyone (within reason) that proclaimed a certain universalistic (moral) ideology was accepted. The French revolution just got rid of the supernatural element and added a secular one - liberte, egalite, fraternite.

Equality

The second moral group agent characteristic I think was needed for a nation-state turn was equality.  Just because you have a religion with open membership doesn't imply that all members are equal. Just think of the Roman Catholic church during the dark and medieval ages.

But equality doesn't imply some fantastical sort of progressive utopia (no rich or poor). Rather, I suspect it just means you are heavily biased to assume the range of behaviours you think are appropriate to people within your society also apply to those outside your society.  Thus, if you can take advantage of low IQ workers in your society you can do so to those outside. But while $2 an hour wages may be OK, slavery is not.  Bounds may be fuzzy, and may be coloured by perceived heritage and ideological sympathies, there are bounds.  (In general, I think such bounds tend to be aggregate sums rather than legalistic individual line items).

CONCLUSION

I think a nation state group agent that emerges giving prominence to two moral values of open membership and equality satisfy Hazony's ideas of Nationalism.  Nation states aren't just an inevitable balance point between anarchy and imperial authoritarianism.  Rather nation states are a product of a moral group agent based upon open membership and equality which occurs in a cultural group polity evolution landscape where hard borders are taken for granted.