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.