On rejecting nationalism exhaustively (the prequel)…

Blogging tends to begin in medias res. Folk may note their particular party affiliations, reveal their intellectual orientations in brief and make (relatively) plain their views on particular issues. Out of this speeding river of emerging opinion, splashes of insight are gleaned into the individual commentator’s broader conceptual commitments and political ideas, their world view and their reasons. Our first principles repose deep, deep in the luminous gloom beneath our rushing surface characters. It is easy, generally, to grow to love our labels. It reduces life’s complexity, makes for neat categorisation, and generally obscures more than it illuminates. A Labour blog, we may insist with confidence, Green Party opinion, we crisply characterise as if this told us everything about the writer and what he or she believes.

Of course it doesn’t – sensible folk would recognise that – but the deeper, determining principles are obviously matters of some curiosity. Indeed, if you squint into exchanging arguments, it is generally at this implicit, conceptualising level that the real basis for the disagreement dwells. As it happens, I’ve been considering writing a post outlining in personal terms the reasons behind my own Scottish political nationalism and membership of the SNP. Helpfully and by way of providing me with something to respond to, Paul Hutcheon has a polemic in the Sunday Herald this morning on what he styles “Salmond’s Cod Nationalism” which he thinks obscures the “bigger picture”. Read it, reflect on it – and I’ll hope to have something written about it during the early part of next week.