When I was a child, I remembered the fine distinction between playing tag and playing hide and seek. In tag, in its many variations, the game went on until someone was tagged or all but one person was tagged. In hide & seek, there was a home base where one could find safety from the person who was “it.” Needless to say, for a variety of reasons I greatly preferred playing hide & seek to tag, because I preferred having a home base to playing a game where there was no home base. I suppose, given the rather vagabondish existence of my life, that this preference for a home base has deeper meaning in terms of my own longing for a settled place. I have discussed this longing and the ironies of the course of my life, and assume that readers of this blog will be familiar with that fact already, so I would like to leave my own personal life for a moment and examine the problem of having a settled home base on a larger level than my own personal experience.

A nation is a group of people who identify with a particular ethnic identity. This ethnic identity can be based on any number of bases, including language, ancestry, religion, or culture. For example, the Serbs, Croats, and Bozniaks all speak the same language (called Serbo-Croat). Each of these peoples uses a different alphabet which is emblematic of a different religion (Serbs are generally Orthodox Christian, Croats are Roman Catholic, and Bozniaks are Muslim). What was once, in the depths of history, a common people have been divided by religion over the course of history, to the extent where they no longer see themselves as the same people and have engaged in ethnic cleansing over their national differences. Anywhere that a distinction can be drawn between groups of people, the possibility exists that these differences will lead to a different nationhood between the two groups of people. This has happened, for example, in Somalia, as the difference between French, Italian, British, and Ethiopian imperialism has divided the Somali people into four different nations which can be distinguished by their different colonial experience. The difference between Somalia and Somaliland consists largely of a clan division line that was superimposed with a colonial boundary that led to a different political culture springing up between one part of the larger Somali people and another, leading to a separate national identity between the groups.

As soon as a group develops sufficient cohesion to recognize itself as part of a larger whole, it is entirely natural and proper for that nation to desire its own space where it feels at home and feels that its own cultural identity is respected and honored. At times, this space can be found as being a part of a larger nation that includes a definite space for local concerns, a type of orginization known as federalism. Whether one is looking at Swiss cantons or American states or French departments, federalism offers at least the potential for distinctive cultures that nonetheless share a common identity at some level to unite together and have the space for both their unity and their diversity, allowing room for common action where there is common agreement and room for separate space where there are different cultural ideals. The absence of private space tends to lead to a unitary state where minority groups feel disrespected and alienated, leading to separatist pressures. The absence of a common identity makes it impossible to have a well-functioning state, leading to the situation of a failed state or tyrannical and oppressive rule by whatever group can summon the most cohesion to dominate broken institutions in the permanent threat of anarchy or rebellion on the part of marginalized and disenfranchised groups.

Much of the evil of this world on a larger scale comes in the distance between nationhood and statehood in a variety of forms. Many nations exist that do not have states, whether we are talking about the free people of Taiwan, the Kurds, the Basques, Tibetans, the Nevesians, the Tuareg of the Sahara, or any number of other peoples. For a long time, between the fall of the Hasmoneans and the independence of Israel, the Jews did not have a state that belonged to them (unless one counts the Khazar Empire, but even this particular state was a multicultural one and not a state founded on a particular Jewish identity). A lack of statehood makes a people particularly vulnerable, as there is no “safe place” for a nation to have as a base which provides a recognized home base as well as a sounding board for making sure that the world and its international bodies are aware of the treatment of a particular people. All too often the issues and identities of stateless nations are assumed not to exist at all because there is nowhere on the map that can be seen as belonging to that particular people under their own self-government. Likewise, the existence of states where there is no common identity or nationhood will tend to lead either to a state of anarchy where different groups compete for their own exploitation of national institutions that become domains for plunder or a state that is tyranically governed by a person or by a ‘nation’ within the state which has the highest cohesion and therefore the highest power. In either case, that state will be a failed state because the essential conditions for just government will not be met–a government by the people, of the people, and for the people, subject of course to the eternal laws of God. Even the more basic requirements of a tolerable republican government are not met when there is a lack of common identity between those who rule and those who are ruled.

Let us not assume that these evils merely exist on the individual level or on the level of entire peoples and tribes. Rather, they exist at every level of human activity. Wherever people are grouped together, the fate of those who are in those groups will depend on the level to which that group shares a common culture and worldview and loving concern for other members of the group. Where these conditions are present, it will be possible (though not certain) that there will be genuine harmony and unity between the members of the group, be it a family, a church, a business, a vocal group, or any other community. Where these elements are absent, only anarchy and tyranny will be options for that particular group, because either the natural lack of cohesion will show in the lack of concerted behavior among people, or a person or group of people will attempt to force a unity on the group by violence and oppression. Good government is only possible where there is a shared worldview and mutual love and respect between those who rule and those who are ruled. The absence of love and respect makes only bad government or no government possible. This would seem to indicate that when we find problems in our institutions, we need to examine the spiritual state of its people and its rulers, to examine whether there is mutual love and respect to be found there, with common identity and common worldview. Where there is no such common identity, and no genuine and freely chosen identity can be found, either we must hold our institutions together by force, or we must find a way to separate between our constituent parts and divide among ourselves, so that each of the peoples within our institutions may have their own home base, just like one finds in the games of childhood.