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Azerbaijan, where I spent the last three days, takes pride in her tolerance towards ethnic minorities but her Armenians long ago fled. Before 1991 and the end of Communism, I was told that Azeris were a minority in Baku and there were large Russian and Armenian communities.
No Azeri argues for importing ethnic minorities so that Azeris become a minority in the country. On the contrary, despite 70 years of being told in schools and by their leaders that nations and ethnicity were examples of false consciousness, they and the Armenians fought each other because neither wanted to be ruled by foreigners.
Why is this surprising? Human beings have a need to belong to groups and the most important groups are the family and the nation. In the Eastern hemisphere nations have, at least in modern times, usually been literally extended families based on ethnicity. In the 20th century nation states were made with enormous pain but unmaking them will cause greater pain. Churchill said that the wars of the peoples will be crueller than the wars of the kings and so it has proved. But we ain't seen nothing yet if we go on dismantling nation states.
And yet Western Europe is ruled by people who do not understand about nations and why they are all important and Western universities churn out an academic proletariat who thinks nations are rather wicked.
No Azeri argues for importing ethnic minorities so that Azeris become a minority in the country. On the contrary, despite 70 years of being told in schools and by their leaders that nations and ethnicity were examples of false consciousness, they and the Armenians fought each other because neither wanted to be ruled by foreigners.
Why is this surprising? Human beings have a need to belong to groups and the most important groups are the family and the nation. In the Eastern hemisphere nations have, at least in modern times, usually been literally extended families based on ethnicity. In the 20th century nation states were made with enormous pain but unmaking them will cause greater pain. Churchill said that the wars of the peoples will be crueller than the wars of the kings and so it has proved. But we ain't seen nothing yet if we go on dismantling nation states.
And yet Western Europe is ruled by people who do not understand about nations and why they are all important and Western universities churn out an academic proletariat who thinks nations are rather wicked.
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