Liberal patriots and most Christian Kings
One of the curious things about the national pride, such as it is, of modern British left liberals, is that it has little to do with Britain as a real country with real history at all. Instead, this pride depends upon the extent to which Britain fulfils the tenets of liberalism, like how medieval monarchs sought to be the ‘most Christian King’ among their peers. This type of pride, the pride of best exemplifying a belief system sited above and beyond the nation, is the way to understand modern liberal national pride, rather than anything we might call traditional nationalism.
In the medieval and early modern periods the papacy bestowed such titles as the most Christian King on the kings of France, the most Catholic King on the kings of Spain, the Most Faithful King on the kings of Portugal, Defender of the Faith on the kings of England, and the Apostolic Majesty on the kings of Hungary. Here, Christianity and the Catholic church which was its worldly embodiment is the universal standard by which all else is judged, kings and their kingdoms gain the stamp of legitimacy from its approval. While (contra Hobsbawm et al.), national/ethnic particularism did have an important role to play in pre-modern European political legitimacy (see the declaration of Arbroath for an example), it was often beneath the surface where this role was enacted; offically, religious (and dynastic) justifications ruled.
In the age of nationalism we see a change, with particular national narratives being emphasised as defining the identity of the nation-state, with their own particular languages and ethnic origins. In his ‘Addresses to the German Nation’ in 1808 Fichte distinguished the particular characteristics of Germans in historical accounts going back to Tacitus. Lavisse’s history of France textbook for schoolchildren (1884) traces the unique characteristics of the French going back to the Gauls, while Britain and America looked back to the freedom-loving Anglo-Saxons as their chosen ancestors. Sovereignty was justified in the name of the people, and the Church lost its legitimacy-bestowing powers in catholic as well as protestant countries.
Today we are back to the pre-nationalist fashion. Fundamental British values are ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs’. I.e. the whole package of contemporary liberalism, pretty much indistinguishable from those of any other Western country. I would like to see citizens of various countries be given a list of the ‘fundamental values’ professed by the countries in their region and struggle to guess which one is their own.
It seems absurd to me to define a country in such a generic way, but for a certain type of self conceived cosmopolitan this is highly important - see the ‘post-brexit shame’ afflicting many in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum. The shame was not from anything tangible, but from the sense that Britain had abjured the sacred liberal cause and was now to suffer a terrible self-inflicted excommunication. Human Rights are invoked as sui generis rules trumping any democratic legislature, rather than a set of laws designed in response to the historically specific crimes of WW2 (now employed in situations inconceivable to their creators). The EU, being today’s post-national liberal institution par excellence, now denounces its members like Hungary and Poland when their elected governments step out of line from liberal pieties due to the fact that their populations do not share the exact same cultural norms as Western Europe. What is most important clearly is how well its member states fulfil its liberal ideology, and little to do with the actual cultural characteristics of European peoples. Its definition of liberal democracy clearly means something quite different from ‘a government the people vote for’.
And it is this which is the key bit of cognitive dissonance for the contemporary aspirants to be the Most Christian Kings; the claims that democracy is a core value when in fact it is liberalism, not democracy, which is. This dissonance is why they must resort to conspiracy theories (the Russians, Facebook, or the right-wing media) to explain the many recent examples of when democracy has led to illiberal outcomes. Going forward then, as long as the pillars of liberal democracy remain officially as they are now, we should expect to see democratic decisions continually cast in the liberal mind as not actually democratic at all.