People who want to live a normal life, work honestly, raise children and everything else, they need a nation state. The nation state in turn needs people who will be emotionally connected to it. This means that belonging to the nation and citizenship of the nation state will be part of their identity. It will be absolutely obvious to them that they connect their personal future and the future of their loved ones with the future of the nation. This includes a willingness to serve in the armed forces (with all the discomfort and risks that this entails), but also a willingness to support various measures to defend national independence and self-reliance.
We come up against the usual cycle of causes. People support the nation state. The nation-state creates an environment that provides space for people to live well. And it also creates an environment in which it is normal and commonplace to support the nation-state.
People support their nation state. The nation-state creates an environment that provides space for people to live well.
The awareness that individuals, families and the nation need each other must exist within every social stratum. Indeed, after the experience of the last two centuries, it seems that without this consciousness, the social contract – that unwritten and unspoken common consciousness of mutual obligations – cannot function. This is a problem especially for those at the top. The upper classes quite logically try to squeeze as much as possible out of the lower classes. But this economic interest can be dampened by the knowledge that members of the upper classes are also dependent on the success of the nation as a whole.
We shouldn’t imagine that a citizen is chosing from multiple options – national, global, corporate, European… Then all anyone would have to do is invest in a massive marketing campaign and the nation would fall apart. The situation would constantly be very fragile, and investment in the national future would be irrational from the point of view of individuals. This is, in fact, the situation in which a significant proportion of the population of contemporary European states lives today.
