Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. When nations develop the same self-adulatory fixation, reality produces something uglier. Despite two millenniums of what we like to consider gradual enlightenment, the beast is alive and wreaking havoc as ever, feeding off disputes from Chechnya to Sri Lanka, Liberia to Kurdistan.
Nationalism picks up where negotiation leaves off, digging deep mental trenches.
The international response to its depredations remains an attempt to pick up the pieces in its wake of refugees and tombstones. Drawing a straight line between hot air and dangerous demagoguery has never been easy. The same rule must also apply within the circles of power. This litmus test was failed recently in a case that illustrates how easily the line between tolerance and railroading is blurred, even in democracies. The country is Spain, the politician who spoke against nationalist excess is Aleix Vidal-Quadras, a former lecturer in nuclear physics in Barcelona who became president of the Catalan branch of the conservative Popular Party.