I don't necessarily always read George Monbiot when he pops up in my daily newspaper of choice, and yesterday was one of the days I didn't - initially. But then later I heard him in discussion with another guy on the radio, and what he was saying sent me back to have a look at his article. I see that Mick Hartley and Tim Worstall have both already taken this up, but here is my own, slightly different, sixpence worth.
Monbiot trades on an obvious point: in the name of nations and nationalism, much blood has been shed and many wrongs have been done. Apart from that, however, his view is just simplistic. One way of getting at how is to move away, at first, from patriotism, national allegiance, love of country - the immediate terrain of argument - and to notice that one of the things most people care, and care quite deeply, about is who and what they are. And, leaving aside those who are abject or ashamed about who and what they are - not an especially good model of emotional well-being - many people manage to take some pleasure and pride in that. This doesn't have to involve their nationality at all, and often it doesn't involve it. It can be about the talents or skills they have, or their achievements, or their virtues, or even simply aspects of their temperament and character; or it can be about belonging to something larger than oneself, a family, group of friends, voluntary organization, culture (in one sense or another among several possible senses). What we're looking at here are aspects of identity, and on the basis of everything we know about human beings, it would be a strange lot of them who had no interest in, or attachment to, who and what they are, however historically accidental aspects of this may in some respects be.
Of course, and notoriously, who a person is - his or her identity - can be, as well as a matter of pride and pleasure, also something turned outwards against others: a claim to superiority over them, a mode of exclusion, a discourse of hatred. But while this is possible, it isn't inevitable. Caring about and having some attachment to who you are, individually and socially, need have no noxious implications or behavioural symptoms whatever. I can be glad of what I know about jazz, or cricket, or Rosa Luxemburg, or Richard Rorty, glad that I am a father or Jewish or have been a writer and teacher, without thinking that others who know about opera, or golf, or George Sand, or Jacques Derrida, or have no children, or aren't Jewish, or are musicians or joiners, are worse or lesser people.
So exactly is it with those aspects of identity that relate to nation and country - and I write as someone whose personal history has not rooted him deeply in any national community. (I have lived in this country for more than 40 years and have always liked being here, and am indeed at home. When I go away, I'm always happy to get back. But from the simple fact that people who meet me for the first time invariably ask where I'm from, I've never had the sense that this is where I belong - in adulthood, neither in England nor anywhere else.) People can be happy and proud to be English or British, Danish, American, Indian, Japanese, without being so in a chauvinist or racist way. It's just part of who they are. How could they be indifferent to that? What is more, they can identify with others of their kind and feel they belong to a particular place, without either of these things implying any contempt or disrespect towards those who are different and live elsewhere. And this is to say nothing of taking pleasure in some of the products of their culture (as they are better placed to do than are the great majority of those for whom it is a foreign culture); or of being properly appreciative of whatever national political 'virtues' or other achievements there may be.
An attachment to your own country or nation or culture, in sum, doesn't have to be chauvinist. We know this from the simple fact that for many people it isn't. George Monbiot's abstract universalism is a caricature of liberal and egalitarian values. These don't demand some sort of empty generalism. They allow, precisely, particularities to flourish on an equal basis. It is a mistake for people of progressive outlook to concede the values which Monbiot thinks he can safely renounce to reactionaries, postmodernists, crazies.