When the American Civil War ended with the surrender of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, scarcely any American, north or south, could estimate how much the country had changed from the peaceful and prosperous nation of thirty-one million souls to a nation burdened with debt, with the south in ruins, and over 600,000 men—the flower of a generation—had perished. Young men who should have been starting families, instead left scores of widows and never-married women to die alone and forgotten. With sometimes hard feelings and desire for revenge, nevertheless, reconciliation and reconstruction were taking apace in the business of making money, driving innovation to turn America into an industrial behemoth.
HUMAN PROGRESS THROUGH WAR AND PEACE
Once the rebellion had been quelled and the union restored, the United States Army was the largest in the world, having swelled to over 600,000 active-duty enlisted men by early 1865, and would total close to one million in the immediate aftermath of General Lee’s surrender. With the war over, the European powers looked with worried apprehension upon the newly restored union. With a peacetime army of 16,000 at the onset of the rebellion, the size of the U.S. Army in 1865 dwarfed any conceivable number of soldiers that could oppose American expansion—north or south. Great Britain, France, or Russia, could not—separately or in combination—hope to defend their interests against American expansion. By 1867, matters “progressed” as follows:
France withdrew all its forces from Emperor Maximilian’s Mexico, upon entry into Mexico by an American Army led by General Sheridan. Fighting both American and Mexican regulars was thought to be “imprudent”—resulting in the collapse of Louis Napolean’s imperial venture, concluding with the execution of Emperor Maximillian.
Russia had good relations with the United States, unshakably supporting the American union from the onset. Its sole North American possession, Alaska, was at a distance that put it closer to London than Moscow, making it difficult to maintain supply lines in case of war. Moreover, Russia saw its geopolitical adversary as Great Britain, not America. The tsar and his military advisors recognized they had not the wherewithal to defend such a distant territory against British encroachment. Russia approached the U.S. Secretary of State to gauge America’s interest in buying Alaska. Agreement was swift, and the U.S. came into possession of an additional 600,000 square miles, at the bargain price of about two cents an acre.
After the union victory, Great Britain recognized that in spite of possessing the mightiest naval fleet in the world, it would be a tall task to defend its island colonies and naval bases in the Caribbean Sea against a union navy that had successfully blockaded a 1,500-mile coastline stretching from the Rappahannock to the Rio Grande. In addition, Canada shared a five-thousand-mile boundary with the United States. This long stretch of a common boundary was, and still is, the longest common land boundary in the world between two sovereigns. Guarded by a mere eleven-thousand troops stationed in Canada since the Slidell incident of 1861, Great Britain, despite its preponderance of naval power, could not hope to stave off an invasion of a half-million seasoned veterans of the bloodiest conflict in history up to that time. With access to the interior blocked by ice floes in the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes for more than six months of the year, British supply lines could not furnish provisions in winter months, should its warships be trapped in the ice deep in the interior of North America. In any event, the union had demonstrated its perseverance in its armies to vanquish the south, and its naval effectiveness in choking the south from being supplied.
For these and other reasons, i.e., a suspected loyalty of its francophone population, British warships stayed clear of Canada. During the war, only a relatively few confederate commerce raiders successfully ran the union blockade. Although the blockade was, on the whole, successful, the United States demanded a steep restitution for damages to U.S. merchant vessels by these ironclad commerce raiders. When the United States demanded reparations for British-built commerce raiders, Great Britain agreed to international arbitration. The arbitration panel endorsed the American position in 1872, in which Britain settled the matter of the “Alabama Claims,” by paying the United States $15.5 million, ending the dispute. 1872 was also a significant turning-point in world affairs, as American industrial production, for the first time, surpassed Great Britain.
TO EMBRACE A NEW UNION
In the aftermath of the war, America acted in earnest to reconstruct the south, restore the union, and continue policies already underway through the foresight of the nation’s sixteenth president—and its first from the Republican Party. In 1862, with the party of Lincoln in control of Congress, the Dred Scott decision was finally repealed, forever outlawing slavery in the territories. President Lincoln, later that year, as a war measure, issued an Executive Order “forever freeing” slaves in bondage in the states of insurrection. Although no slaves were immediately freed by this measure, it was with a view towards removing the stain of human bondage—America’s original sin. The war was no longer about saving the “old” union; a new union had to be embraced. Slavery had existed long enough.
Ending the wickedness of slavery required that the union should prevail. But even with a union victory to be expected—what to do about the loss of hundreds of thousands of men in the prime of life—not to mention the freeing of four million slaves, unused to freedom and the responsibilities and requirements of voting citizenship?
With foresight, the U.S. Congress, at the insistence of President Lincoln, enacted two laws. First, the Homestead Act was passed in 1862, which would facilitate westward expansion by granting 160 acres of public (mostly western) land, to settlers for a nominal fee. Their only obligation was to reside and improve the land. Coupled with the Homestead Act, Congress, controlled by Republicans, passed the Morrill Act, also enacted in 1862, which established a system of land-grant colleges to teach the agricultural and mechanical arts.
While Americans were rushing to pursue their happiness through homesteading and education, its northern neighbor took a different route to building a strong nation.
CANADIAN PROGRESS: MAKE HASTE SLOWLY
Canadians, as loyal British subjects, awaited direction from the mother country to enact legislation to enable Canada to foster a semblance of nationhood that would be maintained as a confederation. The intent was to create through legislation a society of “peace, order, and good government.” After virtual neglect for almost a century since the end of the French and Indian War, Great Britain began in earnest to pay attention to its largest and most important colonial North American possession, Canada. Unlike its southern neighbor, Canada was not fashioned from a revolutionary spirit. It was crafted from a combination of loyal subjects fleeing from the thirteen American colonies; a subservient francophone population of dubious loyalty* to the British Crown; and remnants of Indian tribes that actively gave material support to British forces during the American Revolution.
*Why did Quebec decline overtures from agents representing the thirteen “southern” colonies to join in revolt against British rule? The Quebecois were not convinced that they would get a “fair shake,” i.e., better treatment, from a colonial league of slave-owning colonies. Recent British legislation had carved out Quebec as a designated catholic and francophone region under the provisions of the Quebec Act (1774). The colonial overtures appeared to be patently insincere, overlooking pejorative references to French-speaking Catholics in the Declaration of Independence:
“He (King George III) has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: … For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.”
Despite some measure of local autonomy affording Quebec, the French in Canada broke out in frequent revolt, culminating in the Lower Canada (Quebec) Rebellion of 1837-1838.** British suppression of the Rebellion through widespread administration of the gallows abhorred its American neighbors. When Michigan, admitted as the 26th state to the American Union in 1837, widespread sentiment had already been developing against the barbaric and widespread executions to crush the revolt. In reaction to its gut-level disgust against this barbarity, Michigan enshrined its revulsion in law, outlawing the death penalty in 1846, making it the first anglosphere jurisdiction that generally outlawed capital punishment.
**Jules Verne’s novel, FAMILY WITHOUT A NAME, published in 1889, covers this time period in a family context of two brothers vowing to reclaim the family honor through a revolutionary uprising.
BIRTH OF A NATION
Canada, as a self-governing nation, was neither born out of revolution, nor through a sweeping outburst of nationalistic sentiment. Rather, Great Britain, the “mother country,” took measures towards resolving Canada’s precarious status vis-à-vis a newly reunited United States.
The union of British North America was a long-simmering idea. With the purchase of the Louisiana country by the United States in 1803, the area of the U.S. doubled immediately, with its northern boundary reaching the Oregon country. By mid-century, British administration and control of its vast Canadian territory gained currency in strategic military plans for the securing of this vast territory. The Provinces of Ontario and Québec, in particular, due to their central position, favored some arrangement of federation or Home Rule. In the Atlantic colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, however, a great deal of pressure would still be necessary to convert romantic ideas of a single northern nation into political reality.
South of the border, the raising of a huge United States army during its Civil War (1861–65) to crush the rebellion, shelved British plans to reduce its financial and military obligations to Canada. The union victory boosted fears of American annexation. By providing Canada some measure of self-rule, Canadian lawmakers would be in a better position to take pre-emptive action to preclude the territories to the west and north of “the Canadas”—Quebec and Ontario—from annexation by the United States.
Through a series of measures, Great Britain acted to prop up its position as guarantor of Canadian sovereignty, culminating in passage of the British North America Act of 1867. The Act effectuated Confederation on July 1, 1867, in a Union of the British North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the “Province of Canada” (Ontario and Québec). Canada was to build and become a nation under different ideals, as discussed below.
Confederation could offer the colonies strength through unity, an idea that gained steady support, especially in the wake of the US abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty on tariff-free trade, in 1866. In the face of dwindling external markets, Confederation could facilitate trade between the provinces and with increased access to foreign markets. While economic benefits carried the day, not all Canadian communities saw it that way.
The original inhabitants, the indigenous natives of the soil, valued their autonomy and way of life. They were not consulted by governing authorities, nor did they care to be further diminished in number as a much smaller part of a larger whole. Francophone speakers resisted Confederation—they did not want to be swamped in a North American anglosphere. But, underpinning it all was a unitive desire to avoid the catastrophe that enveloped its large neighbor to the south in the bloodiest conflict up to that time, by constructing nationhood on different values.
PEACE, ORDER AND GOOD GOVERNMENT
The Canadian path to nationhood was stated in terms less individualistic than the “self-evident truths” declared in America’s founding document. Instead of the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence’s “inalienable right” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Canadian subjects to the British Crown, in the famous phrase of Canada’s founding document—the British North America Act of 1867—favored a union constitutive of “peace, order and good government.” Before uncovering their meaning in this Canadian context, clarification and definitions of these constituent elements, and their unitive properties, are in order.
The “peace, order and good government” championed by Canadians, then and since, is not a statement of human rights, as such. Rather, it is a declaration of who shall rule; who shall make law at the local, provincial, territorial, and national levels; and the related powers delegated among them. The Canadian Parliament has primary lawmaking authority over the nation as a whole.*** Parliament, as the national government, may delegate responsibilities to the provinces; and from the provinces may delegate to local governments the power to make local law. In essence, all responsibilities not delegated from the national government to the provinces is reserved to the national government.****
***As British subjects, they are subject to the British Crown directly, or through the Crown’s delegation of authority to the Governor General.
****Delegation of power flows from the nation to the provinces. This is distinguished from the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
PEACE
Peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace is inextricably intertwined with war. Just as “the poor shall always be with you,” there will always be internal conflicts within societies and external conflict between peoples and nations in societies writ large—the “warring” State.*****
***** Strong and well-ordered states need sufficient power to pursue their national interests—in the use of both “hard” and “soft” power. Warring Power requires the accumulation of resources that deters war, since no enemy would dare to confront such a prepared polity.
Warring does not mean that wars are inevitable outcomes of conflict, but as a desired peaceful condition of “prepared deterrence”—that to deter aggression, the state must, out of necessity, prepare for war.*** ***
*** *** “Let him who desires peace, prepare for war” [Vegetius, De Re Militari, “On the Matter of War”]. Note: With all their tutelar gods guarding and protecting Rome, Romans had scarcely known a year of peace.
I discuss war above in the context of Canadian nationhood because Great Britain “initiated” Canadian union out of realpolitik calculations vis-à-vis the newly reunited United States, so as to preclude a war where the British naval Leviathan would little matter against the continental American Behemoth. As the continental land hegemon, America was in a position to end British presence on North American soil.**** *** In any event, the Americans would be too busy with restoring the union and reconstructing the southern states to engage the energies of the nation, rather than in the pursuit of empire.
**** ***This would include the sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States in 1867.
As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Since men are not angels, we will never live to see the withering away of the state. Like death and taxes, hierarchy, law, and governmental power to control the governed, without the will to control itself, shall be always with us. That does not mean that societies need a police state to control conflict, nor is it necessary to militarize the civilian population through secret informers or widespread surveillance. Societies at peace are able to do so by teaching, maintaining, and enforcing social strictures that obviate the need for a Leviathan state apparatus. Rather, civil society undertakes the high responsibility to inculcate and internalize moral values encompassing virtuous human capital with high levels of trustworthiness.**** ****
**** **** Why is virtue and trustworthiness necessary? America’s first two presidents gave what they believed to be absolutely and sufficiently necessary if the republic were to survive.
George Washington in his Farewell Address to the nation in 1796, wrote: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man … should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. … Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. … It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
In 1798, John Adams, in a speech addressing alien and sedition activities, stated famously, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” emphasizing the necessity of virtue and ethical principles in sustaining a democratic society.
When violations of the social contract arise in some societies, dishonor and shame*** *** *** have a way of controlling the governed, often without the need to rely on force to maintain the peace, despite of—or maybe due to—the prevalence of an armed citizenry. ***** *****
*** *** *** Shame, honor, and duty, still prevail within peaceful, Japanese society. (However, harikiri is now frowned upon as shameful—it just isn’t “cool.”) Like most societies, high ethical and moral standards are promulgated for their “fighters”. They become known to history as orders of chivalry, knights, samurai, etc. When these elite orders of the realm fail in honoring their own code of ethics, they experience profound shame. For shame, in warrior societies, was a breach of failure of the warrior’s primary devotion to duty, honor, and country. The Warrior’s Way—Bushido—was a code of conduct that valorized the virtues of restraint and self-control, such as allegiance, loyalty, humility, forbearance, and patience. A higher rank of aristocratic Japanese warriors, the samurai, cultivated the “big-hearted” virtues such as audacity, courage, daring, generosity, and liberality.
***** ***** In the United States, the State of Wyoming, which ranks 50th in total population and 49th by population density, had the fifth lowest crime rate among the states—despite ranking first in gun ownership [237 guns owned per 1,000 population.] This is a true statistical outlier. New Mexico ranks second [55 per 1000]; New Hampshire ranks third [47 per 1000], etc.
Why is it that Wyoming, a mostly rural state with next-to-no crime or gun homicide, can peacefully maintain a gun ownership rate more than five times that of second-ranked New Mexico? Part of the reason can be explained that Wyoming is a western state of vast territory not quickly traversable. ‘In the “Old West”, with its mountainous terrain and “Badlands” desiccation, winter left homesteads isolated up to six months of the year, trapped in heavy snows, subzero temperatures, strong, gusty winds blowing from the North, that produced snowdrifts and sudden avalanches. Such contesting with the extreme elements fostered a tough, independent self-reliant population, that administered summary justice in the common understanding that the “U.S. Marshall was still three days away.”
SHAME HONORS A NATION—THE TALES OF THE NISEI
Shame is very effective in regulating behavior, both in Japan and in their overseas communities, in that relationships between people are suffused with duty and obligation. In fact, shame may serve as a useful call to action: The desire to preserve honor and avoid shame played a key role among Japanese Americans during World War II. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, shamed many Japanese Americans. In spite of prejudice, young Nisei (second generation Japanese in the U.S.) were eager to fight. They wanted to remove the shame caused by Pearl Harbor, and they were determined to prove their loyalty to their country, thus bringing honor to their Japanese community in the U.S. In January 1943, the U.S. military began to admit Nisei. As sons set off to war, so many mothers and fathers told them, “Live if you can; die if you must; but fight always with honor, and never, ever bring shame on your family or your country.”
ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO
In singing of arms and a man, the Roman poet Virgil sang praises to Aeneas, the hero of his legendary epic. In the Aeneid, Virgil weaves escape, flight, wanderings, and evasions, in a long journey that “lost” Troy and found Rome.
Rather than covering epic heroes and their derring-do’s, for the sake of progress and the progressive project, I conjecture the following: does the common or widespread possession of firearms by private citizens constitute a public danger or enhance public safety?
Gun ownership and its relation to public safety have already been discussed in the American context. That does not mean that America has no problem with firearm violence. Whether America would be better off with more or fewer lawful gunowners is beside the point, and I do not intend to resolve this matter here.
THE EXAMPLE OF SWITZERLAND
Many factors contribute to the anomaly of a nation of near-universal firearm possession with one of the lowest crime rates associated with the use of firearms. Despite 29 percent of the Swiss population owning firearms, (it ranks second only to the United States), Switzerland has the world’s 15th lowest crime rate, and scarcely any of them involve guns. Unlike the American experience, though, the Swiss do not possess guns to defend themselves and their dwellings against threats among themselves. Rather, the Swiss Federation maintains a national service militia. This roots Swiss gun culture in the tradition of citizen-soldiers, in which military service is mandatory. Such a high rate of gun ownership empowers citizen-soldiers to take responsibility for public safety and national defense, while U.S. gun ownership is defended primarily on grounds of freedom and self-defense—especially in the right to resist a tyrannical government.
BROODING BIRTH OF A NATION
Nation-states are seldom born without experiencing frequent miscarriages, stillborn uprisings, and coming to terms that seldom satisfies all parties. The delivery of a healthy nation-state after long months of brooding, presents its own challenges and problems. In North America during the “Articles of Confederation” years (1781-1787), the new nation could scarcely be seen as united. While the nation was at peace with its neighbors and the European powers, peace in the colonies was not finally “won” until 1791, when Rhode Island, the last holdout colony, agreed to join the union. But maintenance of the peace requires the maintenance of order. This requires the state have coercive power to maintain the nation’s integrality, while furnishing compromising guidance in the art of factional dispute, according to what justice permits and requires. All the foregoing constitutes ordered freedom, which is borne out of the constitution, which we now turn to.
ORDERED FREEDOM
The maintenance of order is a primary responsibility of government. However, no matter how well designed, governments cannot do it all; government cannot be everywhere—even under the most draconian surveillance states. Something other than “the coercive power of the state” is needed. This “something else” is social order.
Social order refers to stability, with shared social norms, based on a common culture. Without social order, chaos, entropic breakdown, and multicultural tribalism rents the public peace. Restoration of order requires establishing extensive norms that can tie and hold together numerous groups with one set of laws for the whole society. A nation can still be formed and be maintained with maximal freedom around subsidiary, organic communities, that spontaneously arise around ethnic, linguistic, religious—and even regional loyalties.
Organic communities ‘come out of their group shells’ when they turn to commerce—the business of exchanging goods and services in a cash economy. The more a society turns to commerce, the more it promotes peaceful and orderly existence in a system of ordered liberty which sets limits and defines the boundaries between competing interests.
In a system of ordered liberty, there is not one freedom, but many freedoms. There is no abstract freedom, but articulated freedoms, which are qualified liberties. There is a general freedom to act, to actualize one’s potentiality, in order to achieve one’s particular perfection. But license to act on the basis of one’s beliefs is not “ordered liberty.” Ordered liberty does not prevent lawmakers from deciding how individual conduct should be regulated.
GOOD GOVERNMENT
Good government among a people arises organically from a nation’s traditions and values, rather than from seizure of power among contesting factions within, or from invading forces without. The methods and mechanisms of good government cannot be imposed from above, or imposed by a foreign set of values, or imposed by a conquering Caesar. It is fundamentally about making law, which starts from the premise: who makes the law? In an organic community, that “who” is a legislative body. An organic community makes law in several ways. Lawmaking may come directly from the people through direct democracy, like the polis of ancient Athens. Good governments can establish consensus through plebiscite or referenda; or through the selection of representatives, chosen directly or indirectly, by the people as a whole.
People that have had long years of experience with self-rule, i.e., making their own laws, is a sine qua non starting point before assuming a separate and equal station among the nations of the earth. Such is the case with the American Revolution. Prior to becoming the United States of America, the thirteen original colonies had already enjoyed some measure of independence and experience with self-rule. They valued managing their own affairs, rather than surrender their birthright as freemen to an imperial and distant power’s ever encroaching control over the making of law by colonial officials.
Good governments do not come through delegating that responsibility to others, such as through unelected judges or other administrative experts working mysteriously and supposedly on behalf of the people. This reduces law-making to administration, to what constitutes administrative law. Effective, good governance mandates that delegated, authorized officials manage public resources without abuse—going beyond statutory and customary limits; and to be free from corruption—not simply going beyond, but going against the rule of law.
Good governance is not just about doing things efficiently and in the economical use of societal resources within a rules-framed framework. It is not simply about good intentions. To succeed, it must be effective at governance, in which the state has the men, material, and money necessary to function. Otherwise, we have another failed state in the annals of history. For example, a state unable to collect taxes is a failed state almost by definition. Tax collection, like other public functions such as public safety, need to be based on results. In business parlance, this means focusing on “deliverables”—security, protection, enforcement, etc. All of the foregoing furnishes the glue that binds a people. Social Trust and justice are enhanced when the common good among the three institutions necessary to promote good governance—the state, private sector, and civil society—are in consensus. But without deterrence or punishment, there is impunity, to which we now turn.
IMPUNITY
In The City of God, St. Augustine observed that kingdoms that do not “practice” justice are “failed states” ruled by “great bands of robbers.” When robbers become rulers, they are not only unconstrained by avarice, but also by the addition of impunity. Redressing grievances becomes virtually impossible when immunity flourishes. Validity standards are the primary means by which societies deny impunity to unjust rulers, as noted by both Augustine in the context of Roman jurisprudence, and by Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Common Law. The validity of law is governed by its enforceability upon rulers, (i.e., “no one is above the law”), constraining the ruler’s ability to enforce his will through legal coercion. This places the law in autonomy from the caprice of unjust rulers, producing morally just decisions in a framework of predictability by denying them impunity.
CONCLUSION
The United States and Canada were both established as foils to Great Britain. In the former, it was a willingness to fight for liberty; in the latter it was Canadian patience to maintain peace and loyalty to its overseas rulers in London. Americans took things into their own hands. Canadians awaited direction and lawful intervention at the will of the mother country. The whole being of Americans was opposed to anything smacking of privilege, that limited their pursuit of happiness and the acquisition of property in land. Canadians—both English and French—accepted European structures of social order based on estates of the realm such as rank, patriarchy, and class distinctions almost amounting to feudalism. Americans were constantly on the move, rail-splitting their way to the next westward opening to settlement. They acted as liberal individualists who live by the law of contract without custom or regional loyalty. Canadians constituted two cultures—French and English—who viewed themselves as two nations, not as citizens of a common country, but as subjects of the British monarch.
Though both Canada and the U.S. are, in the religious sphere, nominally Protestant (pace Francophone Quebec), their spiritual traditions proved to be decisive in shaping the destinies of both nations of North America. Canada represented a more conservative or traditional spirituality—an almost Platonic philosophy– of a nation’s spiritual trajectory that ascended from being to Absolute Being—to ‘put to rout’ the forces of becoming—disorder, disintegration, contingency, and lack of differentiation—to the absolute and eternal traditional values of authority, discipline, hierarchy, obedience, and order. Without continuity that prevails in nonrevolutionary societies, Canadians believed the peace was unlikely, order a pipe dream, and that good government can only be found in kingdoms not of this world.
U.S. Protestant denominations can be found among any gathering intolerant of every higher principle of authority. Although they may be found in large numbers among conservatives and traditionalists, they tend towards liberal individualism with a large contingent of them championing the rights of individuals to be left alone. These ‘liberal’ conservatives are known as libertarians. They accede to no authority in the realm of conscience. On the matter of resolving controversy through the judicial branch, they prefer ambiguity rather than resolution. Americans do not willingly surrender to the conclusions of a tribunal. They reject European magisterial maxims such as France’s “the people’s voice is the supreme court;” England’s “the king can do no wrong;” and “Rome has spoken.”
What characterizes each nation’s philosophy of government with respect to its citizens, and its social philosophy over managing conflict among the citizenry, are their views of “fences.” What are fences for, after all? For some, it is the call of the Old West—”don’t fence me in.” For others, it is the reminder that man is a communal being that can only flourish in societies where “good fences make good neighbors.” The former stands for liberty—to be free to move on to ever greener pastures, not subjected to constraints; the latter stands for sovereignty of the state that has vested power to guarantee rights and civil liberties, which are limited in application and bounded by good sense. In our own day, we are witnessing in real time the gradual dissolution of globalism to the particularism of national cultures and multiple nationality civilization states. What globalism is, and how globalism came into being—its early successes, followed by stagnation in bureaucracy, and finally the rise of patriotic and populist uprisings that threaten to end a rules-based international schema of multilateral regulation, will be the subject of my next post.