Article by Marian Halcombe.

Excerpt:

Theos half understands this. In its advice on how to talk to the Committed Separatists, it raises what it calls the Progressive’s Dilemma, asking whether “high levels of taxation and redistribution” can be sustained “without commensurate levels of national loyalty”. It also asks whether a country with a thin sense of itself can stand up to “nationalistically-inclined powers on the world stage”, before quoting Alasdair MacIntyre’s remark that being asked to die for the modern state would be “like being asked to die for the telephone company” (pp. 109–10). So it accepts that a thick national identity is needed after all. It is needed so that people will pay their taxes and fight in wars. What is not wanted is enough national feeling for the people to object to who governs them and how. There, in two paragraphs, is the whole political theory of the managerial class.