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The nation state is a rotten idea

Official sign reading: 'No entry, border crossing'.

17 November 2010

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace ...
John Lennon - 1971

There was a time when most people belonged to natural communities or roamed the earth as free agents.

The creation of the nation state was accompanied by borders, armies to defend or take them, governments, laws, bureaucracies, taxes.

Idealists have imagined a global republic founded on our common humanity. Is this a naïve or foolish hope and in either case, a recipe for chaos, confusion and misery?

Perhaps we should embrace the nation state for what it is - a larger entity that enhances our individual lives; a source of pride and security, financial and emotional?

Speakers

For:

  • Professor John Keane is an Australian born author and academic. He is currently Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy which he founded. Among his many books is the recent The Life and Death of Democracy. The Australian Broadcasting Commission recently described Professor Keane as: “one of the great intellectual exports from Australia”, however, he is returning to Australia as the new head of Politics at Sydney University in June this year.
  • Waleed Aly is a lawyer and a journalist. He is a lecturer in the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash Univeristy. His book, People Like Us (Picador), was published last year. He speaks on issues concerning Australia’s Muslim community and the relationship between Islam and western values. He was one of forty Australians selected as a youth leadership delegate to the Future Summit in Melbourne in 2005.

Against:

  • Dr Tim Soutphommasane is a political theorist, commentator and author of Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives. He is research fellow at Monash University's National Centre for Australian Studies and a senior project leader at the Per Capita think tank. Tim is a regular columnist offering a philosophical take on politics, society and public policy. He is also a contributing leader-writer for The Financial Times and The Guardian in the UK. He was speechwriter for former New South Wales premier Bob Carr and on the staff of then opposition leader Kevin Rudd during the 2007 federal election campaign. Of Chinese and Lao extraction, and a first-generation Australian, Tim was raised in the southwest suburbs of Sydney. He completed a DPhil and Masters in Philosophy at Oxford University.

Chair:

Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre. Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York. Simon has been Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre since shortly after it was founded.