I know you'll disagree with me but the problem with Putin is that he's far too liberal and permissive. If Hitler taught us anything it's if you're going to fight the world you got to put your 110% into it, you know? Yet he goes into this war with just a few hundred thousand reservists and when his little blitzkrieg doesn't pan out he employs a few hundred thousand more.

He should be mobilizing his entire country, I guess now the strategy is just bleed them out and wait until the Americans get bored (as was seen in a few countries), and then accept some peace where he accepts some part of the Donbas and so forth into his country and the Ukraine super duper promises not to join the EU or NATO.

The problem with Putin he's far too liberal-minded. He should be more like the Tsar the wet paints him as, he's surely ready for it. He shouldn't accept anything more than total victory in the Ukraine, annexing huge swaths of the country, big middle finger and so on. But he'd never do that, as soon as peace is open for this tiny territory is open to him and Ukraine not joining the EU he'd spring for it, and why? Just lean into it, you're already at war, and will continually be at war with the west, just do all you can to secure as much as you can, you know?

Someone once told me the real conflict has been between Anglo-America versus Russia, Germany was just a side show. And I mean, that's so true. Russia and Anglos unite to defeat Russia occasionally to fight Germany but the real 200+ year battle is between is Anglos and Russians.

In light of this conflict Putin and conversely the Russian republic and it's allies haven't nearly enough to secure victory there, Putin should be mobilizing all of his country if he truly intends to fight America and he shouldn't accept some pitiable peace, he should only accept total victory. But all signs point to him just accepting some little shitty peace as soon as the war is over.

There's no evil in this world than losing, and if you're going to fight something like the whole world like Putin has endeavored himself (or have been forced into) his greatest sin would be to lose.

But I don't think he will lose. America is great at abandoning allies when Americans get bored and don't care anymore. It happened so many times to count. South Vietnam and Afghanistan for instance. The problem with Putin is he will be too liberal to really take a bite, he will just use Eurasianism and Liberalism for a tiny settlement, when he really should demand huge extractions.

You're right that it's in Ukraine's best interest to remain independent from both Eastern imperialism AND Western globalism. Btw, "THE Ukraine" is obsolete Soviet-era slang for "the Ukrainian SSR," plus it's also a way to refer to the country as if it's only a vassal territory of a "union," "empire," or "federation" (or a "federation" that behaves like an "empire"). If you ask me, civic nationalism is the way to go. All nations should be free! This is the 21st century! Down with globalism, imperialism, AND internationalism! They're all the same thing anyway: a path toward global government.

Sorry I only referred to it that way because of convention. It's kind of weird to refer to Ukraine as not 'the ukraine' because really that whole area is up for grabs. It's a flat plains area between the Carpathian and the Eurasian Steppe, the whole country as it exists today is really silly. It's in this position where it will be subsumed by whatever power is strongest. Like the USA wants it called Ukraine because of it's own interests but in the future that state won't be able to hold off any serious power who wanted to subsume it. It just kinda exists as a Lenin creation and a vodka binge by Yeltsin and America is taking full advantage of it.

Plus you know all this nonsense about Ukraine being a Nazi state (namely from Putin) you know, it's just the Ukrainians building state lore as an independent state and the nearest source for inspiration are the Nazi collaborators or at least who the Nazis claimed as collaborators.

But I don't know if Civic Nationalism is something I would want anyways for any kind of government. Nationalism is some weird 19th century invention for weirdos who want war. I mean, you know, you can say both world wars and possibly the third world war one is just a product of stupid eastern European national civicism. The whole idea of nationalism was invented to enable peasantry to agree to million man armies to fight each other with. It's not something I would want to encourage. Much rather submit myself to governance that doesn't demand my blood for state interests.

You're describing ethnic nationalism. That's why I specified civic nationalism. From a nationalist's perspective, nationalism is Resistance against imperialism. So if our only options are nationalism (freedom) and imperialism (order), only an oppressor - or those who've been indoctrinated to want to be oppressed (because of "order" or whatever) - would prefer imperialism and global government. Also, I reiterate that "internationalism" and "globalism" are just alternate terms for "imperialism."

Civic nationalism doesn't seek to take anything away from the individual. It's not collectivist like ethnic nationalism. Constitutional republicanism, the only viable form of governance, is the most highly evolved form of civic nationalism. Democracy doesn't do enough to secure Liberty. In fact, "democracy" doesn't even mean "rule of The People." Neither literally nor figuratively. It actually means something more to the effect of "rule of the landed gentry" or "rule of the monied aristocracy" (derived from the word "demos"). So in reality, democracy is just as authoritarian as autocracy. It could be accurately described as "plutocratic feudalism."

The philosophies of nationalism and imperialism are older than those 19th-century weirdos. Sparta was nationalist, but in all the wrong ways, perfectly fitting the authoritarian collectivist ethos you describe. They were politically proto-fascist and economically proto-socialist. A double-dose of collectivism! That's why their nation failed and dissolved without coalescing back into something resembling its former self ("solve" without "coagula"). Then there was Persia: an advanced civilization, sure, but an empire no matter anyone tries to spin it. Contrary to what '300' (or 'The 300 Spartans') would have us believe, there were no "good guys" in that conflict. Just varying forms of "bad" vying for dominance.

You're right I am describing a different kind of nationalism than civic nationalism. They are entirely separate ideas. The problem with civic nationalism is that it fails on what an ideology is supposed to do, namely, motivate average people to sacrifice their lives on a massive scale. No one will ever sacrifice themselves for freaking The Constitution or sane government. That's why nationalism was effective, because it did do that. And as far as Communism is a stupid ideology it succeeded in temporary situations because it could motivate people to sacrifice their lives for it. You give the choice to normal people between Hitler or Stalin or, like, The Constitution, and the latter will always be the least popular choice.

I think you're wrong in the psychological mapping of someone who would have been motivated to die for nationalism. Resisting the oppressor is a great meta-narrative and it's very popular framing for a lot of things. You know, that's why both sides of the Ukraine war use that exact framing. But the real lizard brain appeal of nationalism (or really any successful ideology) is that it includes people in the power process. Even though you might be some podunk farmer or clerk or factory worker with little to no importance in the world you can imagine yourself of this wider struggle where you become important. Giving someone this ability to imagine themselves of being important is the real reason why ideology, including nationalism works.

It's almost kinda like nukes, you know? The world would be a better place if people weren't mainlining hardcore ideologies, it was a better place before that in many respects, but once one government starts lacing the water with the heroin of ideology, every other one has to as well. Civic nationalism can't do that, it doesn't inspire in people the feeling of power, it doesn't even provide a vision of the future that's exciting. It's just an idea people came up with in America when it became increasingly clear the original demographic core of the United States will soon be a small plurality (or is right now) and will soon be a minority. You can't really talk about nationalism when America isn't even a nation. So, I guess, what I'm saying is that civic nationalism is a cope for people who know that the real stuff won't work anymore. Do Europeans even talk about it? I only hear about it from Anglo states.

Calling constitutional republicanism the only viable form of governance is sort of silly. Especially when you look at the past two centuries and see often that republican constitutionalism devolves into frothing lunaticism and barbarism, America was the only place that didn't devolve into that kind of state but it wasn't free of the lunaticism and violence, it just didn't look so bad compared with France and Britain and Russia and Hungary. Yeah yeah, I know, it wasn't real republicanism, but you know that's the problem with it, it often degenerates into the most insane kind of democracy you can imagine. Even America slowly just kept moving away from it bit by bit. The only reason America isn't a madhouse (yet?) is because they give the people the idea of democracy while also having a very sophisticated media and educational system that inculcates them with acceptable ideas and conversely, ignores the input from people who don't go along with what the superstructure of American Gov wants to do.

To be perfectly honest the most viable form of governance is personal rule aka monarchy. This is the most natural form of governance, it's how family structures are historically setup, it's how corporations are run (though they have some kind of 'republicanism' built into the corporate structure it's mostly personal rule by an elected leader), and it's something that people are naturally more willing to accept. When I bring this up people will send me a picture Charles II of Habsburg as some gotcha or they'll bring up succession wars. My rejoinder usually being, you know, well, sure there were some bad eggs but the worst eggs were never as bad as the worst eggs of degenerated republicanism or democracy, the past 200 years has an endless list of them. And when these modern bad eggs exploded into violence it was on a level and scale incomparable to the wars of kings who fought with their own coin and with professional troops and the occasional peasant levy. Not really comparable mass mobilization or genocide.

Also, you know, modern nation-states, this stupid psyop, for them to really last any length of time it really does demand genocide. The expulsion and killing of Germans in eastern Europe following the second world war, the Armenian genocide and Greek expulsion by the Turks, the cultural and only a small and gentle genocide by the French against Bretons and Aquitainians, the American genocide of American Indians not to mention the enforced cultural homogeneity of their Ellis Islander immigrants. There are more but you get the picture. These are sad necessities of any kind of republican or democratic state. You can't have a stable and functioning state when you have minority populations that live within your borders that might organize along their own interests, this is what blew up the Austrian empire, for instance. But it's necessity skylights the problem of the more 'gentle' and 'sane' and 'rational' form of governance of modern republicanism or democracy.

Of course, there are exceptions to these problems, Rome did okay until it degenerated into frothing barbarism with Marius and Sulla (then ultimately returned to personal rule with the Julian-Claudian dynasty), Venice's system was remarkably stable but the Doge was elected as lifetime personal ruler with the most opaque and confusing election process ever come up with (look it up sometime). You also have the constitutional monarchy of England, but this was far from republicanism and honestly England was probably the most stratified state in Europe west of Poland.

Freedom is the ability for someone to do something they want to do, you are more-or-less free depending on how much you can or cannot do. You're right to say that democracy isn't good at securing liberty, it's probably the worst at it. You know, the problems in a True Democracy[tm] (where people's opinions actually matter) is that you end up with Hitler or Mao. Though, I think you might be mistaken to disparage order as oppression since order really just means a consistent application of the rule of law, which is logically descended from the personal inclinations of the ruler. It's far better to live in an orderly state. For example, it's far better for a child to live under a very strict but consistent father than a chaotic (alcoholic) father. The former will whip you for not finishing your homework or for staying out too late, but it's consistent and you can expect it and plan accordingly. The latter? One day he might come home and hug you and spin you around and let you enjoy yourself, the next day he might beat you for saying something he didn't like. You can't plan for that. That's what makes it abusive. That's the benefit of order.

More freedoms come after people sort of get used to consistent application of law, once everyone is used to what is acceptable or not and don't need gendarmes to beat them or jail them for violating law, you can just sort of expect people to act a certain way wherever you are. That's where English common Law comes from, that's what (Anglo) Republicanism is built off of. It's not a dichotomy of freedom and order or freedom and oppression, it's building off of order to expanding freedoms. We live in the state of nature with absolute freedom (hypothetically, at least, in reality it's not that way) and in the state of freedom you're free to fuck and eat as much as you can as long as you can rely on your strength. This is war, but after war comes order. It's harsh but has a regularity and consistency. Then you get freedom, your average doughy person (such as ourselves) can drink and eat and enjoy ourselves far more than we could before.

I wouldn't really call Sparta a 'nationalist' state. They were, of course, a foreign people who had conquered Lacedaemonia but they didn't see or motivate themselves as 'folk' with some national identity that banded them together, they were foreigner conquerors who lived like they conquered the island yesterday. Though I'd say proto-fascist and proto-socialist might be applying modern labels inappropriately, it is kind of accurate LOL. Though, of course, their socialism was afforded them for the fact they had ten helot slaves to every Spartan at least.

I'd say their state failed less because of their socialist or fascist tendencies and failed more so because they relied on a minority population for all of their troops and refused to incorporate their conquered slaves into the body politic, plus it got very top heavy with the surviving widows consolidating power at the expense of the next generation.

Though, who cares who the 'good guys' were? It was a bunch of jacked dudes killing a ton of people. That makes good television! Though the whole Peloponnesian war shows the power of more money-minded states versus military states, Athens vs Sparta. That's why in the end Rome ended up turning Sparta into a tourist destination for rich Romans to gawk at the Spartans and their strange ways, they thought more about money then martial virtue.

A nation isn't free unless the individual is free. The individual is NOT a sacrificial or expendable commodity of society or "the state." That's authoritarian collectivism. That's why I emphasized constitutional republicanism, an ideal that overturns that unjust system.