Augusta, Maine would have to be the coldest place I have ever been to, only Montreal rivalled it. I had long johns on, thermal under-shirt, super-thick woollen socks and I was still cold. It was early on Tuesday morning and I was standing on the top of a hill in Maine with four others. Jeremy, a Cape Codder, came up to me and asked, "What is happening in Sydney? It is all I see on the news."

I had dinner at a Chili's the night before. It is a kind of franchise restaurant, it has relatively cheap food of decent quality. They also have a bar where you can order food and watch sport on big screens. On Monday night I was sitting at the bar having dinner when I saw Bill O'Reilly, the famous hysterical troll from Fox News, was having a section on the "Aussie Race Riots" . I finished my dinner and beer before Fox's take on the Cronulla riots were.

I also had read the Auian blogosphere's opinion on what happened on Cronulla, from the extremism of Western Heart, to Jason Soon's impassioned shock, to Tim Dunlops and Andrew Bartlett's reasoned entries. I had also gone through the mass media depiction of it, but I am a long way away from those events. When Jeremy asked me what was going on, I replied; "Yeh, I used to live down that way, at Maroubra."

"You have the waxheads, and the highway waxheads. The beach is a scarce resource, and those gangs are fighting over it."

Jeremy laughed, and said to his New Hampshire mate; "Hey Jesse, it was gangs that started it".

Jeremy and Jesse must have been talking about it before I got there. Gangs starting civil unrest was an analogy that America understands well.

"The highway waxheads are now mainly Lebanese-Australians, a bunch immigrated to Australia after Beirut. It is their kids causing the problems. Then you get a bunch of racist dickheads who get together at Cronulla and escalate the thing into a race riot. They were hassling anyone who looked muslim."

New Hampshire's state motto is the cry for liberty; "Live Free or Die" . The arbitrary violence of the mob in Cronulla toward anyone that was perceived as muslim carries the anti-libertous and polluted motto, "Live wog and leb free or die". Nationalism begets racism. It is predicated on exclusion, and coercion to assimilate. Nationalism is incapable of accommodating universal liberty, which is why nationalism and monoculturalism ultimately fail it. They are inferior political philosophies. We have had ten years of federal nationalism and monoculturalism, Cronulla is the result.

The NSW state government responded in usual anti-liberty fashion - demanding new laws for the police to be tough on crime. We have the federal government trampling liberties with the anti-terror laws, and now NSW jumping on what remains with new anti-riot laws. The Australian-Lebanese and the Anglo-Australians who clashed on the southern beaches are to be condemned, not only for their violence and disrespect for the local communities; but also for hastening our collapse into a state hostile to liberty.

This will be the legacy of the nationalist monoculturalism which the government and media are selling. More power collapsed to the centre, and more extremist tears in the social fabric. I have warned in the past that we are creating the environment in Australia that makes Saudi Arabia and Iran failed states . Our multi-ethnic faultline was Bali , courtesy of government and media rhetoric, it just moved to the southern Sydney beaches.

The creation of the faultline was only recent, and that the Cronulla rioters were targeting "muslims" which really meant anyone of middle eastern colour, whether they were secular, devout or non-practising. This shows how a faultline has been artificially created by the furphy of the "clash of cultures" rhetoric.

A comparison of Bill Leak's cartoon on the ugly face of nationalism and a photograph of Cronulla. The ethnic fault-lines have moved, and the caricature of the violent, dumb, crass, overweight, balding suburbanite is no longer pertinent.

These are the images side by side;

One shows the white suburbanite male which is more suitable to the era of Leo Wanker, and Nino Cullotta's "They're a Weird Mob". The reality is that it is kids, in board shorts, with massive biceps and bronzed chests causing the troubles. The bronzed Aussie is the ugly image now, which under the national myth is harder to dismiss than the slobbish suburbanite ocker.

When I was a kid the multi-ethnic faultlines in Sydney were Cabramatta, Liverpool and Redfern. Cabramatta and Liverpool were definately suburban and more fitting with the image of the suburban nationalist. Nowadays the McMansions and expensive housing of the suburbs are a haven from the violent nationalism of the southern beaches.

By the mid-nineties Belmore and Canterbury were developing as fault-lines. I can recall being at a Canterbury vs Penrith playoff game at Belmore in probably 1995/1996. Apparently there was a riot there, but I didn't see it - and I was there. So I am always dubious of media reporting and police reaction on these things due to my own personal experiences.

The fault-line is now the beach suburbs , we have kids fighting over that piece of Australian mythos known as the beach. The young bronzed Aussies are protecting what they see is theirs. It is excessively juvenile.

Leak's cartoon misses.

There are two competing dominant political forms in liberal democracy, these are the individual and the state. Political philosophies can be divided along these lines. In Australian Republicanism, the individual is the dominant, indivisible and discrete political entity.

Conservatism and Nationalism as political philosophies elevate the state to the dominant form of political authority.

Conservatives see the history, culture and ethnic memory of the political majority as providing sustenance, and nurturement for the individual.

Under conservatism, the nation-state becomes dominant over the individual, as the cultural will and majority, expressed through government becomes more important than an individual.

In the conservative framework, an individual who upsets the apple-cart of ethnic, cultural and political memory is dangerous and acts outside of the political system of order.

For this reason, conservatives can view the rights and perpetuation of the state as being more important than individual rights.

A similar political narrative arises with nationalism. The nationalist philosophy elevates the nation-state to dominance over the individual. As a consequence the nation-state can act in a repugnant manner to an individual in order to ensure its own perpetuation as the dominant political entity.

Laws for sedition is a good example of this. They are meaningless laws in a system were the individual is dominant.

Another example is citizenship which is used by conservatives and nationalist as an exclusionary system of legislative discrimination. Citizenship as it is practiced today by nation-states can only come from a system where the state is dominant over the individual.

The philosophies where the individual is the dominant political entity are liberalism, libertarianism, progressivism and republicanism.

These all stem from the political roots of liberalism even though they use different language to describe the individual's dominance. For instance libertarians talk of individual rights, progressives of human rights and republicans of natural rights; which means the same thing.

Under republicanism the just basis for an individual consenting to be governed is that there is a sphere of liberty that cannot be trespassed on by government.

The state must always justify any restriction on the action of the individual with the default form of consent from the individual being presumed as the negative.

The basis for consent is predicated on the complete absence of tyranny in government. The constitutional and statutory structure must be developed into the most efficient organisational form to ensure that outcome.

An inefficient form of social and governmental organisation is in conflict with republicanism. Especially ones that entrench social, political and executive privilege. For instance a monarchical arrangement is repugnant to republicanism, as is a constitution without enumerated rights.

Republicanism is founded on natural rights. These are a function of being an individual and human. The consequences of this philosophy makes citizenship a universal aspect of interaction with the state. Natural rights establish universalism as a strong principle in republicanism.

Nationalism is the political philosophy where the national government is the dominant political entity. Under nationalism the individuals derives their identity and collective memory from the nation.

The national government becomes the pinnacle of that identity and from that political grouping flows the nurturement and sustenance to maintain the national culture.

Nationalism views citizenship as a privilege, not a right. Other more individualistic forms of political philosophy such as liberalism, libertarianism and republicanism, view the individual as dominating over the government. Consequently citizenship becomes a individual or natural right in these philosophies.

The nationalist philosophy often uses citizenship as a club, to keep individuals in line, and to eject those that defy or oppose the national government. Sedition laws are a good example of nationalist thinking.

The world-view of nationalism also enables entrenched arbitrary government. For instance, an individual who is accused by the state of terrorism or sedition - a crime against the state - will have their rights stripped. The case of Jose Padilla in the United States follows this pattern.

Those not of the nation, or not citizens can also have any political rights ignored. In fact in the nationalist thinking, unless those individuals are a subsumed component of the nation - often through the citizenship process - then they have no political rights.

An example of this in Australia is who the national government dealt with refugees. Due to the discriminate nature of nationalist government, it enables and promotes the government paradigm of executive decree.

Nationalism is an inequitable political philosophy which is hostile to universal individual political rights.

There are two possible dominant political entities in liberal democracy, the individual and the state. Progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism see the individual as the dominant entity whereas conservatism and nationalism sees the state as the dominant entity. Most of history has been a struggle for the individual to rise to the position of political dominance, suffering all manner of arbitrary governance, from monarchy, to tyranny, and even colonialism. Liberal democracy is currently the best technology to represent the relationship between governed and governor, but may be replaced if a better technology to represent the individuals interests is found.

Liberalism places the focus on the individual and espouses political equality. Consequently inequalities such as the divine right to rule and hereditary rule were discredited and political equality advanced within the boundaries of nationalisms own political inequalities.

The ideologies of progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism all draw heavily from Liberalism and are essentially arguments of what form of Liberalism the relationship between governed and governor should take. The ideologies are also articulations of political technology, after all, politics itself is a human technology. The starting principle of these ideologies and hence technology, can be used to derive the base truths, or relationship, between the individual and state.

Since the central tenet to progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism, is that the individual is the dominant political entity it follows naturally that political equality becomes an exclusive right - where a right is a just basis for any relationship between an individual and government.

We see this recognition in the language of ideologies; progressives tend to call it human rights, republicans call it natural rights, liberals call them political rights and libertarians call them individual rights. These are all in the same descriptive bag; because the individual is the dominant entity, there are liberties that the individual holds as unassailable from legislative intrusion and executive force.

Australian Republicanism holds the view that civil order is impossible with the presence of state tyranny or arbitrary governance. As a consequence any just relationship between the individual and state must be predicated on this, as it follows no rational individual would submit themselves to be governed if there are no benefits from civil order, they may as well be in a state of nature. Without the guarantee of rights there is no just relationship, there is no liberal democracy, instead their is the presence of tyranny and arbitrary governance.

Conservatism and nationalism both approach the dominant political entity from the other side, elevating the state above the individual. Gary Sauer-Thompson described this very succinctly ;

Conservatism understands that nationality and society are rooted in biological, cultural and historical heritage. The difference between these two concepts becomes particularly obvious when one compares how they visualize history and the structure of the real. Nationalists are proponents of holism.

Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies.

Because conservatives and nationalists see the state as being the basis for nurturing the individual they allow for political inequality, effectively arbitrary governance, against individuals that threaten the state. We have seen this in the past with sedition laws and political prisoners which made up a significant portion of Australia's initial European immigration. For instance one of the Scottish Martyrs, Thomas Muir , was detained and deported to Australia for handing out copies of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man .

This style of conservatism and nationalism also enable discriminative political inequality often over arbitrary issues such as ethnicity, which are little more than accidents of birth. The treatment of the Australian aboriginal people between the 1880s and 1960s are some of the worst excesses of that mindset. More recently we have seen the creation of camps outside of legislative and judicial jurisdiction such as Guantanamo Bay and the Nauru Detention Centre.

I am not saying conservatism and nationalism are all bad. The steady as she goes nature of small 'c' conservatism and its desire for empirical decision making from history are positive attributes. By the same token the nation-state and nationalism have been decent technologies over the last several hundred years since the Treaty of Westphalia. It has enabled increasing global economic activity and a semblance of international order between nations; though the break-downs in order have been catastrophic but generally only short in destructive length.

However it does need to be recognised that some conservatives and nationalists who support this ideological position enable tyranny and arbitrary governance inside a liberal democratic system. Tyranny is a big word, one that we often equate with dictators and despots but it does not have to be absolute to be destructive - just persistent, and arbitrary governance is what we call persistent tyranny.

The major and minor parties in Australia are predominantly economic liberal, culturally conservative and politically nationalist. Most of the political arguments between the Liberal Party, Labor Party, Nationals, Australian Democrats and Greens are within this framework. It is already a crowded political marketplace in that area.

Often too, ideological naming is mis-appropriated by parties, Australian liberals calls themselves classical liberals to disassociate themselves from the Liberal Party or the slur-like meaning 'Liberal' has taken on in America. Australian Republicans are horrified at the lack of republicanism shown by the American Republican Party. Conservatives are horrified at the authoritarianism being espoused in their name in the United States. Genuine libertarians are also dismayed at the appropriating of their language by liberal-conservative-nationalists who see the claim to libertarianism as carrying a cachet of cool.

All these parties and ideologies require a quiet moment of genuflection, to reassess the basic principle from which they stem. This basic principle of the dominant discrete political entity becomes the basis for the choice of political technologies; ie constitutionalism, separation of powers, governance etc: as well as the founding principles with which prosperity, liberty and the on-going advance of humanity are achieved.

x-posted on clubtroppo

A while ago I wrote about intrinsic and emergent properties in social organisation . The several recent discussions on the individual being the dominant discrete political entity in a system suggest hostility to nationalism and national culture, which is not true. These are emergent properties of the social organisation that appear as a result of individuals acting in maximum liberty; socially and culturally.

Nationalism and culturalism are valid forms that have significant effects on social cohesion, however they should not define the system and become synonymous with the state, as their negative forms, including ethnic-nationalism and mono-culturalism, are inherently discriminative.

As emergent properties they are positive, as intrinsic entrenchments they are vehicles for political inequality.

It is hard to view the speech for the second reading of the Citizenship Bill by Ian Campbell and not see it is as legislation which elevates the state above the individual.

From the tabled speech;

Becoming an Australian citizen is a significant commitment. It involves undertaking to fulfil the responsibilities of Australian citizenship as well as being able to take advantage of the opportunities that come with citizenship. It requires the pledging of loyalty to Australia and its people, a shared belief in the democratic process, respect for the rights and liberties of others, and a willingness to uphold and obey the law.

Importantly, the bill retains the principle that Australian citizenship is a privilege and not a right.

A right is a just exclusion from discrimination that the individual has from the state. Rights become a liberty, exclusive to the individual, that are derived from the fundamental relationship between individual and government.

In this respect no individual should be denied the full rights of citizenship as the relationship between individual and government is defined by being an individual being under the jurisdiction of the government - not by accidents of birth, swearing to the tribe, or other forms of political inequity.

Anyone who has undergone the citizenship ceremony can ask themselves how they were different on the day before, the day they took the oath, and the day after. They are the same individual. The only difference is the amount the state is willing to discriminate against them on the matter of political equity.

Citizenship is a right. The fact that citizens allow the state to exist is a privilege.

The speech continues;

As recommended by the Committee, the Preamble has been amended to recognise that Australian citizenship represents "full and" formal membership of the community of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is indeed that - full membership of the Australian community, involving reciprocal rights and obligations.

The language of obligation is another elevation of the state above the individual. An individual seeks to be the most moral and ethical person they can be. Their obligation is not to the state.

It should not be forgotten that nationalism is a recent technology. It only matured in the 19thC and was largely a result of the need for taxation and bureaucratic organisation to ensure sufficient military force for defence and expansion.

It was by definition a form of collective-decision making that was militarised with the relative new technology of diplomacy in the stead of marrying a heir to an opposing monarch. Arguably nationalism is a form of organisation developed for an era of industrialised warfare and violence.

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The Australian Citizenship Act was changed in 2002 so that Australia did not punish those who took citizenship in other countries by taking away their Australian citizenship.

That is good policy sense in a world of globalisation with increasing labor and capital flows. It also formalises the convention that was started by Rupert Murdoch in the late 80s/90s when, as the tale goes, he got Hawke to waive that part of the legislation and managed to keep his Australian citizenship as well as take American citizenship. An important precedent considering most nations have parochial and protected media laws.

It is important to note that this Citizenship Amendment occurred under the Howard Government who often takes nationalistic and conservative stands on political issues. Is it just posturing?

I think it is. Same with campaigning on values. How vacuous can you get. It is small target politics at its finest as you don't have to put forward any policy that can come under empirical scrutiny.

Robert McCloskey writes on the Marshall Supreme Court: "It is hardly surprising that the Supreme Court, an intrinsically national institution, should be drawn to the doctrine of nationalism."

Andrew Ingliss-Clark used the American experience of federalism by mixing the national and federal character together in the Australian Constitution to place checks and balances such that pure nationalism and absolutist state rights could not dominate the other. However, like the US system, the High Court in Australia is a purely national institution. It has no federal character.

Could that be why it is so centralist?

The federal character of Parliament is predominantly the Senate, yet government has continued to centralise and the Senate has not inhibited that growth away from federalism.

Federations are defined by having a national character and a federal character. For instance the House of Representatives in Australia's parliament is organised with a national character while the Senate has a federal character. The House has equal sized electorates and single members, while the Senate has the states as its electoral boundaries and each state has an equal number of members. So the Senate represents the states, which are the federal components of the Federation, while the House represents the Australian people, which is the national character of the government.

One of the innovations of American constitutional design was to put the national and federal characters into tension so that the national government would not grow to consume the states, yet have enough national character that the states would not assert themselves over the national government. This vertical balance of powers in the federation was designed to protect liberty and cemented through constitutional limited government.

One of the blind spots in Australian politics is that federalism is ignored as a technology to ensure liberty and natural rights. Too often people assume the role of government is service delivery, not limited government, and seek to order the political structures accordingly.

The Australian constitution is weak on separation of powers between the different branches of government. This is a flaw in Westminster systems in general. The Australian constitution is also limited in how it enhances and maintains the federal character of the system. Other than the Senate it is a weak constitutionally federalist system. TO add to its woes the national character of the Judicial branch has aided and abetted the executive (who resides in the national character of the House) in expanded the centralised role of the government in Canberra.

We find ourselves in 2007 with a national government that does over 80% of all tax revenue collection and provides approximately half of all state budgets. We have a constitution which has leaked national character through the judicial to the point that the heads of power can be viewed in isolation and justify nearly any expansion into state responsibilities. We also have all the major parties at the national level; Liberal, Labor, Greens, Democrats and Nationals, who have policies to abolish the states and replace them with smaller and more easily controlled regional councils.

So why have we lost our federal character politically? Sport is often cited as the great Australian tribalism, yet the State Of Origin games are the greatest rugby league games on the planet and a massive display of federalist tribalism.

The increasing intrusion into state responsibilities by the national government has been ongoing. The Engineers case is often cited as a turning point. We saw in the 1930s NSW and the National Government face off in what was nearly a civil war over loan responsibilities. The national government (had through constitutional amendment) under-written loans for NSW. When NSW defaulted deliberately under Lang to negotiate better interest rates it became a national issue.

Another large intrusion was the adoption of income tax by the national government in world war two under emergency need. When the war was over and the emergency gone, the national government never gave that responsibility back to the states. It liked the money too much. That is one of the main origins for the vertical tax imbalance.

It is often assumed that Whitlam was where the 'crash or crash through' approach came from in terms of national/federal relationships, but the idea was bi-partisan at the national level. John Gorton believed that the natural relationship in Australian federation was for the national government to do revenue raising and policy. This would leave the states as bureacratic departments to disburse national funds in support of national policy.

This has been called many things. Co-operative Federalism for instance, but it really is the nationalisation of politics. Unless the states are independent policy making and revenue raising entities the federal character of the system is lost.

Ken Parish has written several articles on federalism recently. His second documents how a strongly national character system; ie the national government and the territory which has self-government through a statutory constitution, leads directly to the erosion of property rights. Which are a fundamental and inalieanable right in a system of limited government. Worse; the leases were conducted under arbitrary government and national whim. This is little different to the Howard government's anti-federalist foray into the Tasmanian health system.

We can deduce that a strong national character of federation is a direct threat to liberty.

Ironically Ken argues in the next article for the Gortonisation of the Australian system under a form of co-operative federalism where the national government makes all policy and the states are reduced to disbursing (their own) funds in support of that policy. This is the structure that removed Territorians property rights in the first place. Other than the vertical tax imbalance it is what we have now.

So the continued nationalisation or Gortonisation of Australian politics will place more Australians under the arbitrary whim of the national government, and even occasionally tyranny of the national government (such as the removal of property rights) with the states neutered in being able to resist national policy. I like NSW and Western Australia getting annoyed at the national government. In the recent ersatz electoral campaign we have not seen the Territory or Tasmania fight back. They have swallowed the national government's lumps despite the obvious bad policy.

The Harpurian Republican view of political structures, or social organisation as Charles Harpur calls it, is that maximum liberty and minimisation of tyranny enable greater moral expression. Morality in this instance isn't the caricature of no abortions or abstinence from sex before marriage. Morality is public good in a private and social context. As an example, economists often like to quote the economic liberty through markets as public good or social capital etc. To Dan Deniehy and Charles Harpur tyranny was the greatest inhibitor to human improvement and moral expression. This is Harpur's "for the faith that is in them."

Most modern Australian politicians, constitutional theorists and commentators see government in terms of service delivery. Greg Barns for instance recently divided the political entities up in Australia by abolishing states such that service delivery could be maximised. Ken Parish's new co-operative federalism takes a similar service delivery approach with policy making occurring at the national level.

But, Australia is a liberal democracy that practices constitutionally limited government. The first priority of such a system is the maximisation of liberty. This is where limited government is supposed to be the most efficient - in the constitutional protections of individual liberty. Republicanism is the ideal technology for this as it is the political science to liberalism's political philosophy.

This does not deny a liberal democracy from deciding that government should provide services, however, it can not become the reason for re-ordering government such that service delivery is maximised at the cost of a loss of liberty and the opening up of individuals to potentially suffer from arbitrary government, executive whim, loss of rights and even tyranny.

Harpur and Deniehy's republican philosophy must come first and in Australia this means a system of government with a strong federal character; federally independent entities that are autonomous in policy and tax revenues; and increasing constitutional restrictions on the national government such that they cannot Gortonise or Whitlamise the system.

We can learn from the 19thC Australian Republicans as liberty informed their philosophy. This is a word that has been lost in 20thC Australian politics.