Category: Civic Forum
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The State, the Nation, and Stewardship
Much political discussion becomes confused because it treats the state and the nation as the same thing. They are not. The state is an institution. Its legitimacy comes from the functions it performs. It exists to protect life, liberty and the conditions necessary for human flourishing. It maintains order, administers justice, secures borders and provides…
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On Nationalism
Nationalism has acquired a bad reputation. To some people it means xenophobia, ethnic exclusivity or hostility to outsiders. To others it means little more than patriotism. Neither understanding is quite correct. George Orwell drew a useful distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one’s country and way of life. Nationalism, by contrast, becomes…
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A Theory of Limited Foreign Policy
Introduction In my earlier essay I argued that government is not sovereign but a delegated authority. Its legitimacy derives from a limited number of functions that require collective action, including security, dispute resolution, basic infrastructure, and certain public goods supported by broad consensus. The same principles must apply to foreign policy. The mere existence of…
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A Theory of Limited, Delegated Government
First Principles 1. The individual is the primary moral unit Moral duties arise first from concrete relationships: Government does not create these duties. They exist prior to government. 2. Individuals owe one another non-aggression and toleration People should not: Because individuals have different values, beliefs and interests, peaceful coexistence requires mutual toleration rather than ideological…
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Civic Republicanism for a Post‑Homogenous Britain: Power Down, Not Out
If my last post argued that ethno‑nationalism is a dead end, this one explains the alternative: a civic‑republican Britain built on local self‑government, regional autonomy, and a minimal central state. In other words, a Britain that stops trying to force one cultural model onto 67 million people and instead lets communities govern themselves within a…
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Tragic Pragmatism: Navigating Modern Britain
There is a quiet grief that many Britons carry, though few feel comfortable speaking it aloud in polite company. It is the realization that the country we inherited—or the one our parents and grandparents built—has fundamentally ceased to exist. Between 1948 and the mid-2020s, a quiet revolution took place. Through a mix of post-war corporate…
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The Nation as an Operating System — and Why Tolerance Is Enough
Most of my adult life has been spent inside institutions: corporations, trade unions, chapels, clubs, political parties. Each had its own rules, officers, expectations, and rituals. Each was, in effect, an interest group — a collection of individuals and families coordinating their behaviour under a shared operating system. Eventually I realised that the nation is…
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Thick Citizenship
Modern liberal democracies tend to treat citizenship as a thin, mostly administrative status — a passport, a legal identity, and a bundle of rights that can often be acquired with minimal integration. In my Civic Republicanism, citizenship is something deeper. It is a reciprocal civic relationship that unites political membership, social solidarity, and shared responsibility.…
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A British Civic Republicanism – what would it look like?
Preamble I often write about Civic Republicanism in abstract terms — subsidiarity, competence, non‑domination, polycentric authority, civic guardianship — but abstractions can only take a reader so far. At some point, the most effective way to explain a constitutional philosophy is simply to illustrate the kind of institutional order it would produce. The constitutional framework…
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From Ontology to Political Philosophy – a category error?
It is often said that relating ontology to political philosophy is a category error. Metaphysics deals with being; political theory deals with institutions, laws, and collective decision‑making. The two domains, it is argued, should not mix. But this objection only holds if political concepts are treated as pure abstractions. My argument is that nations are…
Hearth and Heart Magazine 