What about nationalism for a country?
Is it good or is it harmful?
Well, that's like asking about self-confidence
and ego strength for a person.
If a person has confidence and ego strength,
is that good or bad?
You can have too much of it and it's harmful
if you are so full of yourself that you ignore
other people.
If, on the other hand, you lack confidence
and you depend upon other people for your
own image, then you don't have the courage,
you don't have the identity, you don't have
the sentiment to deal with your own issues.
With nationalism today, there are countries
that seem to me that have a healthy nationalism.
I regard Finland, a country that I love as
having a healthy nationalism based on reality.
The Finns speak the Finnish language.
Nobody else in the world speaks the Finnish
language.
It's a beautiful, but very difficult language.
It's the root of Finnish national identity.
The Finns have a national epic, the Kalevala,
in the Finnish language.
And every Finn can recite the Kalevala, Of
Americans and English people can recite Shakespeare.
So the Finns have a healthy national identity
focused on their language, their culture,
and also their history, and what they've been
able to overcome.
There are countries that have excessive national
identity.
There are for example, people who would regard
Germany during the 1930s during the Hitler
era, as having had excessive national identity.
Today, it seems to me that Germany has a healthy
national identity.
Germany's national identity is not based on
going out and conquering the world and acquiring
[INAUDIBLE],, but recognizing that there are
wonderful things about Germany that distinguish
Germany from other countries.
German's long history with the German language,
the language of Martin Luther, that unifies
Germans Protestants and Catholics, the government
support for the arts in Germany, the emphasis
on the importance of the community in Germany
as opposed to the rights of individuals.
In the United States and Los Angeles, anybody
can build a house with any architectural plan
that you like.
And so there's no attractiveness to neighborhoods.
In Germany, there is attractiveness in the
neighborhoods.
So it seems to me that Germany has a healthy
national identity today.
It did not in the 1930s.
Chile has a healthy national identity.
After Chile recovered from the trauma of a
military government in 1990.
When a democratic government came back, it
would have been so obvious for the democratic
government to try to take revenge on the military
government's leaders who had tortured and
killed so many Chileans.
But the first speech by Chile's new democratic
government in 1990 was that he wanted to build
a Chile for all Chileans, a wonderful expression.
That's real national identity.
A Chile for all Chileans means a country where
the tortured and their relatives can live
together with the torturers.
It sounds terrible, but that's the only way
that Chile could get out of the horrors of
their military government.
But that depended upon Chileans having a sense
of national identity that transcended the
horrible things that had happened in Chile.
