All You Ever Needed to Know About Nationalism, but Were Afraid to Ask

I’m admittedly a sucker for a period piece.  But 2006’s The Painted Veil is fantastically good.   It’s mostly a love story about two British ex-pats living in China during the 1920s.  But it’s set against a vivid background of Chinese politics, and peppered with gems like this conversation between a British businessman and a British diplomat:

Businessman: What about support from Chiang Kai-shek?  Where does he stand on this?

Townsend: He’s a nationalist.  He will stand on the side of the Chinese.  That’s why they call themselves “nationalists.”

You won’t find a better postcard version of Tolstoy’s “Patriotism, or Peace?”  Yes, but what are they talking about?  The point is precisely that it doesn’t matter – nationalism is about putting loyalty before morality and reason.

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