Country or Homeland: a Libertarian View

"the state is invariably the main enemy of the country it rules and parasitises"

country or homeland  A country is, roughly, some area of inhabited land that people identify as the home of a particular culture. There is no reason that different people must have conceptions of particular countries, or homelands, that are geographically consistent with each other: some might take broader views, some narrower views, or even overlapping ones (straddling official ^*borders). Thus one ^*person might feel his country to be Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales), another only England, and another the whole United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

It is true that ^*political domination, often from the past, has helped to form the ideas of which areas are countries. Nevertheless, it is clearly possible conceptually to distinguish one’s country or homeland from the ^*state that dominates it; which could be a foreign state, in any case. It suits ^*politicians and ^*statists generally to conflate the two, albeit partly unwittingly. It is some varying ratio of confusion and ^*propaganda for people to speak of “the USA”, “Britain”, or ^*“we” and “you” when, from the context, they must really be referring to the dominant political ^*organisation or ^*regime in that country (even self-described ^*libertarians often do this). England need not cease to be regarded as a country when it is finally freed from a state: ^*“anarchic country” is not an oxymoron. And to be an enemy of the state, as all anarchists are (at least intellectually), is quite different from being an enemy of one’s country. In fact, the state is invariably the main enemy of the country it ^*rules and parasitises, although this is usually done more out of error than of evil. (See ^*treason.)

Such conceptual distinctions might help people to see who is ^*oppressing whom instead of mistakenly thinking that they live in a ^*self-determining, ^*liberal-^*democratic, country.

See ^*nation; ^*nationalism; ^*patriotism.

(This is an entry from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)