So can norwegians save 4,25 billion in interest expense

It is, again, for some, been an either-or. With us or against us. Norway or the rest of the world. Flag-pin or UN-pin. There is no tradition in this country that politicians will go with the flag on the chest. But the colorful, circular pin that symbolizes the Un bærekraftmål, as the recent past has been to look at the chest to the members of the government and the royal family, was once defined by what it was not.

Quickly became muttered about why men and women in positions not signaled their sense of belonging to Norway, but to a supranational organization on the other side of the sea. In the more shady corners of the web got the pin-bearers the most despicable name konspiratorikerne can get on: “Globalist”.

Requirement that it is nasjonaltilhørigheten and only the to is fronted is a fairly extreme stance in a debate that has raged for thousands of years: Who is “we”, and who shall control us? The nation-state as we know it is a recent phenomenon, and has become the dominant form of division of power and people through a long history where we also have organized ourselves into tribes, city-states and empires.

But even if the modern nation states has emerged through the last few hundred years, is the experience of being a member of a distinct community, which extends beyond the family and the tribe, much older than that. The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived on the 400-century before Christ, describes a peculiar “greskhet” across the Greek city-states. Norway, one of the most ancient nations in Europe, was further consolidated by laws which were revised and developed under Magnus lagabøte (lawmender) in the 1200s.

all can we call a nation is said to share a consciousness that is tied to place and time, to a terrotorium and to the territorial history. They participate in the same traditions, although these traditions never completely stable, and is often, but not always, united by a common legislation and a common language.

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“Nation” and “state” is not the same, and have not always coincided. While a “nation” can be said to be a group of people who share a community of traditions and history, is a “state” of an administrative, geographic entity. There are nations without a state — the kurds is perhaps the most famous example — and there are states which includes several nations such as the united Kingdom. An important year for the later notion of the nation-state is 1648, the year when the peace of Westphalia ended the exhausting thirty years ‘ war that had ravaged large parts of the european continent.

thirty years ‘ war had been a scuffle about religion and the power that had drawn most of the european powers. When it ended, the parties agreed on some principles that would be fundamental for the future of international law: That every country should respect another country’s sovereignty, it will say that they should not add themselves up in other countries ‘ domestic politics, and that the authorities in each country should decide what was to be the kingdom’s religion.

The catholic statsoverhodene who had dreamed to retake the whole of Europe on behalf of the true faith, had to turn himself to the idea that it would be with the dream. That the story after the peace of Westphalia has been characterized by great powers that do not exactly have lived the principle to let other countries in peace, is a different story.

But it is especially the last two hundred years the nation state has been the central geopolitical device. Often was the nation-state has the option to listen to an empire. Better literacy skills, means of transportation and means of communication did the citizens in the periphery of the great empires more self-aware and competent, and gripes about to be ruled by a distant and alien sentralmakt was growing in many parts of the world.

Nationalism was for many a part of the fight against to be utdefinert and oppressed, in countries such as Norway, it was in many ways a radical and democratic movement. But it had always a dark side, the bar in the potential also to be a remedy for just utdefinering and oppression, of persecution of jews and minorities, of freethinkers and skeptics. Then came the 20. century snapping, and nationalism was basically to be able to say that the enemies outside the country’s borders and overløpere within the same limits not deserved better than persecution and death.

Lessons learned from 2. world war made it important to bind the countries closer together, through trade and diplomacy. When climate change threatens the planet and large, global corporate bodies dominate the economy are the transnational approach and the solutions that need to. At the same time comes the reactions that are reminiscent of past protests against the emperor or the pope far away: the Courage to be guided by someone who is thousands of miles away from you and you don’t know the culture, and that easily can be suspected not to understand or care about the common people in the periphery.

At any level exercising power of different kinds shall lie, whether at the local, national or supra-national planet, is a continuous and demanding discussion. But what is left, and that must pukkes on, is this: A community does not preclude another. You are not only English, only european or only citizen of the world. You live on all levels and have the rights and responsibilities of each of them. And the one that says that you must select, using a hersketeknikk with a dire purpose heritage.

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