Petre Tutea on nationalism and equality

We have been accused, we on the Right, of exaggerating the power of the nation. All peoples do so. The Germans consider themselves to be the navel of the world, the English consider themselves to be the two navels of the world, the French consider themselves to be the three-and-a-half navels of the world. Everyone believes his own nation is the navel of the world.

Romanianism meant, for our generation, that we should be ourselves. To be on the Left means to be up a gum-tree. Every people wants to be itself. And we also wanted, we on the Right, to be Romanian.

I am Romanian and, as a Romanian, I consider myself to be at the navel of the world; that if I were not Romanian, I would not be anything. I cannot imagine myself as French, English, or German. I mean that I cannot extrapolate my spiritual substance to another nation. I am Romanian by vocation. Everything that I think becomes Romanian.

If there is a science of nationhood, I am Romanian by profession.

Nationalism can also be practiced with decency. No one can forbid a people from living its tradition and history, with its glories and defeats. Pârvan[1] says: ethnicity is the point of departure and the universal point of arrival. I, as a nationalist, have long thought that the nation is the end-point of world evolution. When the nations disappear, we enter the Tower of Babel.
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In the French Revolution’s famous Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, the first proposition is either an absolute idiocy or at best a sophism: men are naturally equal. That’s as if Kant were equal to Iliescu.[2]

Men are naturally unequal. They are unequal members of one family, in which one can be brilliant, another mediocre, and another an imbecile. Hereditary substance is a mystery.

Equality is the greatest enemy of freedom.

The principle of equality, promoted by the world’s democrats, actually only functions in religion, because only the Christian religion considers men equal before God.

Note

1. Vasile Pârvan (1882-1927), a Romanian historian and archaeologist, known for his work on ancient Dacia.

2. Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first post-communist president, whom Țuțea considered demonic.