It is true that the individualism of English-speaking societies has an anti-socialist bias: There has always been a measure of resistance to taxation, to state power, and, indeed, to collectivism of any kind. But look at the other side of the balance: equality before the law, regardless of sex or race, secularism, toleration for minorities, absence of censorship, social mobility, and universal schooling. In how many other places are these things taken for granted?

So why is the celebration of national identity a largely Rightist pursuit in English-speaking societies? It won’t do to say that patriotism is, by its nature, a Right-of-center attitude. In the European tradition, if anything, the reverse was the case. Continental nationalists—those who believed that the borders of their states should correlate to ethnic or linguistic frontiers—were, more often than not, radicals. The 1848 revolutions in Europe were broadly Leftist in inspiration. When the risings were put down, and the old monarchical-clerical order reestablished, the revolutionaries overwhelmingly fled to London, the one city that they knew would give them sanctuary. With the exception of Karl Marx, who never forgave the country that had sheltered him for failing to hold the revolution that he forecast, they admired Britain for its openness, tolerance, and freedom.

So what stops English-speaking Leftists