of course, suggesting that identifying with those under attack is an alternative doesn't mean that it, too, doesn't also entail feelings. indeed, it does and it, most likely, inevitably will--unless ken and ange can explain for me how a traversal of the fantasy will enable us to "identify" with people "in general" or "in the abstract"
which is why, i think Brad, you're missing Weber's point. the skeleton key to Weber is this: religion as economics; economics as politics; politics as religion.
Weber provides a kind of cynical realpolitik account of the nation-state by working from "the outside" in. nation-state emerge by mobilizing support for an "imagined community" and they do via legitimization achieved through nation-state politics. what drove weber mad was that he recognized that there was an inherent tension here that required militaristic, imperialist nationalism in certain contexts. that is, he thought that democratization--the rise of the ideals of egalitarianism and autonomy--was an advance over previous forms of patrimonial solidarity, as was the manifest ideal of commitment to the ostensibly objective rules and regulations of bureaucratic authority and commitment to the "office". however, such commitments, weber argued, could not be sustained because they did not encourage a sense of shared identity and solidarity. that, he thought, could only be achieved via political rituals that created and re-created intense emotional commitments to the nation-state. those rituals were built on defining a shared sense of identity and solidarity against an Other, a threatening Other especially. which is why the egalitarian, autonomous ideals of democracy require "elbow room" in the global geo-political arena.
for Weber, herrenvolk is more like a citified yeoman. i say citified because Weber didn't romanticize rural life and, in fact, argued that it was the rise of cities which was, in part, part of the rise of rationalized proto-capitalism and nascent forms of liberal democracy. he traces this or, perhaps better yet, makes an analogy with marx: democratic traditions and conventions emerge in those cities where the ownership of the means of of violence [weapons] are part of the obligations and duties of citizenship. in those cities where weapons are monopolized by an elite, democratic traditions aren't cultivated.
kelley