A magisterial piece by one of my favorite authors David P Goldman:
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/why-the-british-monarchy-still-matters/
Goldman searches for the sense of the sacred that holds together people as a nation.
He examines successes of nationalism, the USA, UK and both modern and ancient Israel as well as its dark failure In Germany, and highlights the stark difference.
The also skewers the self centered narcissism of post modern liberalism that one can define one own identity.
My favorite quote: “The conceit that we can “define and express” our own identity is perhaps the cruellest hoax ever perpetrated on civilised peoples. We are neither clever enough nor strong enough to do so; to the extent that we succeed in such an endeavour, we make ourselves into monsters. There is a better word for postmodern identity, and that is anomie. Cut off from its past, the postmodern West has no vision of its future, and its most characteristic response is to fail to bring children into the world, thus ensuring that it will have no future of any kind.”