...links Benjamin's Messianic time, Ruskin's orders of recollective and proleptic nostalgia, and Renan's Spartan song. "We are what you were; we will be what you are" might be not only the hymn of the patrie but also the redemptive avowal of a Messianic temporality...

...like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice and devotion. . . . The Spartan song — 'We are what you were, we will...is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of every patrie."70 In order to be recognizable as the subject of history, the core of the nation has to be...

...past, great men, glory . . . this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea. . . . 'We are what you were; we will be what you are' —...is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of every patrie" (Renan 1996, 52). Renan 's distillation of nationalism in the statement "We are what you were;...