However, the map of the world today is far from being a perfectly fitted jigsaw of successfully modernised nation-states.
This is surely what the brand-conscious, youthful, modernised and effective House of Windsor has to be about.
In some ways, the Scottish Labour party is the least modernised part of the labour movement and that cannot continue Jim Murphy But as he announced his resignation, Murphy threw down a deliberate challenge to the union movement and the Scottish party, opening up a new battle between new Labour modernisers and the traditional left.
Instead, the port should be modernised to handle bigger ships, and any free land should be used to provide housing for 12,000 workers and 39,000 pensioners.
Even though she might be prepared to accept a grand bargain – relief for debt-ridden countries if Germany gets a politically modernised eurozone in return – this will not be the outcome she wants Germans to be digesting in the weeks ahead of the election.
Cameron wrongly thought this a clause IV moment to parade a modernised party.
In 1999 there was a proposal to create a new modernised pay structure – Agenda for Change.
"In some ways, the Scottish Labour party is the least modernised part of the labour movement and that can no longer continue," Murphy said.
The commission's head of policy, Sarah Atkinson, describes these as a "modernised set of powers for a modern regulator".
Hence the argument that, rather than mimic the modernised West, and rather than allow it to intervene in their affairs, as it has done through much of recent history, Muslims should create new forms of politics and government proper to their faith.
The stalling of a major offensive led by the cream of its recently modernised armed forces has exposed the precariousness of its grip on the peninsula, which was wrested from the Tigers only in 1996.
