Definitions and the category mistake
Frank Buckley, interviewed about his book The Republican Workers Party, told Bob Zadek that the debate over nationalism is often misframed. Zadek said the word scares him and that when he thinks he knows what it means it does not present a pretty picture. Buckley replied that asking whether nationalism is good or bad in general is a category mistake: the question should be nationalism in certain countries. Israeli nationalism may be fine, English nationalism may be fine, American nationalism is great, and German nationalism he was unsure about. There are bad forms of nationalism, he said, where it has been perverted to evil ends. The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)
Buckley argued that American nationalism is by nature benign because the icon of identity for Americans mostly is the sacred texts of the founding: the Declaration, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. An illiberal American nationalist, on this account, is a contradiction in terms, because what such a person denies is that which makes him American. Buckley rejected the reduction of American nationalism to creedal nationalism — mere belief in the Declaration — insisting Americans are also a people with their own culture and institutions, though he allowed that one can be a nationalist without liking baseball, apple pie, jazz, country and western or Aretha Franklin. Part of the baggage of being an American nationalist, he said, is support of liberal principles and of a broad kind of diversity. The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)
Yoram Hazony, an Israeli philosopher and biblical scholar appearing to discuss The Virtues of Nationalism, defined nationalism as a principled standpoint that sees the world as governed best when nations are allowed to chart an independent course, develop their own traditions and pursue their own interests. Traditionally, he said, this point of view has been opposed to an imperialist or universalist — today globalist — point of view holding that the world would be governed best under a single regime of law and political enforcement. Hazony called this a very old distinction, going back thousands of years, between those who say justice and freedom come when people have independence and those who say that leads to unnecessary war and conflict and that one rule for everyone is better. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)
Patriotism against nationalism and cosmopolitanism
Steven B. Smith, discussing Reclaiming Patriotism, told Zadek that American patriotism is not loyalty to a leader or an individual, citing fascist Italy as the contrary case where the Duce or the Fuhrer is the center of citizen loyalty. American loyalty, he said, has been to the Constitution, and he used the older Greek-derived word “regime” for a constitutional form. Patriotism so understood is loyalty to a political form, not to a person. Smith added that this ideal has not been a source of unity and consensus throughout American history: Americans have argued for over 250 years about what their Constitution is, a great civil war was fought over exactly that fact, and the struggle continues. To be an American, he said, is partly to be engaged in an ongoing dispute about what it means to be an American. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)
Smith described patriotism as a disposition indispensable for democratic self-governing societies, necessary for people’s sense of self-respect and enhancing their sense of membership and belonging. That idea, he argued, is challenged from two directions. On the left, especially in educated and professional circles, people no longer think of themselves primarily as citizens; they see that as parochial and old-fashioned, and many think we are on the way to becoming citizens of the world — an old concept, cosmopolitanism, that goes back to ancient times but has particular resonance today, when problems such as a global pandemic and global warming are genuinely global. Smith said this is not a position he wants to sneer at, but that it detracts from and minimizes, if not despises, the idea that we are also citizens of particular countries with loyalties to fellow citizens. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)
On the right, Smith said, patriotism is challenged by the upsurge of nationalism, an old phenomenon that has come and gone in waves and is now resurgent not only in the US but throughout the world. Nationalism and patriotism, he argued, grow out of a common root: the desire of people to have their way of life, country and culture strong and respected, which he called legitimate and natural. But nationalism moves in a different direction. Smith defined nationalism as an ideology of us against them, an ideology of grievance and resentment whose language is always looking for enemies — foreign enemies, or, failing those, domestic others to demonize and vilify as destructive of the national creed. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism, he suggested, feed off one another, the rise of nationalism emerging in response to globalization while convincing others to double down on cosmopolitanism. Patriotism, he concluded, is different from both, and needs reclaiming from both. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)
Nationalism, diversity and the arrogance of universalism
Hazony told Zadek that in practice, going into a foreign country, knocking over its government and reshaping it is extremely expensive in lives and in the economy demolished by war, for the invaded and the invader alike. He said he was on Zadek’s side on diversity and localism, and that the world is better off with many different experiments in running governments. Even if one could wave a magic wand and make everybody the same according to the best practices of the United States in 2019, he said he would still regard that as an arrogant playing the role of God. He invoked the Tower of Babel, where God looks at the aim of all humanity speaking one language and having one way of thinking and says he does not want that, wanting a world of diversity. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)
Hazony also questioned whether Americans know what is best. He said the United States is not some kind of perfected country, and that when many more traditional societies look at it, the first thing they see is that something like 40% of American children are being born outside of marriage, a figure he called astronomical and which he said speaks to a wholesale destruction of the framework of the traditional family. He asked how one could be so arrogant as not to admit that other people may have insights we lack, and said the virtue of nationalism comes down to being willing to say one thinks one’s society is the best without being so certain that the right thing would be to cause the whole world to be like it. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)
American nationalism and the Founders
In a later appearance, Buckley returned to nationalism in the context of the Trump campaign, on which he said he worked as a pitchman. He argued that Trump as a nationalist would have to adopt the values of the Founders of the country, something he said Lincoln expressly did in a speech on July 4th, 1858. Buckley recounted Lincoln’s remarks on immigration: all honor to the people who fought in the Revolution, some of whose descendants were in the audience, but even without a direct blood tie to the Founders it is enough to subscribe to their values, the electric cord of the words of the Declaration uniting all Americans. That, Buckley said, is what American nationalism means. He added that we now have a bunch of nationalists who are illiberal, and that if you are illiberal you are not American. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)
Buckley also described the older Republican Party as nationalist but recognizing that nationalism has a gravitational force that brings you over to the middle of the road on economics. He said Trump discovered the sweet spot in American politics, which he called progressive conservatism, a middle-of-the-road movement last best expressed by Dwight Eisenhower, and that the party had better cut its ties with Trump as an individual while attracting the 74 million people who voted for him. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)
Across episodes: the same question, different treatments
The topic is touched in four episodes. Buckley’s 2018 discussion treats American nationalism as benign because rooted in the founding texts; Hazony’s 2018 conversation defines nationalism as a principled alternative to imperialism and globalism and defends diversity among nations; Smith’s 2021 interview distinguishes patriotism from both nationalism and cosmopolitanism, casting nationalism as an ideology of us against them; and Buckley’s 2022 appearance returns to American nationalism through Lincoln and the Founders while criticizing illiberal nationalists. The excerpts show no single development across the episodes, but a shift in emphasis: the earlier treatments defend or define nationalism, while the later ones increasingly distinguish it from patriotism and warn against its illiberal forms.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the name of any bill, the holding of any case, or the amendment on which any case turned. They do not give founding dates or the titles and fields of the guests beyond what the labels and introductions supply. Where an excerpt breaks off mid-sentence or mid-exchange, the discussion stops there.