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Nationalism

8 min read

Part of Elections and politics.

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Every episode (3)

Who argued it

Steven B. Smith · Yoram Hazony · Frank Buckley

Republican Party · Donald Trump · Immigration

Background

American nationalism as creed and culture

Frank Buckley told Bob Zadek that the debate over whether nationalism is good or bad is a category mistake: the question should be nationalism in certain countries. Israeli nationalism may be fine and English nationalism may be fine, Buckley said, while German nationalism he was unsure about, because there are bad forms of nationalism perverted to evil ends. American nationalism, by contrast, is by nature benign because the icon of American identity is mostly the sacred texts of the founding: the Declaration, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. An illiberal American nationalist is therefore a contradiction in terms, since what such a person denies is that which makes him American. The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)

Buckley resisted reducing this to creedal nationalism alone. Americans are not just philosophers following a text, he said, but a people with their own culture and institutions, though it takes a moment to figure out what those core cultural artifacts are in a country as diverse as America. What cannot be done is to identify Americanness with the culture of a particular people: one can be a nationalist without liking baseball and apple pie, jazz and country and western and Aretha Franklin, though one would be more of an American for liking all of it. Part of the baggage of being an American nationalist, on Buckley’s account, 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)

Nationalism against imperialism and globalism

Yoram Hazony, introduced by Zadek as an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist, 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 by a single regime of law and political enforcement governing all nations. Hazony called this a very old distinction, going back thousands of years, between the view that people reach justice and freedom through independence and the view that independence merely leads to unnecessary war and conflict. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Zadek framed nationalism as simply federalism on a global scale, and asked whether the reason not to impose American ways on other countries is practical or moral. Hazony answered that in practice knocking over a foreign government and reshaping it is extremely expensive in lives and material for both the invaded and the invader, making the hypothetical of no obstacle hard to answer. He said he was on Zadek’s side on diversity and localism: the world is better off with many different experiments in running governments, and even if one could wave a magic wand and make everybody conform to the best practices of the United States in 2019, doing so would be an arrogant playing the role of God. He compared that ambition to the Tower of Babel story, in which God rejects a humanity with one language and one way of thinking in favor of a world of diversity. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Hazony also questioned whether Americans know what is best, noting that something like 40% of American children are born outside of marriage, which he called an astronomical number speaking to a wholesale destruction of the framework of the traditional family. He asked how Americans could be so arrogant as not to admit that other people, in more traditional societies in Asia or Africa, might have insights they lack—societies that might say they want democracy, civil liberties and free markets modified rather than imported wholesale. The virtue of nationalism, he concluded, comes down to being willing to say one thinks one’s society is the best without being so certain as to believe the right thing is to cause the whole world to be like it. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Patriotism distinguished from nationalism

Steven B. Smith told Zadek that American patriotism is not loyalty to a leader or an individual—that was true in places like fascist Italy, where the Duce or the Fuhrer was the center of citizen loyalty, but America has never been that kind of country. American loyalty, he said, has been to the Constitution, and in his book he uses the older Greek-derived word “regime” for a constitutional form: patriotism is loyalty to a political form, not to an individual. He 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—so that part of being an American is engaging 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, and said it is challenged today from two directions. On the left, especially in educated and professional circles, people no longer think of themselves primarily as citizens, regarding that as parochial and old-fashioned in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world; Smith noted this cosmopolitanism is an old concept going back to ancient times, with particular resonance today because problems such as a global pandemic and global warming are genuinely global. On the right, patriotism is challenged by a resurgence of nationalism, which he called an old phenomenon that has come and gone in waves. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)

Smith argued that nationalism and patriotism grow out of a common root—the desire of people to have their way of life, country and culture strong and respected—but that nationalism moves in a different direction. Nationalism, he said, is an ideology of us against them, of grievance and resentment, always looking for enemies, foreign or, failing that, domestic others to demonize and vilify as destructive of the national creed. He suggested nationalism and cosmopolitanism feed off one another, with the rise of nationalism emerging in response to globalization while convincing others to double down on cosmopolitanism, and he placed patriotism as distinct from both extremes. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)

A nationalist’s obligation to the Founders

In a later episode, Buckley recounted working on the Trump campaign in 2016 and pitching Jared Kushner that the big issue was the rise of aristocracy and the decline of economic mobility, a theme he said became central to the campaign. He described Trump as a failure as a president even before January 6th, citing an inability to cut deals, domestic policy run by the Paul Ryans in the first two years, and the Russian collusion matter, which he said prevented a deal with Putin. He argued the Republican Party should cut its ties with Trump as an individual while attracting the 74 million people who voted for him, and described Trump as having discovered the sweet spot in American politics—a middle-of-the-road progressive conservatism last best expressed by Dwight Eisenhower. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)

On nationalism specifically, Buckley said that if you are a nationalist you have to adopt the values of the Founders of the country, something he said Lincoln expressly did in a speech on July 4th, 1858. Lincoln, discussing immigration, honored those who fought in the Revolution and noted that some of their descendants were in the audience, but said that 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 unites all Americans. That, Buckley said, is what American nationalism means—and he added that the nationalists now ascendant are illiberal, and that if you are illiberal you are not American. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)

Across episodes

The topic recurs across four episodes spanning 2018 to 2022. Buckley in 2018 and again in 2022 treats American nationalism as benign when tied to the founding texts and the Founders’ values; Hazony in December 2018 defines nationalism against imperialism and globalism and defends it as a principled standpoint; Smith in 2021 separates patriotism from nationalism and treats the latter as an ideology of us against them. The episodes show no single settled definition, and Buckley’s 2022 insistence that illiberal nationalists are not American restates rather than revises his 2018 position.

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