Nationalism is What We Need Now--The Case for an “Unpatriotic Conservatism”
In most intellectual circles on the right, as well many in the center and on the left, it is fashionable to damn nationalism. Among conservatives, patriotism is held to be something almost always worthy of praise—though exactly what patriotism might entail has never been settled upon.
As is so often true, the conventional views of the Left and Right, if not entirely unfounded, are limiting and sometimes simply wrong. The United States, at present, suffers from an excess of patriotism and a generally defective sense of nationalism. European countries, too, would benefit from being more nationalistic, though in the Old World the excess is not of patriotism but of a leftist internationalism that has rendered Europeans helpless in the face of Islamic immigration. In the case of U.S. foreign policy, it has not been “jingoistic nationalism,” as many critics like to claim, that has driven our country into an interminable and unjust war in Iraq but a genuine, if misguided, patriotism. The United States should act more like a nation among nations: jealous of her own sovereignty and national borders, respectful of those of other countries.
To say this is not to deny that nationalism can be taken to excess, and historically it often has been in Europe. Nationalism was an active ingredient—though not the only one—in Nazism and Fascism and the bloodletting unleashed in the Balkans after the fall of Communism. But not all nationalism has led to carnage: as Michael Lind and others have noted, the secession of the Baltic states from Russia and the peaceful separation of Slovakia and the Czech Republic were classic expressions of nationalism—the desire of ethnocultural groups for homelands of their own and freedom from foreign government. Benign nationalism is not without precedent—and beither is hubristic patriotism.
Of late, “The American Scene” blog has been discussing nationalism and patriotism at some length, spinning off from a debate in the Cato Institute’s web journal, Cato Unbound. At “The American Scene” and on his personal blog, “Eunomia,” Daniel Larison has been particularly insistent about the distinction between patriotism and nationalism and about the positive value of the former and negative connotations of the latter. The view Larison champions derives in large part from historian John Luckacs and the chapter “About Historical Factors, or the Hierarchy of Powers” from his 1968 book Historical Consciousness. Lukacs, in turn, takes his inspiration from a passage in George Orwell’s 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism.” By “nationalism,” Orwell writes,
”I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.”
There are several problems with Orwell’s essay. For one thing, as he admits at the outset, “nationalism” it not quite the right word for the subject he wishes to address: “There is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject,” he writes, “but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism,’ but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense.” Indeed, Orwell’s “nationalism” is an expansive category for just about anything Eric Blair dislikes: “Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Anti-semitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism.”
One might suggest “ideology” or “partisanship” as a better word for what Orwell chooses to call “nationalism.” But in any case, Orwell’s definitions are tendentious: what we call patriotism is always good (“no wish to force upon other people,” “defensive”) while what we call nationalism sounds inherently bad (“desire for power”). One cannot argue with loaded terms, so let me suggest less value-laden definitions: patriotism is indeed simply love of one’s country. Nationalism is the more specific desire for one’s people to have a sovereign territory of their own. Either sentiment can be defensive; both can be abused and militarized.
Take the case of the U.S. war with Iraq. Larison contends, “The Iraq war was made possible by a propaganda campaign by the government, the exploitation of public fear and anger, the warmongering of nationalists and the twisting of patriotic sentiment into support for a war of aggression by casting the war dishonestly as one of self-defense.” Just about everything there is right—except for the use of the term “nationalists.” For in what sense, other than the purely tendentious, are George W. Bush and his neocon cronies “nationalists”?
President Bush has explicitly attacked beliefs historically associated with American nationalism. Patrick J. Buchanan recently wrote an excellent column on the president’s vendetta against “isolationists,” “nativists,” and “protectionists.” A synonym for the last of those terms is “economic nationalism.” Nativism is a nasty word for the ethnic solidarity at the heart of nationalist sentiment. And historically, American nationalism has often aligned with “isolationism,” or non-interventionism, although that story is rather complicated. For one thing, immigrant groups such as the Germans opposed U.S. entry into both World Wars in part out of nationalist sympathy with their homelands. And whether or not the preference of East Coast elites for intervention in both wars was nationalist—born of ancestral Anglophilia—or transnational in motivation is open to debate. It depends on whether you take American and English nationality to be fungible or not.
(I’m strongly on the side of “not,” our common heritage and language notwithstanding. America is, and ought to be, America, and England England. I’m not one to tell other countries what their business is, but if I were Scottish, I would want the distinction between Scotland and England to be very clear as well. “Britain” is a political and historical reality—but it is an island of multiple nationalities.)
American anti-imperialism and “isolationism” have often been attached to what can fairly be called nationalism. Sometimes this has added an ugly taint to an admirable ideal: Bill Kauffman’s new book Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism catalogues some of the nationalistic attitudes of American anti-imperialists of the early 1900s, who feared that America’s historic ethnocultutural identity would be adulterated by empire. Kauffman cites a poem by James T. DuBois, anti-imperialist U.S. consul to Switzerland, “in which,” writes Kauffman, “the bemused narrator encounter a series of exotic characters, clad outlandishly or barely at all, and upon asking ‘Where do you hail f’m, pardner?’ is informed ‘Porto Rico, U.S.A.,’ ‘Honeyluler, U.S.A.,’ ‘Santiago, U.S.A.,’ and ‘Manila, U.S.A.’” The narrator replies, “Nex’ you know you’ll ask a feller / Whur he’s frum, he’ll up an ‘ say / With a lordly kind o’ flourish, / ‘All creation, U.S.A.’”
To be sure, anti-interventionism, the desire to restrict immigration, and protectionism do not always go together. But they are allied so frequently that we might suggest that they have a natural affinity with one another and make coherent sense as a species of American nationalism. Bush’s immigration views alone ought to acquit him of the accusation of “nationalism”—what nationalist anywhere has ever favored open borders?
I am not a nationalist, and there is much that I find repellent in nationalist views of ethnicity, culture, and economics. There are larger and smaller loyalties that must trump national sentiment, and nation-states are not properly economic entities—states survive by expropriation, not exchange, after all. But all of that said, and even acknowledging the ideological racism into which American nationalism can degenerate, one can conclude that there is a wholesome component to nationalism on these shores. In its desire to preserve a degree (not an absolute degree, however) of ethnocultural solidarity within defined borders, American nationalism is a healthy thing—more anti-imperial than expansionist.
The United States presently finds itself facing two intractable problems. First is a foreign-policy committing the country to providing defense for most of the developed world—from Japan and Korea to Germany, indeed almost to the very borders of Russia, as well as in the Middle East—and to intervening militarily in theaters ranging from Colombia to Kosovo to Iraq. The cost in lives and treasure is staggering and will sooner or later bankrupt the country. This aggravates the second problem, a federal government whose spending is utterly without brake, and which provides transient tax cuts while borrowing trillions that will have to be repaid one day through tax hikes or inflation. On top of these issues, a third has stirred considerable passion: unchecked illegal immigration, and mass legal immigration, which together in a souring economy exacerbate anxieties over employment and, in a era of rising terrorism, raise fears for national security.
Nationalism attempts to address all three of these concerns. It possesses the right answer to one of them, the right answer for perhaps the wrong reasons to another, and the wrong answer to the third. In foreign policy, the U.S. would be well served to behave more like a traditional nation-state and not an ideological empire: it ought to respect other nations’ sovereignty, including the sovereignty of unfriendly powers like Iraq and Iran, and it should not be providing national defense for countries that are fully capable of protecting themselves. As destructive as German and Japanese nationalisms have been in decades past, it is time that those nations assumed the burden for their own military protection. Neither country has the same imperial will that led to mass-murder in the last century, and even to the extent that a militaristic nationalism may be incipient in Japan, that state is checked by a far more powerful China.
Economic nationalism is a subject for another essay, but in short, welfare in the form of tariffs is every bit as unjust and ultimately impoverishing and debilitating as welfare in the form of direct subsidy to businesses or individuals. As for immigration, the question of who should be admitted to citizenship and who should have access to public institutions—health care and education especially—is properly a question for the people of a country. The American people prefer less immigration in general and much less illegal immigration in particular. The economic arguments against immigration are themselves a form of economic nationalism and faulty, but on whatever the grounds, the citizenry of a republic may properly choose for themselves how much immigration they want. There is no Constitutional or natural right that says anyone and everyone can be an American. No one is denied his due by being denied entry into the country, nor is anyone thereby deprived of his property.
Hyper-nationalism, or the abuse of nationalism, is a real danger, but not one the United States faces at this time. If American nationalists were clamoring to annex Canada for Lebensraum or demanding the ethnic cleansing of Hispanic Americans—or for that matter German-Americans or Slavic Americans—that would indeed be a violation of other nations’ sovereignty or other people’s legal rights, as well as being simply morally wrong. But only a marginal fringe fantasizes about such excessive, malevolent manifestations of nationalism. Middle American desires for limited, legal immigration and for a foreign policy of national defense, not global empire-building, are nationalistic but benign. Just as democracy need not mean giving a majority power to do anything it wishes, nationalism does not have to mean justifying crimes in the name of the nation.
On the flipside, there can indeed be times when heinous actions are justified—that is, rationalized—in the name of patriotism. Bush and his voters are not inflamed by nationalism, which the president has vociferously abjured, but by—among other things—overweening patriotism. If patriotism is simply love of country, it is nonetheless possible, as with love of anything else, to love one’s country too much—to overlook her flaws and excuse her errors. A man may love his wife, and he may love her so much that he would kill to make her happy. The motive for murder would be love, but that would not make it right. Love of country, like love of anything else in this world, can be taken to excess.
The neocons are a special case, and Bush is a politician, so his motives are more complex, and darker, than mere patriotism. But the support of ordinary Americans for the Iraq misadventure is most certainly deriving from patriotic feeling. They love their country; they know it is good. They make the mistake, however, of conflating America with all that is good and nothing that is not. They don’t hate Iraqis or Arabs generally; on the contrary, they wish them well. They want what is good for them. And since “America” and “good” are interchangeable terms, they think it cannot be anything other than good for Iraq to be more like America. The whole world should be more like America. This is still patriotism run amuck.
Orwell claims that patriotism “has no wish to force [a country or its values] upon other people.” But hubristic patriots do not believe they are forcing their country on other people. They believe they are helping other people achieve what they really desire. Everyone wants to be like us, and we can help them along by bombing the bejeezus out of anything—secular dictators, 1500-year-old religions, tribal loyalties, national borders—that stands between them and the American Way. The hubristic patriot believes his country always acts defensively, even if, as in the case of the Iraq War, it acts in defense against a nonexistent threat.
Hubristic patriotism supplied the context in which David Frum, a Canadian transplant, could get away with calling right-wing critics of the Iraq War “unpatriotic conservatives.” Those men of the Right had the temerity to criticize America on any number of points, not just foreign policy—some of them even said nice things about the cultural achievements of the French relative to Americans. The unpatriotic conservatives denied the identification of America with all things good and nothing evil.
Patriotism need not always be taken to such abusive and ridiculous lengths. But in the America of 2003, and among many conservative Americans even today, it was and is. Some of this is a reaction against the genuinely unpatriotic sentiments expressed by the hard Left in the Vietnam era and after. Yet extremism in one direction is no cure for extremism in another—too often, the extremes feed off of one another, as the über-patriotic Right and anti-patriotic Left do—and excessive patriotism is at least as dangerous as defective patriotism. What the United States needs now is less passionate love for our country right or wrong, and more prudent adherence to national interests and national borders. More nationalism, less patriotism.
Europe sadly does not have enough of either at the moment, but nationalism is the quality in greater need. The excessive nationalism of the Nazis discredited national solidarity throughout Western Europe, and particularly in Germany. But unchecked Third World immigration is today a greater danger to peace and liberty in Western Europe than excessive nationalism is. Germany, France, and other countries are reluctant to assert their historic national identities—including their religious and political traditions—against newcomers who have few hesitations about expressing their own ethnocultural identities and the political and social practices associated with them—practices of Sharia, for example, or forced marriage. A dose of nationalism could fortify European liberalism against this onslaught. (I do not suggesting anything illiberal here: only that immigration be restricted and Muslims and other minorities not be exempted from laws that apply to everyone else.)
The Left in America and Europe has largely rejected both patriotism and nationalism in favor of an anti-traditional cosmopolitanism: bringing people together by destroying their historic identities, whether religious or ethnocultural or of whatever other kind. If we were all alike, we would not fight any more—no more shooting wars, culture wars, or bitter political disputes. Unfortunately, these leftists do not seem to consider how much cultural, political, or real warfare must take place in order to make everyone alike.
Cultural and political war to end all wars suits the Left just fine, but contemporary leftists are usually a little queasy about real blood-and-guts warfare, their penchant for humanitarian intervention notwithstanding. Unluckily for the rest of us, this is precisely where America’s neoconservatives are most passionate. The neocons and the Left complement each other fully. The Left wants to wipe out traditional Christianity and historic Western nations through legal and cultural change, but it shies away from open warfare and from applying the same anti-traditionalist stance to non-Western cultures. The neocons want nothing more than to make non-Western cultures more like us, and they will gladly use cruise missiles and Marines to do it. Theirs is a peculiar form of post-national patriotism. It is peculiar ideology created by the intellectual elite, it is one that can make sense to ordinary Americans. If you cannot pray in school, the neocons seem to say, why not take out your frustrations by joining the military and bringing the blessings of liberty to other lands? The neocons appeal to Americans on the wavelength of something they can be proud of: their military traditions. Other traditions fall to desuetude.
Samuel Huntington describes the choice confronting America in Who Are We?:
“Cosmopolitanism and [democratic] imperialism attempt to reduce or to eliminate the social, political, and cultural differences between America and other societies. A national approach would recognize and accept what distinguishes America from those societies. America cannot become the world and still be America. Other peoples cannot become American and still be themselves. America is different, and that difference is defined in large part by its Anglo-Protestant culture and its religiosity. The alternative to cosmopolitanism and imperialism is nationalism devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America since its founding.
The transformation of the United States from a confederated Republic into a consolidated nation after the War Between the States was a tragedy, and expressions of American nationalism from the Civil War to the Cold War were often risible and typically took root at the expense of earlier local identities. Traditional conservatives romanticize an American patriotism of hearth and home, but such a thing has not existed, not in measurable quantities at least, for at least a century. The place of the old local loyalties has been taken by the national flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, and the one institution to which almost all Americans remain devoted—the military. What small patriotism survives in little platoons—not Army brigades—is to be cherished. But the road back to the humane scale is a long one, and a mild nationalism, as antidote to leftist cosmopolitanism and neocon imperialism, may be a necessary first step. Even secession, a favored cause of radical localists and libertarians, is most likely to come about in the 21st century through nationalism, as Scots and Quebecois independence movements suggest.
Nationalism is no unqualified good, even in small doses. But it is preferable to the immediate alternatives. Patriotism can and ought to be a pure and noble sentiment dedicated only to defense—but in 21st-century America, it has all too often been inflamed into a mad passion.
Daniel McCarthy is Associate Editor at The American Conservative.
Comments
Dan, you write: “I am not a nationalist,” yet you claim that we need more of something that you’re unwilling to embrace yourself. I’m not quite sure I understand that logic.
You write: “Bush and his voters are not inflamed by nationalism, which the president has vociferously abjured, but by—among other things—overweening patriotism.” You can make this statement by abandoning the traditional distinction between nationalism and patriotism (which did not first come from Orwell, despite the usefulness of his essay--read Lukacs on how the concepts of “nation,” “nationalism,” “patriotism,” and “national consciousness” developed from the 16th century on), but you haven’t really offered a new definition of patriotism that is anything more than, well, another version of nationalism.
You write: “What the United States needs now is less passionate love for our country right or wrong, and more prudent adherence to national interests and national borders. More nationalism, less patriotism.” Exactly wrong. “Prudent adherence to national interests and national borders” is a patriotic action; the nationalist, like the internationalist, cares not for the historic borders of the nation-state. It’s just that the nationalist desires to expand them--literally or figuratively through the spreading of an ideology which the nation is seen as being the ultimate representative of.
It’s in that latter way that the Bush and his voters are clearly nationalists--what is “spreading democracy” if not, in their minds, the extension of “the American way of life” to benighted souls elsewhere?
I understand the desire to rescue the term “nationalism,” and I think that your essay is motivated by such a desire. I find myself gravitating toward the term “economic nationalism.” Yet if we’re going to redefine the terms “nationalism” and “patriotism,” abandoning the traditional distinction, we should have a better reason to do so than the fact that we like the term “nationalism,” or that people we admire, who are actually patriots concerned with the national interest and not really nationalists, mistakenly apply the term “nationalist” to themselves.
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“My country, right or wrong,” by the way, is not a patriotic sentiment, but a nationalist one. So if, as you say, that’s what motivates “Bush and his voters,” then they are motivated by nationalism, not patriotism, even in your analysis.
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One question that those who wish to redefine “nationalism” and “patriotism” really need to ask themselves is this: What will be accomplished by the redefinition?
All too often, as I’ve remarked on this site before, the purpose of the redefinition seems to be something like this: “I like the term nationalism; people I like are derided as nationalists by people I don’t like; people I don’t like insist on calling themselves patriots. Therefore, let’s redefine nationalism so that it’s something more like the traditional definition of patriotism.” (I sense a certain amount of that even in this essay.)
But again--what is accomplished by that redefinition that isn’t accomplished by strict adherence to the traditional distinction? And how does this redefinition not simply cede ground to those who have inappropriately appropriated the term “patriotism” for themselves?
The correct response to David Frum’s “Unpatriotic Conservatives” is not for true patriots to abandon patriotism and to embrace nationalism; it is, instead, the response we offered at Chronicles: What makes a Canadian Zionist think that he has any right whatsoever to define American patriotism?
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Mr. McCarthy has written in the past some wisdom. Not today.
Disturbing and obscurantist. I remain with Orwell’s and Lukac’s definitions, not the author’s attempt to exchange the definition of one for the other. (And I am take by surprise to find myself in some agreement with Mr. Richert in this matter, he otherwise often my antipode.) I go further: All nationalism is “hubristic” by definition; patriotism isn’t. And we have heard before, in the Volkische Beobachter, how “a dose of nationalism” would save use from undesirables, then the Bolsheviks, now the Muslims. It didn’t work then; it won’t work now, and the putative cure was as bad as the disease. Spare me.
Nationalism/tribalism/retribalization caused two world wars, the mess in the Balkans, the mess in Ireland, the mess in Palestine; it ended the royal houses of Stuart, Hannover, the Two Sicilies; and Catholics have often been accused of undermining “the nation”, as in France 1906. Reason enough to damn Nationalism, and all its works, and all its vain promises – and to damn it utterly. And demonstrated evil remains evil, and not a “preferable alternative”.
And just what constitutes a “nation”? Richelieu’s critera? Cromwell’s at Drogheda? Bismarck’s? Cavour’s? the Whig’s of 1688? Dishonest Abe’s? These men with sword and jackboot forced peoples with very different histories and extremely different interests into a faux “nation”. I in North Carolina have a nothing in common with Massachusetts, Minnesota, or California. Indeed, I have more in common with Austrians, Argentines, and Italians. Mr. McCarthy, at least in this matter, thus proves himself to be a Whig, an ideology currently denominated “neo-conservatives”. Frankly, if one were to take some of the author’s good principles seriously, he would have made the case for The League of the South.
Rather than a “dose of nationalism”, The West needs to think of itself as a common heritage, one to be shared if possible, and defended if not. It also needs the Catholic Faith. Cf. De Maistre, Du Pape.
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Dan, thank you for this.
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Sid,
Would you admit that “we”—the West—should at least determine an agreement over what is and what is not part of the nation?
While I agree that nationalism certainly led to WWI, in the end it is valid for historians to think otherwise or to redefine nationalism, like McCarthy.
After all, it was young men who killed each other in Europe. Many demographers think that it was the European son-surplus, which gave all these testosterone-ridden militarists in power the means to go to war. These days, the fertility is quite low.
What I’m saying is this, nationalism alone isn’t sufficient for the horrors of August ‘14. For barbarism like that, you also need the young son surplusses of the early 20th century.
It wasn’t ‘nationalism’ per se what was killing people in Verdun. It was the disease of ideology (communism, nazism, jacobins) in combination with masses of angry young men.
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Webster’s:
Nationalism: Loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations of supranational groups.
Mmmm. . . .more nationalism, please!
“The Left wants to wipe out traditional Christianity and historic Western nations through legal and cultural change, but it shies away from open warfare and from applying the same anti-traditionalist stance to non-Western cultures.”
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Here is my favorite political joke: Wernher von Braun - he aimed at the moon but only managed to hit London. The nation state isn’t going away anytime soon and those who oppose it know it. Their not against “nationalism” they’re against the existence of white people; their wrath is aimed only at the West. It is advocacy of genocide by the back door. They espouse a doctrine that is fundamentally Nazi: whites are born wicked and their culture is evil at its roots and both must be destroyed. They don’t particularly care what comes after, thus the bizarre spectacle of leftists championing the mass migration of Muslims into the West. The left is notorious for manipulating the meaning of words as a political weapon and their redefinition of nationalism has followed their metamorphosis from an economic movement to culture warriors (white-hating racists) in the 1960s, and it’s important to emphasize that they are not just against the states of the West they are racist against those who people those states.
Somehow we have lost the ability to call a spade a spade; the thief has his hands in our pockets and is rapidly relieving us of our goods while we listen to his bullshit patter slack jawed. Our ancestors would have grasped their intent said enough of your guff.
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Mr. Richert is correct. Simply adhering to the traditional definitions will serve our purposes best.
Consider these lines from Mr. McCarthty:
“Hubristic patriotism supplied the context in which David Frum, a Canadian transplant, could get away with calling right-wing critics of the Iraq war ‘unpatriotic conservatives.’ ... Patriotism need not always be taken to such abusive and ridiculous lengths.”
Why not just call this “hubristic patriotism” what it is: Extreme nationalism.
Again, let’s stick to the accepted definitions.
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Let us indeed stick to the PROPER definitions. There is very little traditional distinction between the terms, they would have been used interchangeably by most people, though perhaps patriotism was and is more popular. Nationalism if anything was a nobler word since it was more often used by and applied to those seeking their freedom and sovereignty from the oppression of others. The word you all are looking for is imperialism. Serbian nationalists didn’t cause WW1, Austrian imperialists did. More to the point the left would have used nationalism and patriotism interchangeably until very recently and detested them both, this hairsplitting over the terms today is just semantic sleight of hand. The very word nationalism implies loyalty to the nation, and that is a quality they most assuredly don’t have, patriotism, as we have seen on this thread, can be stretched and pummeled into meaningless support for virtually anything. Deconstruction.
In this overcrowded and shrinking world imperialism is all but dead (except for the ongoing colonialism is that being waged by the Western left against their own peoples, of course). Those waging an “anti-nationalist” crusade against the nations of the West don’t really believe they are preventing war, it’s a canard. The worst among them are pure racists, genocidal in intent, the best are fuzzy egalitarians, objectively genocidal, who think that eliminating the successful peoples and nations, the cultural Kulaks, of the West will somehow marshal in a brave new one-world.
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Very interesting piece!
It seems to me that “patriotism” is a human quality or attitude, like honesty, integrity, etc. “Nationalism” is an ideology like liberalism or Fascism. Also, as I’ve indicated in response to an earlier post: One can make a distinction between “organic” nationalism associated with Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (among others) and the notion of the juridico-political state with that of the “folk-nation” that reflects not only a certain geographical entity, language, and citizenship but also historical roots that include religion, ethnicity, and race. On the other side, you have “liberal” nationalism where “nation” evolves in the context of the jurisdiction of the state with citizenship being the lowest common denominator, then comes language (although nation-state can be multi-lingual like Switzerland), etc. So there is a certain continuim here leading from one extreme (where, say, racism could be basic nationalist identity, like in Nazi Germany) to the other extreme where like in the case of the liberal, multi-culturalist state, nationalism is being “de-nationalized” as even basic traits such citizenship, common history and language are drained of their meanining.
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A short follow-up:
Another way of distinguishing between organic and liberal nationalism is the level of exlusiveness vs. inclusiveness, say, exclusive definition based on race vs. inclusive definition verging on universalism. It seems to me that what we need today is to return to a more balanced approach as proposed by Huntignton.
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“Sticking to accepted definitions” is what I’ve done, Cort. The definitions I’ve used are those found in any dictionary; you’ll notice that I link my definition of “nationalism” to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which defines the term in a nutshell as “the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.”
What’s so bad about that? Or rather, what’s necessarily so bad about that? The point of my essay, after all, is that the worse term has its virtues while the better one has its vices of excess.
There are virtues which have no vicious excess—one can never be too just, for example. But patriotism is not one of these. One can indeed love one’s country too much or in the wrong way. To call such excessive or misplaced love “nationalism” is not always accurate (even though it sometimes is), since hubristic patriotism need not have any of the “us and them” distinction inherent in nationalism. It can be, and in the present case often is, simply too much “us.”
Scott asks why I would want more of something when I’m not willing to define my as the thing in question. Because that’s how imperfect politics works. I might like to see more paleoconservative Protestantism, too, but that does not mean I am a Protestant myself or agree with Protestant theology. It simply means that I think the country would be better off with more Harold O.J. Brown and less James Dobson.
What does give me pause, however, is the idea that the word “nationalism” has been worsened to the point where even attempting to show that it is not inherently and sempiternally evil is liable to create confusion. But I don’t think we have reached that point: both Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy have had essays on the inevitability and sometime benevolence of ethnonationalism recently, and everyone from Samuel Huntington to Michael Lind has been able to discuss the matter seriously without being accused (except by the usual suspects) of brownshirt sympathies.
What I should say explicitly is that the kind of nationalism I have in mind is roughly the sort advocated by Patrick Buchanan or Samuel Huntington—though even the more leftward nationalism of Michael Lind might be preferable to democratic imperialism and multiculturalism.
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“One can indeed love one’s country too much or in the wrong way.”
How so? You’ve made that claim in the piece and comments, but the closest you’ve come to an example is another claim--namely, that the Iraq War somehow represents such an excessive love. But that’s far from self-evident.
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“‘the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.’
“What’s so bad about that? “
Other than the fact that national self-determination is a liberal principle, not a conservative one, as conservatives used to know? (Woodrow Wilson may be called many things; “conservative” is not one of them.)
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“A man may love his wife, and he may love her so much that he would kill to make her happy.”
Is that really love? Would St. Thomas Aquinas say that it is? Or is it rather a perversion of love, not an excess?
If we’re concerned with defining terms, these are important questions. Otherwise, we’re simply making intermediate arguments that justify the overall argument.
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It should be noted, by the way, that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy contains no entry for “Patriotism,” and the “Nationalism” entry uses the term “patriotism” only in the sense of Habermasian “civic patriotism,” which is itself an abandonment of the traditional definition of patriotism and an attempt to redefine the term to mean something like the “propositional nation” idea of the neocons and Straussians.
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To respond quickly to the points Scott raises (if not in the order in which he raises them):
1.) The man who commits murder for love of his wife can be said to be acting out of excessive love or love perverted, depending on the definition of love. The English word love is all too vague, both in this case and in that of patriotism as love of country. Love in the sense of caritas does not have an excess. Love in the sense of amor does admit of excess. I suppose there’s a fair question to be pondered whether patriotism is pietas or amor patriae, and depending on the answer, whether it can be excessive or whether we must properly call what *looks like* an excess of patriotism by another name. While I’m not sure whether excessive love or perverted love (and thus perhaps not love at all) is the more accurate turn of phrase, the phenomenon of patriotism turned toward destructive ends is real and for the sake of clear thinking, it is still better to call this patriotism gone wrong “patriotism” (whether excessive or perverted) than to conscript a different word like “nationalism” to serve in its place. Nationalism, for good or ill, is neither a synonym nor an antonym of patriotism, though the two have some historical overlap.
If we were to call everything perverted or taken to excess by another name, our language would be unnavigable. What’s worse, and the error into which I fear my friends are falling, is that of believing that our wholesome feelings are incapable of leading us into folly—that all evil comes clearly labeled and packaged and is external. I don’t think the world is like that.
2.) Regarding patriotism and the Iraq War, I’m not sure what evidence could prove or disprove the role of patriotism in it, especially if one chooses to call patriotism always a good thing, no matter its degree or form. That definition would of course foreclose the prospect of patriotism playing any role in a bad venture. But if we don’t use a question-begging definition, the prospect that love of country played a role in support for the war does not seem controversial. We cannot know what is really going on inside men’s minds, but a lot of people who act and speak in a fashion consistent with the virtue of patriotism supported the war, and linked their support to their patriotism. They encouraged their sons to enlist in the armed forces. They believed that their country had the will and ability to transform a Middle Eastern dictatorship into a democracy, or at least a safe and minimally just country. They seemed, from my observations, to feel strong emotions of patriotism—love of the flag; a belief in America, in a general sense. Did they conflate America and her government? Yes, but there are important—indeed patriotic—reasons why they made that mistake. They patriotically believed in the goodness of their countrymen and of their form of government, and how could such goodness lead to evil? I could compile evidence for all this, but it should be abundant enough to need little demonstration.
The feeling and motive I have described is not accurately called “nationalism,” since it does not have anything to do with America as a nation among nations or with national identity vis-a-vis other nations. It does not appear to spring from a competitive, nationalistic spirit, but from a spirit which in loving America overlooks her capacity for folly.
Now, all of this is speculative and impressionistic, so if my interlocutors choose not to accept it, I can’t quarrel with them too much. But it does seem to me that what my friends are doing amounts to a kind of Corcyranization or Orwellianism. If something we like is leading to folly, we simply decide to call it something else.
3.) Scott suggests that I look at Lukacs. I have, and although I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment, I recall that at one point in the relevant chapter in Historical Consciousness, Lukacs allows that the distinction between nationalism and patriotism to which he subscribes might also be called a distinction between ideological and organic (if I’m recalling correctly) patriotism. I think the latter formulation is better, though even that fails to credit the possibility that flawed patriotism may not be “ideological” but simply emotional.
As for the wider history that Luckacs lays out, well, it’s hardly an open-and-shut proof that patriotism is always a good thing. Luckacs redefines terms retrospectively, saying that when Samuel Johnson remarked that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, what Johnson really mean was nationalism. Even if that is true, it illustrates the historic capacity for patriotism to be taken to excess (or perversion) and to become a refuge for scoundrels. I disagree with the idea that the later word, “nationalism,” simply steps in and takes the place of earlier examples of patriotism-gone-awry. The older usage, capacious enough to include patriotism-gone-awry as well as the patriotism that makes us all feel so good, is more honest.
4.) Self-determination is liberal and therefore bad. I don’t agree that everything liberal is bad and everything conservative is good. To make conservatism and liberalism syonyms for good and evil is to engage in ideological thinking and the bending of language to suit a political-ideological agenda. That’s the very thing I’m railing against.
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“I don’t agree that everything liberal is bad and everything conservative is good.”
So you would defend national self-determination as a positive principle? The point isn’t that it’s not conservative, and therefore we shouldn’t support it; the point is that conservatives haven’t supported it because it represents a disruption of traditional society. Even some liberals, such as Lord Acton, understood this quite well.
As for “the bending of language to suit a political-ideological agenda,” it seems to me that you’re doing precisely that. You’ve proposed a redefinition of these two terms for some purpose, presumably.
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“The feeling and motive I have described is not accurately called ‘nationalism,’ since it does not have anything to do with America as a nation among nations or with national identity vis-a-vis other nations.”
Really? An offensive war against another nation “does not have anything to do with America as a nation among nations or with national identity vis-a-vis other nations”?
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No, Scott: ordinary Americans supporting the war did not think of it as offensive; they did not support it, as far as I can tell, out of motives of national aggrandizement.
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Again, I’m not redefining terms. I’m using terms in a manner that I would think would be acceptable to any fair-minded person: patriotism is love of one’s country; nationalism is a desire for national self-determination and the expression of national identity. Is that unfair? I argue that both sentiments can be abused.
I don’t think national self-determination is inherently a positive principle; it seems to me, in the abstract, to be a matter of indifference, or perhaps a very low-ranking positive thing subordinate to higher considerations of justice, social order, and property rights. However, the desire for national self-determination seems to be very strong, especially in the modern world, and so I expect we will have to deal with it whether it is a positive thing, a negative thing, or an indifferent thing. In the present circumstances, a modicum of American nationalism would be a positive thing—not because nationalism is inherently good but because it provides some insulation against temptations to global empire and multiculturalism.
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“What’s worse, and the error into which I fear my friends are falling, is that of believing that our wholesome feelings are incapable of leading us into folly—that all evil comes clearly labeled and packaged and is external.”
Of course not. And it’s certainly true that those who spent over two years drawing the country into a war with Iraq played on the actual patriotism of average Americans. The problem with your analysis, Dan, is that you’re assuming that that patriotism is the cause of the war.
The Bush administration was able convince many patriotic Americans to support a war that George W. Bush wanted to fight even before he entered the Oval Office. Those patriotic Americans, however, didn’t vote for Bush in order to bring about such a war.
That, in a mass democracy, patriotic impulses can be manipulated by demagogues to support nationalist goals is no real surprise. That’s why I’d never make the fallacious argument that “our wholesome feelings are incapable of leading us into folly.” You, on the other hand, seem to be making the equally fallacious argument that, if our wholesome feelings do lead us into folly, they can’t possibly have been wholesome.
(And just to make clear, the folly here is not the war, which the average American was incapable of bringing about, but believing the President and his cronies when they declared that the war was in the national interest.)
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I’m interested in learning how one who says that we need more nationalism defines nation—particularly in the American context. For if we are to love our nation, we need to know what it is, whom it includes, and whom it excludes.
Dan, you say that you find much that is “repellent in nationalist views of ethnicity, culture, and economics.” I think I know what you mean there. But in the American context, how do we draw that circle? I’m sure you wouldn’t say that the American nation includes everyone who is born on American soil—budding jihadists and the children of Santeria and everyone else. So who is it, then? Everyone born on this soil who believes in [X]? Everyone born on this soil who is of [Y] ancestry? In solving for X, it is difficult not to define nationalism as an ideology. And, if we’re left with solving for Y, how is it not White Nationalism?
That, ultimately, is what I’m asking: How can a conservative nationalism, in the American context, be anything but White Nationalism? And how, then, can one promote American nationalism without succumbing to those “repellent” aspects of it?
One could say that we are talking not about whiteness per se but about a people whose heritage is generally European and, therefore, generally ("merely"?) Christian. But there is great diversity among the Christian confessions of those people, not to mention the fact that for a good many, it is only a heritage and not an active, living faith. So what are we left with to define our nation and, therefore, our love?
One could say that no, we are not advocating any ethnic cleansing or final solution or resegregation. Doesn’t that just mean that we’re still talking about White Nationalism—just Nice White Nationalism?
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“In the present circumstances, a modicum of American nationalism would be a positive thing—not because nationalism is inherently good but because it provides some insulation against temptations to global empire and multiculturalism.”
One can support the nation-state “against temptations to global empire and multiculturalism” and be a patriot, rather than a nationalist. John Paul II, in his last book, even links the nation-state with patriotism rather than nationalism. (He agrees with Lukacs, Orwell, Hadar, Larison, and me, by the way, on the definitions of these and related terms.)
Nationalism, on the other hand, can--and, in the modern world, often does--play right into the hands of global empire and multiculturalism. Montegrin nationalists, for instance, appealed to the E.U. for support for their right to self-determination. Kosovo is independent today because of the actions of the American global empire and because of the support of so many for multiculturalism.
When Mexican irredentism in the American Southwest reaches the level that Mexican-Americans demand independence from the United States, they will be doing so out of Mexican nationalism, not Southwestern patriotism. And they will receive support from the chattering classes because of multiculturalism.
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I’m not talking about white nationalism at all. I’ll address Aaron’s question about defining the nation on the main page, because it’s a significant lacuna in the original article.
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I don’t disagree with Scott that nationalism can play into the hands of many evil causes; again, I’m not simply reversing the values and saying that nationalism is always good and patriotism is always evil. I’m saying that neither idea is an unmixed good.
Let me ask this question of my interlocutors: do you really think George W. Bush is a nationalist, with his preference for open borders and mass immigration and small concern for national sovereignty?
Scott raises the question of the cause of the Iraq War. There are lots of kinds of causes. The weight of my argument does not rest on the idea of the American public causing the war in the sense of instigating it. My point is that the hybristic patriotism of the public (and conservatives) was necessary for its continuation and for Bush’s re-election in 2004. Scott is correct that the public’s error was in trusting Bush and his cronies. But why was the public inclined to make that mistake, and why are many conservatives inclined to continue making it? I find some kind of patriotism—perverted or excessive—is involved. If I read my interlocutors correctly, they suggest that this motive or tendency should be called nationalism instead. But it doesn’t look like nationalism to me. It looks like love of country taken in the wrong direction. Good motives can lead to bad policies.
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“Good motives can lead to bad policies.”
But they didn’t. Bad motives--those of Bush, et al.--led to bad policies. The fact that, in our democratic system (as attenuated as it is), those with the bad motives found it necessary to try to deceive enough people in order to make it seem that they were representing the will of the American people does not in the least change the fact that government policies do not represent the will of the people but rather the will of elites.
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I disagree with Scott on that last point. The public did not instigate the Iraq War, but the public did support it, and many good-hearted conservative people continue to do so now. The public, and conservatives especially, re-elected Bush in 2004. Good motives did lead to bad actions on the part of voters, who trusted Bush et. al. The good motive was, a desire to support their country in time of apparent danger, a desire that overrode prudence. Patriotism contributed to imprudence on the part of voters and the public generally (even outside its capacity as a mass of voters—“support” for the Bush project was more generalized than just voting for it in ‘04).
This does seem to me to be the crux of the matter. I don’t think the public, and the conservative subset of the public in particular, can be excused for its role in supporting the war. The public did the wrong thing, however patriotic its reasons.
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Humpty Dumpty orates again. There’s a glory for you!
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“The public did not instigate the Iraq War, but the public did support it, and many good-hearted conservative people continue to do so now. The public, and conservatives especially, re-elected Bush in 2004. Good motives did lead to bad actions on the part of voters, who trusted Bush et. al.”
That argument, it seems to me, hinges on the assumption that those who voted for Bush in 2004 voted for him on the basis of the war. That is not, however, what exit polls showed, as I discussed in the January 2005 issue of Chronicles.
The most important issue, cited by 22 percent of voters, was “moral values,” and 76 percent of those voted for Bush. The second most important issue, cited by 20 percent of voters, was “economy/jobs,” and John Kerry won 77 percent of those voters.
“Terrorism” was third, at 19 percent, and Bush won 79 percent of those voters. “Iraq” finally made an appearance in fourth place, at 15 percent--and Kerry won 68 percent of those voters.
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To be fair, many people came away from the 2004 election thinking what Dan apparently thinks. That’s because, on Meet the Press the Sunday after the election, Karl Rove, desperate to prove that the election was not about moral values, claimed that the most important issue was “terrorism and Iraq” at 34 percent total.
But since voters concerned about “terrorism” voted mainly for Bush, while voters concerned about “Iraq” voted mainly for Kerry, Rove’s sleight of hand was more than typically deceptive.
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Mr. McCarthy: I like that you group anti-interventionism, immigration and protectionism together, as these are the “big three” policy issues, I believe, vis-a-vis globalism, which I find to be the real “threat” today, not nationalism.
Mr. Richert: I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying, and I see the value in maintaing the distinctions, but how will maintaining this distinction affect outlook or policy decision?
Would you concede that globalism today is a greater danger than nationalism (in terms of self determination)?
Although ‘nationalism’ is a creation of the 19th century, it is but a manifestation of the ‘natio’, which is an ancient concept. And etymologically, both ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’ imply link by blood. In this very limited and traditional sense, both can be virtuous or abused. While I respect the distinction Lukacs makes, I have often wondered what the difference would be in basic policy choices.
How would differences between the two play out? How would, say, a type of regional patriotism in the U.S. (e.g. Kentucky patriotism) differ from Danish or French nationalism today? French nationalists do not desire to plant the French flag on Spain; quite the contrary, they want to exit the EU.
Which brings me to a larger point, in the face of globalism, what other bulwark is there than nationalism? Is not French nationalism preferable (for the French) than the EU? Would not Danish nationalism be more desirable (for the Danish) than the EU?
I’m not asking in jest. It just seems that to confront globalism at some level one requires a sovereign entity (whether it be nation, state, city-state, etc.) that is defined in some way (race/ethnicity, religion, customs, language, geography) that has the ability to exercise self determination.
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Mr. Richert: Or to put it more succinctly, when on the news we hear of “French nationalism” in opposition to the EU, do you disagree with the French sentiment because it is inherently nationalistic or do you think it should more aptly be called “French patriotism”?
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Scott, don’t you think that “national security” for many voters included the Iraq issue? I wouldn’t expect a specific, single-issue description to out-poll a broader category. By the way, do you think there were no voters for whom Iraq was a “moral values” issue?
My argument does not hinge on the 2004 election. The Iraq War was unjust, many Americans have and still do support it out of patriotic motives. Patriotism—in excess or misunderstood or perverted, but patriotism nonetheless—has driven them to endorse bad policy. At least that’s my contention; we have no way of knowing motives with any certainty. What’s your best guess as to what motivated overwhelming public support for the Iraq War at its outset, and what continues to motivate grassroots conservative support for it today?
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“Would you concede that globalism today is a greater danger than nationalism (in terms of self determination)?”
In what sense? Would I concede, for instance, that the United Nations today presents a greater threat to the lives and welfare of most Americans than the Bush administration does?
Hell, no.
John Lukacs was absolutely right 20 years ago when he said that the nation-state may be dying, but nationalism is alive and well, and it will be perhaps the defining force of the 21st century. (By the way, Lukacs is not in favor of the nation-state dying; as a patriot, he wishes to preserve it. He was simply making an observation.)
If, on the other hand, you mean “Do you regard the destruction of national sovereignty as a grave issue?” then the answer is “Absolutely.” And currently, the greatest threat to American national sovereignty comes not from without but from within--from the American nationalists who are bankrupting this country and killing its sons and daughters in an unjust war.
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“It just seems that to confront globalism at some level one requires a sovereign entity (whether it be nation, state, city-state, etc.) that is defined in some way (race/ethnicity, religion, customs, language, geography) that has the ability to exercise self determination.”
Let’s say “self-rule” ("self-determination" having a very specific historical meaning). If you’ll accept that change to what you wrote, Matthew, then I’ll heartily endorse what you wrote.
But sovereignty and self-rule are not synonyms for nationalism.
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“Scott, don’t you think that ‘national security’ for many voters included the Iraq issue?”
Where did “national security” come from? It wasn’t part of the exit poll results that I quoted.
“My argument does not hinge on the 2004 election.”
Except that you blamed Americans who voted for Bush in the 2004 election for the continuation the war--and said that they voted for him because of “misguided patriotism” (i.e., because of the war).
“What’s your best guess as to what motivated overwhelming public support for the Iraq War at its outset . . . “
Patriotic impulses that were deliberately stoked by the nationalists who wanted the war. We don’t disagree on that. (We disagree, apparently, on whether patriotism is a good thing or a bad one.)
“ . . . and what continues to motivate grassroots conservative support for it today?”
Ah--if we’re going to talk now about “grassroots conservatives” (a subset of those who supported the war), then I have no qualms in saying that what motivated their support at the beginning of the war and continues to motivate it today is nationalism.
“Grassroots conservatives,” however, are not the same as the average American who supported the war.
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Scott: I wasn’t implying that the threat of globalism is external. Rather, the threat of globalism comes from an ideology to which our elites have subscribed.
It seems that we’re largely in agreement. I’m in favor of some bulwark (regardless what you want to name it) which most effectively is able to combat the deracination of globalization.
Isn’t the patriotism/nationalism distinction more of an Anglo-American distinction? For example, the “French nationalists” I’ve known have no desire to invade the Middle East or plant the French flag again in Algeria; rather, they are motivated by maintaining the traditional character of France, ceasing Third World immigration, and pulling out of the EU.
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Sorry, Scott, I meant “terrorism” when I typed “national security.” My point stands: I suspect a great many Bush voters think of Iraq as being a terrorism issue. That was one of the ways in which the war was sold to the public, after all.
My argument doesn’t hinge on the 2004 election; I discussed it to bolster my point. I suspect the poll you cite does not give an adequate account of voters’ motives. But that’s a suspicion—since you’ve provided evidence for your view, I’ll concede you the point.
“(We disagree, apparently, on whether patriotism is a good thing or a bad one.)” The headline that was given to my article might create a misleading impression. I don’t argue anywhere that patriotism is a bad thing tout court. My position is that it is a virtue but one that, like most other virtues, may be defective or excessive. To the extent that patriotism trumped prudence in the minds of voters who supported the Iraq War, it was excessive.
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One way migration causes complete genetic replacement over time.
Genetics. 1979 January; 91(1): 163–176.
“We investigated various cases of the island model with stochastic migration. If the population is infinite, the immigrants have a fixed gene frequency and the alleles are neutral, the gene frequency on the island converges to that of the immigrants.”
The Island Model with Stochastic Migration
Thomas Nagylaki
Department of Biophysics and Theoretical Biology, The University of Chicago,
From the South Side of Chicago we get Obama. But Clinton, Bush and McCain stand for the same. We are facing genetic extinction and replacement. To stop that we must reduce immigration to under 25,000 per year including illegal, visa overstay, etc. We also need to reverse what we can of the flow.
Math determines your choices, emotion then lets you choose. If you imagine your choices based on emotion, then you never get to use your emotions at the proper point, to choose the real action that will let you survive.
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