Rich Lowry - The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free

To Mimmy, Nini, and BaiI love you with all my heart

We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interest among those who live under the same government, and are contained within the same natural or historical boundaries. We mean, that one part of the community shall not consider themselves as foreigners with regard to another part; that they shall cherish the tie which holds them together; shall feel that they are one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of their fellow-countrymen is evil to themselves, and that they cannot selfishly free themselves from their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connexion.

John Stuart Mill

Standing in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe at a commemoration marking the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, French president Emmanuel Macron had a message for the world, and especially for his American counterpart, Donald Trump.

Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism, Macron said before the assembled world leaders at the 2018 event. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying Our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.

Macrons rebuke of Trump, the self-declared nationalist listening nearby, electrified the international media. Although the Macron speech played to near-universal praise, it garbled the definitions of patriotism and nationalism; slighted Frances own great nationalist tradition; and posited a conflict between nationalism and values that doesnt exist (or doesnt have to).

Almost everyone has an opinion about nationalism (usually that its a very, very bad thing), without really knowing what it is. The esteemed president of France is no different.

When President Trump first openly embraced the term at a 2018 campaign rally, commentators reacted in horror. Patriotism is about love, nationalism about hate, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof opined. Trump, insisted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, is normalizing a hateful political philosophy that is contrary to our deepest-held beliefs.

The malodor surrounding the idea of nationalism is one reason that Trump picked up on its appeal when more conventional Republicans ignored it or recoiled from it.

Nationalism is traditionally not a partisan affair. Both major political parties have access to it and have made powerful appeals to it over the centuries. The GOP had been most closely associated with nationalism since the 1970s but lost touch with it in the pre-Trump years under the influence of libertarians and a globe-trotting business elite and in pursuit of an overly idealistic foreign and immigration policy.

The party was vulnerable to renegade populist politicians with a nationalistic appeal. Pat Buchanan (running from the social-conservative right) took President George H. W. Bush down a notch in the 1992 presidential primaries, and Ross Perot (running from the radical center) helped finish him off in the general election. But nothing prepared anyone for the unlikely rise of an outlandish political outsider promising to put America First and Make America Great Again.

Although Trump is a nationalist, its a mistake to attribute everything about himor even most things about himto nationalism. There isnt anything inherently nationalistic about wild presidential tweets, extreme boastfulness, excoriating attacks on the media, the browbeating of allies or even protectionism or populism (although in the modern West, nationalism often speaks in a populist voice).

These things define Trump, and his persona, more than nationalism. Nor was there anything nationalistic about his initial reluctance to unambiguously denounce the far-right protests in Charlottesville, one of the low points of his presidency.

Trumps nationalism was encapsulated in his 2016 campaign themes that, stripped down to their essence, were amazingly simple: We need to adopt immigration and trade policies with our own interests foremost in mind. We should protect ourselves with the utmost vigilance from foreign threats, whether via the so-called Muslim ban or Trumps promise to bomb the shit out of ISIS. Without borders we dont have a country, and the one to our south needs to be protected by a big, beautiful wall. Most important, our country, not any other nation or international body or alliance, should always come first.

These constituted the basic axioms of Trumps nationalism. Immigration was such a focus because it involves foundational questions: Do the American people have the sovereign authority to decide who gets to come here or not? How should we weigh the relative importance of the interests of American vis--vis foreign workers? And finally, what emphasis are we going to put, if any, on assimilation?

When abstracted from his combative rhetorical style and more idiosyncratic policy enthusiasms (e.g., taking Iraqs oil), the rudiments of Trumps nationalism should be hard to opposeor would be in a more rational time than the one we live in.

In his widely panned inaugural address, Trump said that a nation exists to serve its citizens and that we are one nation, sharing one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. What is supposed to be the alternative to this vision? Serving the citizens of other countries? The nation as a collection of tribal and other interest groups that dont share a common destiny?

On foreign policy, Trump was considerably more grounded than his predecessors. In his 2005 inaugural address, George W. Bush, a champion of universal freedom, quite seriously promised to spread freedom everywhere around the world. In 2009, Barack Obama, in his more soaring moments a self-styled citizen of the world, predicted that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself and averred that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

Trump simply left it at: We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the worldbut we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

This, too, should be uncontroversial. Where, historically, many nationalists around the world have failed is in not recognizing the right of other people to self-government. Trump has repeatedly made it clear that his nationalism is broadly applicable.

In his 2018 address to the UN General Assembly, he declared, We believe that when nations respect the rights of their neighbors, and defend the interests of their people, they can better work together to secure the blessings of safety, prosperity, and peace. He made a nod to the remarkable variety that makes up the international tapestry: Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth.

As a consequence, he continued, America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination. It will honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. All we ask, he stipulated, is that you honor our sovereignty in return.

After years of worry over purported American imperialism, these sentiments should have been a relief to the international media and assembled foreign potentates, yet, of course, there were few plaudits.

Trump most eloquently expressed his nationalism in a fine 2017 speech at Krasiski Square in Warsaw, in front of a monument to the Warsaw Uprising. He spoke of a Polish nation that is more than one thousand years old and that persisted during long periods of occupation and despite a long Communist political and cultural offensive against its very identity. While Poland could be invaded and occupied, he said, and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts.