"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool."

"To listen to protectionists, one would think tariffs are something of a miracle drug. Anything and everything can be solved by tariffs. Prices too low? Tariffs will raise ‘em. Prices too high? Tariffs will lower ‘em. Sprained knee? Just take two tariffs and call me in the morning. ...

"Take, for example, the argument that tariffs can be used as negotiation tools. The argument goes that you can threaten another nation with tariffs, impose the costs of the tariffs on them, and force them to bend to your will (whatever that will may be). ...

"[Yet] politicians face a different set of incentives. The major issue with many tariff supporters’ models is that they improperly model these incentives. This is a side effect of collectivist thinking; we must always remember that a 'nation' is a useful abstraction, but ultimately is made up of individuals who choose. A 'nation' never, ever chooses. And a government is not synonymous with the nation or the people located therein. ...

"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool.

"Indeed, so-called trade sanctions and tariffs end up having the opposite effect. The American embargo of Cuba entrenched the Castro regime. Tariffs and embargoes on Iran failed to halt their nuclear program or weaken the regime. Putin still wages war in Ukraine despite (or because of?) trade sanctions. Perhaps most damningly, the Chinese government developed DeepSeek as a direct response to Trump’s original 'economic statecraft' against the Communist Party (continued by Biden).

"Adam Smith recognised this problem. In the 'Wealth of Nations' ... he notes that tariffs could be a potential tool to negotiate lower barriers in other nations. ...   Such negotiations could work, he states, but could also lead to war ...."

~ Jon Murphy from his post 'The Political Problem of Tariffs'

"Nationalism is not patriotism!"

"Alchemy is not chemistry.

"Altruism is not caring.
"Socialism is not sharing.
"Astrology is not astronomy.
"H2SO4 is not water.
"Nationalism is not patriotism."

~ Keith Weiner

"Nationalism is not patriotism! A French patriot roots for their Olympic basketball team; a French nationalist grumbles that almost all the players are black....
    "Note that 'identity politics' is not an inherently left or right wing idea. Where it favours minority groups, it is typically framed as left wing. When it favours the majority ethnic group (or more precisely the group in power – recall South Africa before 1994), it’s typically viewed as right wing. Thus [both varieties of] nationalists tend to oppose immigration, which threatens to dilute the [favoured] ethnic group."

~ Scott Sumner, from his post on 'The authoritarian nationalist playbook'

Patriotism ...

"Alchemy is not chemistry.
"Altruism is not caring.
"Socialism is not sharing.
"Astrology is not astronomy.
"H2SO4 is not water.
"Nationalism is not patriotism."

~ Keith Weiner

"How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place? "

"I don’t believe it makes sense to accuse people of being Nazis or Maoists. Almost everyone, including even extremists, now understand that these were highly flawed political movements.
    "Nonetheless, it’s worth thinking about why Maoism and Nazism were once so popular. Why did so many Chinese college students join the Red Guard and enthusiastically persecute their professors (and others)? Why did 37% of the German electorate vote for the Nazi Party in 1932? These questions cry out for an explanation. ...
    "Of course, not everyone joined the Red Guard, and not everyone voted for the Nazis. [But] which people alive today [in those circumstances] would have joined the Red Guard? And which people alive today would have joined the Nazis?
    "Consider the woke extremists that enthusiastically denounce and shun people for not being sufficiently left wing on a check list of issues. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been part of the contingent that joined the Red Guard? And think about people that are so anti-immigrant that they don’t even want us to accept high-skilled people from India and China because they worry about America’s European heritage being diluted. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been among the 37% who voted for the Nazis?
    "I wish more people would do some serious soul searching, and honestly ask themselves how they would have behaved in some of these extreme situations. ...
    "I’m not accusing modern nationalists of literally being Nazis. ... Nor do I believe that today’s woke extremists wish to beat and torture their professors. Instead, I see far left and far right wing ideologies as a sort of virus, which can infect people’s minds, even otherwise reasonable minds. And I see liberalism as a sort of vaccine. ... making [one] immune to the lure of authoritarian ideologies. [I’m not defining liberalism in the American sense of left-of-center Democrat. I am using the term in the international sense of supporter of free speech, human rights, a market economy, democracy, civil rights, opposition to nationalism, etc. ] I have no doubt that if [the liberal] had been born in another time and place, he would have avoided becoming an authoritarian of either the left or the right.
    "How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place?
    "When politics gets extremely contentious and extremely tribal, people are pressured to take sides. ... People hate it when they are ostracised by fellow members of their 'tribe.' Sorry, but the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Your only reliable political allies are those that share your core principles."

~ Scott Sumner from his post 'Liberalism as a vaccine'

 

"... a broader, decade-long 'crank realignment' in American politics."

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s transition from semi-prominent Democrat to third party spoiler to Donald Trump endorser is emblematic of a broader, decade-long 'crank realignment' in American politics.…
    "The partisan shifts of both Trump and RFK Jr. are part of a long term cycle in which .... a generic suspicion of institutions and the people who run them has come to be associated with conservative politics. Conservative cranks are not even close to new (the John Birch Society, for example), but they’ve become increasingly prominent ...

    "If I’m agitating for a 'liberal' realignment of American politics, it’s partly because I live in terror that the realignment will come anyway—but it will be illiberal….
    "Let’s talk about what kind of implicit idea would cause someone to combine a traditionally conservative proposal (keeping out immigrants) with a traditionally leftist proposal (government price controls)—and do so in a way that so overwhelms every other consideration, including democracy itself, that it causes them to flip their vote.
    "The implicit premise is that government exists to hand out favours to 'people like me'—and to kick everybody else in the teeth, especially poor immigrants coming here in search of a better life. That particular policy combination indicates a tribal mindset….
    "At any rate, this is precisely the political realignment I’m trying to avoid, one that brings together the worst of both worlds: bloated Big Government welfare-statism and paranoid, xenophobic nationalism."

~ Matt Yglesias from his post 'The crank realignment is bad for everyone.'  Hat tip Robert Tracinski who comments, "There’s still a good chance that this is exactly what we’re going to get."

 

Productivity. In medals, at least.

 

Economist Robert MacCulloch notes that New Zealand's productivity growth, as measured in Olympic medals, is astonishing.

In the 1924 Paris Olympics, New Zealand won one bronze medal in total. It was in athletics for the 100m by Arthur Porritt. The race was later immortalised in the film, 'Chariots of Fire.' NZ had a population of around 1 million back then. Just over 100 years later, the tally is 10 golds, 7 silvers and 3 bronzes*, which after adjusting for population increase, is a huge rise. Meanwhile the United States won 45 Golds at the 1924 Paris Olympics, a tally which has plummeted down to around 37 at the Paris 2024 Olympics. So productivity in this sphere in New Zealand, compared to other countries, is phenomenal.

As you're probably aware, for all sorts of reasons New Zealand is shit at economic productivity. 

So why the difference?

On this MacCulloch suggests the reason for this is simple: In sports, unlike elsewhere, New Zealanders value meritocracy "where the fastest, highest, longest .. the best .. wins, regardless of other considerations?"

Kiwis clearly respond to merit being rewarded and produce amongst the finest output in the world when it is. Meanwhile in many other spheres in NZ, everything but meritocracy is winning the day. And productivity is paying the price.

In microcosm, he's probably right. And it's great to see these athletes triumph.

Mind you,  if I were to carp — and I will, even if it's a mite too soon — I can't help wondering how much taxpayers and ratepayers are dunned for all this nationalistic gold. You know, how many millions it's cost taxpayers per medal.

Consider, Arthur Porritt paid his own way to Paris in 1924. So that was zero-taxpayer-dollars** per gold then. And now? Well, I'd like someone somewhere to do the calculation ...

* I've updated the totals.

** Yes, it was pounds then. But using that there would be too confusing.

National/Ethnic Pride

"I've never understood national pride; I've never understood ethnic pride....
    "Because ... to me pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth.
    "Being Irish isn’t a skill. It’s a fuckin’ genetic accident.
    "You wouldn’t say, 'I’m proud to be 5 foot 11 inches. I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer.”
    "So why the fuck would you be proud to be Irish, or proud to be Italian, or American or anything?
    "If you're happy with it, that's fine. Put that on your [bumper sticker]."

~ George Carlin from his monologue 'Proud to be American' [VIDEO]

"The larger meaning of Free Trade..."

"The larger meaning of Free Trade ranks it as a phase in social evolution by which, on the one hand, militarism is displaced by industrialism, and, on the other hand, political limits of nationalism yield place to an effective internationalism based upon identity of commercial interests."

~ J.A. Hobson, from his 1898 article 'Free Trade and Foreign Policy'

"No force in the world since 1848 has been more powerful, more deadly, more pervasive, or more persistent, than nationalistic zeal."

"If you had convened a meeting of the great European thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and asked them what would drive future global politics, not one of them would have put nationalism on the list.
    "The leaders of the Enlightenment anticipated a coming age when reason and universal values would shape the course of events. Marx and his fellow travellers trusted that class struggle and economics oppression would serve as the spire to change. The positivists in the camp of Auguste Comte championed science and progress as the driving force in future history. Social Darwinists postulated evolutionary models; political economists attributed power to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'; and Neo-scholastics put faith in the hand of God. 

    "Everybody had a theory. But none of the thought leaders anticipated a future when war and bloody carnage would be instigated by chauvinistic impulses and love of country. The illustrious philosophers dismissed those as archaic loyalties, irrational sentiments no longer useful for human society, and destined for the dustbin of human. history.
    "But the theorists were wrong. No force in the world since 1848 has been more powerful, more deadly, more pervasive, or more persistent, than nationalistic zeal."

~ Ted Gioia, from his book Music: A Subversive History

"If the rulers really wanted to communicate with their subjects, they did not use the grotesque doctrine of 'Marxism-Leninism'; they appealed, rather, to nationalist sentiments"

 

"Marxism was a philosophical or semi-philosophical doctrine and a political ideology which was used by the communist state as the main source of legitimacy and the obligatory faith. This ideology was indispensable, regardless of whether people believed in it. In the last period of communist rule it hardly existed as a living faith; the distance between it and reality was so great, and hopes for the joyful future of the communist paradise were fading so rapidly, that both the ruling class (i.e., the party apparatus ) and the ruled were aware of the its emptiness. But it remained officially binding, precisely because it was the main instrument of the the legitimacy of the system of power. If the rulers really wanted to communicate with their subjects, they did not use the grotesque doctrine of 'Marxism-Leninism'; they appealed, rather, to nationalist sentiments or, in the case of the Soviet Union, to imperial glory Eventually the ideology fell apart, together with the empire; its collapse was one of the reasons that the communist system of power died out in Europe."

~ Leszek Kolakowski, from the 2004 Preface to his 1976/8 book Main Currents of Marxism

 

Self-determination: 'The atomisation of human society'

"Self-determination, which has nothing to do with self-government but has become confused with it, is barbarous and reactionary: by sanctioning secession, it invites majorities and minorities to be intransigent and irreconcilable. It is stipulated in the principle of self-determination that they need not be compatriots because they will soon be aliens. There is no end to this atomisation of human society. Within the minorities who have seceded there will tend to appear other minorities who in their turn will wish to secede."

~ Walter Lippmann -- who, a world-war before, had helped draft Woodrow Wilson's 'Fourteen Points'; from his 1944 critique of US War Aims

 

Colonialism was not Capitalist

Colonialism is under attack again -- criticised all too often not by by the mercantilist* motivations of most empire builders, but because ( it is claimed all too frequently) it is inspired by and a ruthless example of laissez-faire capitalism. Yet as Hans Sennholz writes in this guest post based on his 1956 article 'The Myth of Capitalist Colonialism: "The exploitation of colonial possessions is inconsistent with the concepts of competitive private enterprise and voluntary exchange."  

"The adherent of capitalism [therefore] need not defend the acts of mercantilist governments, for capitalist philosophers and economists have exploded and opposed the doctrines of mercantilism since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even today they are the bitter enemies of the modern expressions of [the] mercantilist international relations [that inspired colonialism]."

The Myth of Capitalist Colonialism

Guest post by Hans Sennholz

The exploitation of colonial possessions is inconsistent with the concepts of competitive private enterprise and voluntary exchange.... [Yet in the past few decades, academics and politicians across the spectrum] have attacked the political and economic position of the West [and what they frequently describe as "colonial expoitation."] 

Classical Liberal sympathy for undeveloped nations 

[Classical liberal] sympathy for the colonial peoples and our hostility against colonialism stemmed originally from our liberal conception of the natural rights of all men. Liberty and independence were precious ideals worth every sacrifice to gain and defend.

But the nineteenth century liberals often committed tragic blunders by encouraging liberation movements which in fact were nationalist movements toward the substitution of one collectivist order for another. The concepts of individual liberty and the inviolability of property rights were so foreign to most dependent nations that their uprising meant only the displacement of the established order by an even less desirable order....

[Marxian sympathisers and fellow travellers] level the charge that Western colonialism has kept the economically backward nations subjugated for more than two centuries. Western capitalism tortured and exploited colonial people, they say, until they began to free themselves from the strangling grip of capitalism... Today there is hardly a textbook on recent history that is not perverted in one form or another by Marxian and Leninian ideas on capitalist colonialism.

The Marxian Interpretation of Colonialism

What a communist conceives to be “colonialism” is in the words of V. I. Lenin “the territorial expansion of the system of exploitation of labor by capital.” New human capital is drawn into the orbit of wage slavery through colonial conquest. Once the world was divided among the colonial states of Western Europe, finance capital—especially from America—then became the decisive power of subjugating whole countries and nations to the capitalist profit greediness, even though these nations retained their political independence. The latter stage often is labeled “capitalist imperialism.”

The very premise of “capitalist exploitation” is an absurdity. Where the price of labor is determined through the operation of demand and supply in a free labour market, exploitation is impossible. Only where the mobility of labour is impeded through government decrees and regulations can labour possibly be underpaid. Indeed, true exploitation may be observed in all socialist and communist economies.

Equally untenable is the communist contention regarding American financiers and their imperialist endeavors. By investing their capital funds abroad they increase the productivity of the backward areas. They attract the services of foreign labor not by brute force, but through higher wages and better living conditions. Of course, their incentive is the possibility of profits to be derived from the new wealth created through their initiative.

Colonies Acquired under Mercantilism and Nationalism

The existence of colonies, i.e., underdeveloped territories dependent on a ruling power, is not a phenomenon of capitalism, as its enemies so ardently contend, but of the very absence of it. The colonial empires of the Western nations were built in periods of mercantilism or rising nationalism. During the short intervening age of capitalism, colonies were considered in herited burdens to be disposed of sooner or later. “Our colonies are millstones around our necks,” said the British stateman, Disraeli, in 1852 when Great Britain was about to embark upon her famous open-door policy.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries England, Holland, France, and Spain were the foremost colonial powers. That was the age of mercantilism. And mercantilist ideas led governments to acquire dependent territories. Every nation endeavored to be self-sufficient through tariffs, other import restrictions, and acquisition of colonies. The balance-of-trade theory prevailed and the notion that one nation’s prosperity is another nation’s loss and misery determined international relations. Europe was always fighting or preparing to fight.

The adherent of capitalism need not defend the acts of mercantilist governments, for capitalist philosophers and economists have exploded and opposed the doctrines of mercantilism since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even today they are the bitter enemies of the modern expressions of mercantilist international relations.

The hostile attitude of the fathers of capitalism toward the existence of colonies can easily be recognised by the role they played in the American War of Independence. They were the friends of the colonists and insisted that colonial independence should be granted and maintained even after the War of 1812. Furthermore, has there ever been a more devastating critique of colonialism written than the one by Adam Smith in his famous Wealth of Nations?** To attach colonialism to capitalism is an obvious absurdity.

Capitalism Transformed the British Empire

Around the 1820′s England was practically the only colonial power. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies had become independent and the remaining French and Dutch possessions depended on the grace of the British Navy. But England, at this time, refrained from further expansion of her empire because British liberalism had begun to shape Britain’s foreign policies. Capitalism fundamentally began to transform the British Empire into a market economy.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the British overseas settlers were virtually independent—enjoying a dominion status. All other territories dependent on British rule were governed according to open-door principles. Britishers, foreigners, and natives were treated alike. The British Empire became a vast free-trade area in which the British government merely undertook to maintain law and order.

Complete evacuation of all foreign territories would have been the logical solution for British classical liberalism. But such a step in almost all cases would have brought about anarchy, civil war, and famine in the colonies evacuated.... [Yet clearly the indigenous populations] themselves ... approved of British rule. This is clearly attested to by the fact that tiny occupation forces sufficed to maintain peace and order among natives outnumbering them immensely.

And yet in spite of her most beneficial administration, England today [continues to reap criticism] because of her policies of racial segregation. The British civil servants in their exalted positions among the natives seldom withstood the temptation for social snobbishness and racial pride. This [justified] grievance on the part of hundreds of millions of Asians undoubtedly contributed to the dissolution of the British Empire in Asia.

Expansion of Colonies under Nationalism

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century the colonies of the Western nations experienced an unprecedented expansion. France vastly expanded her empire in Africa, and Germany acquired dependent territories in Africa and Polynesia. Also Russia, Japan, and the United States occupied new territories in various parts of the world. In all these cases of colonial acquisition adventurous governments under various pretexts seized foreign territories against the interest and advice of business and finance in order to reap cheap glories and advantages for their own administration [and advance the prospect of plunging the world into war. None of these adventures either advanced or were inspired by capitalism].

Take the example of German colonial acquisition. There is abundant proof that the German bankers and businessmen opposed as senseless every single occupation of colonial territories... [and] German business remained disinterested. At the outbreak of World War I less than one-half of one per cent of Germany’s foreign trade was conducted with her own colonies.... The German colonies were acquired by an interventionist government which constantly disparaged capitalism, and loved the display of its own political and military strength. To accuse capitalism for the existence of German colonies acquired by the Iron Chancellor Bismarck and his Kaiser is founded on neither fact nor reason.

In the case of territorial acquisitions by Japan and Russia the political conditions were similar. Omnipotent governments under their absolute sovereigns embarked upon colonial conquest under various pretexts. No matter what their stated reasons, Japan and Russia did not invade foreign countries because of pressure by conspiring businessmen... Neither the Czar nor the Mikado was a stooge of his subject bankers and merchants....

During this period of nationalist and interventionist colonisation France was a republic. But the military debacles of the Franco-German War of 1870 severely hurt the pride and self-confidence of the French Army. It urgently needed new fields of activity from which to feed again its pride and glory and display its fighting morale to itself and the world. And it found a welcome opportunity in the campaigns against the natives of North Africa.... The following expansion of the French colonial empire thus was the outcome of diplomatic considerations and feelings of military glory and pride. The French generals fighting in the passes of the Atlas Mountains wanted war with the natives, not trade relations.

Also, the American acquisitions of dependent territories following the Spanish-American War of 1898 were clearly the doings of an ambitious administration.... Now what economic interests could American bankers and businessmen possibly have had in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines? Even today American trade and investments in these territories remain insignificant. To blame American bankers and brokers for the conquests of a political administration that looked to Europe for guidance, is an outright misrepresentation of facts.

Throughout this period [however] England continued to conduct her open-door policies. While the other colonial powers more or less severed their territories from the unhampered world market through tariffs and other trade restrictions, England clung to free trade. At the outbreak of World War I, Great Britain and her colonies were practically the only unhampered part of the world market. Several times during this period Britain expanded her territorial control over underdeveloped areas merely to safeguard the world market and its international division of labour. Occupation by any other colonial power would have meant further destruction of world trade and aggravation of international relations through more trade barriers.

Britain Unfortunately Follows Suit

But toward the end of the nineteenth century the spirit of interventionist colonisation also came to Great Britain. It was the time of the Fabians and the growth of social conflict through socialist and neo-mercantilist ideas. “To solve the social conflict and to spare England a murderous civil war, we colonial politicians must acquire new territories which are to receive our surplus population.” This was Cecil Rhodes’ excuse for his colonial conquests in South Africa; and his reasoning was socialist, if not Marxian. 

A classical liberal philosopher or economist finds no social conflict in capitalism, rejecting the Marxian doctrine of proletarian revolution and denying the possibility of exploitation in capitalism which, according to all our experience, improves the living conditions of the workers. He knows that capitalist countries are the desired targets of immigration; not emigration, as Rhodes believed....

NOTES

* In The Logic of Action II, Murray Rothbard defined mercantilism as "a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state."

** In his Wealth of Nations Adam Smith characterises colonialism as a costly monopoly:

The monopoly of the colony trade, therefore, like all the other mean and malignant expedients of the mercantile system, depresses the industry of all other countries, but chiefly that of the colonies, without in the least increasing, but on the contrary diminishing, that of the country in whose favour it is established . . .

* * * * 

Hans F. Sennholz (1922-2007) was Ludwig von Mises' first PhD student in the United States. He taught economics at Grove City College, 1956–1992, having been hired as department chair upon arrival. After he retired, he became president of the Foundation for Economic Education, 1992–1997. His full article first appeared in the November 1956 edition of 'The Freeman.' [pdf]

"Nationalists focus on unifying around a given ethnic group..."

"Nationalists focus on unifying around a given ethnic group, rather than people who happen to be living in a particular political entity. Thus to the Chinese leadership, Han people in Taiwan (or even Singapore) are far more “Chinese” than Uyghurs living in western China. To the Hungarian leadership, an ethnic Hungarian living in Romania is more Hungarian that a Roma individual living within Hungary. Nationalism is not patriotism! A French patriot roots for their Olympic basketball team; a French nationalist grumbles that almost all the players are black....

    "Note that 'identity politics' is not an inherently left or right wing idea. Where it favours minority groups, it is typically framed as left wing. When it favours the majority ethnic group (or more precisely the group in power – recall South Africa before 1994), it’s typically viewed as right wing. Thus [both varieties of] nationalists tend to oppose immigration, which threatens to dilute the [favoured] ethnic group."

          ~ Scott Sumner, from his post on 'The authoritarian nationalist playbook'

"I see dishonesty as a core nationalist concept. When nationalists are in power, this requires covering up failures in order to make the nation seem 'great again'." #QotD

"I see dishonesty as a core nationalist concept, as the ideology cannot easily survive in an environment of honest inquiry. Thus nationalist governments hide their true intentions in order to appear patriotic.... When nationalists are in power, this requires covering up failures in order to make the nation seem 'great again'."

~ Scott Sumner, from his post 'Dishonesty is a core nationalist value, perhaps the core nationalist value'
.

"Economic freedom, personal freedom, and cosmopolitanism are Very Good Things, and (b) Western elites are at least less opposed to all three Very Good Things than the deeply authoritarian Western masses." #QotD

"On average, I do trust Western elites more than Western masses. My main reason, though, is not that the modern world is too 'complex' or 'interconnected,' but that (a) economic freedom, personal freedom, and cosmopolitanism are Very Good Things, and (b) Western elites are at least less opposed to all three Very Good Things than the deeply authoritarian Western masses. Back in 2012, I described the median American voter as a 'moderate national socialist,' and subsequent events have reaffirmed my doleful perspective."
        ~ Bryan Caplan, from his post 'Open Borders in the New Yorker'
.

"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is the difference between the love a father has for his family and the love a mafia Godfather has for his 'family'" #QotD

"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is the difference between the love a father has for his family and the love a [mafia] Godfather has for his 'family'... Patriotism is a warm and personal business. Nationalism is another business entirely. It’s the kind of business Salvatore Tessio talks to Tom Hagen about after Tessio’s betrayal of Michael Corleone. Tessio: 'Tell Mike it was just business.' ...
    "Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism… 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 on other people... Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other [ideological, theological, racial, etc.] unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
    "Sinking your own individuality into anything is not a prescription for happiness. Even if what you’re sinking it into is beer."
   ~ PJ O'Rourke partly paraphrasing George Orwell, in his post Patriotism v Nationalism
.

#QotD: "...the very word 'nation' has been endowed by nationalism with a meaning and a resonance which until the end of the eighteenth century it was far from having."

"Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It pretends to supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a government exclusively its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in the state, and for the right organisation of a society of states.
    "Briefly, the doctrine holds that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type of government is national self-government.
    "Not the least triumph of this doctrine is that such propositions have become accepted and are thought to be self-evident, that the very word 'nation' has been endowed by nationalism with a meaning and a resonance which until the end of the eighteenth century it was far from having...
    "Goethe, reviewing in 1772 a book entitled On the Love of the Fatherland, written to promote loyalty to the Habsburgs in the Holy Roman Empire, had this to say [instead]: ‘Have we a fatherland? If we can find a place where we can rest with our possessions, a field to sustain us, a home to cover us, have we not there a fatherland?’    "Such was the current opinion in Europe at the outbreak of the French Revolution...
    "[It is said that] ‘the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation.’ What, then, was meant by a nation? Natio in ordinary speech originally meant a group of men belonging together by similarity of birth, larger than a family, but smaller than a clan or a people... Thus [the University of Paris had four nations]: the nation de France referred to speakers of Romance languages including Italians and Spaniards; the nation de Picardie referred to the Dutch, that of Normandie to those originating from North-Eastern Europe, and that of Germanie to Englishmen as well as to Germans proper.    "By extension, the word came to be used as a collective noun... This use of the word as a collective noun persists into the eighteenth century, and we find Hume stating in his essay Of National Characters that ‘a nation is nothing but a collection of individuals’ who, by constant intercourse, came to acquire some traits in common, and Diderot and D’Alambert in the Encyclopédie defining ‘nation’ as ‘a collective word used to denote a considerable quantity of those people who inhabit a certain extent of country defined within certain limits, and obeying the same government’... Such is the sense in which Montesquieu uses the term in The Spirit of the Laws, when he says that 'under the first two dynasties [in France] the nation was often called together, that is the lords and the bishops'....
    "This is the claim implicit in Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s definition just quoted, and later made quite explicit by Sieyès. ‘What is a nation?’ asked Sieyès. ‘A body of associates living under one common law and represented by the same legislature.’"         
          ~ Eli Kedourie, from his book Nationalism.

Is Nationalism the Friend or Foe of Liberty?

The question is, is Nationalism the friend or foe of liberty? In this guest post, Jeffrey Tucker argues that a nationalism that presents itself as a friend of liberty is one that must wilfully ignore the most bitter lessons of the last century, while eschewing the greatest lesson of all: that the only true guarantor of liberty is liberty itself.

Is Nationalism the Friend or Foe of Liberty?

Guest post by Jeffrey Tucker

Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony is hitting the opinion pages (excerpts from his new book) with a provocative thesis: that nationalism is not a threat to liberty but rather a guarantor of it. His argument is about stability under democracy. It requires mutual trust, fellow feeling, cultural cohesion, a sense that the other could be you because you share similar values, he argues. “Nationalism was the engine that established modern political liberty,” he claims, and now we need nationalism to maintain the kind of political stability that undergirds freedom itself.

This is near impossible in what he calls “multinational states,” by which he means a geographic territory too mixed up in terms of language, religious allegiance, and culture. He cites unsustainable states like Iraq, Syria, and Yugoslavia. Such mixing has worked, more or less, in the US because “the original American states shared the English language, Protestant religion and British legal traditions, and they had fought together in wartime.” New additions to the mix (Catholics, Jews, and former slaves) were acculturated only due to pre-existing cultural dominance.

He further argues that the national consensus in the US no longer exists, due to high rates of immigration. This has shattered mutual loyalty, he maintains, so as regards America as an experiment in multinational diversity: “It’s not clear that the U.S. is succeeding at this task.”

Good and Bad Nationalism?

You might be thinking you have heard this line before. You have seen the memes from the far right, read the tweets, bumped into the fanatics at rallies. Such sentiments have been credited with getting the current president elected.

But Hazony is careful to distance himself from such movements.

Every nationalist movement contains haters and bigots (though not necessarily more of them than are found in universalist political and religious movements). But nationalism’s vices are outweighed by its considerable virtues. A world in which independent nations are permitted to compete freely with one another is a world in which diverse ways of life can flourish, each an experiment in how human beings should live. We have good reason to believe that such a world holds out the best prospects for freedom, for innovation and advancement, and for tolerance.

If you had never read an argument for nationalism that is calm, reasoned, and rooted in history, you might find his point persuasive. Many liberals (and pre-libertarians) a century ago certainly did so. [But they didn't yet have the evidence before them of a century of bloody nationalism as evidence against the thesis - Ed.]

Back then, the pressing issue, on which the fate of civilisation rested, was the following: what should be the standard for the drawing of borders after the chaos of Great War? It was a war for democracy, they said but it was the death knell for the old multinational monarchies of Europe.

Political loyalty in the old world was based on dynasty, intermarriage of rulers, deal making, and religious control. In the new world, there is no question that democracy would be the watchword. The nobility would no longer rule; the people would be in charge. A unity global democracy is impossible. There must be states and there must be borders, so what constitutes the basis for nationhood?

Liberalism had a number of answers to the problem and most came down to precisely the terms that Hazony presents here. States should be organized along the lines of fellow feeling, mutual trust, and citizen identity in whatever form.

Liberal Nationalism?

Ludwig von Mises, writing in 1919, was at that immediate post-war stage highly sympathetic to the nationalist project. What’s a nation? Mises rejected the then-fashionable trope of carving up the human population by race on grounds that the supposed science of the project was “a thicket of error, fantasy, and mysticism.” Instead, he wanted to define a nation specifically according to one overriding standard: language. Polyglot nations are unsustainable. Experience in educational institutions alone shows this. Attempting to fund and run schools with multiple language groups feeds resentment and hate. It’s true for all public institutions. The only real answer is separation, that is, universal secession by smaller groups against larger groups. If national feeling feeds this, it is a friend of liberty.

What is the liberal attitude toward nationalism, in Mises’s view? The true liberal rejects dynastic control of lands because it “rejects the princes’ greed for lands and chaffering in lands.” Further, it embraces the right of a people to determine their own fate: self-determination, in the phrase of the time. However, Mises clarified that there is nothing inconsistent between love of nation and love of universal well being. Liberal nationalism is always directed against the tyrant. It always seeks peace between peoples: “The desire for national unity, too, is above all thoroughly peaceful.”

Now, keep in mind the year he was writing. It was 1919, before the rise of fascist ideology in Europe. The idea of forming states on the "national principle" alone was entirely new, and Mises saw it as the only real path to preventing a new world war from being borne out of allied imperialism and postwar German resentment. His vision was to let bygones be bygones, let people alone, permit any group or any part of a group to form its own nation (even down to the individual level, if that were possible), and move toward a world of free trade, free migration, and universal limits on power.

Mises’s Mind Changed

The Misesian path was not the one followed, obviously. Mises’s 1927 book on liberalism drops the endorsement of nationalism but retains the longing for self-determination. After the Second World War, following his migration to the US as a refugee, having spent six years being sheltered in Geneva, he was given the chance to revisit the question of nationalism. His new outlook appeared in 1944, in his book Omnipotent Government. Having witnessed at first hand the results of the nationalist experiment, Mises had completely changed his mind.

This book goes to great lengths to walk back his theory from 1919. In a world of statism, he recognises, nationalism is a philosophy of aggression. Whether based in religion, racism, or territorial expansionism, nationalism is a threat to liberty itself and the project of human cooperation. It leads to migration barriers, trade protectionism, violence against non-nationals, and finally war. He no longer believed that nationalism could be a friend of liberty. The reverse is true: “nationalism within our world of international division of labour is the inevitable outcome of etatism.”

What had made the difference? Life experience, for one. He watched his beloved Vienna be invaded by German armies. He saw the universities purged of intellectuals, particular those deemed Jewish and liberal. He saw Europe enveloped in despotism, war, and mass death, in the name of territorial expansion and domination by the master race. He watched with horror as the nationalist principle, the one he imagined might be a source of peace, become the basis of the bloodiest nightmare.

What mistake had he made? As he put it, his nationalist idea was rooted in an underlying philosophical presumption of liberalism, that is, models of public administration that do not interfere in people’s lives and property, do not seek war, do not restrict trade and migration, do not attempt to control racial and language demographics, and do not manipulate people’s desire for belongingness to shore up the power and status of a “great” leader. In other words, the real answer is liberty; nationalism not only contributes nothing to the cause but is easily weaponised by any state that expands beyond its proper role.

Renan’s Deconstruction

Having witnessed the horrors of what nationalism wrought in his home and throughout Europe, Mises sought out some theoretical basis for his new realisation. He found it in a 1882 writing by the French historian Ernst Renan: What Is a Nation? Mises was right: if another essay has done as good a job in dealing with the issue, I’m unaware of it. Renan wrote it while the age of monarchy was coming to a close, as the rise of democracy was occurring everywhere, but still before the Great War unleashed such territorial confusion. Ideologies like socialism, imperialism, and “scientific” racism were vying to replace old-world understandings of political community.

Renan observes that people frequently throw around the word nationalism without unpacking what precisely it means. He delineates five conventional theories of nationhood from history and practice:

1. Dynasty. This view believes that ruling-class lineage forms the foundation of nationhood. It’s about a history of initial conquest by one family or tribe over one people, its struggle to gain and maintain power and legitimacy, its marriages, wars, treaties, and alliances, along with a heroic legend. This is a solid description of European experience in feudal times, but it is not necessary for nationhood.
    The dynastic sense of what nationhood is has largely evaporated in the 20th century, and yet nationhood is still with us. Renan saw that the dynastic view of the nation is not a permanent feature of the concept but only incidental to a time and place, and wholly replaceable. “A nation can exist without a dynastic principle,” writes Renan, “and even those nations which have been formed by dynasties can be separated from them without therefore ceasing to exist.”

2. Religion. The belief that a nation needs to practice a single faith has been the basis of wars and killings since the beginning of recorded history. It seemed like nationhood couldn’t exist without it, which is why the Schism of the 11th century and the Reformation of the 16th century led to such conflict.
Then emerged a beautiful idea: let people believe what they want to believe, so long as they are not hurting anyone. The idea was tried and it worked, and thus was born the idea of religious liberty that finally severed the idea of national belongingness from religious identity. Even as late as the 19th century, American political interests claimed that the US could not be a nation while accepting Catholic, Jewish, and Buddhist immigration. Today we see these claims for what they are, politically illicit longings for conquest over the right of conscience.
In addition, what might appear at first to be a single religion actually has radically different expressions. Pennsylvania Amish and Texas Baptists share the same religious designation but have vastly different praxis, and the same is true of Irish vs. Vietnamese vs. Guatemalan versions of Catholicism. This is also true of every other religious faith, including Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. 

3. Race. In the second half of the 19th century, there arose the new science of race, which purported to explain the evolution of all human societies through a deterministic reduction to biological characteristics. It was concluded that only race is firm and fixed and the basis of belongingness. Renan grants that in the most primitive societies, race is a large factor. But then comes other more developed aspects of the human experience: language, religion, art, music, and commercial engagement that break down racial divisions and create a new basis for community. Focussing on race alone is a revanchist longing in any civilised society.
    There is also a scientific problem too complex for simple resolution: no political community on earth can claim to be defined solely by racial identity because there is no pure race (Mises says exactly the same thing). This is why politics can never be reduced to ethnographic identity as a first principle. Racial ideology also trends toward the politics of violence: “No one has the right to go through the world fingering people's skulls, and taking them by the throat saying: 'You are of our blood; you belong to us!'” 

4. Language. As with the other claims of what constitutes nationality, the claim of language unity has a superficial plausibility. Polyglot communities living under a unity state face constant struggles over schooling, official business, and other issues of speech. They have the feeling of being two or several nations, thus tempting people to believe that language itself is the basis of nationhood. But this actually makes little sense: the US, New Zealand, and the UK are not a single nation because they hold the same language in common. Latin America and Spain, Portugal and Brazil, share the same language but not the same nation.
    There is also the issue that not even a single language is actually unified: infinite varieties of expression and dialect can cause ongoing confusion. How much, really, does the language of an urban native of New Jersey have to do with expressions used in rural Mississippi? “Language invites people to unite,” writes Renan, “but it does not force them to do so.” There is nothing mystically unifying about speaking the same language; language facilitates communication but does not forge a nation. Mises too embraces this view, thus reversing his position from 1919. 

5. Geography. Natural boundaries are another case of nation-making in the past which, as with all these other principles, actually has little to do with permanent features of what really makes a nation. Rivers and mountains can be convenient ways to draw borders but they do not permanently shape political communities. Geography can be easily overcome. It is malleable, as American history shows. The existence of geographically non-contiguous nations further refutes the notion.
    Americans speak of “sea to shining sea,” but how does that make sense of Alaska and Hawaii? Also in the US, enclaves of past national loyalty are a feature of city life: little Brazil, Chinatown, little Havana, and so on. Even further, to try to force unity based on geography alone is very dangerous. “I know of no doctrine which is more arbitrary or more fatal,” writes Renan, “for it allows one to justify any or every violence.”

All the above have some plausible claim to explaining national attachment, but none hold up under close scrutiny. In Renan’s view, nationhood is a spiritual principle, a reflection of the affections we feel toward some kind of political community – its ideals, its past, its achievements, and its future. Where your heart is, there is your nation, as Albert Jay Nock said. This is why so many of us, even outside the U.S. can still feel genuine feelings of joy and even belongingness during July 4th celebrations. We are celebrating something in common: a feeling we have that we share with others, regardless of religion, race, language, geography, and even ideology.

Renan: “Man is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains. A large aggregate of men, healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral conscience which we call a nation.”

Mises was clearly taken with this view, and hence his change of heart and mind.

Orwell on Nationalism

Around the same time, the always-remarkable George Orwell presented his own Notes on Nationalism in 1945. It’s not as careful an essay as Renan’s but consider the context: fury and disgust at the rise of Nazism, nationalism, communism in Russia, and a ghastly war that wrecked so much of the world. Orwell had had it up to here with collectivism of all sorts.

His essay is in three parts. He first defines it: “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad.’” Secondly, “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.”

Notice that Orwell’s definition is not rooted in the territorial issue. His nationalism is more ideological. It’s the habitual and uncritical celebration of some group-based cause that one believes is specially blessed to solve all the world’s problems. In this sense, the typical Communist is a nationalist, looking the world over for revolutionary movements to cheer on, such as the political pilgrims who look at a place like Cuba and Venezuela and find not tyranny but emancipation. He even finds nationalism in the works of G.K. Chesterton who celebrated a “little England” but found virtue in expanding imperialism so long as it took on the Catholic brand (Orwell was especially disgusted at Chesterton’s defence of Mussolini).

Second, Orwell identified three nationalistic habits of mind:

First, obsession: “No nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organisation, fills him with uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some sharp retort.”
Second, instability. “The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable.” It’s a tribalist mindset and it can easily migrate. Thus were so many fascists recruited from the ranks of communists, and so many champions of the Pan-Germanism that bred Nazism came from the upper-class ranks of British society. In his view, nationalism is inherently unprincipled in this way.
Third, indifference to reality. “All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts…. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

He elaborates this prescient point that pervades the left and right today.

Although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.

Orwell discusses other manifestations of this mentality, such as forms of identity politics. All salvation comes from the white rice; all virtue is in the non-white races. All glory or evil resides in the Jewish people. Greatness/evil extends from one country. And we could go on with every list in the Identitarianism of our time: misogyny/feminism, disabled/abled, Christian/Islam, rich/poor, and so on.

The nationalist is forever counterposing diverse societies with homogenous ones, as if the latter thing even exists. The word homogeneity should not even apply in any literal sense to any two members of the human family. No two people are the same; even twins have minds of their own. The chase for a homogenous population will always and everywhere result in forcing people into a group not of their choosing.

Orwell writes: “The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."

What’s most interesting about Orwell’s essay is that he takes a broadened view of the nationality question, to the point that it is no longer about territorial politics alone and instead touches on the psychological impact of political rule itself. (Sigmund Freud has long ago identified this as a pathology in his overlooked Group Psychology book.)

In this case, his analysis of nationalism applies not only to Nazism, not only to Communism, not only to Catholicism or any other religious or Identitarian movement you can name. It could, conceivably apply, for example to libertarianism itself. No one, no movement, is immune from the virus. Reflect on that point to perhaps explain a lot that has happened to the “liberty movement” over the last ten years.

Back to Hazony

Our Israeli professor friend Yoram Hazony is not unaware of Orwell’s writings, and addresses them directly. Still, he comes out on the other side, still arguing that nationalism is a friend of liberty. But what does he mean by liberty? He means democracy, stability, and high trust among society’s members such they that have warm affections for the national state and see it as an essential source for social order.

“The national state leverages these bonds of mutual loyalty,” he writes, “to get individuals to obey the laws, serve in the military and pay taxes, even when their own party or tribe is out of power and the government’s policies are not to their liking.”

This might be right – nationalism is certainly useful in manipulating people to intensify loyalties to the state – but is this necessarily the highest goal of society? Liberalism argued that the answer is no. The highest goal of society is realised not through loyalty to the state, but through freedom that leaves people alone in their person and property to find their own path to happiness.

A century ago, Hazony’s views might have been plausible. No more. Ludwig von Mises learned this lesson between his earliest and later writings. He lived through the experiment in controlled nationalism, and discovered the truth that it cannot be controlled. In fact, it can unleash literal hell as a propaganda device to disguise gross injustice and evil.

A nationalism that presents itself as a friend of liberty is one that must wilfully ignore that most bitter lessons of the last century, while eschewing the greatest lesson of all: that the only true guarantor of liberty is liberty itself.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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In her 1977 lecture, Global Balkanisation, Ayn Rand examines the meaning of “ethnicity” and the consequences of “modern tribalism” in politics. Rand argues that the global trend toward political organisation based on race, language and religion bodes ill for the future of Western civilisation. She contrasts the disintegration inherent in modern tribalism with the unity displayed by societies that respect individual rights regardless of race or ancestry.
In this webinar and Q&A, Rand scholars Aaron Smith & Ben Bayer discuss highlights and major themes from this historic lecture, and the applicability of those themes to our world today:

A brief on alt-right ideology

On the anniversary of the so-called "Unite the Right" alt-right march in the States, when they're apparently marching again in Washington D.C., Jeffrey Tucker points out in this guest post that if the movement has united anyone at all, it's not the right -- but the left! But it would be a grave mistake, he says, to think that the alt-right is just some clownish marchers at some rally waving flags and shouting threatening slogans. The real problem is the underlying philosophy...

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Every activist political movement eventually becomes a caricature of itself. This is certainly true of the so-called alt-right that blasted onto the cultural stage with its “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Part 2, today, in Washington, D.C., is revealing the irony. The lasting effect of this movement has been to unite the left. And not just the left: it is uniting most normal people who want to live a regular life, get along with others, and reduce the polarising effects of politics in our times.

Writing about this subject a year after my book came out always leads people to tell me that the alt-right is dead. I won this. I should stop writing about the issue.

The Philosophy

There is truth to this but it is mostly a superficial observation. Yes, the formal movement called the alt-right has become a caricature of itself, one particularly useful to the left-socialists who need an enemy and a threat to scare everyone about the coming dystopia.

What’s not dead, and has been a problem for 200 years, and which is still not understood, is the philosophical outlook that motivated the rise of the alt-right in the first place. It is more properly called Right Hegelianism. [And to paraphrase Keynes, "“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct philosopher like Hegel."]

Hegelianism (which split into left and right branches) was born in Germany in the early years of the 19th century as a reaction to the rise of liberalism in Europe and the world. This new movement rejected the core claim of liberalism that society can regulate itself and that individuals should be free to live good lives, believe what they want, say and print whatever they desire, and trade with anyone, so long as they didn’t hurt people.

Frederic Bastiat summed up the liberal view in the phrase “social harmony.” People figure out how to get along and build great things together so long as they are left alone by state authority. That was the liberal idea and it unleashed wealth creation and peace on the world, built the middle class, dramatically expanded living spans and population, and transformed life on earth. It gave birth to the idea of progress and eventually spread the idea of equal freedom for everyone: no more slavery, no more legal impediments to trade and association, universal rights to everyone, diplomacy instead of war, and free trade between all peoples.

Conflict Not Harmony

Hegelianism posited something very different, and it leads to a much more important way to view politics than the idiotic left-right split derived from French Revolutionary politics - that between those who value the liberal ideal of social harmony, and those who don't.

For those who don't, the social order simply cannot be left to the devices of Individual choice; it must acquiesce to forces of history that are more powerful than the randomness of human volition. These historical forces are the major player in revealing intractable conflict alive in the world. What is this conflict? Over many decades and centuries, the narrative would change. The struggle could be between classes, nations, languages, religions, sexes, mental abilities – really you can take your pick depending on the time and place. The agent that would harness the conflict and make it right would (always and everywhere) be the State.

There were two broad political branches of Hegelianism, left and right, that would become instantiated respectively in Marxism and Nazism --  but this was much later. In the intervening years, each side built its intellectual edifice brick by brick. Left Hegelianism took on many iterations before the Bolshevik variety finally achieved victory. Right Hegelianism began with the idea that history would culminate in total authority being granted unto the Prussian state and church, but it later became the animating force behind nationalism and bourgeoise statism in general.

The right Hegelian rogues gallery is huge. It involves protectionist Friedrich List, great-man theorist Thomas Carlyle, the luddite John Ruskin, the reactionary faux-aristocrat Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the race theorist Frederick Hoffman, the Darwin preservationist Madison Grant, the eugenicist Charles Davenport, the IQ theorist Henry Goddard, the communist turned Nazi philosopher Werner Sombart, the officious puritan misogynist Edward A. Ross, the brooding historicist Oswald Spengler, the anti-Semitic poet Ezra Pound, the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, the radio populist priest Charles Edward Coughlin, the pretend-baron and violence lover Julius Caesar Evola, the jailed whacko Francis Parker Yockey who influence postwar rightists, and so many more.

What They Believe

Read enough of this material and you begin to notice certain themes. Yes, anti-liberalism unites them in every way, but what about their positive agenda? What is it exactly that they advocate?

First, they reject social harmony in favor of the friend/enemy distinction, which they believe brings essential drama to the course of what would otherwise be a boring life. There must be struggles. There must be battles. There must be war and violence. To take part is what gives life meaning.

Second, they believe in the centrality of nationhood over the individual, and this takes many forms depending on how one defines the nation. The nation can be based on race, geography, language, religion, or dynasty, or some combination thereof. Whatever it is, it is not for you to choose. It certainly isn’t an affair of the heart. This is terrain in which identity politics takes hold.

Third, trade protectionism is central because the things we use and the services we consume need to reinforce our attachment to nationhood. Free trade is too random to tolerate. Plus free trade lessens our attachment to the leader.

Which leads to, fourth, the leadership principle. The leader must be strong and compel assent. He is the central organizer whether in peace or war. He embodies the nation, instantiating the will of the people and their national identity. He must have a great story of overcoming every obstacle to triumph over all. He may build a wall or make the trains run on time, but in time the great man will conquer all.

Fifth, an essential part of the right Hegelian vision is rooted in demographic panic and opposition to the randomness of human reproduction. For them, there is always some crisis going on beyond our immediate control. The white race is disappearing. Christianity is dying. English is no longer normative. Manhood is disappearing. Nothing is made in America anymore. The wrong people are getting rich. The Jews are taking over. And so on. The presence of crisis necessitates panic that leads people to surrender control of their lives to some external saviour.

Ideas Not Marches

It’s a mistake to think that the fate of the alt-right is bound up with public perceptions toward clownish marchers at some rally where people are waving flags and shouting threatening slogans. The real problem is the underlying philosophy that regards peace as a threat, prosperity as deracinating, and freedom itself as nihilistic chaos that cries out to be replaced by dictatorship, law, and imposed order.

That philosophy is still with us, and it triggers the rise of left Hegelianism, which is another problem to address on another day.

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Jeffrey Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, including his penetrating analysis of the alt-right 'Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty'
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QotD: "Nationalism is more absurd and more criminal than socialism" ~ Lord Acton

"The theory of [nationalism] is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism ... and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of [these] two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom, - the absolute monarchy and the revolution."~ Lord Acton, concluding his essay on 'Nationality'

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