This confused climate of massive global networks arrayed against isolated individuals favors the appearance of vague terms like nationalism and populism. People reason that if global networks and selfish, false elites are destroying the nation, they must naturally step back and restore the nation-state to its rightful place in the hearts and minds of citizens... [...]
In order to truly serve their nation, true Americans must fearlessly criticize her for her waywardness. More importantly, we must evangelize her, bringing her to the fullness of faith in the God under Whom she owes her existence. Only when America kneels before her true God will she become truly civilized. One of the mistakes [...]
The Great War, in Woodrow Wilson’s view, had to become precisely what the delegates to the Congress of Vienna feared: a moral crusade, an instrument of social and political revolution. For American president Woodrow Wilson, the First World War was the “war to end all wars” by making “the world safe for democracy,” not least [...]
By the beginning of the Mexican war, even famed newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan began to doubt his own expansionist infatuations. What would America do, for example, if she tried to incorporate not just Mexico but actual, honest-to-God Mexicans into the republic? Standing with his father as they watched the Battle of Bunker Hill in [...]
So incisive and troubling did the Nazis find Jean Renoir’s indictment of war and his embrace of the shared culture of Europe, that when the Wehrmacht invaded France and occupied Paris in the spring of 1940, Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion was among the first cultural artifacts Nazi officials confiscated… The Great War was a catastrophe for Europe. The [...]
Yoram Hazony’s "The Virtue of Nationalism" sees the world as composed of two “antithetical” types of government: universalist empires and free nation-states. The problem is that everything in the book is forced into that all-inclusive doctrinal dichotomy. The Virtue of Nationalism, by Yoram Hazony (305 pages, Basic Books, 2018) Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism has the [...]
The nation-state, along with a broadly Christian culture, has always been the surest foundation for a classically liberal order. America’s ideals depend not on tribal loyalty to universal propositions but on loyalty to the tribes—and little platoons—from which our ideals arise... How do you gauge the health of a civilization? There are geographic and demographic, [...]
All is not well between the nation state and empire: Centre and periphery have their rules which at times collide, as witnessed of late. Are there any possible guiding principles that could minimize the force of collision? In 1887 the optometrist Ludwik Zamenhof published the fruits of his passion for constructing an artificial language in [...]
The militant nationalism of the twentieth century made it futile to assert clear ideas, to ask honest questions, to make reasoned judgments, or to engage in truthful debate… Permit me to begin at the end. Joseph Pearce is concerned with the power of an international bureaucracy and the advent of a world government that will [...]
Had the Nationalists carried the day in 1776 and turned the Continental Congress into a national government, implied powers would have been the normal constitutional practice from the moment of independence. The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 by N. Coleman (294 pages, Lexington Books, 2016) The Articles of Confederation that Congress [...]
We should see the nations of the world as distinct and beautiful flowers in the garden of culture. It is the love of this uniqueness of each nation which should inspire all lovers of national integrity to fight against the globalized monoculture that the globalist Imperium wishes to impose… In his essay “Towards Patriotism: An [...]
Some observers ascribe racist and anti-business sentiments to proponents of a new nationalist political order, but such pejoratives distract from alternative and more plausible explanations for populism’s contemporary popularity… There is much to commend in David Mr. Brooks’ latest op-ed, “The Coming War on Business,” but his assessment goes significantly astray from appraising accurately the [...]
Nationalism has not brought and will not bring unity, if for no other reason than nationalism insists on uniformity and must always exclude those who do not conform. Yet, if there is a chance to achieve some measure of unity, patriotism might enable it. In his thoughtful response to my essay, “History as Tragedy and [...]
A genuine nationalist cannot be an imperialist. In this sense, the so-called nationalism of the nineteenth century was nothing of the sort… Mark Malvasi’s recent essay on the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century was a cogent and thought-provoking appraisal of the dangers of politically orchestrated mob-patriotism. It was not, however, an essay that [...]