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How Important Is the Nation-State?
Today I’ve been reading over the first issue of American Affairs, a new intellectual journal that appears to have grown out of the (largely Claremont-based) American Greatness movement. American Affairs seems to understand itself as a possible seed-ground for exploring an intellectual foundation to Trumpism.
I should admit forthrightly that I look on this project as a skeptic, and as one who considers that the founders of this project have taken a large (not to say foolhardy) burden on themselves. I’m not, in general, the sort of person who seeks to shut down ambitious intellectual projects. But to my mind, the trouble with American Greatness was always the extent to which it understood itself in rejectionist terms. The spirit of the thing seemed not to be, “The right could use some fresh ideas around now, so let’s explore,” so much as, “The whole conservative movement is intellectually and (probably) morally bankrupt, so we’re starting over. Sign onto our program or be rendered irrelevant.”
That kind of “convert or die” attitude makes it hard to climb aboard, especially if you think (as I do) that there’s quite a lot of good to be found in the conservative movement from Buckley through the dawn of Trump. I’m in favor of exploring new ideas and making needed adjustments, but I’m also quite opposed to chucking free-market economics and neoconservative geopolitics as though they were groceries past their expiration date. Reading the American Greatness blog, I regularly have the same thought: This is all fine, but apart from the overt belligerence, these arguments could easily have been advanced in the conservative movement of yesteryear. What has your blanket excommunication accomplished, except to insulate yourselves from critique that would likely be quite helpful?
Having said all this, I pulled up the first issue of the new journal resolved to give it a fair shot. I could only read three articles without subscribing, so I haven’t gone through the whole thing. Here’s my reaction thus far: This reads to me like choir-preaching. It’s hard to see how these arguments would be compelling to anyone who wasn’t already deeply sympathetic to the perspective being advanced. Perhaps that’s the idea; after all, if the rest of us anachronisms have already been excommunicated, maybe we’re not worth the trouble. Or we could just say (to put the point less snarkily) that it can be acceptable to have a journal. It still seems a little unfortunate, because after all, Buckleyite conservatism has been developed across many years, and even its origins involved some large and very theoretical brains. If the Great Americans are looking to toss out whole realms of conservative theory (or perhaps I have misunderstood?), they should really be revved to start laying some serious, theoretical foundations. I would have expected that to be the point of starting a journal.
Of course, it’s only the first issue. Maybe they’ll get there. But here’s a concrete example of where the argument seems so thin that I can only suppose that the author is presuming a sympathetic readership. In his opening article, Joshua Mitchell argues that Trumpism is not populist, because it in fact represents a struggle against a real enemy (globalists) on behalf of a real good (national sovereignty). Once we understand the evils of globalism, we will appreciate that Trumpism, as a part of the global war against globalism, is substantive and entirely coherent, and not (as detractors like me suspect) an emotion-driven uprising whose goals mostly boil down to a resentment-and-nostalgia-tinged wish-list. The globalists are deeply wrong, Mitchell argues, because they do not appreciate that national sovereignty is, “the final word on how to order collective life.”
At this point in the 9.000-word article, I was intrigued, presuming that Mitchell would now undertake to argue for the extraordinarily strong privileging of the nation-state that, in his view, is the motivating and justifying principle behind Trumpism. Although I have encountered a great many people who assert the primacy of the nation-state, I have yet to hear a really thorough defense. Here’s what Mitchell gives us to justify his principle:
The Peace of Westphalia, which formally inaugurated the modern European system of nation-states, came into effect in 1648. Shortly thereafter, in 1651, Hobbes wrote one of the great works in the history of political philosophy, Leviathan. In a now-common reading of that work, and correct so far as it goes, Hobbes’s Leviathan provides us with the individuated self, oriented by self-interest and the fear of death. These ideas are in Leviathan, but they only scratch the surface of that great work. Hobbes’s deeper concern in Leviathan was the English Civil War, which in no small part was a religious war involving the claims of Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. The doctrinal difference between the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians need not concern us; what matters is where each of these Christian sects located sovereignty. Hobbes thought that Roman Catholics were guilty of what we might call “false universalism,” because they vested sovereignty at the supra-state level, in Rome. Hobbes thought that the Presbyterians were guilty of what we might call “radical particularism,” because they vested sovereignty at the sub-state level, in private conscience. The English Civil War occurred, on Hobbes’s reading, because of these religious wagers that peace and justice were possible without national sovereignty. In his estimation, these supra- and sub-state alternatives are perennial temptations of the human heart. Their defenders may promise much, but neither “commodious living” nor justice are possible through them. Only by vesting sovereignty in the state can there be improvement for citizens and workable understandings of justice.
The post-1989 experiment with globalism and identity politics demonstrates that Hobbes was correct, so long ago, that supra- and sub-state sovereignty are perennial temptations of the human heart. The post-1989 version of that temptation saw global elites use the apparatus of the state to bolster so-called free trade, international law, global norms, and international accords about “climate change,” the advances towards which purported to demonstrate the impotence of the state itself. In such a world managed from above, the only task left for the Little People was to feel good—or feel permanent shame—about their identities, and perhaps to get involved in a little “political activism” now and again, to show their commitment (on Facebook, of course) to “social justice.” The Little People in such a world were not citizens, they were idle “folks,” incapable of working together, because what really mattered was not rational deliberation with their neighbors, but what they owed, or were owed, by virtue of their identities. Determining the calculus of their debt, in turn, were Very White Progressives in the Democratic Party who cared not a jot about the real outstanding debt of $19 trillion owed by the U.S. treasury. These Very White Progressives sought to adjudicate justice from above, by legal carve-outs or, if necessary, by executive actions pertaining, for example, to transsexual bathrooms, so that all “identities” could have their due. Fortunately, 2016 was year the American electorate decided this ghastly fate was not to be theirs.
That’s it. In two paragraphs, Mitchell dispenses with the absolute prioritizing of national sovereignty, and moves right along to lambasting universities, discussing different possible strains of nationalism, and complaining about the undue influence of European thinkers on Buckleyite conservatives. This is an absolutely crucial piece of his argument (and indeed, in his view, a dividing line so critical that people who fail to side with him should not even be regarded as Americans but rather as “proxies for globalism”). Nevertheless, he evidently regards those two paragraphs as sufficient to establish the point.
This seems to me like a pretty blatant example of what I call “the Fallacy of Confusing Complexity.” Political and moral reasoning are really so much easier and less complicated if we presume that we don’t have significant moral obligations to non-Americans. Once people start thinking they might have obligations that go “above” (cosmopolitanism) or “below” (individual conscience) national boundaries, who knows where we’ll end up?! Probably fighting among ourselves, like the English did! The only solution is to insist that national sovereignty is absolutely primary, and that no other sources of obligation can really count.
As a pragmatic claim it might be true. But of course, life often seems simpler when we dismiss as too messy or complicated obligations that may in fact still exist. I think patriotism and shared nationality mean something, but I don’t they don’t mean everything. I believe that I can have obligations to non-Americans for all sorts of reasons: Because they are my blood relatives or personal friends, or because they are my co-religionists, or because our nations are allies and have assumed obligations towards one another, or possibly just because they are human beings in great need. Any of those might, in some respect, affect my compatriots as well as myself, thus going outside (either above or below) national sovereignty.
In other words, I don’t see how national sovereignty can be the absolute “final word” on collective life. Moral obligation is indeed quite complicated at times! But we aren’t entitled to dismiss moral truths just because they’re complicated and confusing.
What do others think? Is there more to this argument than I have appreciated, or is it really as thin as it seems to me?
Published in General
Yes, we are too accustomed to the Left changing the traditional meaning of perfectly good words. If that’s the new standard of behavior, we should learn how to do it.
The expression “thumb in the eye” means the way the establishment saw it. Whether you like it or not, our votes were made based on clear-eyed reason. I said nothing about views outside of what you’re pleased to call “Trumpism” in your quest to marginalize us, but which I call rational adult thought. You are the strawman builder, not I. My description of globalism was accurate.
And actually Rachel did deny that intelligent people voted for Trump. She just did it in a thinly veiled passive-aggressive manner. Apparently she believes we’re actually as stupid as she thinks we are. “Nuanced” haha. A favorite word of the Obama administration to indicate that anyone who disagrees with them is dense.
Oh, and @matty – Though our votes were based on clear-eyed rationality, it doesn’t mean we weren’t angry. We WERE. We channeled that anger into the voting booths, not into the streets. That is the rational and adult way to act on anger.
You want to talk to me about emotional outbursts? Really? Take a gander at the liberals who express their disappointment by destroying property and blocking traffic. The over-wrought bloggers, the doomsayers among the congressional Democrats, the sobbing celebrities in their “Public Service” videos.
And my personal favorite:
https://youtu.be/avcyqp_10Yk
We have engaged some on these kinds of issues where the results make me very nervous. Have you paid attention to who is leading human rights in the UN?
As a young person, I used to think boundaries and countries were a nemesis…the cause of most antagonisms in our world. Now I realize that there will be government no matter whether boundaries/nations exist or not. As such, nations are the only way to make sure that governments are close enough to the people to be responsive to their needs and desires. Witness Brexit. The British came to realize that being governed by an entity far away did not meet the needs of the citizens. Then look closely at ourselves in the USA. The national government is not as responsive as the States. Thus our wise founders developed Federalism to insure the power of the local government. Now I realize the deficiency of my young thoughts. Boundaries are actually a force for freedom and liberty. Nationalism does not have to be triumphalism. It merely needs to allow for individualism
Come on over to this side of the Tiber. You’re totally welcomed, and if we may not always agree with the Pope, we are at least theologically coherent. : -P No, I’m kidding. A person needs to follow their discernment on such things.
Was there much of a check? The check, except for very early in the middle ages, was sporadic. The Pope could not hold the Eastern Orthodox in the fold, he relied Charlemagne afterward, and post about the 12th century I believe had very little respect from most of the other states. Once the Papacy created the Papal States, then they lost a good deal of the moral authority you are implying. I don’t have the time to look it up, but France and Spain both at times sent armies into Italy to attack the papacy.
When in history hasn’t it been bloody? Perhaps during the Pax Romana but even then it wasn’t as peaceful as advertised. And except for a couple of local places for short periods of time, citizens have never been free until the American Revolution.
You may be right, but I’m not finding that convincing. Perhaps you or someone can articulate the difference between a modern nation state and an ancient/medieval/Renaissance state. Other than size and the modern technical sophistications I just don’t see the difference.
LOL!!! That is hilarious.
Isn’t this a is a thread reviewing a new intellectual journal dedicated to explaining and exploring Trumpism?
My understanding is that the (late) 16th and 17th centuries were rather particularly violent.
UPDATE: Corrected to indicate the centuries I had in mind.
Seems to me more like a thread pretending to be “intrigued” by the strange alien creatures who follow the non-existent ideology she calls “Trumpism.”
A quick note: if you view the American Affairs website in a private/incognito tab, you can read as many articles as you like. The same trick also works on the New York Times, Washington post, etc.
Nanu nanu!
On its surface it is. What it actually is a Never Trumper cherry picking a Trumper article to explain how shallow and moronic Trumpers are and why Never Trump was right all along. Mix in some Catholic social justice, a little Hobbes, a little Calvin, and bake at 375.
Yes, possibly but as I think over history I can see lots of violence. The 100 years war in 13th & 14th centuries, the italian wars, which is what I think you referring to. Actually part of the reasons for the crusades was to re-focus European nation states from fighting each other toward a common enemy. But the 30 years war that led to that 1648 agreement was very bloody. Sadly, it seems like war is a natural state of humanity.
The word “Trumpism” appears four times in @rachellu‘s post and it’s one of the tags. “Trumpism” appears over a dozen times in subsequent comments. Neither “Trumpism” nor “Trumpist” appears even once in Mitchell’s article.
Perhaps this is because he is trying to understand the multiple reasons that Trump was elected, and not, pace Rachel, trying to articulate a philosophy or ideology of “Trumpism.”
She quotes Miller:
Yes. Miller is saying that Westphalia hit a sweet spot, though to justify Westphalia, 9000 words isn’t enough. Try Kissinger’s Diplomacy instead.
Rachel, reading something into Mitchell, is certainly misreading what he says about the universities, which is that the Westphalia system has come under a multidirectional attack in the last century and that universities in the United States have for years been in on the attack. If that’s “lambasting” so be it.
Internationalist forces attacking the Westphalia system have taken many forms:
The depth of hostility to national sovereignty can be seen in the Progressive alliance with militant Islam: were the latter to accomplish its mission, Progressives would not fare well.
How much did people really care about having one people per state and one state per people before the idea of the nation-state and the rise of nationalism?
Why did Germany (this is pre-WWII and even pre-WWI) decide to stop being a confederation of “Germanies”? Why had it been a confederation of Germanies until then? (I think the answer has something to do with Napoleon, in Germany’s case.) Similar could be asked of Italy. Why did Italian nationalism decide a patchwork of city-states was no longer good enough?
I myself am unsure of the specifics. But I do know that arguments for the unification of these countries were labeled “nationalism”. People arguing for unification believed for some reason a “nation-state” with borders resembling the modern borders should exist and shouldn’t just be a confederation of smaller states, but instead something more unified.
Sure, states and peoples separated and merged before the modern era, too, with people wanting to be with and be governed by their own kind. But I do think the idea that people can and should be separated into nations, each with its own state, and that unrest comes (even deserves to come) from failing to live up to this ideal, is a fairly modern idea.
Woodrow Wilson said, “National aspirations must be respected.” He meant that as an improvement on how things often were historically, and he must have meant something by it.
Do you not see it? Do you really not see it?
That plus the straw men.
I see yet another analysis dismissed by saying “NeverTrumpers still hate Trump supporters!”, and roll my eyes. It’s hard to say “play the ball not the man” when discussing a Straussian publication (what with the seen/unseen and explicit/implicit stuff), but come on
Well I can’t help you then.
I really appreciate MFR’a critique here especially since it involved reading a rather lengthy article. But, a question. Does the later segment on different types of nationalism really greatly expand the justification for prioritizing the nation-state? Isn’t that section basically also predicated on the assumption that the need to be some kind of nationalist is already established, such that we can now consider what sort we prefer to be?
The article really is kind of a hodgepodge of stuff, which makes it hard to critique fairly. There isn’t a single central argument but more a bunch of points cobbled together. But the opening segment is structured as follows: People think Trumpism is populist, and that is wrong because it is a struggle against pernicious globalism. Globalism is the mistaken belief that the nation-state is not the final arbiter of our public life. And why is that wrong? Because… quoted paragraphs. Then he treats that as established and moves on.
Maybe the later stuff does add something to the explanation of why nationalism is good. What exactly does it add, though? To me it seemed as though the quoted segment was the “let’s get ice cream” and the part MFR discussed was more about picking what flavor you want.
That was my understanding, although MFR is right that he attempts to soften the understanding of Nationalism as Blood and Soil Nationalism.
There you go with “Trumpism” again. Also, I can’t see that Miller claims the nation state is the “final arbiter of our public life;” it seems to me that he is arguing that it still has value, and is if not the happy medium, perhaps be the least unhappy medium between the pernicious effects of sub-state and supra-state group allegiances.
I also think that had he failed to even try to distinguish between varieties of nationalism, he would be subjected to scathing criticism for that.
But I agree that the piece is somewhat incoherent and not entirely successful
You should know that the announcement of this journal explicitly said that it was intended to provide the intellectual case for “Trumpism”. Rachel is not out of bounds in her description based on the stated goals of the publishers of the journal.
Yes, true enough. Though he isn’t too hostile to the alt right; it’s clear that he’s moderately sympathetic.
I do find it interesting how the Greatness folks want intellectual purity (an American identity drawing on American thinkers) and the alt right ethnic purity. They’re slightly different crowds, though both enamored of Trump and Bannon (and a Bannonesque policy agenda) and in that sense natural allies.
The difficulty with this is that “patriotism as manifested in our opposition to ‘globalism'” comes really close to coming back to the America First stuff. Adding words to redefine nationalism isn’t all that meaningful if your meaning is going to be isolationism with a side helping of concerns about international conspiracy. It’s a fig leaf. I mean, perhaps that is what Mitchell is going for, but I don’t think that it was a particular problem with Rachel’s article that she overlooked elements that do not appear to have a genuine substance to them.
I was going to say that tactics aren’t an end, but then I saw how dumb that would be. It is a wonderful thing that Trump has brought so few Mitchells with him into government, but it should concern us that they will continue to slant and tarnish perception of him.
That seems to be a pretty bad faith reading to me.
By the time I reached the end of Mitchell’s article, it was unclear to me whether Mitchell even thinks of the US as a nation-state. I thought it possible Mitchell was trying to advance forms of nationalism compatible with the US is, rather than with nation-states specifically.
I know conservatives mocking Wikipedia is a pastime, but just looking up “nation-state” there…
Why “nationalism” rather than just “patriotism”?
Rehabilitating some form of “nationalism” (not necessarily ethnic nationalism or nation-state-ism) would place more emphasis, perhaps, than appeal to patriotism alone does on Trumpist notions of national sovereignty, border enforcement, and anti-globalism. After all, patriots may reasonably disagree on how best to assert national sovereignty, what wise border policy is, or what “globalism” in the pejorative sense even means. And perhaps “nationalism” also addresses the current reality that the federal government is right now much stronger than the founders anticipated, perhaps “forcing” Americans to act, for now, more as a nation-state (even though we’re not one) than more traditional patriots would like.
Trumpism is, as far as I can tell, pretty open about trying to create a coherent philosophy from Trump’s appeal. If usage of terms like “nationalism” is part of that appeal, then Trumpism’s job is to interpret those usages as charitably as possible, trying to discard old baggage and possibly even creating new definitions along the way. So yes, Trumpism’s job does appear to be to accept that “nationalism” must mean something good, then figure out what good thing it must mean. And yes, the process of reappropriating suchlike terms is bound to confuse some perfectly decent people.