"The Nationalist Threat to Liberty" - My Final Contribution to the Liberty Fund Symposium on "The Legacy of David Boaz"

The symposium has now concluded.

David Boaz. (Cato Institute)

 

The Liberty Fund symposium on "The Legacy of David Boaz" -  prominent libertarian thinker and longtime Cato Institute leader - has now concluded. There were initial essays by five participants - Andy Craig, Tarnell S. Brown, Aaron Powell, Jonathan Blanks, and myself. Each participant has now also posted two response essays. My final response essay is entitled "The Nationalist Threat to Liberty." Here is an excerpt:

Once again, I have few disagreements with the other contributors to the symposium. So I will take this opportunity to draw out a few common themes, and their implications. As before, a common theme of the various contributions is the need to extend liberty to all, without arbitrary exclusions based on factors like race, immigrant status, gender, sexual orientation, and the like.

In one of his response essays, Tarnell Brown mentions the Marquis de Lafayette as an example of the cosmopolitan nature of the struggle for liberty, and how immigrants and foreign allies contributed to the founding and growth of America. It's worth noting that, in addition to fighting for liberty in the American Revolution, Lafayette was also a longtime advocate of the abolition of slavery who unsuccessfully urged George Washington and other Founding Fathers to do more for that cause. Lafayette understood that liberty must be extended to all, regardless of race and ancestry. So should we.

Another, at least implicit, common theme, is the menace to liberty posed by the resurgence of illiberal and authoritarian nationalism. This is most obviously true in the cases of nativist and xenophobic attacks on immigration and trade, and Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine (motivated primarily by Russian nationalist imperialism)….

Nationalism obviously threatens liberty by restricting the range of people allowed to enjoy it. It also imperils freedom by promoting government central planning of the economy, through a combination of protectionism (as with Donald Trump's massive new trade war), immigration restrictions, and industrial policy. In these respects, nationalism is – as my Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I explained in "The Case Against Nationalism," – very similar to libertarians' other traditional rival: socialism. As Alex likes to put it, nationalism is socialism with more flags….

Libertarians of my generation… and even more so those of David Boaz's generation, came of age in a world where socialism and the progressive left more generally were the greatest threats to liberty. It may be psychologically difficult for some to adjust to the new reality where the greatest threat to our values now comes from the political right, in the form of nationalism. That adjustment may be especially painful for those most emotionally attached to the old "fusionist" alliance between libertarians and conservatives. But adjust we must.

Later in the piece, I note that recognizing nationalism as the greatest current threat to liberty does not imply an uncritical attitude towards the left:

David [Boaz] also understood that addressing the danger from the right doesn't entail blinding ourselves to the flaws of the left. The "democratic socialism" popular on the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party and in some European nations remains dangerous, sharing many of the flaws of its authoritarian counterparts. It is, today, less widespread – and thus less immediately threatening – than right-wing nationalism. But that could change.

David Boaz knew that libertarians must be alert to dangers to liberty from both right and left, and that we should strive to avoid becoming too emotionally attached to either side of the conventional political spectrum, even though tactical alliances on particular issues are often useful. On this, and much else, we should learn from his example.

My other contributions to the symposium are "David Boaz on Immigration" (initial essay) and "Liberal Universalism and the Menace of Nationalism" (first response essay). Other participant's contributions are available at the Liberty Fund site here.

Comments

[Roger S]

Nationalism obviously threatens liberty by restricting the range of people allowed to enjoy it.

This is like saying that property rights obviously threaten liberty.

[Kleppe]

Don't give him any ideas.

[TEMA]

If nationalism is a threat to liberty, why are some nations more libertarian than others. Obviously, nationalism doesn't necessarily lead to oppression of the kind found in the USSR and Communist China. If there were no nationalism -- that is, no boundaries between geopolitical entities -- how do you know that the outcome for the U.S. (or any other relatively free nation) would be greater liberty?

[thenotoriousrbg]

you're conflating States and Nations. States are geopolitical entities. Nations are groups of people unified by some ethnic or cultural identity. an example of this are the Basques of Spain. Spain is a State, Basque Country is a Nation. Basque Nationalism seeks to secede from Spain because Nationalists seek to unify State and Nation. as another example, the Indian tribes of the US are Nations: there's the Cherokee Nation, the Navajo Nation, etc. but the State that contains them is the US.

there are two kinds of Nationalist movements: Separatists, who have a Nation and want a State, and Identitarians, who have a State but want a Nation. examples of the latter include Nazi Germany (who had the German State and used genocide to make it exclusive to the German Völk), and the People's Republic of China (who have the PRC but want to assimilate the Tibetan and Uighur nations into Han culture.)

historically, the US has never been a Nation. we are, and always have been, something between a salad bowl and a melting pot. and we don't need to be a Nation to succeed. in WWII we had Navajo code-talkers, Jewish refugees, WASPs, first-generation Italians and the descendents of slaves all fighting with common cause to protect our shared home and our separate peoples.

[Roger S]

Wow, the USA was not a nation because it used 400 Navaho code talkers in WWII? I am pretty sure that if Basque ever becomes a nation, it will fill jobs with non-Basque people.

For most of American history, it was primarily people descended from England and nearby European countries.

[hobie]

I guess you've missed all the state suppression on universities, law firms, states, opposition lawmakers, judges, the EPA. Forget lawfare on steroids....this is the shut down of dissent. It's all just a matter of how far you hayseeds have debased yourselves in service of owning the libs

[Supremacy Claus]

Hate America all you want. Just do not use tax funds to subsidize your hate.

[hobie]

Ah nationalism. When in history has it never lead to millions of dead people?

Who, this time, will be the Jews?

[Roger S]

The Nazis were defeated by nationalists.

[hobie]

Are you so glaringly stupid that you don't comprehend that the Nazis were nationalists. I mean, we are all here watching you think and type out your thoughts...and we all know reality...well, most of us do.

I mean, as a thoughtful person, it is beyond interesting to me to see you metamorphize right in front of our eyes. Each week...

[Roger S]

Yes, the Nazi were national socialists. Russia, France, Britain, etc. were all nationalist. Most countries are. The USA was, until we got open borders.

[David Nieporent]

The US had always had open borders. It wasn't until the 20th century that this changed.

[Kleppe]

This may have been your last contribution to "The Nationalist Threat to Liberty," but I regret that your contributions to "The Libertarian Threat to the Nation" will continue unabated.

[bye]

Everything you point to is 'generic'

"Indeed, the vast majority of expressions of American patriotism — the flag, the national anthem, statues, shrines and coinage honoring national heroes, military parades, ceremonies for those fallen in the nation’s wars — are replicated in every other country of the world. This is all the stuff of nationalism, both abroad and here at home."

This article attacks the principles of the Founding, reminds me of John Dewey

So this is intolerable to your mainstream American and rightly so

"extend liberty to all, without arbitrary exclusions based on factors like race, immigrant status, gender, sexual orientation, and the like."

Everybody's liberty going back to Plato, is based on human rights. You have zero rights by say sexual orientation. ZERO

Biden was thrilled to his toes to call this liberty
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/sam-brinton-comp.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1200

Now Biden waits in disgrace to die.

[Brett Bellmore]

Is straining somebody else's eye muscles by inducing excess eye rolling an actionable tort? This seems like the place to ask.

You know, when I was a teen, I was an anarcho-capitalist of the David Friedman sort. And even then I was more aware of the problems with anarchism than Somin appears to be at his advanced age!

I mean, that's ultimately what Somin is advocating here: Anarchism. He's not wrong that enforcing borders violates the NAP. Having governments at all violates the NAP, so complaining about having borders but not other elements of the classic state that actually have more impact on people's day to day lives seems a really weird, insupportable place to draw the line. Seriously, anarchism with borders seems more plausible than states without.

[Stephen Lathrop]

In the absence of a nation state, what vessel does a libertarian theorist propose to put a libertarian government in?

[bye]

If you get rid of religion, the state is GOD , if you get rid of the state, whoever does it is GOD

Libertarians never think through the results of their hate and attacks on Jews and Christians. Stupid folk like Sam Harris are even worse:

This is what super-fool Sam said 20 years ago and he still doesn't see how people like him have massively strengthened Islam

’the very ideal of religious tolerance—born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God—is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss’ (2005: 15).

THE ONLY THING THAT WILL DESTROY ISLAM IS "FREEDOM OF RELIGION" Sam must have ignored Aayan Hirsi Ali for years, the world's most famous atheist woman (now a Christian) She said long ago

“My observation is yes, Christianity is different from Islam…The worst thing that a Christian has ever said to me, the rudest thing that a Christian has ever said to me, the thing that made me most uncomfortable that a Christian said to me was ‘I’m going to pray for you. I hope you will be safe. I hope you will be redeemed.’ But within my own family and my own community, when I say I’m in doubt about the Koran and Muhammad and life after death and all that, it is ‘well, you are to die.’

[Brett Bellmore]

This seems uncharacteristically trenchant for you, but it is spot on: If you compromise libertarian principles enough to not be an anarchist, nations seem unavoidable.

Somin seems to have decided to define "nationalism" in a systematically pejorative manner, and then, surprise, it turns out to be a bad thing!

Oxford defines "nationalism" as, "identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations."

It's a fair cop: Nationalism, so defined, is the position Trump has advanced consistently: That a nation's government should devote itself to advancing the interests of its own citizenry, and leave advancing the interests of the citizens of other countries to those countries' governments.

This leaves room for the interests of citizens of other countries to be treated as a side constraint, but never the primary goal.

That's long been my position, and it IS based on libertarian theory.

Government routinely violates the non-aggression principle. It's organized violation of the non-aggression principle! It taxes people, it issues commands backed by threats of violence, routinely delivers on those threats to keep them plausible.

It is maybe justified on account of being both unavoidable, and the claim that it operates for the good of its victims. Who are, of course, primarily the inhabitants of the government's territory, it's citizens. And, of course, Somin's treasured "foot voting" does require that governments mostly limit their depredations to the people within their territories...

It's maybe justifiable if done for their good. To do it for the good of somebody else, instead, is just straight up evil, without a hint of justification.