Our critics would presumably agree with us on these defects in Trumpian nationalism. What they have not conceded, even grudgingly, is that there is anything worthwhile in Trump’s nationalism that has eluded other Republicans: that these Republicans have too often failed even to try to connect their policy proposals to Americans’ self-interest, that they have ignored their desire for national unity, and that these failures contributed to Trump’s rise. Conservatives lost touch with their nationalism in part because of an exaggerated philosophical discomfort with it.

Goldberg lamented that our defense of nationalism, coming as it did soon after Trump’s inauguration, would be taken as a “whitewash” of his version of nationalism (which is already white enough). When a new president uses one of the highest-profile events in American politics to articulate views that are both right and wrong in important ways, however, it is exactly the right time to sift through them.

Take Trump’s protectionism, which Goldberg urges conservatives to reject. We should indeed reject it — not because it is always wrong to subordinate the freedom of a corporation to the interests of the country, but because we have many reasons to think that trade barriers will usually undermine the national interest. Raising tariffs on the imports that American companies use to manufacture their products may help certain other American companies, but it will hurt Americans as a whole. The problem with it, that is, isn’t that it’s “economic nationalism.” It’s that it’s not a sensible form of nationalist economics.