Left-wingers and Europeans are quick to detect the whiff of fascism in American nationalism. It doesn’t take a history degree to recognize how hysterical this is, but if historical perspective were needed, Jean-François Revel provided it when he observed that, while the dark night of fascism is always said to be descending in America, somehow it lands only in Europe.
Libertarian readers of this journal cannot be nationalists, of course. Like religion, nationalism carries with it too much baggage. Nationalism promotes solidarity, the sense of attachment to and sympathy with others that is one of the most basic of human goods. It will pull one leftward on economics, since it asks one to support social welfare programs for fellow-citizens. Not aliens, mind you. The nationalist will distinguish between aliens and citizens, but what he’d deny the former must be paid for by what he’d give the latter. Otherwise the pose of nationalism is a pious fraud. That’s why a libertarian who objects to social welfare nets cannot be a nationalist.
Nationalism has too often been dismissed as retrograde, by a New Class largely indifferent to both natives and aliens. But if we thought that nationalism provided the single touchstone of political morality, we’d make a like mistake. If you’re a jusqu’au bout nationalist, here are some things you’re not fond of: humanity, the West, Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular. Nationalism is not enough.
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