"Nationalism" and Trump and Macron
It's hard to tell what people are arguing about when they argue about nationalism. Trump says he's for it, Macron against it. If anyone actually knows what's going on, please lemme know. I tentatively guess that Trump's thinking of nationalism as it's opposed to some fairly extreme version of internationalism that takes organizations like the EU or even the UN to be paradigms for the future, and hopes to weaken/undermine national sovereignty. Whereas it seems that Macron is thinking of nationalism as patriotism gone wrong, and associating it with something like foreign policy "realism"...which, so far as I can tell, is basically ethical egoism writ large. And it's associated with one natural interpretation of "America first." This seems to be supported by Macron's emphasis on moral obligations that trump national prudence.
These sorts of public, less-formal disagreements tend, IMO, to be matters of emphasis--haggling over smallish differences. Does Macron want to see the nation-state (or, depending on what you think that means, just: the state) wither away, to be replaced by EUs? And, ultimately, something UN-like? I guess I doubt it...but the Europeans are weird, so maybe. Does Trump want...I dunno...whatever Trump is supposed to want? Needless to say, the left is hyperventilating with the effort of making him a massively racist antisemite, a white/ethno-nationalist, and everything else bad...so they leap to corresponding conceptions of nation, nationalism and America-first-y-ism. I've heard people say that Trump is, if anything, a civic nationalist, which seems plausible--certainly more plausible than the ridiculous claim that he's a white nationalist...which really is a completely different kind of thing anyway.
But who knows? Disputes like this are a mess even when Trump isn't involved. And when he is, you end up trying to piece together what the hell it is that he really means.
I leaned fairly hard toward a kind of Star-Trek-y cosmopolitanism when I was younger. Currently I'm rather skeptical of it. I've generally come to think some kind of Burkean conservatism is wise, and rates of massive change should be slowed. I think it's a terrible idea to seek to weaken national sovereignty, especially when the illiberal left seems even more powerful in Europe than here. This is not a recommendation for stasis, just for caution. I do fear a left that seems to combine a desire to weaken borders and pursue demographic re-engineering with a mindless, sweeping multiculturalism that includes, inter alia, a rejection of the ideal of assimilation. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism are closely associated with multiculturalism and the relevant sectors of the left. I have no interest in social/cultural stasis...but, given how admirable and successful Western culture and American culture have been, it's fairly clearly a terrible idea to start hacking away at it willy-nilly. Social and cultural change--except in what are basically emergencies, like the case of the civil rights movement--ought to be pursued slowly, with great circumspection. And, though I'm by no means a foreign-policy "realist" / national ethical egoist, I think we've got a pretty damn good thing going, and we'd be foolish to throw it away in favor of largely-untested Utopian internationalist ideals. Aspects of the left make it seem that it wants us to basically merge with Sweden. My own inclination is to think that that's nuts.
Though, for the record, I am inclined to favor a lot more international cooperation than Trump does. Not that it should matter what I think. But Trump seems to be shredding our international alliances. That seems like the other edge of stupid. I actually tend to be attracted to rather more international engagement, e.g. more (though: smarter) foreign aid. If we have any idea how to do it, I'd favor massive investment in trying to fix Latin America. That'd be prudent as well as noble. But I have no idea whether we even have any clue how to do such a thing. Incidentally...sure would be nice to have that $3 trillion or whatever back from the Iraq war, wouldn't it?
Incidentally, I have little idea what I'm talking about--so you should take that into account.
These sorts of public, less-formal disagreements tend, IMO, to be matters of emphasis--haggling over smallish differences. Does Macron want to see the nation-state (or, depending on what you think that means, just: the state) wither away, to be replaced by EUs? And, ultimately, something UN-like? I guess I doubt it...but the Europeans are weird, so maybe. Does Trump want...I dunno...whatever Trump is supposed to want? Needless to say, the left is hyperventilating with the effort of making him a massively racist antisemite, a white/ethno-nationalist, and everything else bad...so they leap to corresponding conceptions of nation, nationalism and America-first-y-ism. I've heard people say that Trump is, if anything, a civic nationalist, which seems plausible--certainly more plausible than the ridiculous claim that he's a white nationalist...which really is a completely different kind of thing anyway.
But who knows? Disputes like this are a mess even when Trump isn't involved. And when he is, you end up trying to piece together what the hell it is that he really means.
I leaned fairly hard toward a kind of Star-Trek-y cosmopolitanism when I was younger. Currently I'm rather skeptical of it. I've generally come to think some kind of Burkean conservatism is wise, and rates of massive change should be slowed. I think it's a terrible idea to seek to weaken national sovereignty, especially when the illiberal left seems even more powerful in Europe than here. This is not a recommendation for stasis, just for caution. I do fear a left that seems to combine a desire to weaken borders and pursue demographic re-engineering with a mindless, sweeping multiculturalism that includes, inter alia, a rejection of the ideal of assimilation. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism are closely associated with multiculturalism and the relevant sectors of the left. I have no interest in social/cultural stasis...but, given how admirable and successful Western culture and American culture have been, it's fairly clearly a terrible idea to start hacking away at it willy-nilly. Social and cultural change--except in what are basically emergencies, like the case of the civil rights movement--ought to be pursued slowly, with great circumspection. And, though I'm by no means a foreign-policy "realist" / national ethical egoist, I think we've got a pretty damn good thing going, and we'd be foolish to throw it away in favor of largely-untested Utopian internationalist ideals. Aspects of the left make it seem that it wants us to basically merge with Sweden. My own inclination is to think that that's nuts.
Though, for the record, I am inclined to favor a lot more international cooperation than Trump does. Not that it should matter what I think. But Trump seems to be shredding our international alliances. That seems like the other edge of stupid. I actually tend to be attracted to rather more international engagement, e.g. more (though: smarter) foreign aid. If we have any idea how to do it, I'd favor massive investment in trying to fix Latin America. That'd be prudent as well as noble. But I have no idea whether we even have any clue how to do such a thing. Incidentally...sure would be nice to have that $3 trillion or whatever back from the Iraq war, wouldn't it?
Incidentally, I have little idea what I'm talking about--so you should take that into account.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:24 AM
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