In the last century, nationalism ravaged Europe. So why do today’s resurgent nationalists, who advocate essentially the same political doctrine, believe their agenda will somehow lead to different results?
I think you should have made crystal clear how the 'Nationalist' movement which you mentioned, "the Edmund Burke Foundation. Under the banner of “national conservatism,” the Foundation has sponsored major international conferences. The most recent event in Miami, FL, featured more than 100 speakers, including keynote talks by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Josh Hawley, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The national conservatives are joined by still other factions, who often describe themselves as the “illiberal right.” And it was a significant moment when then-president Donald Trump thrilled a crowd at one of his rallies by telling them that he’s a nationalist.' was intellectually and morally similar to the European Nationalist movements which you decry. That is, I wanted direct quotes from the keynote talks which made it clear that the speakers at these American 'Nationalist' conferences were outright demanding the sacrifice of the individual to the state. Frankly, watching the accelerating intellectual and moral degeneration of the left in America and world wide, the recent alliance between the left and followers of the absolutely evil belief system Islam being, in my view, the worst development in American political history since the institution of slavery, to speak plainly, if it comes to civil war and to me, that's clearly where the violent tyrannical left is now pushing us, I will fight for the right. I reason that the nihilism of the left, the left's conscious rejection with prejudice of all facts which clash with their ideology and all human values, honesty, competence, integrity, excellence, beauty, and above all justice, etc., as such leave them nothing to do but be vicious murdering tyrannical scum. Should you choose to do so, I will be interested to hear how you think I am mistaken.
“One feature of the original American system deserves special emphasis: the safeguarding of intellectual freedom. The principle of church/state separation fenced religion off from political power.”
This statement is historically incorrect.
At the time the US Constitution was signed in 1787, five states had officially established state religions.
Massachusetts: Maintained the Congregational Church as its official religion (and was the last to disestablish it in 1833).
Connecticut: Maintained the Congregational Church (disestablished in 1818).
New Hampshire: Maintained the Congregational Church (disestablished in 1817).
South Carolina: Declared the "Christian Protestant religion" to be the official established religion under its 1778 constitution.
Georgia: Authorized public tax support for the Christian Protestant religion in its 1777 constitution.
Even though only five states had active, tax-supported establishments in 1787, almost all states still used religious tests. With the exception of Virginia, nearly every state constitution at the time required government officeholders to swear an oath professing belief in God, the divine inspiration of the Bible, or Christianity.
Because the states held tightly to their own religious laws, the framers of the US Constitution explicitly banned religious tests only for federal officeholders under Article VI, and later passed the First Amendment to prevent the federal government from interfering with or setting up a national religion.
Historian Gordon Wood objects to the popular legal narrative that the Framers smoothly and universally agreed to separate church and state out of pure Enlightenment idealism.
Wood stresses that the First Amendment was not passed to banish religion from American public life, but rather to protect the states from federal interference. The separation of church and state originally applied only to the federal government. The Framers—facing a nation divided between states with official churches (like Massachusetts) and states with broad religious freedom (like Virginia)—instituted federal separation as a practical truce to keep the fragile union together.
While elite figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wanted separation for purely secular, Enlightenment reasons, Wood emphasizes that they could never have passed these laws alone.
In his reviews of early American religious history, Wood argues that disestablishment succeeded because religious minorities (like the Baptists and Methodists) demanded it. These fast-growing evangelical groups did not want a secular society; rather, they deeply feared older, dominant denominations like the Anglicans or Congregationalists using state power against them. As Wood notes, Madison shrewdly "seized upon sectarianism to further secularism," using the mutual jealousy of religious groups to legally separate church and state.
Wood vigorously denies that the separation of church and state meant early America was a secular society. He explains that even after taxpayer funding for churches was abolished, the public square remained overwhelmingly and intensely Christian.
Early state courts routinely ruled that Christianity was part of the "common law" of the land, and societal expectations heavily enforced Christian morality. For Wood, the legal separation of the institutions of church and state was real, but it paradoxically unleashed a massive wave of popular evangelicalism that made American culture more religious than ever.
Wood argues that the Founders did not try to protect ideas by building a secular wall to shield them from religion; instead, they democratized the intellectual landscape. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood notes that before the Revolution, "truth" was top-down. The state and the established church dictated what ideas were acceptable or blasphemous.
The Revolution shattered this hierarchy. By stripping the state of its power to enforce religious conformity (at the federal level and eventually the state level), the Founders created a free, commercialized "marketplace of ideas." Wood explains that ideas were protected from religious overreach because no single religious group had the institutional power to monopolize truth anymore. In a sprawling democracy, every idea, pamphlet, and sermon had to compete for the public's attention.
Many argue that the US Constitution is inherently secular because it omits God and bans federal religious tests. However, Wood points out that James Madison’s strategy for protecting free thought from religious tyranny was structural, not purely legalistic.
Drawing heavily from Federalist No. 51, Wood highlights that Madison did not rely on parchment barriers or "secular" decrees to prevent religious overreach. Instead, Madison relied on a multiplicity of sects. If a society had only one or two dominant religions, they would inevitably use state power to crush rival ideas. But by encouraging a massive, sprawling variety of religious and philosophical factions, no single group could form a majority to legally suppress an idea. Protection from overreach came from clashing pluralism, not mandated secularism.
observers against conflating the secular nature of the Constitution's text with a secular society.
He notes that the Constitution's silence on God was a deliberate top-down choice by Enlightenment elites who wanted to prevent federal religious tyranny. However, the immediate consequence of this protection was not a secular nation. Because ideas were now protected from state-enforced religious overreach, popular religion actually exploded.
Unshackled from state control, ordinary Americans used their newfound intellectual freedom to create an aggressively evangelical culture. Thus, Wood's historical explanation contains a great paradox: the structural mechanisms built to protect ideas from religious overreach are precisely what allowed a vibrant, deeply religious populism to conquer the American public square.
Daniel, thanks for these comments. I'm aware of state-level provisions supportive of religion. And I recognize religion has been an enduring popular feature of American culture. It is also true that America's protection for intellectual freedom, including a federal/Constitutional separation of church-state, is extraordinarily strong, and therefore salient, compared to other states.
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
As Miss Rand would say, there is no “America” protecting freedom (not unless we’re talking about the continent). There are only individuals who challenge bad ideas with good ones.
You are perpetuating a myth. The separation of church and state as I have detailed was never enshrined in our Constitution. That the Supreme Court held otherwise in the landmark 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education is an example of man made law in contradiction of the clear language written in the Constitution.
The founders never could have imagined religion being banned from the public square. The idea that the founding fathers of the United States were anti-religion or strictly secular atheists is historically inaccurate. While they fiercely opposed state-mandated religion and religious tyranny, the overwhelming consensus among historians is that the Founders deeply respected religion and viewed it as a vital pillar for a free society.
Well perhaps this letter will be informative, by george washington in 1790. That shows the fundamental difference between the americans the the european regimes that preceeded it. "Gentlemen:
While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
A couple of comments, though I doubt the authors will respond, since New Ideal rarely answers comments.
First, your argument holds up as long as we accept your definition of nationalism as a species of collectivism and a cousin of tribalism. But you should acknowledge that many (most?) patriotic Americans understand “nationalism” differently: as a citizen's loyalty to his country in a world of independent, sovereign states. In that sense, it’s natural for citizens of any decent country to be loyal to their own, with no explicit attraction to collectivism.
Second, I hope, and expect, that Part Two will explicitly distinguish patriotism from nationalism.
Jim, thanks for this note. I do agree there's a difference between patriotism and nationalism. The two are often blurred. Such blurring serves to make the nationalism that I'm analyzing in this piece seem better than it is. I believe there are many patriotic Americans, and that their loyalty is to virtues specific to America as a sovereign nation. I believe it's a mistake to describe that as "nationalism," since that term designates a specific political idea distinct from mere support for the sovereign nation one values.
I'm looking forward to Part 2 absent the ‘straw man arguments’ and the non addressed case for Economic Nationalism which is the dominant argument (not conservative nationalism, what nonsense) made by advocates of nationalism in the world today eg Brazil, Holland, France, UK, US, etc.
You are ignoring the elephants in the room (because you have no address for them?).
Please define a sovereign country without borders and if you not an advocate of said absurd position please explain how a capitalist/free market economy can long exist without its government protecting it from: foreign intellectual theft, foreign government subsidized undercutting, foreign sabotage, etc.
All good until the standard western imperial Russiaphobia - no Vladimir P is not a tribalist, the Russian people are fighting yet another Western Imperialist attempt to smash up their country and steal Russias vast natural wealth. Ukraine is just the theater the neocolonial west chose to use to attack Russia, by rearming Ukraine and constantly pushing the NATO war machine towards Russias western border.
I value ARI’s insistence on a clear standard. But how does one operate within a political framework that doesn’t hold those same standards? The article makes its philosophical case clear. What I’m left weighing is how to act on those principles given the choices before me in Michigan’s election: vote for a Christian nationalist running against a Muslim socialist? Not vote? I know the standard. What I’m weighing is how to act on it given the choices before me because an election cannot tally my indifference.
Nation-building versus nation-destruction rooted in a deep , almost subterranean love of homeland and the choice between individual and collective intellectual ideals during national renewal : the right to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness under state protection , within a security strategy safeguarding the nation and its citizens against internal and external enemies.
I think you should have made crystal clear how the 'Nationalist' movement which you mentioned, "the Edmund Burke Foundation. Under the banner of “national conservatism,” the Foundation has sponsored major international conferences. The most recent event in Miami, FL, featured more than 100 speakers, including keynote talks by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Josh Hawley, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The national conservatives are joined by still other factions, who often describe themselves as the “illiberal right.” And it was a significant moment when then-president Donald Trump thrilled a crowd at one of his rallies by telling them that he’s a nationalist.' was intellectually and morally similar to the European Nationalist movements which you decry. That is, I wanted direct quotes from the keynote talks which made it clear that the speakers at these American 'Nationalist' conferences were outright demanding the sacrifice of the individual to the state. Frankly, watching the accelerating intellectual and moral degeneration of the left in America and world wide, the recent alliance between the left and followers of the absolutely evil belief system Islam being, in my view, the worst development in American political history since the institution of slavery, to speak plainly, if it comes to civil war and to me, that's clearly where the violent tyrannical left is now pushing us, I will fight for the right. I reason that the nihilism of the left, the left's conscious rejection with prejudice of all facts which clash with their ideology and all human values, honesty, competence, integrity, excellence, beauty, and above all justice, etc., as such leave them nothing to do but be vicious murdering tyrannical scum. Should you choose to do so, I will be interested to hear how you think I am mistaken.
Nationalism subordinates the individual to the collective nation, the exact opposite of America’s founding on reason and individual rights.
To revive it is to renounce the American ideal.
“One feature of the original American system deserves special emphasis: the safeguarding of intellectual freedom. The principle of church/state separation fenced religion off from political power.”
This statement is historically incorrect.
At the time the US Constitution was signed in 1787, five states had officially established state religions.
Massachusetts: Maintained the Congregational Church as its official religion (and was the last to disestablish it in 1833).
Connecticut: Maintained the Congregational Church (disestablished in 1818).
New Hampshire: Maintained the Congregational Church (disestablished in 1817).
South Carolina: Declared the "Christian Protestant religion" to be the official established religion under its 1778 constitution.
Georgia: Authorized public tax support for the Christian Protestant religion in its 1777 constitution.
Even though only five states had active, tax-supported establishments in 1787, almost all states still used religious tests. With the exception of Virginia, nearly every state constitution at the time required government officeholders to swear an oath professing belief in God, the divine inspiration of the Bible, or Christianity.
Because the states held tightly to their own religious laws, the framers of the US Constitution explicitly banned religious tests only for federal officeholders under Article VI, and later passed the First Amendment to prevent the federal government from interfering with or setting up a national religion.
Historian Gordon Wood objects to the popular legal narrative that the Framers smoothly and universally agreed to separate church and state out of pure Enlightenment idealism.
Wood stresses that the First Amendment was not passed to banish religion from American public life, but rather to protect the states from federal interference. The separation of church and state originally applied only to the federal government. The Framers—facing a nation divided between states with official churches (like Massachusetts) and states with broad religious freedom (like Virginia)—instituted federal separation as a practical truce to keep the fragile union together.
While elite figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wanted separation for purely secular, Enlightenment reasons, Wood emphasizes that they could never have passed these laws alone.
In his reviews of early American religious history, Wood argues that disestablishment succeeded because religious minorities (like the Baptists and Methodists) demanded it. These fast-growing evangelical groups did not want a secular society; rather, they deeply feared older, dominant denominations like the Anglicans or Congregationalists using state power against them. As Wood notes, Madison shrewdly "seized upon sectarianism to further secularism," using the mutual jealousy of religious groups to legally separate church and state.
Wood vigorously denies that the separation of church and state meant early America was a secular society. He explains that even after taxpayer funding for churches was abolished, the public square remained overwhelmingly and intensely Christian.
Early state courts routinely ruled that Christianity was part of the "common law" of the land, and societal expectations heavily enforced Christian morality. For Wood, the legal separation of the institutions of church and state was real, but it paradoxically unleashed a massive wave of popular evangelicalism that made American culture more religious than ever.
Wood argues that the Founders did not try to protect ideas by building a secular wall to shield them from religion; instead, they democratized the intellectual landscape. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood notes that before the Revolution, "truth" was top-down. The state and the established church dictated what ideas were acceptable or blasphemous.
The Revolution shattered this hierarchy. By stripping the state of its power to enforce religious conformity (at the federal level and eventually the state level), the Founders created a free, commercialized "marketplace of ideas." Wood explains that ideas were protected from religious overreach because no single religious group had the institutional power to monopolize truth anymore. In a sprawling democracy, every idea, pamphlet, and sermon had to compete for the public's attention.
Many argue that the US Constitution is inherently secular because it omits God and bans federal religious tests. However, Wood points out that James Madison’s strategy for protecting free thought from religious tyranny was structural, not purely legalistic.
Drawing heavily from Federalist No. 51, Wood highlights that Madison did not rely on parchment barriers or "secular" decrees to prevent religious overreach. Instead, Madison relied on a multiplicity of sects. If a society had only one or two dominant religions, they would inevitably use state power to crush rival ideas. But by encouraging a massive, sprawling variety of religious and philosophical factions, no single group could form a majority to legally suppress an idea. Protection from overreach came from clashing pluralism, not mandated secularism.
observers against conflating the secular nature of the Constitution's text with a secular society.
He notes that the Constitution's silence on God was a deliberate top-down choice by Enlightenment elites who wanted to prevent federal religious tyranny. However, the immediate consequence of this protection was not a secular nation. Because ideas were now protected from state-enforced religious overreach, popular religion actually exploded.
Unshackled from state control, ordinary Americans used their newfound intellectual freedom to create an aggressively evangelical culture. Thus, Wood's historical explanation contains a great paradox: the structural mechanisms built to protect ideas from religious overreach are precisely what allowed a vibrant, deeply religious populism to conquer the American public square.
Daniel, thanks for these comments. I'm aware of state-level provisions supportive of religion. And I recognize religion has been an enduring popular feature of American culture. It is also true that America's protection for intellectual freedom, including a federal/Constitutional separation of church-state, is extraordinarily strong, and therefore salient, compared to other states.
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
As Miss Rand would say, there is no “America” protecting freedom (not unless we’re talking about the continent). There are only individuals who challenge bad ideas with good ones.
You are perpetuating a myth. The separation of church and state as I have detailed was never enshrined in our Constitution. That the Supreme Court held otherwise in the landmark 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education is an example of man made law in contradiction of the clear language written in the Constitution.
The founders never could have imagined religion being banned from the public square. The idea that the founding fathers of the United States were anti-religion or strictly secular atheists is historically inaccurate. While they fiercely opposed state-mandated religion and religious tyranny, the overwhelming consensus among historians is that the Founders deeply respected religion and viewed it as a vital pillar for a free society.
Well perhaps this letter will be informative, by george washington in 1790. That shows the fundamental difference between the americans the the european regimes that preceeded it. "Gentlemen:
While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
G. Washington"
A couple of comments, though I doubt the authors will respond, since New Ideal rarely answers comments.
First, your argument holds up as long as we accept your definition of nationalism as a species of collectivism and a cousin of tribalism. But you should acknowledge that many (most?) patriotic Americans understand “nationalism” differently: as a citizen's loyalty to his country in a world of independent, sovereign states. In that sense, it’s natural for citizens of any decent country to be loyal to their own, with no explicit attraction to collectivism.
Second, I hope, and expect, that Part Two will explicitly distinguish patriotism from nationalism.
Jim, thanks for this note. I do agree there's a difference between patriotism and nationalism. The two are often blurred. Such blurring serves to make the nationalism that I'm analyzing in this piece seem better than it is. I believe there are many patriotic Americans, and that their loyalty is to virtues specific to America as a sovereign nation. I believe it's a mistake to describe that as "nationalism," since that term designates a specific political idea distinct from mere support for the sovereign nation one values.
Thanks, Elan!
Loyalty to a free country is not "nationalism".
Nationalism is the collectivist doctrine that the nation is a mystical entity to which the individual must be sacrificed.
America’s value lies in its ideas, reason and rights, not in any tribal “us.”
I'm looking forward to Part 2 absent the ‘straw man arguments’ and the non addressed case for Economic Nationalism which is the dominant argument (not conservative nationalism, what nonsense) made by advocates of nationalism in the world today eg Brazil, Holland, France, UK, US, etc.
You are ignoring the elephants in the room (because you have no address for them?).
Please define a sovereign country without borders and if you not an advocate of said absurd position please explain how a capitalist/free market economy can long exist without its government protecting it from: foreign intellectual theft, foreign government subsidized undercutting, foreign sabotage, etc.
All good until the standard western imperial Russiaphobia - no Vladimir P is not a tribalist, the Russian people are fighting yet another Western Imperialist attempt to smash up their country and steal Russias vast natural wealth. Ukraine is just the theater the neocolonial west chose to use to attack Russia, by rearming Ukraine and constantly pushing the NATO war machine towards Russias western border.
I value ARI’s insistence on a clear standard. But how does one operate within a political framework that doesn’t hold those same standards? The article makes its philosophical case clear. What I’m left weighing is how to act on those principles given the choices before me in Michigan’s election: vote for a Christian nationalist running against a Muslim socialist? Not vote? I know the standard. What I’m weighing is how to act on it given the choices before me because an election cannot tally my indifference.
Nation-building versus nation-destruction rooted in a deep , almost subterranean love of homeland and the choice between individual and collective intellectual ideals during national renewal : the right to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness under state protection , within a security strategy safeguarding the nation and its citizens against internal and external enemies.