Nationalists of the World, Unite?

The historian John Lukacs used to say all the old “isms” of politics were defunct. They’ve become “wasms,” except one — nationalism. Lukacs died five years ago, but the relentless anti-Israel protests on America’s campuses today testify to the truth of his insight. So does the attempt by authorities in the capital of the European Union bureaucracy to quash a “National Conservatism” conference two weeks ago. The mayor of Brussels was quick to order police to shut down the conference that brought speakers such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage to his city. Naturally, he claimed he was only doing this to protect everyone from the threat of radical protesters wreaking havoc on the conference and city alike — as if preemptively censoring National Conservatives with government power was the only alternative to letting violent leftists silence them through private intimidation. Yet some might wonder why a “National” Conservative conference was being held in Brussels in the first place, with a distinctly multinational lineup of speakers from Britain, Poland, Hungary, France, the United States and elsewhere. Critics of National Conservatism — both the conference and the coalition associated with it since the first “NatCon” gathering in Washington, D.C., in 2019 — have often claimed there’s a contradiction in nationalists from different nations working together. Isn’t that really internationalism? The founder of the National Conservatism conference, the American-Israeli intellectual Yoram Hazony, answered that in the closing chapter of his 2018 book “The Virtue of Nationalism.” There he relates how in the aftermath of World War II — a conflict widely seen as originating in nationalism, though Hazony finds it a product of imperialism instead — two opposing responses to the problem of aggression arose. The European intelligentsia, and eventually many educated Americans as well, chose to reject nationalism in principle and place their hopes in new international institutions: the United Nations, the European Union and the abstract “international community,” as well as what’s now called the “liberal international order.” The other response was to reaffirm a defensive and lawful nationalism, above all the effort to create a Jewish state — Zionism. Hazony came to perceive the continuing growth of anti-nationalist ideology in elite European and American institutions (including our colleges and universities) as a long-term existential threat to Israel. Zionism is a form of nationalism, and if all nationalism is bad, then Zionism must also be rejected by the international community and the well-credentialed Westerners who think of themselves as its leaders. Yet the opposite was really true; if Israel was to survive as a nation-state, defenders of the Jewish state would have to affirm not only Zionism but nationalism in general. And Israel’s best allies wouldn’t be liberal internationalists but rather nationalist conservatives in different places. Even in democratic Western nations that fought the Nazis in World War II, such as Britain and the United States, liberals demonized nationalist-minded conservatives as bigots of every kind: xenophobes, racists and, of course, antisemites. Hazony recognized that the greater antisemitic danger now came from the left — the radical activists in the streets and the genteel bureaucrats in control of institutions like the European Union and U.N. agencies. His vision has been vindicated in the years since he published “The Virtue of Nationalism”: Not only has the left shown its antisemitic as well as anti-Zionist inclinations, but the nationalist right in much of Europe and elsewhere has proved to be strongly supportive of Israel in its time of crisis. Nationalist leaders such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, not to mention Donald Trump and Hungary’s Orban, are staunchly pro-Israel. Just as important, in Hazony’s analysis, they are in favor of the nationalist principle that makes Israel possible. On the other side of the ledger, the same frenzied students and cold-blooded bureaucrats who think Israel is worse than Hamas think Western nations are exceptionally wicked in comparison to the rest of the world. Today’s protests against Israel are part of a larger campaign against the nation-state itself: against national borders, sovereignty, the right of self-defense, cultural continuity and assimilation, and well-defined citizenship. Leftists long for a post-national world of administrative zones — not nations in any meaningful sense — overseen by enlightened experts whose authority doesn’t rest on the consent of any specific people, but who are ritualistically maintained in office by a well-managed fluid voting pool of identity constituencies and broken individuals. The French political scientist Pierre Manent argues that without nations, without some specific people in a particular place, there can be no democracy. Nationalism has its defects, and National Conservatism may not always remedy them. But if there’s going to be any democracy in the 21st century — in America, Europe, Israel or anywhere — there must be nations and nationalists willing to stand for them. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com

Foreign Policy Splits the Parties

In 2024, foreign policy doesn’t pit Republicans against Democrats so much as it pits Republicans against Republicans and Democrats against Democrats. For Joe Biden’s party, Israel is the fault line, with Democrats split between supporters of the Jewish State and those of Palestinian sympathies. For the party of Donald Trump, the internal conflict is over Ukraine, and the bitterness of the battle risks costing Mike Johnson his speakership. These crises in the Middle East and on NATO’s frontier are catalysts for tensions that have been growing in both parties’ coalitions since the end of the Cold War. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world, by far; what obligations does that impose on us for using our power to promote our values? And what are those values anyway? The anti-colonialist left thinks America is too wicked to do good on the world stage. The anti-interventionist right thinks the world is too unlike us to benefit from our crusading — which instead only undermines what makes us special and strong at home. The more internationalist right, on the other hand, sees greater danger to our institutions and way of life arising from insufficient engagement with a dangerous world, which will turn away from our values and interests if we don’t actively promote them. That requires, they say, supporting friends and allies around the globe and confronting hostile states, ultimately, if necessary, with military force, and by every means short of that in the meantime. The interventionist left, for its part, has the same confidence in government’s ability to improve the world outside our borders as it has in the competence of government at home. And if engaging with the world erodes American distinctiveness, as some on the right fear, that’s a benefit rather than a drawback as far as these progressives are concerned. These are basic dispositions. They’re complicated by several hard realities that can’t be avoided no matter what one’s ideal policy might be — external threats, for one thing, and the limits of America’s unprecedented but not unlimited wealth and power for another, as well as the limits of national morale and political will in support of any long-term project. There are serious debates to be had both on the left and the right. Yet on the left, as is typical for that side of politics, protest often takes the place of serious discussion, especially on college campuses. To judge by social media, one might think the right can’t have an adult conversation about foreign policy, either. But an event I recently moderated suggests that conservatives can grapple intelligently with their differences. The University of Texas at Austin held a debate — organized by UT’s Civitas Institute and my employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute — on the proposition “Resolved: America’s Defense of Ukraine Is Vital to Upholding the Liberal International Order,” with National Review’s Noah Rothman affirming the proposition and former Trump administration national security official Michael Anton opposing it. Although Rothman and Anton didn’t come to a meeting of minds by the end of the debate, each made points that arguably worked in the other’s favor. After an audience member asked Rothman how his fears of further Russian aggressions beyond Ukraine differed from Vietnam-era “domino theory,” Anton added that Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew was reputed to have said that America really won the Vietnam War. How so? The resolve America showed in fighting the war signaled to the wider Indo-Pacific region that Communism could not expand easily and without resistance, even if Washington proved unable to save South Vietnam. That message fortified the willingness of other states to resist Communism, including Singapore. I asked Anton if this lesson applied to Ukraine. Would it mean that even if American support wasn’t enough to defeat Russia, the heightened cost of Putin’s war would still discourage further depredations by Moscow — or anyone else — and strengthen other nations’ inclinations to resist them? Anton wasn’t convinced the precedent would apply in today’s circumstances. Nevertheless, in sharing Lee’s opinion, he helpfully complicated the debate. In turn Rothman acknowledged that his support for Ukraine did not extend to sending American troops to fight for Kyiv, even if Anton proved correct in his contention that nothing less than that would secure victory for Ukraine. Rothman believed, however, that supporting Ukraine was the best way to keep America out of a European conflict, as Russian success would foment chaos on NATO’s borders and weaken the alliance architecture that kept Europe at peace. There were no concessions on either side, yet the debate showed how conservatives with starkly different views could compare them productively. It also showed a college campus can still hold a mature debate, not just another protest. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com

PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.

Imagine making a documentary about one of the 20th century’s leading opponents of the Ku Klux Klan — without ever talking about the evil of the KKK itself. If that sounds like malpractice, consider PBS’s new documentary on the life of William F. Buckley Jr. “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” the latest installment in the “American Masters” series, has much to say about anti-Communism but never reckons with the murderous reality of Communism itself. In failing to do so, producer and director Barak Goodman unintentionally reminds his viewers of why Buckley was needed in the first place — and why he still is. Never mind that Buckley died in 2008, and next year marks the centenary of his birth. The liberals who already reigned in America’s universities when Buckley was a Yale student in the late 1940s have not learned any lessons in the decades since then. Faculty and administrators still will not speak frankly about evils emanating from the left end of the political spectrum, from Communism to the many violent groups that claim to act in the name of anti-colonialism. The PBS documentary gets Buckley’s resume right but understands little of its significance. In 1951 Buckley published his first book, “God and Man at Yale.” Four years later, when he was not quite 30 years old, Buckley launched National Review, which became the all-but-official publication of the nascent conservative movement. He had a hand in the creation of other institutions, too, such as the right’s student activist arm, Young Americans for Freedom. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan drew political support and intellectual sustenance from the movement Buckley built. And after Goldwater’s crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election, Buckley restored conservatives’ spirits with his run for mayor of New York City the following year. “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” is right to suggest that although WFB’s mayoral campaign never had a shot at winning — Buckley joked that if he won, he’d demand a recount — it taught conservatives how to mobilize urban Catholics and voters fed up with escalating crime. The Nixon coalition, which would win the White House in 1968 and 1972, was the Buckley coalition first. His mayoral run made him a media sensation and led to a career in television, on top of the several careers he already had as an author, editor, lecturer and movement-maker. He even started his own highly successful interview show, “Firing Line,” which ran for more than three decades, mostly on PBS affiliates, starting in 1966. “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” tantalizes viewers with clips of WFB’s exchanges with “Firing Line” guests such as Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg. But the documentary is reluctant to let Buckley speak for himself; voiceovers from historians offering their own spin break in after only a few words from the subject himself. The filmmakers prefer to highlight defeats and embarrassments: the debate Buckley lost to James Baldwin at Cambridge University in 1965 on the resolution “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro” and WFB’s explosion on live TV, while covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when Gore Vidal taunted him as a “pro- or crypto-Nazi.” Buckley, losing his composure for once, retorted by calling Vidal a “queer” and saying he’d “sock” him in the face — “and you’ll stay plastered!” — if he kept up the abuse. Vidal delighted in getting this rise out of Buckley and thought it made great television, but the conservative was mortified. The trouble with “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” though, isn’t that it showcases such episodes but that it finds its subject incomprehensible at the most important level — the meaning of his life’s work. When Goodman isn’t presenting Buckley as a figure fit for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” he and the historians he’s enlisted press the thesis that Buckley was an irresponsible elitist who dabbled with populist forces he could not control. The documentary ends with scenes of Donald Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. But it’s elite liberals, not Buckley, who created the opening for Trump. Buckley’s institutions, notably National Review, opposed Trump — yet their opposition wasn’t enough to offset demand for Trump from voters whom liberals had alienated. By failing to learn the lessons Buckley tried all his life to teach, and refusing to moderate their left-wing prejudices in light of an articulate conservative critique, liberals in politics, media and the academy guaranteed the rise of populism. From the Cold War to crime in the cities, they blamed America for every problem. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberals like those behind “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” persist in treating Communism as a footnote to McCarthyism. They have their history, and their view of Buckley, upside down. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com