Next month, a new book is set to come out from National Review editor Rich Lowry called The Case For Nationalism. Now, I have nothing against Lowry; he seems like an alright person. However, this crusade for nationalism is something I have noticed, and had issues with, for a while.
Lowry says in the Amazon Description for his book that nationalism, “fueled the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution.” While this might kind of be true, Lowry seems to ignore that, even if nationalism started the war, globalism ended it. Specifically, many historians credit the French for sending weapons and troops to the colonies as the factor that ultimately allowed them to succeed over the British. Something, by the way, the French only did because of a negative act of globalism in regards to how the British had treated the French for centuries.
I also find it quite odd that Lowry cites both Theodore Roosevelt (the man who engaged in borderline imperialism in South America and gave the world the Panama Canal) and Ronald Reagan (one of the strictest enforcers of the Truman Doctrine) as examples of nationalism.
I’m starting to think nationalism just means whatever Rich Lowry likes.
Allow me to make some comparisons:
Globalism gave us lax immigration policies during the early 20th century. Notice just how low unemployment was during the Industrial Revolution? Well, you can thank immigration for that. Did you know that every immigrant, even an unskilled one, creates an average of 1.2 jobs for native workers?
Nationalism gave us a twenty-year shutoff on immigration. In 1924, Congress passed the Immigration Act, which sharply limited the number of immigrants allowed in and provided funding to agencies that would deport illegals. This act was replaced in 1965 after being revised in 1952.
Around that same time, nationalism gave us the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, commonly cited as one of the most significant factors leading to the decade long Great Depression.
Globalism gave us a generation of anti-socialists. Modern Florida is a very right-leaning swing-state. But it wasn’t always so right-leaning. The leading cause in this shift was immigration from Castro’s Cuba to the United States. This policy, often known as “Wet Foot, Dry Foot,” simply said that if you step foot on American soil, you can stay.
Republicans use to understand this. During the Cold War, Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both let in a large number of refugees from Soviet-bloc countries. Why? Because they would then inform the American public about how terrible socialism was.
Maybe instead of building a wall for Mexico, we should build a bridge to Venezuela.
The nationalists of this era were those in East Germany, building a wall so people could not get out and shooting them when they tried to leave.
On free trade, one only needs to compare nationalist China to globalist Hong Kong to see who wins this fight. China puts a tariff on most products made outside the country; Hong Kong does not. As a result, China must pull every trick in the book to keep up the illusion of prosperity. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, a rock with no natural resources, is a deadly threat to the communist empire.
While I am a critic of organizations like the United Nations and the European Union, that is because they commonly come off as useless or authoritarian. If anything, the issue with these two organizations is that they do not wish to engage in any form of globalism that doesn’t also double as mercantilism.
Only people with bad ideas are scared of people with new ones. Globalism, combined with freedom, leads to the biggest share of ideas, so we can truly see which ones are the best. It doesn’t matter which metric you look at; globalism leads to more freedom and more economic prosperity in society.
Ephrom Josine is a libertarian political blogger/commentator. You can find him on Twitter @EphromJosine1, writing near-daily on Medium @ephromjosine or weekly on Freedom First Blog.