Assistant Editor Grayson Logue interviews Rich Lowry, Editor in Chief of National Review and author of “The Case for Nationalism.” They discuss the history of nationalism and its resurgence in the modern-day as well as President Trump’s strike against Iran.
Grayson Logue is the Assistant Editor of Providence
Rich Lowry is the Editor in Chief of National Review
Rough Transcript
Grayson Logue
Welcome to the ProvCast the regular podcast of Providence, the Journal of Christianity and global affairs. I’m assistant editor Grayson Logue. Over the past few years we’ve seen the resurgence of nationalism across the world and the West. We’ve seen Brexit and its emphasis on national sovereignty, we’ve seen President Trump embrace the term “nationalist,” we’ve seen the rise of nationalist and populist parties across much of Eastern Europe stretching into Central Asia, in particular with Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. That resurgence in the past few years has also been mirrored by a resurgence in intellectual interest and the concept of nationalism. There’s been numerous articles, a number of books, perhaps most notably, in recent years Yoram Hazony’s Virtue of Nationalism. Providence hosted a conference on nationalism this past fall as well. And today I’m joined by the author of another book on the subject, Rich Lowry. Rich is the editor in chief of National Review, a syndicated columnist, and most recently the author of The Case for Nationalism: How it Made us Powerful, United and Free. Rich, thank you for joining us today.
Rich Lowry
Thanks so much for having me.
Grayson Logue
So let’s jump right in. Why a book about nationalism and why now?
Rich Lowry
Well, my book was really occasioned by President Trump, in particular his inaugural address, which got me interested in the topic. I wrote a column about it, I wrote a long magazine piece with colleague Ramesh Ponnuru, defending nationalism, and then I delved into it more deeply in this book. And prior to the rise of Trump, I really had the lazy, conventional attitude that most people have had. There’s something really bad about nationalism, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it’s bad. And patriotism is good. And at the outset of the book, I reject that terminological distinction and set out how ‘patriotism’ comes from the Latin ‘patr,’ same root as ‘patriarchy’ of ‘father,’ ‘fatherhood,’ ‘land of our fathers,’ ‘loyalty to our own,’ and nationalism is the doctrine or idea that a distinct people united by common culture, a common history, should govern a distinct territory. And for me that basic concept is unassailable. It defines the modern world, the current international system and has really made modern democracy, as we know it, possible.
Grayson Logue
Okay, so you’re starting off there with the distinction between patriotism and nationalism. So if I’m hearing you correctly, you would argue that nationalism is something a bit thicker than patriotism. Patriotism is perhaps merely just loyalty or love of one’s own and nationalism, does it go beyond patriotism, to something more distinct about a country, about its land, about its people?
Rich Lowry
So I think that the two concepts are intertwined. And loyalty to your own is part of nationalism. What I reject is the definition of patriotism. They see… folks both on the right and the left, that in America, patriotism is just attachment to a set of ideas and a belief in a set of ideas. And kind of the the crudest, most far-reaching expression of this idea is that America itself is just an idea. And I think that is indefensible, profoundly wrong. Obviously, our ideals are important to us. But there’s not a conflict the way a lot of people set it up, inherently, between nationalism and ideals, kind of the best nationalisms are suffused with ideal. Certainly, ours has been. And I don’t think you get the ideals of America without the predicate of the culture of America-which cultural nationalism I think is really important-and that the ideals wouldn’t have mattered so much, wouldn’t have had the impact on the world that they did, if it weren’t for other nationalistic considerations. The extent and the power of the nation have been very important and always intertwined with the fate of our ideas. One of the reasons we get a constitution is because Hamilton, Washington, Madison and others fear that the American political project is going to fall apart at the beginning and discredit everything the revolution had been about. So the basic instinct there was that you should have a strong and capable national government, which is one of the roots of American nationalism. But the founders and the drafters of the Constitution realized that there was this relationship between the two: national strength and our ideal. So it’s not an either or, it’s an and and both.
Grayson Logue
It’s an and and both. And part of I guess the point of this book is to bring back that ‘both’ aspect of this concept that. You’ve seen, there’s been this overemphasis on purely the ideals of the country, America being just only an ideal. And that’s, I think, paralleled with a certain cosmopolitan view of the world where we’re a little bit disembodied with ideals, potentially. That’s certainly something that Yoram talks about in his book. What in your mind are the essential differences between a nation embodying a nationalist view of itself in the world and a cosmopolitan view of itself in the world?
Rich Lowry
So cosmopolitanism thinks that the nation is small minded, that borders are too exclusionary, and that there’s such thing as a citizen of the world. I’m not sure whether any nation really embodies this point of view. I opened the book with Emmanuel Macron and his speech, talking about difference between patriotism and nationalism and how nationalism disgraces and discredits, slights our ideals. But when we put our interests over our ideals, we’re losing something important. But France puts its interests first. It’s one of the most nationalistic countries in the world. So…
Grayson Logue
There’s a certain incoherence taken to its logical end, essentially, what you’re saying is that everyone, basically, because that’s how they act in their own lives, to a certain degree puts their own interests first. That doesn’t mean you don’t have values that might put others ahead of you in certain scenarios. But there’s something natural about the national interest being primary…
Rich Lowry
Yes.
Grayson Logue
…is incoherent and a cosmopolitan view?
Rich Lowry
Yeah, absolutely. So it kind of builds out that nation is, in one sense-this is obviously a real simplification-but it’s the family writ large, where you’re just gonna inherently care about your spouse, your children, your mother, your father, your siblings, more than other people. Doesn’t mean you hate other people. Doesn’t mean that at a certain level, you don’t care and love other people, as well, but you know them better, you are bonded to them whether you like it or not. You didn’t choose this bond. And I think that similar things are true of the nation.
Now, the EU is genuinely a cosmopolitan project where the seed of it was the argument that nationalism had led to bloody, horrifying complications in Europe in the 20th century. We had to get past nationalism and have some super national state in Europe. I don’t think that project will succeed ultimately, because the Finns really don’t care about the French and the French don’t really care about the Poles. And the Poles don’t care about any of them. They all care about their interests, and they have their distinct culture. So when push comes to shove, I don’t think they’ll be able to dissolve the constituent sovereignties that make up the EU. And of course, we’ve seen that play out in the Brexit vote in the UK, which is probably the best and purest expression of nationalism over the last several years. Trump represents aspects of it but gets all tangled up with his populism and with his personality and his combativeness. The vote in the UK was just a simple question that is, at the root of nationalism, ‘should Britain be ruled by British people?’ Or not? Should it be ruled by Brussels, or should it be ruled in Westminster? And to me the answer to that question is completely obvious.
Grayson Logue
You mentioned some, perhaps excesses, of nationalism that Europe had to overcome. Let’s get into a little bit of the history of the term, the history of it as it’s played out, in particular in Europe. In the late 18th century, nationalism as a force was historically liberalizing. This is something that you point out in the book is something that other scholars like Jill Lepore, Harvard historian, in her book, The Case for the Nation, has argued that nationalism, at least at that point in history was a liberalizing force because it gave concepts like national sovereignty, life. It embodied concepts like citizenships, individual rights. Those parallel together to establish the nation state system that now defines essentially, the modern world. Lepore tracks that history, agrees that it was liberalizing then, she then argues that with the nation state model, kind of more or less established as a norm in the 20th century, nationalism morphed into something more nefarious. We can see that perhaps most typically, if you look at Nazi Germany, but also a lot of the Baltic states and the type of ethnic nationalism that arose from that era. Is that included outside your conception of nationalism, included in your conception of nationalism? How would you contend with that, as I think that’s part of people’s anxiety and aversion to the term, is that history?
Rich Lowry
Yeah, so it’s absolutely right that in the 18th century, it was a liberalizing phenomenon, because the basic insight was that the nation didn’t belong to a monarch, it should belong to the people. And a nation shouldn’t be ruled by an imperial center. And the great empires of Europe, none of them were liberal or democratic because an empire when you have all sorts of different peoples hooked into it, someone has to rule. So there has to be a dominant language, there has to be a dominant culture. And the people who have their own languages and cultures that aren’t governing themselves are going to want to govern themselves. And the history, as soon as the repressive apparatus of an empire gives way, then the constituent peoples want to go their own way and govern themselves. And we saw this with the Ottoman Empire, with Hapsburg Empire, with the traditional Russian Empire and with the Soviet Empire in the 20th century. Now, nationalism in Europe, especially late 19th-early 20th century does take on, in some cases, quite a malign form, and it becomes mixed up with all these other trends with militarism, with Social Darwinism, with so-called biological or scientific racism. So I would argue that that was not true nationalism. What I’m mainly concerned with in the book is defending the American nationalist tradition, which I think has always been different. But when you take the most extreme example in Europe, the Nazis, they appeal to nationalistic sentiments and use nationalist tropes. But if Hitler had just been a nationalist, he wouldn’t have been one of the worst monsters in world history. It’s the unique aspects of Nazism over and above nationalism, and in certain respects opposed to nationalism, that accounted for Nazism’s unique evil -the idea of the Aryans, they’re going to rule Germany and not just Germany, but the rest of Europe, and these wars of extermination. That is something beyond and outside the nationalist tradition. And if you look at World War Two, I’d argue it was the small-d democratic nationalists who stood up and fought: Hitler, de Gaulle, Churchill, FDR.
Grayson Logue
Okay, one more point on European nationalism and then I want to talk a little about American nationalism. So I’m inclined to agree with you that Hitler and Nazi Germany and kind of the Imperial-like-esqueness of the Third Reich is more of a unique case. If you look in Eastern Europe, kind of during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and the Baltic states, you have peoples who thought of themselves as nations along kind of ethnic and linguistic lines, and they were all kind of were vying for statehood. But they lacked the political institutions, they lacked the distinct territory. And there we can see kind of slipping of nationalism into ethnic lines and all of the history and the mass slaughter that could come after that, and did come after that. So in your view of nationalism, that wouldn’t be a valid nationalism, because it lacked a distinct land because it lacked a particular character to its political institutions. What would you say for kind of the Baltic question?
Rich Lowry
Well, I would say kind of the worst example in the Baltics was the Serbs, and it was nationalism. And it was just a really bad form of nationalism. And it was kind of poisoned, from the beginning, in the sense of historic grievance and shot through with kind of paranoia and violence. So with Serbs I would… the Nazis, I’m much more comfortable, and I think it’s correct to say, “well, that’s not nationalism.” But the Serbian case it is nationalism, it’s just a malign form of nationalism. And I don’t think there’s any denying that or looking away from that. I just think one, the American tradition is different; two is, any really basic force in our world can be put to good or ill uses. And nationalism because it’s powerful to old, it’s natural. You will have autocrats and dictators making appeal to it. It’s just that they very often twist it and it becomes something different than nationalism, when it justifies taking other people’s territory and governing other people.
Grayson Logue
Okay, let’s talk a little bit about American nationalism. I want to first get into kind of seeing if applying the critiques of European nationalism hold any water in the American context. In the book, you talk about US continental expansion. And you argue, also that when nationalism kind of manifests as unjustified military aggression or imperialism, that that either isn’t nationalism or at least a bad nationalism. But you also describe American continental expansion as one of the great nationalist projects of the country, coming at the expense of Native Americans coming at the expanse of Mexico. So I guess my question would be in the American context, or just in a general context for nationalism at a principal level, what limits that type of territorial expansion aside from just military might?
Rich Lowry
Yeah, so it should be what the United States had a huge hand in developing in the 20th century, which is a robust appreciation for the sovereign rights and prerogatives of other peoples. In terms of our continental expansion I just think it’s an arguable, an enormous boon to our nation, but obviously the treatment of the Indians especially, is one of our great national sins. So the war with Mexico, I have a little bit more relaxed attitude to it, than some critics -not to delve into the details, but there’s an entirely just in my view, Texas revolution, you know, against a Mexican dictatorship. The Texans really legitimately wanted to become part of the United States, and Mexico told us, “Don’t even think about it, or we’ll wage war over it.” Now, Polk obviously was spoiling for a fight but Mexico technically, in part because it was provocation, fires the first shot and then the the territory we take from Mexico is almost entirely unoccupied by Mexicans. They had tried to govern and rule it and populate it unsuccessfully. So this to me is not a great national sin. The treatment of the Indians, which was cruel and duplicitous, and racist is really right up there with chattel slavery. But I think this was a tragic inevitability. I don’t think there’s… you can come up with any counter example of a settler society encountering indigenous people, where the indigenous people weren’t pushed aside. I wish we had stayed true to our commitments to them but there was a deep cultural divide, including over what constituted property where Native Americans had a much looser view of property rights that would-and I’m simplifying horribly-that would encompass hunting grounds that you didn’t occupy and improve. And European settlers kind of thought, “Well, if you’re not putting a fence up around it and making better, it’s not really yours.” So that was among the deep cultural conflicts, but there was definitely a kind of cultural imperialism to our continental expansion.
Grayson Logue
Gotcha. Okay. You have argued in the book, and said in talking about the book that this is kind of like a mainstream tradition, American nationalism that runs through figures like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, to a degree, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that’s a good thing, that it’s a tradition that should be accessible across party lines. This past summer we had the National Conservatism Conference. I was there, you were there as a speaker. One of the most interesting speakers to me was Patrick Deneen, and he gave a talk on nationalism. And he was quite skeptical of figures like TR. He was essentially arguing that we should have a nationalism only insofar as it supports and enables the local and regional identities, the families and communities, and he was suspicious of the kind of early 20th century cultivation of nationalism that it abstracted these loyalties to the larger nation state, disembodying them to a certain degree. So what are your thoughts on kind of Deneen’s take there? Because I thought it mirrored your superstructure argument of “we don’t want to say just the abstract loyalties insofar as they’re just the nation, isn’t what we should be doing either.”
Rich Lowry
Yeah. So I thought that was really interesting speech, too and I think in character for Deneen, who, when I first saw him on the program, I was like, “why is he a nationalist?” Because he’s really, and I’ve only dipped into his books and maybe I’m being unfair, but I would characterize him more as an anti-federalist, where he thinks that the Constitution of the United States was a mistake from the beginning. Now, obviously, it’s true that under our system and this is something we should be very protective of, under the Constitution there’s wide latitude given for different forms of government and regional cultures, in states and localities and that’s not something we should want to do away with or change. You know, our national tradition is not that of France with a heavily centralizing tendency, but I just don’t see in the real world and say, the early 20th century, when TR was at his height, that wasn’t a bad time for the American family or bad time for a community. I think it’s later, when you see the growth of an overweening Central State, and certain welfare programs that begin to see a real tension with federal activism. And with these kinds of values and local and personal affiliations that we want to protect. So I don’t see necessarily a conflict between nationalism, and that flexibility is built into the US system. Having a constitution didn’t hurt the family, having a strong navy didn’t hurt the family, you know, having an assimilationist ethic didn’t hurt the family, expanding across the continent didn’t hurt the family. So I just don’t see the tension that he does, unless you’re defining kind of all of the progressive impulse to nationalism, which I think would be unfair.
Grayson Logue
Okay. Well, let’s talk about the present day. So in America right now, and […] written a lot about the problem of social isolation, kind of community disintegration, that’s a topic that a lot of social scientists are exploring. In that context, is there a danger in national identity becoming a little too thick? Basically, people as they are experiencing community breakdown, they perhaps turn to politics as a form of communal identity, that increases partisanship and increases division, which is sort of the opposite of what you say, nationalism should serve to do. So, let’s talk a little bit about that tension or potential danger that we have right now.
Rich Lowry
Yeah, I think that’s definitely true. And, you know, key aspect of the conservative vision-and I’m conservative, my nationalism is part of my conservatism-is that counter to what a libertarian might think, a libertarian sees the relationship of the individual to the state as kind of the the main definer of a society, and of the direction of history. A conservative considers that important but more important is what is in between the individual and the state. And ideally, you want this space created for robust civil institutions, like family foremost among them, but all sorts of civic groups and civic attachments. And one of the reasons that we were feeling so bad, even though you know, objective conditions in the country are so good, you know, relative peace… and now we’ve had economic growth for the last 10 years, is that that middle part is increasingly hollowed out. And the relationship between the individual in the state that makes you free, if you get it right, but all the stuff in the middle is what you make makes you happy. So we’ve actually, weirdly, even though conservatives have lost a lot of the size of government arguments, people are not really less free. In many respects, they’re more free than than they’ve ever been. But they’re also many of them, more unhappy. Because if you’re free, but you know, you’re not married, and you’re not in the workforce, and you’re not going to church, the chances are, you’re not very happy. And that’s one of the drivers of the complicated phenomenon of the so called ‘deaths of despair.’ But this is a long way by saying, “yes, if people want to try to substitute the meaning that you get from those kinds of relationships with nationalism or with partisan affiliations, that’s not what either of those things are for.”
Grayson Logue
You’ve mentioned a little bit earlier that you try to disassociate some of the President’s kind of more erratic tendencies from nationalism, even though he’s embraced the term. It doesn’t seem that nationalism has taken off very at all on the other side of the political spectrum and the left they think of it oftentimes as inherently racist or tied kind of inextricably, to fascism. As a prudential practical question, not as a matter of history or theory, is there a scenario in which reviving nationalism is unhealthy in political discourse? Essentially, if you have one side of the spectrum, regardless of the merits of the concept in your argument, that is kind of rejecting it, just by virtue of that rejection it becomes another partisan divisive term in our politics.
Rich Lowry
Yeah, it’s definitely risk. I’m not sure how to avoid it because I think any term that Trump used really for these impulses and tendencies and beliefs of his would be rejected by the the other side. And I think Trump’s nationalism when he’s on the teleprompter-he’s given a couple of speeches at the UN-his best speech of his presidency in Warsaw, his nationalism is unassailable. And what he talked about in that Poland speech was just the amazing resilience of the Polish nation because it was so Polish and had these cultural attachments and loyalties that never gave way, even under the most hideous occupations and partitions, even of the country. And this is an insight that Trump and I’m sure this is the only case where this is true, […] shares with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said the same thing to the Poles when they’re under occupation by the Russians: “don’t let them stop you from being Polish, then they’ll never really absorb you and you’ll never go away.” And that turned out to be true.
The problem with Trump is when he’s off the teleprompter. And I think nationalism should inherently be a unifying appeal, and a unifying concept. But he slights that aspect of it. He’s needlessly divisive. I think an episode that really captures it was his fight over Baltimore, where he said, “you know, no human being would want to live in West Baltimore.” Well, fact is human beings do live in West Baltimore, and they’re not just human beings, they’re Americans. Right? And you’re the head of the American state. So this is not how you should speak of your countrymen. And just repeatedly, because of his persona, which is combative to a fault, he falls down on that aspect of nationalism. And Democrats have rejected, even Bernie Sanders who had much more of a nationalist aspect to his politics, has turned away from it. And we’ll see, you know, how it turns out in 2020. I think if Democrats lose, that will be one of the reasons that they could go further left on economics, there was room for that. But they had to give a little on these kind of cultural issues and nationalistic issues to communicate to the middle of the country that they share their values. Now, maybe they beat Trump, and it’s the lesson they take is “Yeah, it was good to reject nationalism. We don’t have to have anything to do with that.” If they lose, perhaps there’ll be a rethinking. But we’ll see. I just think that there’s a democratic, large-D Democratic nationalist tradition that the party is foolish to lose touch with, but they don’t take any advice from me [anyways].
Grayson Logue
No, I certainly agree with you there that there is that tradition, and there’s figures that you highlight in the book, in particular, Teddy Roosevelt with his bully pulpit. I think that that is an important aspect of ensuring national movements and nationalism in the American context as a liberal nationalism and [an illiberal nationalism]. I think the President has a platform there and a role to kind of guide that ethos. You talk a little bit about immigration and the ethos of assimilation towards the end of the book. My question with regard to that is when it comes to assimilation, when it comes to people coming from other parts of the world, coming to the country, obviously, there’s a contentious history in America as to how assimilation was previously defined racially. It was defined in these more spurious terms. What habits of assimilation, in your view, are essentially cultural and cultural insofar as they’re nongovernmental, something that the government shouldn’t take a hand in? Or if they have taken a hand in the past, it’s been more harmful than helpful. And do you think the presidency as a platform is an essential part of cultivating that culture of assimilation and giving a unifying tone for people to assimilate to?
Rich Lowry
Yeah, so I think the key things are one, learning the language, which is absolutely essential. Language is the basis of nationalism everywhere, even in this country, and learning English is the basic demand. And then there’s just the ‘feeling like an American,’ you know, feeling attachment to this place. Learning, it’s history, learning its civic rituals, honoring its symbols. And what I worry about, you know, immigrants throughout history have done this and it’s been an amazing story… It’s just the last time we had immigration at this high a level, every aspect of our culture and our governmental institutions and our lead institutions had their shoulder to the wheel to make sure this happened. Plus it was a different time economically. It was very easy. You’d come over and you’d basically be plugged into a factory line somewhere. It was harder to communicate back home, there were two world wars that were enormous assimilative events, for better or worse. And then in 1924, there was, in many respects an ill-intentioned immigration law that that basically hit the pause button on immigration. So ethnic enclaves that developed couldn’t be constantly replenished. And that was also an important aspect to assimilation. So I worry that the culture of assimilation is frayed, the lead institutions, many of them reject the idea of assimilation because they think it’s it’s too exclusionary, asking someone to adopt your own culture seems completely bizarre to me and high levels have continued. So there are parts of the country where you can get away with speaking exclusively Spanish. And that’s just, that’s something I worry about very much. The president, you know, he can set a tone. I’m not sure there’s much he can do in immigration policy. I think if you had a more skills based system, and a system that valued whether people spoke English already, before they came, that would that would help, but it’s something I’m worried about.
Grayson Logue
So you mentioned kind of the all hands on deck cultural assimilation in the early 20th century, which I certainly agree with you: it was very thick and very part of the culture kind of reinforcing that through two world wars. A part of that culture of assimilation was also negative in the sense that if you were Eastern European instead of Western European, or if you were Asian, instead of White, that you weren’t actually included in that assimilatory effort. Your argument is, correct me if I’m wrong, saying that, that was perhaps an overcorrection, or an excess of that, or we hadn’t quite fully opened up what it meant to be American to all people groups. But in reaction to that, in the modern day, particularly in the intellectual and academic space that has led to kind of a rejection of having cultural cohesion whatsoever. And this is something that I think Jill Lepore writes about really well, arguing about how in the 1970s, historians kind of rejected the history of the nation, but in so doing, nationalism doesn’t go away. It just kind of goes back into these darker corners without the type of molding of the traditional mainline nationalist tradition, and then you get kind of more far right circles. Would that be an accurate kind of characterization, in your mind?
Rich Lowry
Well, I think the history of immigration restriction in this country is shot through with racism, and that’s bad, especially with regard to Asian Americans. And there is this kind of layering, tectonic layers, where, “okay, we’re British American, that’s what we are. Okay, we’re Western Europeans. And then Oh, okay. No, we’re Eastern Europeans and Jews too. Oh, okay, actually, we’re Asians and Latin Americans as well.” That’s good. I mean, that’s been… that’s a genuine progress. So I wouldn’t defend that element of our history at all, but what I reject, and I don’t know whether you want to get to the 1619 project a little bit, is we obviously had these great national failings, national sins, chattel slavery, the very worst, but they don’t define the entirety of what this country is. And it’s, it’s always had the capacity to grow and to open up. And where I think people go too far on the other side, is they define the commitment to the American nation itself as of a piece with the small mindedness of wanting to exclude Asian Americans, just because they’re Asian Americans. That itself, the commitment to the Nation […] itself is kind of tainted with racism, and that I completely reject. And I think, and certainly in the American instance, and in the case of true nationalism, nationalism gives you a loyalty over and above race, tribe, ethnicity, partisanship, and that’s why it’s more important in this time than ever before, in my view. Because people, they want to feel attached to something and it’s a little bit like Chesterton, if you don’t believe in God, you’re gonna believe in something else. If you don’t feel attached to the nation, you’re gonna feel attached to something else. And the alternatives besides religion, are bad. You know, it’s partisan loyalty, it’s race and those things will tear us apart if they aren’t leavaned by a higher commitment that unites us all. Because, you know, not all people can be white, not all people can black, not all people can be Hispanic. They all can be Americans. And that’s the glory of this country.
Grayson Logue
No, I definitely agree with you there. I will say for projects like the 1619 Project, there’s an important kind of line in American history, specifically the field of history, of opening up the sense of American identity. And sometimes those projects might go a little too far. But I do think that is an important piece of contributing and supporting, in some cases driving similar to how you point out John Dewey in the progressive era, that the ferment of that era insofar as it opened to the society was a good. Obviously there can be excesses there, as well. Before I let you go, I do want to get your take on some more recent current events. You had an article on our website last week on Trump in Iran, the title, Neither neocon nor isolationist, I thought was a very interesting piece. How bout we we unpack it…
Rich Lowry
Thanks. So in reaction to Trump’s killing of Qasem Soleimani, there was kind of a freakout on the left and also parts of the Trump-supporting right, that also oops, here’s George W. Bush, again. And Trump obviously rose up in opposition to George W. Bush. I think his nationalism, in part, was motivated by a sense that foreign policy in the Bush and even the Obama years had been overly idealistic and not cold-eyed enough, and we needed to focus more on our own interests. And the Soleimani strike, to me, was kind of a classic expression of the Trump approach, which, as the great analyst Walter Russell Mead, cited over and over again on this appropriately, is a Jacksonian impulse. It’s not strictly isolationist. It doesn’t have a great interest in the rest of the world, as long as they’re not bothering us. But as soon as there’s a perceived threat, the reaction not to blame ourselves, not to hide away in a shell, but to go eliminate this threat with all due dispatch, and force. And that’s what Trump did with with Soleimani. And his red line, you know, Trump’s red line didn’t have anything to do with our values or any humanitarian concerns. It was just don’t harm Americans. That’s what I’m touching. Don’t do that. And that’s also I think, kind of Jacksonian impulse and a real lowest common denominator, a nationalist impulse. So this didn’t herald Trump turning around and all of a sudden saying, “well, we’re gonna go invade Iran and transform their society.” That’s wasn’t what it was about at all. It was about protecting Americans, and trying to ensure that the Iranians would at least think twice before doing it again.
Grayson Logue
Yeah, Providence readers should be no stranger to Walter Russell Mead, a contributing editor. I would definitely encourage all of you who haven’t already read Special Providence, the book where Walter lays out the four dominant schools including Jacksonianism. You can find it on Amazon. You can also find Rich’s book The Case for Nationalism on Amazon.
Rich Lowry
Great segue, great.
Grayson Logue
If you want to read it… Yeah. Little plug there. But I think we’re out of time, but thank you so much, Rich.
Rich Lowry
Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
