It may be that the MAGA movement has fallen on hard times. Its president is faltering, with very poor approval ratings. The Iran war and the Epstein debacle have splintered the MAGA base. The administration appears to have little vision and far less energy now than in the first year of this second go-round. The midterms may deliver at least one house of Congress to the Democrats.
However, Donald Trump and that movement appear to have permanently altered the conservative part of the U.S. political spectrum, including the Republican Party and the various think tanks and activist groups. Ideas also have spread that are not likely to be shoved back into the bottle.
David Gushee
As a student of U.S. democracy and threats to its health, I believe it is incumbent on me and many to continue seeking to understand what is happening on the right. While I read a number of important current conservative voices while preparing my own 2023 book, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies, I keep discovering more voices I feel compelled to engage.
One of these is Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony. Today I consider the revised edition of his book, The Virtue of Nationalism. This book more than any other I have read from recent conservative intellectuals helps make sense of the direction of not just the U.S. MAGA Right but conservative movements in Europe as well. (Hat tip to Laura Field’s excellent work, Furious Minds, for putting me on the trail of Yoram Hazony.)
The argument
Hazony’s argument in The Virtue of Nationalism is offered with crystalline clarity in easily digested and generally restrained prose that veils what turns out to be a rather explosive message.
Hazony argues there are two fundamental competing principles of political order — nationalism and imperialism. Nationalism happens when politics is organized around a diverse array of independent “national states.” Imperialism happens when power is seized, or ceded, or otherwise shifted, to a transnational body that overrides the sovereignty of national states.
Yoram Hazony
Hazony is strongly in favor of political order being provided by national states and strongly opposed to any form of imperial governance. In this sense, Hazony happily claims to be a “nationalist” and to be attempting to reclaim “the virtue of nationalism.”
Part One of Hazony’s book offers historical analysis and arguments. Part Two extends the historical argument but mainly functions at the level of political philosophy.
The Hebrew Bible
Interestingly, Hazony, who as I noted is Israeli but whose influence is global through his leadership of the National Conservatism conferences, begins with the Hebrew Bible. He argues it offers the formative vision for politics to be organized at the national level. The Jewish people were a tribal confederation who banded together eventually to form a national state. That state was threatened and ultimately destroyed by regional empires, notably Assyria and Babylon. Hazony treats the texts describing the development of Jewish nationhood as normative or at least highly relevant for thinking about such matters today.
Hazony goes on to argue that Christianity’s eventual accommodation to the Roman imperial inheritance distorted the political vision of the Roman Catholic Church, which leaned transnational and imperial-minded for the many centuries of Christendom. Hazony seems to identify imperialist thinking with the Catholic cultural inheritance more broadly.
It was only when the Protestant Reformation happened that the moral power of the Hebrew Bible’s vision of national states was rediscovered and unleashed, Hazony says, arguing that “the Protestant construction of the West” shaped burgeoning (Protestant) national states such as England and the Netherlands and thus the modern Western understanding of nationhood.
Nation defined
This is probably the best moment to introduce Hazony’s crucial definition of a nation: “a number of tribes with a common language or religion, and a past history of acting as a body for the common defense and other large-scale enterprises.”
The Bible’s vision, Hazony contends — a vision he says was picked up by the early modern national states he celebrates — was of “a free and unified nation living in justice and peace amid other free nations.”
Hazony tries out a number of other formulations throughout the book, but his basic account, which he describes as “empiricist” rather than “rationalist” in its sourcing, is in my view best described as “organicist.”
For Hazony, within a specific territory there are families and extended family groupings (clans). A number of clans together form a tribe. A number of geographically contiguous tribes can either spend their energies fighting with each other or decide to unite together into a nation, that is, if they have sufficient cohesion — a crucial term for Hazony — around history, language, law and religion.
National states that work have a shared identity forged by this common history, language, law and religion. Essentially, a national state is a “people” sufficiently cohesive, united and capable of controlling a bordered territory to become a national state.
“Nations” or “peoples” do not have a “right” to a national state (this is for Hazony a fatally idealistic vision), but some nations demonstrate the ability — by arms, inevitably — to control a territory and to build a national state there. The world consists of the array of national states, often surrounded by failing and failed states that lacked some element necessary to cohere and survive — often, for Hazony, because they lacked “nationality” or “nationhood” as he has framed it. His examples are the hodgepodge failed states of places like Iraq and Syria.
Hazony explicitly rejects any social contract theory of government and offers an extensive depiction and rejection of the work of John Locke. He describes Locke’s theory as rationalist and as an individualist “dreamscape” that has little connection to the real world of families, kin networks, communities and nations.
Defining liberalism
But the legacy of (Lockean) liberalism is worse than innocuous fantasy for Hazony. He believes “liberalism” has become imperialistic, in multiple directions. It undercuts “the biblical and Protestant origins” and values that were present at the construction of the Protestant West, replacing them with a vacuous social contractarianism.
It undercuts the legitimacy of national self-determination in government and in economic life. It favors imperialist global trade regimes and sometimes global empires or superstates such as the United States at the height of its powers, the European Union, international law and human rights regimes, or an overly empowered United Nations.
Hazony also here at least partly integrates the more familiar claim that modern liberalism is anti-traditional, anti-religious, anti-national(ist), and intolerant and imperialist in its pretensions. This is the familiar trope against aggressive “wokeism”: a liberal order that claims to value tolerance while policing acceptable beliefs and practices and punishing dissenters.
To summarize, then, Hazony is using the term “liberalism” in three distinct but for him highly interrelated ways:
- Classic philosophical liberalism — the originally Lockean, rationalist, individualist, contractualist, universalist political philosophy
- Liberal internationalism — a transnational vision emphasizing and celebrating international institutions, law, economic regimes, EU-style supranationalism and sometimes benign American universalism
- Contemporary progressive liberalism — an imperialist moral vision hostile to inherited religion, nation, family and traditional moral norms
Defending nationalism
In Part Three, Hazony develops a far more polemical edge. He attacks the claim that nationalism is hateful and instead argues that liberalism/imperialism is the side that is hateful, because whenever people refuse to submit to their universalist verities, they become outraged and oppressive.
He attacks the “shaming campaigns against Israel” and instead argues that “the enormities of the Third World and Islam go unprotested” in liberal forums. He blames Immanuel Kant for the anti-nationalist paradigm and the legacy of Kant for the continued power of his internationalist/imperialist paradigm especially in Europe, the UK and the U.S.
In his most intense chapter, Hazony says liberals believe the lesson of Auschwitz is that Jews are repeating the wrongs that were once done to them, whereas Zionists believe the lesson of Auschwitz is that the national state of Israel is needed so Jews are never unable to protect Jewish children again. For the former, “Israel is Auschwitz,” whereas for the latter, “Israel is the opposite of Auschwitz.”
Hazony defends Great Britain’s pro-nationalist decision to leave the European Union — which he consistently attacks as imperialist — and America’s decision to elect a nationalist president, among other supposed offenses. Liberals view these and other nationalist leaders/movements/nations as “deplorables,” which for Hazony means they are doing something right — resisting imperialism-liberalism-internationalism.
Critical assessment
My father used to talk about people who conceal an “iron fist” inside a “velvet glove.” I fear Yoram Hazony’s Virtue of Nationalism is aptly described by that picturesque image.
His (largely) restrained prose and sweetly reasonable-sounding proposals carry with them certain very troubling implications. I understand that some of those who have gathered with him under the “national conservatism” umbrella have been less reticent to unveil the iron fist.
To begin with what seems to me the most important: Hazony’s proposal risks replacing a constitutional republic with a tribal nationhood. It is not only that Hazony explicitly rejects any notion that what makes a nation cohere is shared constitutionalism. It is also his definition of nationhood/peoplehood around shared heritage, language, law, religion and successful warfighting.
At least in the U.S. setting, this proposal certainly seems to carry the implication that the U.S. “nation” really consists of the historically successful conquerors from Europe of what became the United States. That would be (mainly) the Northern Europeans, notably the English. In his examples, Hazony most often mentions the English and the Dutch.
While Hazony is careful to say explicitly that his proposal is not about “biology” or “race,” this way of defining nationality certainly has racial implications or raises very troubling questions in this regard.
Do contemporary descendants of enslaved African Americans qualify as members of the U.S. American “nation”? Do later immigrants, especially those not from Europe, qualify? How might they qualify if they do not share tribal affiliation, memory or history? Someone like Barack Obama, for example — would he qualify for full membership in the U.S. “national state”?
Hazony does acknowledge that national states can incorporate new tribes and clans into the nation. But he insists this occurs only when they establish bonds of mutual loyalty to the existing nation and participate in its common national project. It stands to reason if that is the standard, it would set limits on how many such others the centered tribes should be willing to admit.
Hazony’s account reminds me of Paul’s metaphor in Romans 9-11 of Gentile believers being grafted into the covenant people Israel. There already is a root stock. Others may indeed be grafted in, but they are grafted into an already existing people rather than participating equally in defining what that people is.
One could easily derive from Hazony’s thesis the policy implication that the best way to preserve national cohesion would be a) to stop or sharply limit immigration to the United States; or b) to stop or sharply limit immigration from people who do not belong to the original group of “tribes” who formed the U.S. American “national state’; or c) to denaturalize a certain number or even all migrants who were not born here or not from one of the original tribes. And it might suggest an immigration enforcement policy of creating a highly intimidating Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureaucracy in order to discourage migration to this country.
Does anyone see any resemblances to current U.S. immigration policy?
Role of religion
Hazony frankly and regularly includes religion in his list of elements of national identity and as essential to national cohesion. He writes of the early Protestant-constructed states: “The king or ruler, in order to rule by right, had to devote himself to the protection of his people in their life, family, and property, to justice in the courts, to the maintenance of the sabbath, and to the public recognition of the one God. … These precepts were seen as providing the minimum requirements for a life of personal freedom and dignity for all.”
Hazony’s argument strongly suggests he would endorse a similar approach on the part of states today, in the name of national cohesion and well-being.
One can see how this understanding of the role of religion in the state fits with at least one faction within the modern nation of Israel — not to mention the theocratic vision of the ancient nation of Israel. But it will strike anyone as threatening who takes seriously a church/state separationist vision — as articulated, for example, by a marginal figure like Thomas Jefferson.
So if one believes national cohesion requires religion and at least some of its laws, and the version of religion/law that, should be advanced is that which reflects the predominant founding national tribes (Protestant Christians later expanded to include Catholics), then it would follow that church/state separation is not a value, while state-mandated religious instruction and observance are a value — indeed essential for national cohesion and viability.
If one believed that to be the case, it would carry the policy implication that governors, legislators and judges should seek to override the vestiges of separation and “freedom from religion” that (supposedly) misbegotten interpretations of the First Amendment have yielded, and should do things like reinstate religious instruction in public schools according to the dominant local or national religious tradition.
Thus, if one were in a state like, say, Texas, naturally one would press for religious instruction of all the state’s children in the predominant religion of the community, and one would seek the freedom to reimpose laws based on core Christian moral traditions, such as laws banning gay sex, same-sex marriage and abortion. The inevitable question is how much religious and moral freedom would remain for citizens who do not belong to the predominant religious tradition.
That question already is a live one in, for example, Texas itself.
Now take the idea that part of what defines a nation is a history of demonstrating nationhood by acquiring and successfully defending territory by force. Here one finds an interesting, indeed disturbing, blend of descriptive claim and normative implication.
Take the Israel-Palestine situation. Hazony argues the Jews constitute a nation — a people — and that, especially after Auschwitz, they required a sovereign national state capable of defending itself. The establishment of Israel in 1947-48 therefore represents, for him, the restoration of normal Jewish political existence after centuries of vulnerability.
Although Hazony addresses these questions more fully elsewhere than in The Virtue of Nationalism, the impression this book leaves is that Israel’s political legitimacy rests not on international recognition but on the successful warfighting that established and has defended its sovereignty. Given Hazony’s skepticism toward international institutions, it is difficult to imagine him saying the United Nations made Israel a nation. Rather, Israel demonstrated and secured its nationhood by successfully fighting for its independence.
The implication of Hazony’s overall argument appears to be that nationhood belongs to the winners. Palestine, ergo, is not a “nation” because it has not won nationhood. It may have other national elements (although there is not a shared Palestinian religion) but it has not won anything on the battlefield. The United States is a national state because it has won battles, repeatedly. The Kurds are a people but do not have a national state because they have not won it through arms.
This would have the problematic moral implication that to the victors go the spoils. An empiricist theory in which historical land-possession, national cohesion and successful military action establish political reality has trouble generating a moral principle by which the claims of the unsuccessful, conquered, dispossessed or stateless can be adjudicated. This approach conveniently allows the continued nonrecognition of, for example, the national aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Finally, the whistle must be blown on Hazony’s identification and rejection of all transnational projects as imperialistic.
This would lump together the Christian church’s vision of a global human family (and in many contexts its organization of transnational bodies), the old Marxist dream of global Communist revolution, the neoliberal project of American empire, the project of the European Union, liberal internationalism, global climate change treaties, international trade bodies like the World Trade Organization, international law and legal authorities like the Geneva Conventions and the International Court of Justice, and the United Nations itself.
All these: Empire? Imperial. Or are some of them not efforts to build human community, reduce the risk of war between nation-states, advance global economic well-being, solve shared human problems and prevent nation-states from becoming predators without at least being confronted by countervailing voices and powers?
National cohesion
The most positive thing I can say about Virtue of Nationalism is that it helps us center the perennial and quite pressing problem today of national cohesion. It also helps us understand the playbook that is being run in a number of nationalist parties and regimes. Thus, it may reveal more than it intends, or more than it should, from the perspective of its adherents.
If this kind of organicist, tribalist vision of nationality is going to be defeated in the United States, the Democratic Party must develop leaders who can name explicitly what is wrong in such a vision and offer a compelling alternative vision of national identity, cohesion and purpose.
Such a vision, in my view, should look like constitutional nationhood that is historically particular but genuinely open to incorporation of new peoples; cohesive enough to produce mutual loyalty without being ethno-religiously tribal; and capable of generating a vivid love of country without making tribe, blood, religion or conquest the criterion of national belonging.
David P. Gushee serves as Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, chair in Christian social ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and senior research fellow at International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is past president of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Christian Ethics. He also is author of 30 books, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust; Kingdom Ethics; Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies; Changing Our Mind; and The Moral Teachings of Jesus.