In Further Defense of Nations: A Response to McManus

“As such, quiet gratitude rather than arrogant pride is, I believe, the right attitude to take towards the idea of the nation.”

I very much appreciate the opportunity to engage in this dialogue with Matt McManus on nationalism vs. internationalism. I’ve found reading his articles on Merion West has helped broaden my thinking, particularly his critiques of Jordan Peterson from a reasonable non-identitarian left-wing perspective. I’m grateful for his positive comments about both the first piece in this dialogue and my piece on Arendt, loneliness, and totalitarianism. In this piece, I’ll aim to respond to his comments on my article on nationalism. He and I are at different points of the political spectrum: he’s on the Left, and I’m on the Right. The fact that we can engage in this civil discourse about difficult subjects shows that this is still possible today in our increasingly divided times, and that is something to be thankful for.

I was arguing that those who see World War II as the fault of nationalism were wrong when they argued that dissolving the national state was necessarily the best remedy, given the chaos that held sway before 1648, and which risked being repeated.

I’ll start by noting that McManus’s brief summary in three points of my article is accurate, on the whole. He is right in the first point that I have a pessimistic view of human nature, which influences how I view the need for national states. On the second point, while he is right that I followed Yoram Hazony’s arguments about the discrediting of nationalism following World War II, he is mistaken when he says that I had written that the national state is a check to imperial ambitions like that of Nazism. I was arguing that those who see World War II as the fault of nationalism were wrong when they argued that dissolving the national state was necessarily the best remedy, given the chaos that held sway before 1648, and which risked being repeated. The fact that I put the two together in the same paragraph meant that it looked like I wrote what he said I wrote, and I apologize for the lack of clarity on my part. Finally, I appreciate the positive comments in the third point about my criticisms of excessive individualism, which, following Arendt, could lead to the reactionary seeking for community which ends in tribes of immutable identity based in fear rather than affection. This is a discussion which conservatives need to have, as it is something that we, as a society, need to avoid.

I’ll now move on to address McManus’s criticisms of my article, again point by point as he has written them. On his first point, he is right that internationalists after WWII did not have a “beneficent view of human nature.” How could they have, following the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, particularly the Holocaust? I think there is a difference, though, between those who set up organizations like the United Nations and the first instantiation of what is today called the European Union—and the EU today with its emphasis on ever closer union and erosion of national sovereignty.