What Is Nationalism and What Does it Mean for Liberty?

FromPresident Donald Trump to the rise of new nationalistpolitical parties in Europe to a generalresurgence of the term inrecent years, nationalism seems to be on the march.   Nationalism is a political movement that has made major inroads in recent years while preaching a message of immigration restrictionism, trade protectionism, and a stronger government devoted to defending citizens from (mostly) imaginary harms.  But besides some policy positions and a style of g overnance, there is not a good working definition of nationalism widely used in popular discourse and there is almost no attempt todistinguish it from patriotism.   My base assumption was that nationalism must be something more than crude jingoistic tribalism, but few ventured beyond that.  Those reasons prompted me to read several thousand pages on the topic – and I learned quite a bit.  Below are some lessons I learned and a useful taxonomy of differen t types of nationalism.The first thing I learned is that most research on nationalism is terrible.   Most writers on this subject poorly define their terms ordefine them so broadly that they are meaningless.   I wish I could go back in time and tell an earlier version of myself to skip lots of papers and books.  Even worse, many scholars of nationalism are either critics or supporters of the concept, which forces them to makeabsurd statements like claiming that the National Socialist German Workers Party wasn ’t a nationalist political party.   This...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs