The rise of nationalism and political parties promoting
it has become an important and unsettling trend across the world. Jill Lepore provides a concise history of
nationalism and its relevance to history and politics in the United States in This America: The Case for the Nation. Her intent is to make clear the battle that
has always existed between two forms of nationalism in our country, and to
encourage the liberal side to match the other with dedication and intensity.
Nationalism arose in
Europe incorporating ideas driven by the French Revolution and the need for a
political system that no longer required a monarch to function.
“Nationalism,
when it emerged, was a product of the Enlightenment, and a species of
liberalism. To be a nationalist at the
end of the eighteenth century meant to believe in a slew of revolutionary
liberal ideas: that the peoples of the world are naturally divided into
nations, that the most rational means of government is national self-rule, that
nations are sovereign, and that nations guarantee the rights of citizens.”
“Politics
became the operation of a new force, not the divine right of kings but the will
of the nation.”
Coherent nations of
similar peoples with similar backgrounds did not exist. If this concept of nationhood was to succeed,
those within the national boundaries had to be convinced that they were, in
fact, a member of a meaningful body of citizens.
“…as nation-states emerged out
of city-states and kingdoms and empires, they…incorporated all of the different
people living in newly bounded territories, and the best way to do that was to
invent a common history, telling tales about a shared past, tying together
ribbons of facts and myths, as if everyone in the ‘English nation’ had the same
ancestors, when in truth they were everything from Celts to Saxons. Histories of nation-states are stories that
hide the seams that stitch the nation to the state.”
The stories people in a nation tell about themselves
determine their values and aspirations.
Historians play a critical role in creating narratives that inspire an
affinity between inhabitants and a love of nation sufficient to generate a willingness
to make sacrifices for the benefit of the state. Popular histories need not be accurate, but
they must be effective.
“’Historians are to nationalism
what poppy growers…are to heroin addicts,’ as the English historian Eric Hobsbaum
once darkly observed. ‘We supply the
essential raw material for the market’.”
Up to a certain point nationalism and patriotism had
nearly the same meaning, but the twentieth century would see a perversion of
nationalism from something healthy to something dark and dangerous.
“…it’s easy to confuse
nationalism and patriotism, especially since they once meant more or less the
same thing. But in the early decades of
the twentieth century, with the rise of fascism in Europe, nationalism had come
to mean something different from patriotism, something fierce, something
violent: less a love for your own country than a hatred of other countries and
their people and a hatred of people within your own country who don’t belong to
an ethnic, racial, or religious majority.”
“Patriotism is animated by love,
nationalism by hatred. To confuse the
one for the other is to pretend that hate is love and fear is courage.”
Lepore tells us that historians were so repelled by what
nationalism had become that after World War II they chose to stop writing
stories that would encourage national cohesion and pride for fear of creating more
violence and death. However, people
continued to need these stories and would accept them from people pushing an
agenda if historians would not contribute.
“Nations, to make sense of
themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past.
They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues, but
get it they will.”
“When serious historians abandon
the study of the nation, when scholars stop trying to write a common history
for a people, nationalism doesn’t die. Instead,
it eats liberalism.”
The world has seen a surge in the illiberal forms of
nationalism that seem to be against people and things. Each affected country has its unique issues. The United States is not an exception. In fact, as Lepore points, out it arrived at
nationhood by a path fraught with hazards, some of which are contentious to
this day.
The United States began as a confederation of states each
of which contributed their own forms of nationalism to the political brew. To get agreement on a federal constitution, a
number of compromises had to be made.
These accommodations haunt the nation still. The major issues were states rights versus
federal control, and the acquiescence to slavery as a legal institution.
“The language of nationalism,
when it surfaced in the United Stats in the 1830s, had less to do with feelings
of national belonging than with the ongoing dispute between federal power and
states rights. To be a nationalist meant
to advocate for the power of the federal government.”
“…stability rested on a
compromise that allowed not only the continuation of slavery in the South, at a
time when it was on the wane in the North, but also for the granting of
disproportionate political power to slave states, in exchange for their
willingness to stay in the Union.”
Intertwined with federal versus state issues were those
associated with the slave versus nonslave states. The nation was harboring two forms of
nationalism, one striving to be liberal, the other resolutely illiberal.
“Liberalism is the belief that
people are good and should be free, and that people erect governments in order
to guarantee that freedom…Nations are collectives and liberalism concerns
individuals; liberal nations are collections of individuals whose rights as
citizens are guaranteed by the nation.
Liberal governments require a popular mandate to rule: liberal nations
are self-governed.”
“’Ours is the government of the white
man,’ South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun declared in 1848, arguing against
admitting as citizens of the United States the people of Mexico, people he did
not consider to be white…Calhoun’s was a race-based nationalism: the United
States was to be a white nation. This
view was not confined to the South.
Oregon in 1857 adopted something close to a whites-only constitution: ‘no
negro, Chinaman, or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage,’ it
declared. That same year, in Dred
Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Court ruled that no person of African descent
could ever become a citizen of the United States, on the grounds that the
framers of the Constitution had viewed Africans as ‘beings of an inferior order,
and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the
white man was bound to respect’.”
Americans like to think of themselves as an exceptional people,
one who set an example of liberty and justice for those of other nations who
lacked those benefits; that was the liberal nationalism at work. Unfortunately, liberty and justice only
existed for white males for most of our history. Americans were also exceptional in sending
out the message that America’s experience with nonwhite peoples proved the
superiority of whites, determined that colored peoples were incapable of governing
themselves, and demonstrated that social and economic discrimination against
nonwhite peoples was appropriate and effective; that was the illiberal
nationalism at work.
“An American nationalism
descended from these illiberal traditions endures, a scourge to the country and
the world.”
The history of the United States has been dominated by
the conflict between these two forms of nationalism. From the founding of the nation until the
Civil War, abolitionists and proponents of slavery battled incessantly over
that institution. When it looked as
though the slave states might end up a permanent minority they decided to
succeed from the nation. After much
death and destruction, the slave states were defeated. Slaves were emancipated and slavery was no
longer possible. However, the culture of
white dominance never disappeared.
Instead it found other ways to apply social and economic constraints on
the former slaves. This system of formal
discrimination endured for another century before its legality was finally eliminated. Was this a sign of progress, or was it merely
a time of preparation for another battle?
The civil rights struggles of the 1960s eliminated explicit
racial discrimination but did little to ameliorate implicit forms. The period that followed was not so much a
time of racial peace as a reforming of battle lines in preparation for the next
conflict. It was not by accident that
advocates of liberal policies ended up centered in the Democratic Party and
advocates of illiberal policies ended up migrating to the Republican
Party. The degree of political
polarization appears frighteningly similar in both geography and intensity to
that which prevailed in years before the Civil War. The illiberal thrust today is not associated
with slavery, although racism and white supremacy is endemic to the Republican
Party. Rather, it is the attempt to restrict
the rights of women over the issue of abortion.
From this source we derive this observation.
“Prominent figures on the
Christian right in the US ranging from religious magazines to authors to elected
politicians have warned that the fight over abortion rights could lead to a new
civil war.”
The compromises made in forming the nation continue to
contribute to political polarization.
Demographic trends and the peculiarities of our Constitution suggest
that the Democrats will have a growing advantage in controlling the House, and
to a lesser extent the presidency, but the Republicans, although a distinct
minority, will have the advantage in controlling the Senate, and thus the
Supreme Court. This is not likely to
engender bipartisan cooperation.
Instead, deadlock on almost all issues seems inevitable.
Is there a gathering storm leading to some final conflict
whose outcome will finally break this curse of the two nationalisms, or just
another skirmish in a never-ending war?
Stay tuned…
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