Category: 2024 Election

2024 Election, General, Nationalist Theory, Politics

Globalism vs. Nationalism

Bob Claude |

In every wise struggle for human betterment, one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations arise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege.

Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism

Politics has been most simply described as a contest between the “ins” and the “outs”. Those who are “in” eventually succumb to Lord Acton’s proverb that power corrupts. The “outs” then try to hold them accountable, while the “ins” desperately try to justify and preserve the privileges of their power. Monarchies tried to claim a “divine right” to their power and nineteenth century robber barons adopted the theory of social Darwinism to justify the inequality of the Gilded Age.  This quotation from Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism emphasize the importance, indeed the inevitability, of the defeat of such excuses for power and the outdated assumptions that underlie them. 

Globalism has become the latest ideological excuse used by international elites to preserve their privileges in today’s world.  This philosophy believes economic and foreign policy should be made on a global basis without regard to any particular nation’s needs or interests. Politicians thus have a duty to improve the lives of every person on earth equally regardless of national boundaries. Peace will occur when there is worldwide homogeneity in economic, political and cultural conditions and practices.  

In theory, these goals are laudable and its attraction has deep roots in Western civilization and history (see my series on “Nationalist Foreign Policy – A History” under the Foreign Policy tab above). It becomes particularly attractive during waves of economic globalization.  Here is where we need to clearly distinguish globalism from globalization. Globalization is a socioeconomic phenomenon involving a significant increase in trade and cultural knowledge across national borders. When Marco Polo arrived in Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan’s court in 1275 AD, he was part of such a wave of globalization made possible by stable and safe trade routes through Central Asia from Europe to Asia.  The history of this process has been brilliantly told in Prof.  Peter Frankopan’s book” The Silk Roads”, which describes how periods of global trade and cultural contact changed the world from ancient to modern times. However, these waves would prove to be temporary. Globalization could not survive a nation’s love of its own culture and desire for independence.

This latest wave of globalization began in the 1960’s with the Kennedy Round of tariff reductions, continued during the latter part of the Cold War and then took off after it ended. A new international elite whose disproportionate privileges arose from the benefits of this wave then proclaimed a “New World Order” dedicated to spreading their interpretation of democracy and free enterprise throughout the world. This became the basis of modern globalism and achieved a bipartisan consensus in American politics. 

Meanwhile, American elections continued to be fought over the increasingly vacuous divide between big vs. small government.  The debate over the domestic and international costs of the new order were incorporated into this old debate. Four ideologies, each with their own goal or god, emerged: 

  • Corporate globalism and the god of efficiency 
  • Socialist globalism and the god of equality
  • Ethnic nationalism and the gods of blood and soil 
  • Progressive nationalism and the goal of community

In the perfect world, each of these ideologies would be represented by four different political parties.  The real world of our two-party system requires American voters to research each candidate individually and determine which of these ideologies best matches the candidate’s philosophy and positions.  As we approach the 2024 election, the American people need to become familiar with the basic premises underlying each of these new ideologies, the political philosophy behind them and their current leaders.  My next four posts will undertake that task, starting with a survey of the tenets of corporate globalism. 

2024 Election, General, Nationalist Theory, Politics

We all must be in the Arena

Bob Claude |

The nation is relieved that former President Trump survived yesterday’s assassination attempt. However, an audience member was killed in the attempt and another injured. They and their families should be in our thoughts and prayers. The photo of Trump defiantly raising his fist before the flag recalls Theodore Roosevelt’s defiance of the attempt on his life during his 1912 presidential campaign, famously declaring that “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose”.

I lead, however, not with that quote, but with Roosevelt’s equally famous “Man in the Arena” speech, where he calls all Americans to embrace the risks of action and the kind of “dust and sweat and blood” that Trump defied. This call does not necessarily mean a call to enter politics ourselves, but to the kind of courage that those who fight for our country here or overseas live daily.  This injuries and deaths at the Trump rally now call us to a new fight for our political life here at home.

Over the past few years, our political debate has coarsened and polarized to the point where violent rhetoric has become shamefully common. Only last week President Biden promised to put his opponent Trump “in the crosshairs”.  A poll in the New York Times revealed that 10% of respondents believed violence was justified against Trump and a similar percentage believed the same about President Biden. The rest of us have seen all of this and either shrugged our shoulders or remained silent out of fear.

We can no longer be among the “cold and timid” who assume this is someone else’s problem. It is time to summon the courage to confront calls to hatred and violence in the political arena and ostracize those who engage in them.  Media outlets that feature or promote them must be shunned and boycotted. Finally, each of us must have the courage to confront friends and acquaintances who engage in such hateful rhetoric and ostracize them as well.  If necessary, we should not hesitate to report them to law enforcement if they pose an imminent threat.  Otherwise, the hatred will not only worsen, but we will also then be complicit in what happens afterwards.

2024 Election, Politics

Confronting a False Choice

Bob Claude |

Neither the Republican or Democratic platforms contain the slightest promise of approaching the great problems of today either with understanding or good faith; and yet never was their a greater need in this nation than now of understanding and of action taken in good faith, on the part of the men and the organizations shaping our governmental policy.

Theodore Roosevelt accepting the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party, August 6, 1912

As we approach the 2024 election, the US is in the midst of funding two major wars and trying to effectively deter a third. Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion has faltered due a reconstituted and more deadly Russian military as well as the delay in aid. Israel’s war against Hamas is taking a toll on both Palestine’s and Israel’s future.  Meanwhile, China expands its threats in the Western Pacific towards not only Taiwan, but also the Philippines. Here at home, the federal government’s apparent impotence in the face of economic inequality and an influx of 7 million illegal immigrants feeds a disillusion with our constitutional democracy that divides the nation.   

At this perilous time in our history, we enter a presidential election where polls show a majority of voters worry about President Biden’s obvious physical and mental frailties. The only current alternative, Donald Trump, is equally elderly, increasingly mentally unhinged and facing criminal trials in four jurisdictions. If your close your eyes and just listen to the two of them, their campaign messages are identical – the “other guy” is mentally incompetent and an existential threat to democracy. I am no conspiracy theorist (see this), but Biden and Trump increasingly look like mere figureheads for other agendas having little relationship to the real issues facing the nation. The legitimacy of our democracy depends on flushing out those issues, as difficult as they may be, into the open so the American people can decide, not just isolated elites.

Part of Trump’s agenda in this election is obvious.  He is running for his life from the very real possibility of becoming a convicted felon and thus losing not only money, but also his freedom in prison. His first act as President would be to order the dismissal of the federal charges against him.  After this, his motives become murkier.  It may simply be the further enrichment of himself and his family while catering to his supporter’s lowest impulses. Trump has once again taken hard lines against immigration and the border invasion that cannot be achieved without congressional approval. His failure to achieve meaningful long-term reform during his previous stint in office belies the likelihood of any substantive change.  Instead, he talks of being a “dictator for a day”, a goal which shows his utter disregard for the democracy he claims to be defending and inability to unite the nation behind any goal see this.

Meanwhile, Biden appears primarily engaged in trying to hold a fractious Democratic Party together to “save democracy” from a Trump victory at any price. This means that he has to unite moderate and traditionally liberal Democrats with the increasingly powerful democratic socialist or “progressive” base of the party. He tries to paper over the differences by buying their support with billions of federal dollars in flagrant disregard of the effect on America’s long term financial stability.  His foreign policy uses the same strategy, where billions to Ukraine, Israel and climate change projects vainly try to preserve American unipolar hegemony. Meanwhile, he further divides the nation by offering tacit and occasionally vocal support for identity-group grievances against everyone else. But are these the ends or simply a means to insulate an isolated international elite from the consequences of their greed?

This website began as a call to national unity in the face of the rise of nationalism elsewhere in the world and the challenges it creates here at home. James Strock, a member of the Board of Advisors of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, recently pointed out that half of the world will be voting in elections this year and, whether it is the US, Russia, or India, it is really nationalism, not democracy, that is on the ballot. He correctly argues that only a genuine American nationalism that addresses our own divisions while respecting the differences of other nations can renew our democracy and enable us to succeed in an increasingly multipolar world (See this post on his “ The Next Nationalism” Substack). Building such a modern American nationalism will require a clear understanding of the choices we must make as a people in the reality of the current world. As we approach the upcoming elections. I will be highlighting the choices we Americans must face.