Category: General

Domestic Policy, General, General, Politics

100 Days of Myopia

Bob Claude |

Source: “Pictures of TR & FDR Together”, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. 16, No.1 in Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University

Nothing worth having comes without effort – Theodore Roosevelt

Since the purpose of this website was to develop a positive ideology of nationalism, I have avoided keeping up with the chaotic first three months of the second Trump administration. We have now reached the vaunted 100-day mark in his presidency, which is too often used to judge a president’s success. It leads to a temptation to focus on quick, shallow policy victories at the cost of lasting change and thus risks squandering a mandate.

Trump’s victory came amid claims that it heralded a historic realignment towards a new nationalist majority in the American electorate.  However, history shows that lasting political realignments are processes, not specific events. They begin before the election and are then fostered by the victors afterwards. The campaign doesn’t end, but continues as the victor explains their new national priorities and broadens his movement’s connection to the American public.  As Trump should have learned in his first term, he had no automatic sinecure, but was simply on probation. His support may have been a mile wide, but was only an inch thick.

The obsession with a president’s first 100 days harks back to the first administration of Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin.  In an attempt to revive the economy during the Great Depression, he used the Democratic majority in Congress to enact a wealth of legislation to stabilize the economy and create jobs.  No one knew what would work, and so it was the policy equivalent of throwing mud against the wall and seeing what stuck. The Supreme Court voided some of it as unconstitutional. Most economists now agree it had little impact and that the economy did not fully recover until the advent of World War II.

This, however, does not mean it was ineffective.  Americans may not have known much about the alphabet soup of federal agencies FDR created, but every family huddled around their radios each week to listen to his fireside chats.  In a calm avuncular manner, Roosevelt used this relatively new medium to promote his legislative program and explain his philosophy. This created the support that enabled him to eventually pass iconic liberal goals like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act in the latter two years of his first term.  It cemented a realignment that continued for almost 40 years and still is a part of our political landscape.

Trump has an opportunity to achieve a new nationalist version of the Roosevelt majority. Globalist Democrats are in disarray and their popular support has sank to historic lows. It is a golden opportunity for the kind of debate that would cement a lasting nationalist mandate. Instead, Trump 2.0 has taken the easy way out by making the same myopic mistakes as Trump 1.0, but on steroids. It has been dominated by Trump’s desire for revenge and his addiction to executive orders, many of which are futile, bombastic, unconstitutional or all three at once.

Theodore Roosevelt certainly pushed the boundaries of presidential power (see this earlier article), but as part of a coherent discussion of the policy reasons for it.  His most important political role was as a cheerleader for local Progressive reform movements. Much like FDR, he enjoyed using the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to promote his philosophy and embraced the possibilities for persuasion that the legislative process offered. It was hard work, but worth the reward. Instead, Trump’s arrogance and dictatorial methods risk reviving globalist legitimacy while justifying the use of similar tactics by a future president of that ideology.

General, Globalism vs. Nationalism, Nationalist Theory, Politics

Ethnic Nationalism and the Gods of Blood and Soil

Bob Claude |

I am insisting on nationalism against internationalism.

Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to Sen. Albert Beveridge

Theodore Roosevelt lived during the last great era of European nation-building of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He saw Germany and Italy transformed from small city-states and kingdoms into strong unified states, while the Austrian – Hungarian Empire was broken apart by ethnic tensions. These movements were driven by the most basic form of nationalism – the concept that peoples with the same ethnic heritage and common geography should constitute a distinct and separate nation-state within those geographic boundaries. He then saw how the resulting national unity created powerful and successful states, though sometimes with tragic consequences.

Ethnic nationalism continued to be a primary driver of international relations through the 20th century and past the millennium. The nations of the Global South freed from colonialism after World War II cherished their own past history and native lands and are committed to building their national sovereignty and economic power (see this previous post).  Russian expansionism is based on a combination of pan-Slavic identity, religious superiority, and a sense of victimhood. Chinese nationalism has always rested on the inherent superiority of the Han Chinese based on their millennia of history and now the ideological call of Maoist communism. In his book “When China Rules the World”, longtime China expert Martin Jacques described the myth of Han Chinese superiority and maintained that the Chinese may very well be the most racist people in the world. Even the vaunted European Union is beginning to fracture due to nationalist movements within its membership.

History has illustrated the benefits and dangers of ethnic nationalism. It prioritizes national unity and a sense of community over short- term efficiency, thus making those nations more resilient in the face of domestic and foreign challenges (see this post on the importance of resilience). Its call to community service promotes selflessness over personal economic equality. This sense of community, however, is often confined to the primary ethnic group and can quickly descend into claims of racial superiority. Excluded minorities often fall back on the own national histories, resulting in internal division, mass emigration, or civil war and thus destroying the solidarity nationalism is supposed to foster. Racial nationalism also can lead to fascist expansionism. The most notorious example is still that of Nazi Germany, whose call to “Blood and Soil” was used to justify some of the worst brutality in history.

Roosevelt’s American nationalism sprung from love of his land and the history of its people, tested by the Civil War and its call to save the Union. His love of the American landscape spurred his drive for conservation. The man who invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House, appointed the first Jewish cabinet member and fought for direct presidential primaries demonstrated by his actions that our history of democracy and human rights was his paramount value. Unfortunately, this love of America sometimes expressed itself in a belief in Anglo-Saxon or “English” racial superiority.  In his book “The Winning of the West”, he wrote that the pioneering of the American West was part of the triumphant spread of “the English-speaking peoples “and ranked it with the rise of Germanic and other races. This reflected a common belief among the elite of his time that racial characteristics shaped history, which itself may have been inspired by the nationalist movements of Europe.

Nevertheless, ethnic nationalism is the most common national ideology in the world and thus a reality Americans must deal with. The sense of community and national resilience it creates gives those nations real power that supports their sovereignty and unity. However, in a multi-ethnic nation like the US, this form of nationalism is more likely to be divisive than unifying.  TR knew this and became the champion of a nationalism tailored to our unique American history and values.

Next in the series: Progressive Nationalism and the Goals of Community and Opportunity

General, Globalism vs. Nationalism, Nationalist Theory, Politics

Socialist Globalism and the God of Equality

Bob Claude |

Source; Library of Congress

When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, they were reacting to the wave of globalization that came with the industrial revolution of the 19th century. The cartoon above from the British magazine Puck graphically showed the toxic political results of the resulting despair. It shows a boar of corporate greed sowing the seeds of the socialism that Marx & Engels advocated. Their response was a radical form of equality that believed “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”. It closed with the famous phrase “Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains”.

Thus, socialism began with a cry to abandon national identity for international class identity and struggle. The Socialist Internationale was organized as a cross-border movement of similar political parties in various European nations. As resistance to its goals stiffened, the movement turned ugly with the rise of the anarchists, whose tactics of assassination and violence eventually reached the U.S.. Theodore Roosevelt never forgot he became President due to the bullet of the anarchist who assassinated President McKinley. It sparked his own commitment to fighting corporate greed and concentration and the exploitation it created, but within a free market system.

In the end, the nineteenth century call for international worker solidarity perished in the trenches of World War I as each nation’s proletariat willingly marched to war not against the rich, but against opposing enemy nations. The pull of national identity proved to be more powerful than class identity.  The Soviet and Chinese Communist attempts to build a globalist socialist movement resulted in further oppression and eventually adopted nationalist themes to spur their people to defend themselves from foreign foes. While western European socialist parties saw limited success in the interwar period, the U.S. turned to a conservative isolationism and during the New Deal of FDR, a brief progressive nationalism.

Modern socialist globalism is no longer the province of some small Western political parties, but is now officially advocated by the foreign policy of the majority of the Global South that still sees itself as victims of colonialism (see this previous post). In the US, the call to class identity is joined to similar calls to ethnic and gender loyalty fueled by a strange combination of victim psychology and guilt. They consider themselves victims of oppression by the rich while also being guilty of oppressing other nations simply by being American. In foreign policy, this leads to either liberal interventionism to forcibly spread “freedom” or subordinating legitimate national interests to other nations as a way of appeasing the god of equality. Domestically it creates a destructive race to the bottom as risk-taking declines and social jealousies feed on themselves.

TR spent his political career fighting not only the boar of corporate greed, but also the siren song of victim psychology.  He called Americans to remember their heritage as leaders of a new social experiment.  This was the basis of his nationalism.  As we move to explore the nationalist response to globalism, we will first consider another, more basic form of national identity and how it can go wrong as well.

Next; Ethnic Nationalism and the Gods of Blood and Soil