"The Nationalist Threat to Liberty" - My Final Contribution to the Liberty Fund Symposium on "The Legacy of David Boaz"

The Liberty Fund symposium on “The Legacy of David Boaz” -  prominent libertarian thinker and longtime Cato Institute leader – has now concluded. There were initial essays by five participants – Andy Craig, Tarnell S. Brown, Aaron Powell, Jonathan Blanks, and myself. Each participant has now also posted two response essays. My final response essay is entitled “The Nationalist Threat to Liberty.” Here is an excerpt:

Once again, I have few disagreements with the other contributors to the symposium. So I will take this opportunity to draw out a few common themes, and their implications. As before, a common theme of the various contributions is the need to extend liberty to all, without arbitrary exclusions based on factors like race, immigrant status, gender, sexual orientation, and the like.

In one of his response essays, Tarnell Brown mentions the Marquis de Lafayette as an example of the cosmopolitan nature of the struggle for liberty, and how immigrants and foreign allies contributed to the founding and growth of America. It’s worth noting that, in addition to fighting for liberty in the American Revolution, Lafayette was also a longtime advocate of the abolition of slavery who unsuccessfully urged George Washington and other Founding Fathers to do more for that cause. Lafayette understood that liberty must be extended to all, regardless of race and ancestry. So should we.

Another, at least implicit, common theme, is the menace to liberty posed by the resurgence of illiberal and authoritarian nationalism. This is most obviously true in the cases of nativist and xenophobic attacks on immigration and trade, and Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine (motivated primarily by Russian nationalist imperialism)….

Nationalism obviously threatens liberty by restricting the range of people allowed to enjoy it. It also imperils freedom by promoting government central planning of the economy, through a combination of protectionism (as with Donald Trump’s massive new trade war), immigration restrictions, and industrial policy. In these respects, nationalism is – as my Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I explained in “The Case Against Nationalism,” – very similar to libertarians’ other traditional rival: socialism. As Alex likes to put it, nationalism is socialism with more flags….

Libertarians of my generation… and even more so those of David Boaz’s generation, came of age in a world where socialism and the progressive left more generally were the greatest threats to liberty. It may be psychologically difficult for some to adjust to the new reality where the greatest threat to our values now comes from the political right, in the form of nationalism. That adjustment may be especially painful for those most emotionally attached to the old “fusionist” alliance between libertarians and conservatives. But adjust we must.

Later in the piece, I note that recognizing nationalism as the greatest current threat to liberty does not imply an uncritical attitude towards the left:

David [Boaz] also understood that addressing the danger from the right doesn’t entail blinding ourselves to the flaws of the left. The “democratic socialism” popular on the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party and in some European nations remains dangerous, sharing many of the flaws of its authoritarian counterparts. It is, today, less widespread – and thus less immediately threatening – than right-wing nationalism. But that could change.

David Boaz knew that libertarians must be alert to dangers to liberty from both right and left, and that we should strive to avoid becoming too emotionally attached to either side of the conventional political spectrum, even though tactical alliances on particular issues are often useful. On this, and much else, we should learn from his example.

My other contributions to the symposium are “David Boaz on Immigration” (initial essay) and “Liberal Universalism and the Menace of Nationalism” (first response essay). Other participant’s contributions are available at the Liberty Fund site here.

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