I have always found celebrating America’s independence to be a joy. America was the first nation founded on idea, and that idea was freedom. The celebration should be even more special this year as we approach America’s 250th birthday and are already beginning the anniversary of the rebellion which produced independence. I realize that not all Americans celebrate our nation. Marxist, Post-Modernist, racialist progressives, I know, believe our nation embodies everything wrong with humanity. But classical liberals and libertarians who value freedom should celebrate our national heritage, right? Except some claim that proponents of freedom are hostile to even American nationalism.
Personally, my immediate reaction was that thus must be a joke. I have never seen any tension between freedom and nationalism. World government, the antithesis of nationalism, has always to me appeared enormously detrimental to freedom. I have always favored U.S. national sovereignty over international organizations like the United Nations. I was consequently surprised to learn about the alleged tension between classical liberalism or libertarianism, and nationalism. I believe I first encountered this thesis in Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism. I began to recognize the globalist bent of libertarians and libertarian organizations. Indeed, many free market economists whom I know champion globalist positions like open borders and unrestricted international trade.
I see this as all wrong. Freedom arises when a group of people decide to achieve freedom for themselves; that is, to create a free nation. Throughout the history of civilization, many humans have tried to subjugate others through force, fear, and intimidation. The conquerors have never abandoned their efforts because some folks asked to be left along. A free nation only comes into existence because the people constituting the nation make a hard commitment to protect each other from subjugation and with no ulterior motive of subjugating their allies of today after defeating the conquerors. This was the essence of the American Revolution and the source of American exceptionalism. A free nation is profoundly moral, perhaps the apex of human morality. Classical liberal theory may hold that all humans are morally equal, but we are not physically equal. Although we might all contribute to our common defense, the strong and brave contribute more than others. When the strong and brave join in mutual defense as opposed to domination of the physically weaker, this represents the very best behavior of people.
The ideals of libertarian theory remain a pipe dream until or unless a group of people band together to fight for and maintain their freedom. The world is full of predators and defense against predators looking to conquer and exterminate those showing weakness or possessing wealth is always an absolute necessity. If external predators are kept at bay, the problem of who guards the guards arises. In a free nation the guards must choose not to try to dominate other citizens. George Washington returned to Mount Vernon after winning our independence, he did not use the Continental Army to subjugate Americans. Forging a free nation must involve significant trust, first trust those who do the heavy lifting to secure freedom will not in turn subjugate those they have defended against foreign predators, and second that citizens will not irresponsibly pick fights with others, creating messes for the group.
We should celebrate any nation coming remotely close to realizing the ideal of freedom. And those fortunate enough to be born into a free nation, we should honor those who established and protected this freedom, deliberately choosing not to dominate the fellow citizens they protected.
To be clear, nationalism can be a form of collectivism and has served as cover for efforts to curtail individual freedom. But the voluntary commitment to mutual defense at the core of a free nation is to be celebrated.
I find the ambivalence and perhaps even hostility of libertarians most surprising because Ayn Rand, a dominant intellectual force of modern libertarianism, was a true patriot for her adopted United States. She always rejected any moral equivalence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, argued that a free nation could invade an unfree nation whenever it chose, and advocated for rational self-interest in national defense. As just one illustration, consider the following passages from her essay, “The Roots of War”:
A dictatorship is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country’s economy, he attacks his neighbors. … A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. …
Needless to say, unilateral pacifism is merely an invitation to aggression. Just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so has a free country if attacked.
Ayn Rand was a true America Firster.
We should recognize and applaud the universalism of classical liberalism. The political philosophy was not applicable to only some humans. The principles and rules were based on human nature, specifically our ability to reason and cooperate. Brad Thompson details this for America’s founders in America’s Revolutionary Mind. The rules of just conduct could potentially apply to everyone. This was not a political philosophy patched together to defend the acts of one nationality, race, or religion but one which all humans could live by and up to. Classical liberalism’s universal message conflicted with those seeking to defend and maintain slavery. Phil Magness in The 1619 Project: A Critique highlights the tension between liberalism and Southern efforts to defend the peculiar institution. Defenders of slavery understood the need to reject the entire liberal, free market project to justify continued human bondage. Recognizing the applicability of a system of peaceful cooperation to all humans signifies moral progress and comprises an admirable element of liberalism.
Proponents of liberty seemingly forget, however, that while everyone can potentially live by the rules of freedom, many humans do not embrace this. While we might offer philosophical tracts about the rights and freedoms of all humans, which all should possess. Many humans continue to want to subjugate others or to serve them. Others wish to compel their neighbors to live or worship as they command. In such a world people only have the rights and freedoms they can make others accept. Achieving freedom requires a group to recognize the value of each individual and commit to defend their freedom. A nation – a free nation – is the only way to approximate the classical liberal and libertarian ideal.
American libertarians should also not be ashamed to feel patriotism. Emotions are an automatic human response when we observe good in the world. This was another theme of Miss Rand. Consider this from her essay “Apollo 11″ on watching the rocket’s blastoff:
I found myself waving to the rocket involuntarily, I heard people applauding and joined them, grasping our common motive; it was impossible to watch passively, one had to express, by some physical action, a feeling that was not triumph but more: the feeling that the white object’s unobstructed streak of motion was the only thing that mattered in the universe. … That we had seen a demonstration of man at his best, no one could doubt – this was the cause of the event’s attraction and of the stunned, numbed state in which it left us.
Freedom is good. Stories of the Americans who chose to put their lives in danger to protect freedom should cause an emotional response. Feel free to cheer at Fourth of July fireworks or get misty eyed watching a documentary on the American Revolution. Freedom isn’t free and the moral choice people make to fight for a nation’s freedom should move the rest of us. Founding and maintaining a free nation is among the best that humans can do.
Pic of Ayn RandL Julius Jääskeläinen, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Daniel Sutter is Affiliated Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center and Professor of Economics at the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University.
