Is Nationalism Incompatible With Liberty? Two Libertarians Disagree

Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Jeremy. This is a great opportunity. I love that we're an active movement here in New Hampshire. Congratulations, everyone, for being the most successful libertarian movement in the country. You've really distinguished yourselves. Uh even in in Missouri, where I'm from, when people talk about libertarians who are effective, uh, they talk about New Hampshire. So congratulations for your success thus far, and I wish you the best in the future. Now, libertarian nationalism, people ask me what does this mean? What do you what do you mean when you describe yourself as libertarian nationalists? We talked about that. And I just think of it as libertarianism with the guts to actually govern. So I believe in everything that the libertarian tradition got right, which are things like property rights, individualism, limited government, the constitution.

But I reject the part that I think is holding us back at this point in time, which we should discuss tonight. Things like the non-aggression principle. I think you know that doesn't stop Hamas. Right? You could go to Gaza right now and give them all a copy of Murray Rothbard, and that's not the non-aggression principle isn't going to stop them from committing acts of terrorism. Uh, I don't think open borders preserves liberty. I I've always been someone who believed that there should be security protocols for ending the United States. And I actually I I became more closed borders because the more I studied and read and learned what open borders, I won't say apologists, but open borders activists stated they believed, they always said specifically in their uh political theory that it open borders doesn't mean just anyone can come to the United States.

You can't come here to commit acts of terrorism, you can't come here to subvert our society, etc. And I thought, okay, well, then is that really open borders? I mean, what's so different about that that from like my own version of libertarianism? And after a while, I started to sort of like pull out this thread, the sweater, you know, and and start to put things together and realize that there wasn't really a coherent coherent theory behind open borders, other than perhaps what left-wing anarchists believe, which is truly no concept of a nation state whatsoever. So I think a philosophy that refuses to defend civilization itself will be replaced by one that does. Um, and I think liberty needs a home. Certainly it's found a home in New Hampshire, and I want to defend that. I don't believe that nationalism is incompatible with individual liberty.

I think that just like there are dozens of forms of libertarianism, there's minarchism, anarcho-capitalism, there's Georgism, uh, there uh there's Ayn Rand's objectivism. There are about a dozen different schools of thought amongst nationalists as well. So uh I don't believe that nationalism inherently is incompatible with individual liberty because I think that liberty didn't uh libertarianism didn't emerge from a vacuum, it emerged from a nation. Uh, and I also I really dislike that there is this resistance to embracing America's tradition of liberty because I look at the United States American nationalism as different from other forms of nationalism, because American nationalism to me intrinsically is tied up with the concept of liberty. And I think it's a huge mistake to give up the American project to the authoritarians or the authoritarian nationalists or left-wing communists or socialists.

And I think that it it's that is our birthright. The United States was a gift given to us from our ancestors and our heritage. And my ancestors specifically fought for this country in the American Revolution. And I think that we would be making a humongous mistake to walk away from the national project that our ancestors handed down to us. So I see American nationalism as intrinsically libertarian, where German nationalism, Japanese nationalism, is not. You do not the one thing that makes America unique, the one thing that makes America exceptional compared to Europe or other countries is that if you go to find a conservative meeting in the UK, there are no libertarians. Conservatism in the United Kingdom has no libertarian aspects to it almost whatsoever. The thing that separates American nationalism from other forms of nationalism is our belief in individualism.

We're cowboys. God, guns, gold, girls. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so we I believe that we should, we as the libertarians should rise up, reclaim the American project for ourselves, place ourselves and our history at the center of the American project, and we should gradually exclude those who came to usurp the birthright that was handed to us, uh, and which is there waiting for us. It reminds me of the story of Jacob and Esau, and I see I see many libertarians who are gladly handing over the American national project to people who despise us, people who hate us, who call themselves Americans, who clearly have nothing in common with our founding fathers or with us and our ideals. Well, that's a lot. That's great. We, I mean, uh, you know, I got I got professional PR training once, and they said when they first get to talk, you just say whatever you want uh and ignore whatever you're supposed to be talking about.

Yeah. And uh yeah. So you just gotta get whole display. So uh no, I thought I I agree. I mean, we'll get to some areas where I might disagree with you, but I we're not here to go, I'm not gonna respond to everything you just said. Um uh I think this one, this one was kind of meant to be somewhat of a gimme. I think everyone in almost everyone in this room um is here because we believe in some degree uh uh in uh a nation. I don't I honestly don't even really understand how you take the other side of this. Are you are you like there's one gonna be one global culture and everyone's gonna be the same? I mean, once people are different, you're gonna have areas with different culture, different languages, different practices, the and that's gonna start to look something like a nation. I think when people object to the idea of nationalism, it's usually because they're rolling other things into that idea.

Uh, but we can have a nation where, well, that the shared culture that there's some of our shared practices are individual liberty and free markets and property and property rights. Um, and so you know, I think that as libertarians and pro-liberty people can object to a lot of nations that exist and how they behave, but I don't think that means we should be against the idea of a nation or wanting to be a part of a shared people or a shared culture, whether that's at the level of America, New Hampshire, or or any number of other scales. Yeah, I think speaking of PR, I think that the word nationalism has gotten a bad rap because of white nationalism, and because it if you go to get an American school textbook from a public school, they will speak of nationalism as inherently a negative thing.

Uh and there are people who believe in a post-national project. There are people who think that eventually one day, like like Karl Marx and others believe that we would all rise up and we would abolish our governments and that we would all live, you know, collectively in peace. But I don't see, I don't see even the most even the most based examples of anarcho-capitalism that you could look at from world history, whether it's the hoplite farmers of ancient Greece, they got taken over. If you look at uh Icelandic Ghidord, uh the Icelandic Vikings created a system that was very limited taxation, and they all got to choose their own leaders. We haven't lasted as long as that system yet either, though. No, true, but they've lasted longer than us. But they were they were taken over. They were ultimately taken over.

And then there was Zier of Africa. But uh again, taken over. There are still some c some aspects of law from the the days of the Zier of Africa. But e all of those experiments, they were taken over by a larger force because they were unable to defend their polity. Uh and libertarianism needs teeth. Let's take it to the next, let's get to the next topic because I think we're gonna cover some of this. All right.