Book Review: The Virtue of Nationalism

Yoram Hazony has constructed a brilliant defense of nationalism over against the utopian vision of imperialists such as the UN and the EU. He also has an interesting take on why Israel is so hated by Europeans, and why the Palestinians, Muslims, and much of the Third World get by with so little censure by the UN and the EU. Carefully argued, carefully documented, Hazony makes a powerful and scholarly case for his contentions. The logic of his argument is painstakingly constructed and easy to follow--he communicates it well as a writer and a thinker. Hazony puts forward a thesis that is difficult to refute; I find myself agreeing with him in his main points.

Criticism: Hazony appears to write as, at most, a deist. God is an uninvolved bystander if He even exists. Hazony treats the OT as if one of its main purposes is establishing the "right" kind of government for Israel. In other words, Hazony treats reality as if the big story is the unending struggle of politics, philosophies, and peoples--a struggle that has neither beginning nor end. He seems to completely miss the big story of the Old Testament (the promised coming of Messiah). He's unable to deal with (or at least, does not deal with) the fundamental reality of the nature of man: that each person is intrinsically morally corrupt, and that this moral corruption becomes part of the fabric--and the explanation--of our actions, politics and philosophies. Consequently, his unrelenting logic and excellent argument about relations among peoples and nations would only be completely true in a world in which God does not exist or is not involved, and in which all men are not morally corrupt. But that is not the world we live in, with the result that his argument is incomplete and at some levels inadequate when he gets to the reasons for the hatred and violence we see in the world.

Good book, well worth reading. The criticisms above do not vitiate his main point of the virtue of nationalism.

The Federalist Papers: A Sad Irony

In 1777 the Second Continental Congress circulated among the thirteen states a constitution by which the several states in loose union would be governed. It was called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, often referred to as the Articles of Confederation. The states ratified the compact by 1781.

It was a document created during our war of independence and, quite naturally, among its chief concerns were to provide a central government possessing the authority to wage war, conclude treaties, and provide for international trade.

Article one formally gave to our new nation its name, The United States of America. The second article addressed a fear near to the heart of every eighteenth century patriot: having just broken away from a monarch they did not want to permit the establishment of a central government possessing absolute authority. Consequently the Articles granted to the confederation government only such powers as expressly delegated in the document, all other powers being explicitly reserved to the sovereign states.

The Articles granted Congress the exclusive authority to wage war, exchange ambassadors, enter into treaties, set the terms for commerce with other nations, establish weights and measures, including coinage, as well as several other powers. However, no enforcement mechanisms were provided.

By 1783 the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation were becoming obvious. For instance, the Treaty of Paris ending the war with Britain was drafted in November of 1782 and signed in September a year later. However it was not ratified by Congress until January of 1784. Part of the delay was caused by members of Congress failing to show up—and the confederation government had been given no tools to enforce attendance. Similar problems were experienced as the young nation tried to pay its large war debt. When the states failed to cough up their allotted portion, the central government had no means to force them to do so.

It was apparent that the Articles were inadequate to the task of governing the nation, so a constitutional convention was convened. By late 1787 the new constitution was submitted to the states for ratification. It was vigorously opposed by some who feared that the creation of a strong federal government would overwhelm the sovereignty of the states and eventually lead to tyranny.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay thus wrote a series of articles published in New York under the pseudonym Publius that sought to counter the arguments of the anti-federalists. The collection of eighty-five essays is now known as The Federalist Papers and set forth the benefits of a strong federal government.

The shocking and sad irony we find at this moment in our nation’s history is this: the modern federal government has become so intrusive and has so egregiously usurped the powers reserved to the states that the arguments in The Federalist Papers can now be used to contend for a large-scale dismantling of the federal leviathan.

In Federalist #27, Hamilton argues that: “It merits particular attention in this place, that the laws of the Confederacy, as to the ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of its jurisdiction, will become the SUPREME LAW of the land; . . . Thus the legislatures, courts, and magistrates, of the respective [states], will be incorporated into the operations of the national government AS FAR AS ITS JUST AND CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY EXTENDS; and will be rendered auxiliary to the enforcement of its laws.” The all-caps emphasis, my friends, was original, it was his. Notice that he limited the national government to “the enumerated and legitimate objects of its jurisdiction” and “its just and constitutional authority.” He’s limiting the Feds to what the constitution specifically enumerates as federal powers—all else is reserved to the states. 
There is nothing wrong with our federalist constitution. The problem is that neither the courts nor the legislature nor the executive have restrained the reach of the federal government to those powers granted it by the constitution.

Citing examples of federal tyranny is all too easy. For a simple project, research the amount of land in the western states owned by or controlled by the federal government. Find in the constitution a provision allowing the federal government the power of determining whether West Virginia shall burn coal to produce electricity, or Alaska drill for oil, or how many miles per gallon an automobile must attain to be manufactured in Detroit, or how much corn a farmer in Iowa is allowed to plant. Study how the commerce clause (Article I, Section 8) has been wholly twisted by the courts and legislature to give the Feds unprecedented power over the economy.

If we are to reclaim our nation, we must restore sovereignty to the states and wholly eliminate—not improve, but eliminate—entire departments of the federal government.

C. S. Lewis, the radical

I never realized what a radical C. S. Lewis was until reading his essays in God in the Dock. One of Lewis’s great concerns was the rise of the modern, technocratic welfare state. Lewis warned that the purpose of government is to protect individual liberties, not to transform society or to provide for its citizens. When a population forgets that limited role of government it is headed inevitably for tyranny.

Lewis writes, “. . . classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.” [from the essay, Is Progress Possible? in God in the Dock, 314]

Lewis published this in 1958. Apparently we weren’t listening.