I wish that when one pointed out accurately that the other person was wrong, the other person would embrace the truth, but that’s not how the world works.
If you don’t see clearly what is, it’s hard to give prescriptions for making what is better.
One obstacle to conversation between liberals and the right is that one side is usually arguing for what should be with the kingly power of reason (I think this is the liberal side usually) while the trad side talks primarily about what is.
For example, New York Times liberal Ezra Klein says to nationalist Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony:
Listen, America is this grand experiment, and what holds that experiment together is the liberal tolerance of division, disagreement and difference. And that the people in that experiment need to be committed to one another, to our shared institutions, to elections and the peaceful transfer of power — and that what is going wrong is a dissolving commitment to that. In a way, Joe Biden could be making that argument to me.
But national conservatism is making some other argument than that. It’s not making an argument that we need more decency from our politicians or we need just more commitment to the abstract institutions of democracy and the other political party — because I agree with all that.
A nationalist might respond: I agree that in a nation, “The people in that experiment need to be committed to one another, to our shared institutions, to elections and the peaceful transfer of power — and that what is going wrong is a dissolving commitment to that.” That is a civic ideal. But how do we get there? From a nationalist perspective, the more we have in common with each other, the more naturally we will trust each other.
The liberal believes in the power of the individual’s capacity for autonomous strategic thinking. The trad believes that we are not primarily individuals, that we are not primarily living in a buffered identity, and that our cognitive powers are much weaker than our genetic and cultural predispositions and that we should base our politics on what is rather than on what should be.
From a trad perspective, liberalism is just one tool in the tool box to make a better nation. The nation does not serve liberalism. Liberalism, to the extent you use it, should serve the people.
Everything, with few exceptions, should serve the nation. Free markets and free trade and socialism and tariffs and government funding of science and international alliances should all be employed to the extent that they increase the dignity, safety and well-being of your people. The nation’s leaders should not act experimentally in the service of ideas.
Principles are nice but for most people, they function primarily as cues to emotion that spring from our bonds to people we know. Music moves us, not from the logic of its words and notes, but from how it makes us feel. Nationalism is something we feel more than think. Rationality is not usually our primary driver.
Just because the Nazis believed in blood and soil does not mean that the common emotions that spring from ties of blood and soil are bad and should be denied. Sometimes it is adaptive to speak up for the importance of ties of blood and soil, and in other situations, it is more adaptive to emphasize other bonds such as religion or civic identity. Nationalism always contains a racial element, a civic element, a religious element, a cultural element, and other elements. For some, their nationalism will primarily be ideological, for others it will be primarily civic, for others it will be primarily religious, and for others it will be primarily racial. These commitments are not exclusive. People are complicated. If you can get people rowing in the same direction, it doesn’t matter that their primary motivations differ. You want your people rowing in the same direction. For some Jews, for example, their primary devotion is to Torah. For others, their primary devotion is to Israel. For others, their primary devotion is to their family. These different sources of motivation can lead these Jews to rowing together. It’s the same for all nations.
