The Negative Effects Of Nationalism

Op-Ed by Scott Lazarowitz

Thanks to the post-9/11 resurgence in nationalism in America, we have the “national security” apparatus turning against the very people who obediently support it, and we have escalating conflicts caused by the immigration debate.

Nationalism is a very bad thing, in my view. It is a form of collectivism, and in America it has destroyed the very basis of what America was founded on: freedom.

In immigration, for example, we have two sides of anti-freedom statists competing against one another.

On the one side are the leftist immigration extremists who want government-controlled (i.e. taxpayer-funded and approved) “sanctuary cities” and so on.

Sadly, many of these people oppose free and voluntary exchange, and they unfortunately believe in government theft of private wealth and property, who believe in wealth and income redistributionism and want to force workers and producers to have to fund the lives and activities of others involuntarily.

Why not let private charities, churches, business owners, and residents provide for and fund to help immigrants voluntarily?

On the other side are the anti-immigration collectivists and nationalists who don’t want foreigners coming to America, who want to continue the socialist, central-planning scheme of government controlling the movements of millions of people. These socialists or fascists (or social fascists) such as the awful attorney general are siccing the government police (including the federal anti-immigration police, “ICE” etc.) on the immigrants, an extremely anti-freedom way of trying to “protect” the American citizen-slaves from foreigners.

But now it seems the debate is becoming overly contentious. The leftist immigration extremists are beginning to react to the violent police state by themselves committing or threatening to commit acts of physical violence against the anti-immigration True Believer government officials, such as with the confrontations or altercations between Texas state reps Matt Rinaldi (R), Ramon Romero (D), and Poncho Nevarez (D).

Now, Rep. Rinaldi (R) claims on his Twitter profile to be “devoted to the cause of liberty,” but apparently he is one of many, many Americans who believe that only “citizens” have a right to their liberty, but not foreigners.

Like many nationalists, Rinaldi seems confused about the concept of unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that all human beings have inherently, rights which preexist the formation of any government, and which thus preexist the formation of the concept of “citizenship.” These anti-freedom types believe in government borders far more than they believe in private property and private property rights which apply to one’s labor, business and capital as well as one’s home or wealth. These people want state governments to impose top-down authority on cities, as much as they want the feds to impose their top-down authority on the states, cities, and all the people.

And I heard Dennis Prager recently on the radio criticizing those who consider themselves “citizens of the world,” rather than citizens of their country. He said that an identity with your country should be first and foremost at the top of the list of people’s self identities. For example, as some people would say, “I am an American first. Then I am Italian, then I am a Democrat, then I am a Catholic,” etc.

Well, I am not an “American” first. I am an individual first. So, I am “me” first. And then I am a member of my family, and then I am a member of my local community. Those are the immediate priorities, in my view.

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I don’t understand why people are so anti-internationalist and anti-globalist but then are such faithful and loyal nationalists, like there’s a difference as far as being a faithful member of any large political unit viewed as “important.”

But why stop there? Why is it more important that you identify with the nation in which you live, and not more with your state, town or neighborhood? So I find some inconsistency there. If we reject collectivist, top-down identities, then there isn’t much difference between saying you’re a “citizen of the world,” an “American citizen,” or a “citizen of the European Union.”

In fact, there really isn’t any difference between the European Union and the United States. Both are crumbling and collapsing before our very eyes. Both are centralized collections of nations under the rule of a top-down central-planning authority. In the beginning of the United States of America, or, between the Revolution and the ratification of a Constitution and formation of the U.S. government, the colonies were individual “nations,” or nation-states, without any connecting “national” government ruling over them after they separated from British rule.

In a society in which those unalienable rights to life and liberty, voluntary exchange and free markets, and private property rights exist, any property owner (home or business) can invite anyone else onto one’s own property. Employers would hire whomever they want, with no government permission. Workers can find a job wherever they want. As long as people are peaceful and don’t violate the persons and property of others.

Can you imagine the freedom of living one’s life without having to get a bureaucrat’s permission to do this or that?

Unfortunately, statists, centralists, nationalists, and otherwise authoritarians and collectivists don’t think that way.

And that’s just with the immigration issue.

Another example of why this nationalism and central planning stuff is really bad and very dangerous is the dependence that the masses have on the feds for “national security.”

We now have people such as the “Homeland Security” secretary himself engaging in what I would call a true act of terrorism by saying that if we knew what he knows about terrorists we’d “never leave the house.” What a schmuck, in my view. Talk about a fear-monger. And he’s so full of it, too.

The truth is actually the opposite of what these government propagandists and their media stenographers have been saying, and what most people in America believe about that whole apparatus in Washington. The truth is, U.S. Presidents have been starting wars of aggression overseas, murdering millions of innocents for decades and provoking foreigners to act against innocents in America and the West. “Intelligence” agencies especially in the U.S. and U.K. intentionally radicalize those from an already primitive and barbaric culture in the Middle East. There is plenty of proof of that most recently regarding the Manchester, England bombing. And investigative and spy bureaus have been motivating those hapless patsies within America to commit terrorist acts.

And these government bureaucrats are doing it all on purpose to “create new monsters to destroy,” to justify their government monopolies, their little fiefdoms and power trips, and especially their tax-funded paychecks, benefits and pensions. But after all these decades, they have become careless and so narcissistic in such an extreme that they are now really exposing themselves. That kind of pulling the curtain away is a breath of fresh air, isn’t it? In the end, the truth will set us free, I believe. (I hope.)

Washington bureaucrats and their enforcers are acting more and more treasonously and dangerously. So I find these recent headlines very disturbing:

Is Trump deliberately having ISIS relatives killed? (on Antiwar.com). If so, does this mean that in prosecuting other unjust laws and policies such as the drug war, will Trump have the family members of any suspects killed (as well as having suspects themselves killed, sans due process)?

The reason I’m asking can be understood by another headline: Leaked documents reveal counterterrorism tactics used at Standing Rock to defeat “pipeline insurgencies” (on the Intercept).

The feds, state and local police goons are militarizing local “law enforcement” like they are fixated in another one of their wars that the U.S. government started in the Middle East, apparently.

Besides the anti-immigration fascists and the dangerous leftist college campus purges, the “national security” apparatus has become treasonous as it has used its energies to foment terrorism against its own people. So it is time that more Americans consider a total decentralization, and it is time to stop supporting the ruling criminal racket in Washington. It is time to restore a society of peace and freedom, a society respectful of the individual’s self-ownership, private property and voluntary exchange.

The problem is that so many millions of people are indoctrinated in this nationalism thing that it might have to take an economic collapse to force them to finally let go of their dependence on and obedience to Washington. I wish there were some way to deprogram them.

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog.

Image Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images via NPR