American Nationalism: Rich Lowry vs. Alex Nowrasteh

Alex exposed the nonsense of his position in the first minute, suggesting that a benign nationalism focused on national identity and cultural institutions “doesn’t exist”.

Doesn’t exist???
That would be like saying his opponent Rich Lowry doesn’t exist, and none of us who believe in civic pride and love of country without hating others exists.

Apparently only racist nationals exist in his world. Alex must be the only one on the planet to love his country without being a racist.

🐂💩

Imagine criticizing Nationalism for being just "theoretical" as a libertarian lmfao!

If nationalists are naught zees, what are globalists?

They're both just demagogues, tossing historical facts as it fits their cowardice and weak theories.
I see two leftists agents of some tribe, disguised as center and right libertarian, doing what they do the best: dividing nations.... 😂
And BTW libertarianism is what took us to the current state of affairs in the first place.
I would love to see those two "early life" paragraphs on Wiki 😁

So let me guess, no one's opinion was changed

The same people who were against the war in Vietnam are supporting the war against Russia. Go figure

Stop doing drugs people

Goddamn when does the debate start

I vote for the British empire and napoleon

This debate makes me want to vomit

To me, nationleftist simply a bi product of run away leftism and failure of proper representation.

America is a capital market empire.

I’ve been saying this for years. Whether the debaters realize it or not nearly all debates revolve around a battle of defining terms. This debate is an excellent example

Loyalty to Core values, A binding document that is natural and simple enough for even the uneducated to understand and defend, with clear geographical borders Is great; without boundaries and law and natural voluntary moral duty instilled in the culture, the value system will be consumed by a larger more intolerant statists… even if the consumer(s) are domestic and not foreign. in other words, it can’t be just be About defending the term USA or a flag or a cult leader. Defending power for the sake of power, Or selling our soul for some imagined future greater good is unsustainable, because The individuals end up defending something they naturally hate.

I've been undecided on many a debate. This might be the first time I went into a debate agreeing with the resolution and left it disagreeing.

As someone who finds themselves as somewhere in between libertarianism and conservatism, this was very interesting to listen to.

Alex had me with "Nationalism is to stalking, as patriotism is to love."

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights explicitly forbids the formation of a Nation State. Yes, Lincoln violated the Constitution and Bill of Rights on a number of levels, but he completely trampled over the 10th Amendment.

The United States of America. Think about it for a moment and you will understand that we are NOT one nation. We are a FEDERATION of 50 (currently) individual STATES. The pledge of allegiance. The flag. The anthem. These all came much later as the country moved away from its roots and into a centralized, anti-constitutional unified State.

Someone needs to fix the editing. Audio doesn’t match up with video.

Look at all of these examples of successful non Nation-States:

Proceeds to list half a dozen countries that are 95%+ White.

Being a nationalist is a completely idiotic concept. No one chooses the country in which they born.

Seems like Rich is in favor of "nation-ism" (i.e. a territory having a single government as established by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is the default unit of international relations and internal governance) and "American-ism" rather than nationalism. His argument seems to be, basically, "I love America, America is a great nation, therefore I'm a nationalist and nationalism is good, because America is good."

The best moment in this debate was when he was asked at what point a nation becomes an empire---for which he did not have a good answer.

It lays bare that "nationalists" are just would-be imperialists who have enough strength to dominate and centralize power over one group of people, but aren't strong enough to start exerting that power over others. Hence, German nationalism was nationalism when Prussians were forcing French speakers in Alsace to pay German taxes and speak German, but somehow it is "imperialism" when they attempt to do the same thing to Belgians.

Shame no one asked Rich about the Uighurs in China. Aren't they being "reeducated" so they can become a part of the Chinese nation?

Anyone who has lived under peculiar nationalisms, like oneself, living in Scotland a nation within Great Britain, can tell you is that it's a double-edged sword.

Good job Grant! Really enjoyed it!

"Was Alexander Hamilton a proto-fascist?"

Yes.

As an ideological private law society market anarchist (libertarian), but with great fondness for traditional American conservatism, I disagreed with Rich Lowry way more than Alex, but I still feel like Alex didn't do as good of a job as he could. He should of talked more about how Rich Lowry's version of conservatism is not rooted in the American tradition, which has always been about strong decentralization, and federalism.

This so Jerry Springer minus the beating up aspect... 😮

patriotism and nationalism are the same thing

This is the first time watching the SOHO Forum made me dumber. 🤦

Rich’s arguments are some of the goofiest things I’ve ever heard. Argues (correctly) that the Austrian Habsburgian empire wasn’t nationalist… later argues “if we aren’t a nation why do we have borders?”… did the habsburgian empire not have borders? Borders aren’t just a function of nation-states. So many silly, self-contradictory arguments for his position.

It’s quite funny that the guy they got to defend nationalism did not even know the definition of a nation.

I think this debate was a missed opportunity - debating a definition rather than the substance. What Rich defended isn’t necessarily what opponents of “nationalism” oppose. Alex became distracted by the definitions and didn’t hone in on the real concerns.

Love you fake libertarians supporting Rich, a Bush era neocon who stridently pushed for the Iraq war. Rich’s version of nationalism is taxing Americans to give huge sums of money to Israel and Ukraine.

I found the claim that CA and AU are free nations, given the insane COVID restrictions, rather amusing.

I would enjoy, briefly, listening to these chaps debate the definitions of vaccine and recession...

Summary: Poison is a function of the dose.

I have no issue with shared cultural and political values. Having a coherent vision of your country is important.

What I don’t like is the idea that somehow your life is less important if you aren’t a member of my nation.

Also Jeffrey Epstein and John McAfee didn't kill themselves

Wow, that escalated! 😆😅🤣

What is the opposite of nationalism? Its globalism. Im not the opposite of a globalist.

This right here won it for me.
"It's an ideology of GROUP-RIGHTS, that denigrates individualism in favor of an ABSTRACTION known as a tribe or in this case the nation."
Arbitrarily grouping and drawing conclusions from statistics concerning those groups is the source of nearly all stupidity in social policy. The letter of law is at it's best when group membership is totally ignored.

nationalism - noun
identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.

if the nationalists interests are genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation etc etc, they don't suddently stop becoming nationalist becasue Rich low iq Lowry arbitrarily decides they don't meet his criteria.