What the Heck is National Conservatism?

And Why Should You Care?

I had not heard about National Conservatism until recently. Earlier this year I read a review of Yoram Hazony’s new book, Conservatism, a Rediscovery. It sounded interesting so I looked it up on Amazon and discovered that Mr. Hazony had previously written a book titled, The Virtue of Nationalism. It also sounded interesting so I bought both books. After reading Mr. Hazony’s earlier book, I wrote a commentary, The Specter of Nationalism, published April 25th, 2024,that critiqued Mr. Hazony’s rejection of the Enlightenment based liberal world order that America created after World War Two.

I had thought that National Conservatism (NatCon) was a fringe right-wing faction that would be of interest only to a few alt-right fanatics. That was until I saw that Senator J. D. Vance was a featured speaker at the NatCon Conference organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation only a few days before he was named Donald Trump’s running mate. Included as featured speakers along with Senator Vance were several other Republican senators, Vivek Ramaswamy and the creepiest senior advisor of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller.

My latest copy of Hillsdale College’s publication, Imprimus, featured a reprint of a talk by John Fonte, on National Conservatism, Freedom Conservatism and Americanism. Mr. Fonte divides conservatives into three groups or waves, the first wave being the William F. Buckley through Ronald Reagan wave, the second or Bush wave bounded by George H. W. and George W. and epitomized by Paul Ryan, and the third wave symbolized by Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. According to Mr. Fonte, this third wave of conservatism in America that we call Trumpism or MAGA Republicanism is essentially National Conservativism as described by Mr. Hazony in his books. National Conservatism in its Statement of Principles emphasizes God and Country and rejects globalism and Enlightenment philosophy and values. National Conservatism states that only the national values based on traditional culture and religion are appropriate for each country and asserts that the universal values of the Enlightenment are not universal at all.

The Freedom Conservatives mentioned in Mr. Fonte’s piece are the remaining second wavers (Never Trumpers or RINOs that the MAGA Republicans are pushing out of what used to be the Republican Party). They also have an organization and a Statement of Principles which they say is based on the Sharon Statement inspired by first-waver William F. Buckley at the Founding of Young Americans for Freedom. The Freedom Conservatives haven’t made much of a ripple yet but they do include some respected conservatives as signatories to their Statement of Principles such as Karl Rove, George Will and Jonah Goldberg.

The National Conservatives’ foundational principles are a common culture and religion along with a common language and shared ethnicity. I cannot tell the difference between Norwegians and Swedes but they can, which is why they have separate countries (I can tell the difference between Yorubas and Hausa-Fulanis but that is another story). All the Nordic countries are very homogenous, each having its own culture, language and ethnicity. The success of these countries is largely due to this homogeneity despite being very large welfare states. Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world for seven years in a row by the World Happiness Report primarily because it is one of the most homogenous countries in the region with 91% of its population of Finnish ethnicity.

But how does a country like the United States that lacks such homogeneity develop a common culture? Even when the United States was predominantly white (as recently as the 1970s) a shared European ancestry is very different from the shared language, religion and common culture found in the Nordic countries. Those Americans of previous generations had many different languages, religions and ethnicities. There had to be something else to bind all those disparate people from Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe together. And now that the US is even less homogenous, with new immigrants from all across the globe with different cultures, religions, languages and ethnicities, we need something special to bind a very diverse people together. I do not think that National Conservatism can fulfill that role.

Given the nature of the world and the human beings that inhabit it, it seems to me that each group of conservatives has it partly right. Rabbi Sacks noted in his book, Morality, that any cohesive nation must have a common culture. This common culture is a crucial factor so that citizens of that country understand each other. Without this understanding among citizens a country would be torn apart by division. The common culture creates the Rules of the Road so that citizens can anticipate the actions of other citizens and understand their motives.

While a single state religion cannot be imposed on citizens  in a truly free country, the various religions must be in accord with the national culture or they will be a source of division, which is why, as a Jew, Rabbi Sacks had to assimilate the culture where he lived in England. The common culture must not come at the cost of personal liberty and the common culture must be able encompass many different subcultures as was done in Singapore by Lee Kuan Yew.

In America, the rising prominence of National Conservatism has been generated by globalism which has been blamed for driving good manufacturing jobs to foreign countries. That has been a major theme of former President Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump promises to bring those jobs back by increasing tariffs on imported goods and other policies to reduce the globalization of commerce even if that is to the detriment of friends and allies as well as adversaries. National Conservatism has been portrayed as American traditional values fighting a culture war against far-left progressives. But this is deceptive.

Freedom Conservatism bears a striking resemblance to classical liberalism and classical liberalism is aspirational. As the Constitution says, the intent of our republic is to create a more perfect union and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. That means our republic should always be changing and striving to achieve those Enlightenment ideals and principles upon which America was founded, the Founders were, after all, revolutionaries, not conservatives. Our culture is based on those aspirations and ideals. But those aspirational ideals and principles are not easily achieved. Only four paragraphs after proclaiming the goal of securing the blessings of liberty, the original Constitution acknowledged that all men were not free and that slaves (those bound to service according to the Constitution) only account for three-fifths of a white person. The aspirational intentions of classical liberalism must grounded in reality. The Constitution attempts to address the issue of human nature by limiting the power of government and creating checks and balances to keep that power in check. But it is the aspirations of a better world that draw people from across the globe to our shores. It is the aspirations that make us unique among nations, that made America exceptional. As it says on the Great Seal of the United States (and the dollar bill), “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a New Order for the Ages.

National Conservatism does not recognize those aspirations. NatCons will tell you that their values are traditional American values and some are, but some very important ones aren’t. The Judeo-Christian tradition runs strong in National Conservatism, but freedom of religion doesn’t. Their statement of principles declares, “public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.” The concept of democracy as the only form of government for free individuals is absent. Again from their principles, “Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance.” To them democracy is a quaint Western tradition, not a foundational principle. National Conservatism is as alien to America’s founding principles as is socialism or communism. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin would easily agree with many of the points outlined in the NatCon Statement of Principles.

But while the beliefs of National Conservatism are alien to America’s founding principles, the problems they seek to resolve with this movement must be addressed. The Covid pandemic showed us that globalized trade and investment, while efficient, is also fragile. In times of crisis supply lines become disrupted and dependence on adversaries that don’t play by our rules can be deadly. But import substitution (which is what reshoring is all about) will not solve the problems that Trump and the National Conservatives hope to cure – the hollowing of manufacturing jobs in America’s heartland. A report from Econofact shows that while the Trump tariffs on imported steel may have increased employment in the domestic steel industry by about a thousand workers, the increased cost of steel may have cost as many as 75,000 jobs in industries dependent on steel. The loss of jobs to technology is a greater factor in job loss in the US than imports. Statistics compiled by the St. Louis Fed show that while US steel production is about the same as in the 1980s, employment in the steel industry has declined by more than half. Reshoring will not make the Rust Belt bright and shiny like new.

Innovation, an essential element of free trade and competition, does more for American workers than protectionism and tariff barriers. Protected markets are not innovative. The solution for diminishing blue-collar employment in traditional manufacturing is for American workers to learn new skills to adapt to a changing market. Innovation, and a network of allies bound by shared values, will be essential in the more dangerous world of the 21st century. National Conservatism would make that dangerous world even more dangerous, stifling innovation and weakening the alliances we need to protect our way of life.

What made America great, what made America exceptional, what made America the leader of the free world, were the Enlightenment values that formed America.