Skeptic Magazine commissioned the following essay for a special issue on the theme of nationalism, (vol. 27, no. 4 / Dec. 2022). We are pleased to reprint a slightly revised version of the essay, with permission, in New Ideal. Part I appeared last week.

National conservatism’s anti-Enlightenment crusade

Distancing themselves from nationalism’s blood-soaked legacy, those who call themselves “national conservatives” would have us believe that their ideology is pro-liberty, that it is in fact the path to restoring the American vision. But as with the nationalism of the last century, their vision is hostile to reason, individualism and liberty.

National conservatism fundamentally devalues the individual’s rational mind, and consequently, it repudiates the principle of individual rights. In his book, The Virtue of Nationalism, Hazony argues that — contrary to the evidence — human reason is incapable of arriving at universal truths. He writes that, “no human being, and no group of human beings, possesses the necessary powers of reason and the necessary knowledge to dictate the political constitution that is appropriate for all mankind.”1 Therefore, he believes, it is wrong to regard the principle of individual rights as a universal truth. Instead, he downgrades it to a “cultural inheritance of certain tribes and nations.” (And as we’ll see, despite pro-liberty rhetoric, this view empties the principle of individual rights of all meaning.)

National conservatism is tribalism with a theoretical fig leaf. If you unpack Hazony’s idea of “the national state,” inside, like nesting Russian Matryoshka puzzle dolls, you find tribes; unpack tribes, and you find clans and families. Unpack families, and yes, there is a reluctant concession that families consist of individuals, but the basic unit of value is really the family/tribe. Binding the collective together are a common language, and history and the self-recognition as a community. To be part of this collective is to owe your devotion to its “collective self-determination.” (This implies divining the “collective’s” will, by some means transcending our senses and reasoning minds.) Here as with twentieth-century varieties of nationalism, the nation’s needs take precedence over the lives and judgment of individuals.

National conservatism repudiates the Enlightenment’s focus on individual sovereignty. Yoram Hazony, in a keynote at a nationalist conference, announced that “We declare independence from neoliberalism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism — you can give it any name you want — but that set of ideas that sees the atomic individual, the free and equal individual” as central to political thought.2

Will a national conservative state protect your individual rights? To have even a semblance of freedom, in this view, you have to live in a tribe or nation where that is a “cultural inheritance.” (Tough luck if you’re born where “honor killings” and female genital mutilation are accepted cultural inheritances.) Whatever degree of freedom you may be afforded is not a matter of your moral right, but rather a permission granted by the collective, and hence a permission that it may withdraw. Essentially, your life and freedom actually belong to the nation. To echo Hegel, your life is “something subordinate,” and if the collective “claims life, the individual must surrender it.”

National conservatism seeks not to safeguard individual liberty, but to exert authoritarian control. You can see this in a 10-point manifesto that Hazony co-authored, “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles,”3 which bears the signatures of a long list of writers, political figures and activists. The document puts forward several anodyne positions that give it a veneer of compatibility with freedom: an embrace of the rule of law; a repudiation of racism; the idea of constitutional government; a nod to the idea of free enterprise. These, however, are merely window-dressing.

The manifesto’s conception of the purpose of government is overtly collectivist. Government is not instituted for the sake of securing the rights of individuals, but “to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation.” To serve the collective’s welfare, national conservatives call for imposing a “national economic policy” to command every individual and prop up favored industries (while somehow, miraculously, avoiding “cronyism”). In reality, this erects but the facade of enterprise, trade and private property, while negating their essence.

The manifesto’s distinctive aim, however, is religious authoritarianism. National conservatism seeks to demolish one of the signal achievements of the American political system — the separation of church and state. This separation reflected a sober recognition of historical experience: the Old World had been racked by wars of religion and by the political dominion of one Church or another. For their part, national conservatives assert that:

No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. [. . .] Where a Christian majority exists, 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.

Such a Christian nationalist regime, we’re assured, would protect religious minorities. Notice, however, the statement’s glib evisceration of the First Amendment’s protection of intellectual freedom. The national conservative manifesto simply states: “Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.” [Emphasis added.]

To say that freethinkers, dissidents or atheists, for instance, “should be” protected “in their private lives and in their homes” is not to say that they have a right to freedom of thought and speech. That would necessarily include the right to voice and write and publish your ideas. A protection that extends only to your private life and home conflicts with that; it implies that you cannot hire a lecture hall, run a blog, publish books, release videos, exhibit artwork or run advertisements to express your views. And why exclude children from such protection? Presumably, national conservatives are only too eager to see children in state schools indoctrinated in the state’s dogmas (Christian dogmas, here in the U.S.).

Moreover, whatever this protection looks like, it is conditional. The nation’s “collective self-determination” takes precedence, overriding any permission granted to individuals. It is hardly an original tactic to promise people a vague freedom that the government can later revoke, once it has seized sufficient political power and no longer feels obliged to put on a friendly mask.

The authoritarianism latent in national conservatism can be seen elsewhere in the “Statement of Principles.” In keeping with the goal of marrying church and state, the government’s purpose is not only to bring criminals to justice. Its mission also encompasses the imposition of a religiously rooted morality: in areas “in which lawlessness, immorality and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.”

And how, exactly, does a government’s energetic intervention against “immorality and dissolution” square with protecting individuals from “religious or ideological coercion”? Further evidence of the religious authoritarian agenda is contained in the document’s alarm at “radical forms of sexual license and experimentation” and the notion that government must foster “stable family and congregational life and child-raising as priorities of the highest order.”

These goals — policing sexual behavior, promoting traditional “family values,” encouraging childbearing — are shared by Islamist regimes such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and, especially, the self-styled Christian regimes of Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán (fittingly, Orbán was an honored guest at one of the national conservatism conferences). There is a deep kinship between these authoritarian regimes and national conservatism.

Notice also the points of commonality between national conservatism and a political vision that came to power in the last century.

[This outlook] is a religious one in which man is viewed in his permanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. [. . .]

Being anti-individualistic, . . . [it] recognizes the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State . . . ; outside of it no human or spiritual values may exist, much less have any value. [ . . .]

To achieve this purpose it enforces discipline and makes use of authority, entering into the mind and ruling with undisputed sway.4

The similarities are marked: Religion as a political foundation. Subjugating the sovereign individual to the nation. Authoritarian control. These are the words of a political figure who elevated the nation above the individual; who allowed the facade of enterprise, trade and private property, while negating their essence; and who built a militant dictatorship. That this statement from Benito Mussolini resonates with the political vision of national conservatism should be disturbing.

National conservatism is an ideology crusading for religious authoritarianism.

In The Virtue of Nationalism Hazony insists that his brand of nationalism is narrow, unambitious and therefore peaceful. Yet, by design, Hazony’s theory puts the life and freedom of the individual at the mercy of the tribe/nation, and so vulnerable to being exploited in the name of “collective self-determination.” What recourse is possible to an individual if his duty is to subordinate himself? What hope can there be of resolving disagreements peacefully through persuasion, if this society is predicated on sidelining reason and rejecting universal truth? What’s left, except physical force? Nothing.

These points are evident in examining actual societies that devalue reason and subordinate individuals to the collective. They exhibit an ingrained “us-versus-them” mindset, which leads to viewing outsiders with suspicion, if not contempt. How can disagreements and conflicts be settled in such societies? Why try to reason with “outsiders” who are inferior, wrong or beyond redemption? Think of the Rwandan genocidal tribal war in 1994. Recall the “ethnic cleansing” and concentration camps during the nationalist wars in the Balkans. 

Nationalism is notorious for conflict and bloodshed, and that’s fitting: it pushes aside the faculty that enables individuals to avoid and resolve conflicts through persuasion.

A pro-reason, pro-American alternative

Why abandon the Enlightenment ideals at the foundation of America in the name of national conservatism? Because, we’re told, today’s cultural disintegration and the “woke” phenomenon are products of consistently practicing reason, individualism, liberty and their political-economic expression, capitalism. Supposedly, reason ends in alienation, individualism ends in nihilism, capitalism ends in unemployment, poverty, despair and misery. In their place, national conservatives offer religious collectivism as a cure. 

Yet this is a fraud. Reason is our means of understanding the world, ourselves and others. It is our way of taking control of our lives, earning self-esteem, bonding with friends and lovers, resolving conflicts and creating lives of meaning. Nihilism and alienation are products not of reason, but of rejecting it in the name of faith and other forms of irrationality, a prevailing cultural trend. Moreover, it is not individualism but the focus on group identity and tribalism that dominate our culture. It is not capitalism but the betrayal of political and economic freedom that has been the theme of the past century. The economic upheavals and angst we’re witnessing are products of our refusal to uphold liberty — the full separation of state and economics — consistently.

National conservatism is not a cure for our cultural ills, but part of what’s ailing us.

But there is a rational alternative. What’s urgently needed today is a rethinking of the ideals of reason, individualism and freedom — and a commitment to realize them fully, consistently, without compromise. 

In the twentieth century, the foremost champion of these philosophic ideals was Ayn Rand. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism takes reason, not faith, as the only means to knowledge. It teaches us to follow our best, most rational judgment, not treating feelings as tools of cognition. Individualism is the theme running through Rand’s novels and thought. The hallmark of individualism is a fundamental orientation to facts and a commitment to grasping the truth first-handedly, rather than obedience to authority or unthinking social conformity.

This thoroughgoing individualism implies a distinctive moral code. The moral purpose of an individual’s life, Rand argues, is “the achievement of his own happiness.” Happiness cannot be achieved by the satisfaction of irrational whims; it entails “using your mind’s fullest power” to identify, pursue, and achieve genuinely life-furthering values. And the Objectivist ethics of rational egoism holds that “human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.”5

Politically, the government’s proper function is not to subordinate the individual to some alleged greater good, “the public interest,” the community, the “race,” God’s will or the nation — but to protect his freedom to pursue his own path in life. Rand wrote:   

Individualism regards man — every man — as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights — and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.6

The Enlightenment bequeathed to us the idea of the sovereign individual, but since then this idea was attacked and marginalized. In Rand’s philosophy we find the philosophic validation, grounded in empirical facts and logic, for America’s foundational ideals. It is these secular ideals properly understood and defended that we desperately need today, not any whitewashed form of collectivism.

"The long march towards democracy has been to free men from the abuses of the sovereign’s whim. Alas ... democracy contains within it two toxic seeds. ...

"The second is what French economist Frédéric Bastiat observed in 1848: 'the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.'

"The longer we have had democracy, the greater demands electors have made on those elected. ...

"We are now several generations into an experiment on dependency so profound that this election we look for politicians who can fulfil central government’s promise to educate our children, pay for our entertainment, supply the news, cover our medical bills and even address our mental health issues.

"These are not the demands of a free people.

"These are the expectations of serfs."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'We escaped the whims of kings. Did we just create a new kind of dependence?'

"Freedom is not empowerment. ... Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. [Freedom i]s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle."

~ PJ O'Rourke from his 1993 'Liberty Manifesto'

[Also appearing in the Spectator.]

You Can See Everything is a brilliant and deeply evil film about the utterly cursed world we live in. It is the only world we have, so it’s worth getting good at living in.

I am going to be free with the spoilers. There is nothing to spoil. There is actually no true content in this 3-hour film. Well, about 90 seconds. Yo…

Read more

It’s a rare and rewarding turn of events when the irrationality of our opponents is captured in a spot-on new term. So let’s savor the emergence of “doomer.” Naturally, I asked Claude just what “doomer” means.

A “doomer” is someone convinced that catastrophe is coming and probably can’t be stopped. It spread around 2018 as an internet meme: a cartoon of a gloomy young man in a black beanie, chain-smoking, hopeless about his own life and the world. The label then broadened into a tag for fatalistic pessimists on particular topics. A “climate doomer” thinks climate collapse is unavoidable. An “AI doomer” thinks advanced AI will likely wipe out or subjugate humanity. It’s usually a put-down, implying the gloom is more mood than argument. Some AI-risk people have adopted it for themselves, though. The opposite camp is sometimes called “boomers,” or more often “accelerationists.”

In today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Weekend Interview” is “Why Did Technologists Become Doomers?”

It’s not just the slant of the headline that’s good. The interviewee, Zack Korman, is astonishing–not just in being on the right side, not just in supplying important information about the risks of AI, but in actually showing that what caused the hysteria is a philosophy! And guess which philosophy: “effective altruism”!

The “effective altruism” brand has been pushed for a decade or two now. So let’s pause to evaluate the term. There are two things to bear in mind:

1. Effective altruism is still altruism.

2. Altruism is the morality of death.

On one level, “effective” and “altruism” are incompatible. “Effective” means bringing about the goal. Altruism means: surrendering all goals. But on a deeper level, there is one way a morality of self-abnegation can be effective: suicide.

Returning to the interview:

Mr. Korman traces the origins of AI doomerism to a 2014 book, “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. Elon Musk praised the book at the time.

Bostrom’s profundity may be judged by his serious claim that we may be living in a simulation.

This is a revival of Descartes’ idea of the evil demon who force-feeds you false beliefs, such as that what you see is real. Another variant is Bertrand Russell’s idea that the world and you could have popped into existence 5 minutes ago but equipped with a whole set of (false) memories of a past history.

Back to “effective altruism.” It includes utilitarianism, “the greatest good for the greatest number” and runs wild with it. “The greatest number” is taken not just to mean everyone on earth, but everyone who will ever live.

Effective altruists add to utilitarianism the concept of “longtermism”–spelled with no hyphen–which Mr. Korman defines as the idea “that future lives matter the most, so to speak, because there’s so many more of them.”

He explains:

there’s eight billion people alive today, but over the next thousand years, we might hundreds of billions of people that come and go [i.e., not just because the population might grow but mainly because 1,000 years is many lifespans]. And if something bad were to happen to prevent those hundred billion people from coming into existence, we’ve effectively committed genocide.

Do you get the implication? You have to sacrifice not merely for the people around the globe who are alive; you have to sacrifice to bring into existence future people. And those who do not come into existence will hold you responsible for their never being born!

This is not idle theory. Mr. Korman knows these people, was at Oxford around the time Bostrom’s book became a thing, and has a career in cybersecurity. He says “effective altruism” is behind the doomer notions of slowing, restricting, or stopping technological progress:

Effective altruist organizations are “very committted to this concept of catastrophic risk and how do you prevent it. And one of the big areas of catastrophic risk would be AI kills everyone.” That Mr. Korman concludes is why “effective altruists as a community are extraordinarily doomer.”

Many of this ideology’s adherents have ties to large AI companies. Anthropic’s president, Daniela Amodei, sister of CEO Dario Amodei, is the wife of Holdem Karnofskyu, who co-founded two large effective altruist nonprofits. Anthropic received early funding from effective-altruism adherents including Sam Bankman-Fired. . . With so many effective altruists on the payroll, it’s little wonder that AI labs are filled with doomers.

There’s more, but I just want to pass along this little-known information about the vaunted Hugging Face break-in by a “swarm” of OpenAI’s agents who were being tested. Mr. Korman says the incident was due to a lack of “basic cybersecurity”:

OpenAI has said explicitly that if their monitoring was running, this would not have happened, but they weren’t running it.

I had heard it claimed that the Hugging Face incident was due to inadequate preventive measures, but I certainly did not know that OpenAI has stated that explicitly. Mr. Korman used to be a doomer himself, but learning more about the field–and the weird ideology behind the doomers–have converted him to be an AI booster. And he is rightly more than suspicious about the power that would be given to “regulators”:

Some, including Mr. Gates, have called for an international regulatory body to manage AI. “I think that’s quite a scary concept,” Mr. Korman says.

Correctly, he believes that legal liability law is the proper vehicle for handling such risks as there are– risks which are not that different, he says, from the risks posed by older technologies, as in the case of the automobile.