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5.25.2024
He says the two ideas "are not in tension with one another." He's wrong.
While speaking at the Libertarian National Convention (LNC) on Friday, tech entrepreneur and failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy floated an idea upon which he said the "future of this country depends."
All that it requires is for libertarians to decide to support a larger, more powerful federal government.
"I believe that the future of this country depends on a libertarian-nationalist alliance that will save this country," Ramaswamy argued from the main stage at the LNC, where he also debated Clint Russell, one of several men running for the Libertarian Party's vice presidential nomination.
Those comments were met with a smattering of boos from the crowd of Libertarian delegates—and for good reason. There are many factions of libertarians, of course, but the one belief that unites the movement is an understanding that individuals are best suited to make their own decisions about how to live. Nationalism, at its root, is a fundamentally collectivist idea that prioritizes the needs of the state over the choices of individuals.
In off-stage comments to Reason at the LNC, Ramaswamy reiterated his belief in a libertarian-nationalist alliance. When pushed to explain how two seemingly opposing viewpoints could find common ground, he argued that the two are "not overlapping objectives, but they are not in tension with one another."
"When I say 'nationalist,' I mean a revival of our national identity," Ramaswamy explained to Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller (whose video coverage of the LNC will be forthcoming). "I don't think that's counter to libertarian principles at all. I think we've lost that national pride and identity in our country, and I think that is a foundational issue."
With all due respect to Ramaswamay, that's a load of crap. The current wave of nationalism sweeping the right wing of American politics is not about innocent-sounding things like restoring national pride. Its proponents are quite open about the fact that they want to grow the power of the state to pursue things like industrial policy, aggressive deportations, and even very silly stuff like banning lab-grown meat.
That puts the two perspectives very much in tension. In practice, libertarians advocate for decreasing the power of the state to control individual freedom. Nationalists have no qualms about limiting the free movement of people or goods if those restrictions are seen to be—or imagined to be—in the amorphous interests of the country (which really means in the best interest of whatever special interest manages to control the policymaking apparatus).
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Continues:
https://reason.com/2024/05/25/no-vi...arian-nationalist-alliance-doesnt-make-sense/
