Allan C. Brownfeld on conflating Judaism with the state of Israel

After Israel's creation, the organized Jewish community embraced it and made it "central" to Jewish identity.  Israeli flags were displayed in synagogues, lobbying groups were created to promote Israel's interests, making it the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.  The Palestinians were displaced and, in 1967, their land was occupied.  In reality, the Palestinians have become the last victims of the Holocaust, for which they bear no responsibility whatever. 

What we have witnessed since 1948 can only be considered a form of idolatry, making the State of Israel, not God and the Jewish moral and ethical tradition, "central" to Jewish identity.  This is reminiscent of the story of the Golden Calf in the Bible. 

[...]

Where the future will lead is impossible to predict.  One hopeful possibility is that the movement toward universalism and the rejection of nationalism which proceeded dramatically in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - and was interrupted by the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine - will once again move forward in the future.  There is now every indication that this will be the case.  The current divisions in American Judaism certainly point in this direction.

~ Allan C. Brownfeld, American Council for Judaism, introduction to Coming to Palestine, pp. vii-viii

 

Hannah Arendt on nationalism

Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others.  It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.

~ Hannah Arendt

Ray Dalio: trade wars lead to conflict

Sara Eisen: Is a trade war healthy? [...]  Where does the trade tensions and tariffs ratcheting it up fit, whether it's the external order of what do you think will ultimately happen as a result of all of this?

Ray Dalio: It's just an extension of the patterns of history.  So for example, if you looked at European countries in the '30s, like Germany in the '30s and taking economic policy, there was write down the debts, create tariff revenue because you can get a lot of money from tariff revenue, then build up your domestic [industry] - be nationalist, be protectionistic, be militaristic.  That is the way these things operate.

So I would say lessons from the past of what that looks like.  And the issue is really the confrontation of all of this, the fighting of all of this.  So tariffs are going to cause fighting between countries.  What kind of fighting?  Maybe military, I'm not necessarily talking military, but think about U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and all of those types of fighting.  There will be fighting and that will have consequences.  And I think that's the main thing to pay attention to.

Sara Eisen: Do you worry about what it will do to the global economy... as a result of all the trade barriers?

Ray Dalio: Of course.  I worry about the global economy and the global well being... but I also should emphasize that in history you can see that there are the major countries [involved in the conflict] and then there are the neutral countries.  And the neutral countries do extremely well during these periods of time.  They get people and capital that go to them, they are able to navigate in a certain way.  The making of great prosperity, it doesn't effect the whole world; there are beneficiaries of this, too.  Like Singapore, if it remains a neutral country - and that's a very difficult thing to do - and it operates this way, it becomes great opportunities.

~ Ray Dalio, "Ray Dalio and Salesforce’s Benioff on AI, trade wars and new world order," CNBC International Live, 18:40 mark, March 14, 2025

Ludwig von Mises on how nationalists and classical liberals view free trade

The nationalists stress the point that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of various nations, but that, on the other hand, the rightly understood interests of all the citizens within the nation are harmonious.  A nation can prosper only at the expense of other nations; the individual citizen can fare well only if his nation flourishes.  The liberals have a different opinion.  They believe that the interests of various nations harmonize no less than those of the various groups, classes, and strata of individuals within a nation.  They believe that peaceful international cooperation is a more appropriate means than conflict for the attainment of the end which they and the nationalists are both aiming at: their own nation's welfare.  They do not, as the nationalists charge, advocate peace and free trade in order to betray their own nation's interests to those of foreigners.  On the contrary, they consider peace and free trade the best means to make their own nation wealthy.  What separates the free traders from the nationalists are not ends, but the means recommended fo attainment of the ends common to both.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 183

1949

Robert Higgs on Trump's handling of the coronavirus

From the very beginning of his presidency, Trump has made important economic and social decisions -- about trade, about immigration, about law enforcement -- entirely in the service of his insane nationalist obsession. Now he is dealing with the coronavirus disease in the same way, using this crisis as a pretext for harming foreigners for the sake of harming them and for fostering U.S. companies. The man is a monster and an idiot rolled into one. If anyone ever deserved to be kept away from supreme power, he is the one who ought to have been.

~ Robert Higgs, Facebook post, March 12, 2020

Ludwig von Mises on nationalism and socialism, two sides of the same divisiveness coin

Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally.

~ Ludwig von Mises

Nassim Taleb on nationalism

We find it to be in extremely bad taste for individuals to boast of their accomplishments; but when countries do so we call it "national pride."

Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes, p. 64

Sheldon Richman on national pride

There certainly are things about America to love. The philosophy expressed in the Declaration of Independence tops the list. The abolitionist movement is another example. Any dedication to liberty and resistance to tyranny are worthy of admiration.

But for that very reason, so much about “America” deserves not love or pride but contempt. From the start, people in power have sought to nullify the ideals that distinguished America from other countries. The record of U.S. interventionist foreign policy, which has required coercion of the American people and others, is a record of shame. American presidents have supported and even installed dictators to advance the U.S. government’s imperial agenda. Their military policy has regarded civilian lives as expendable in the pursuit of an international regime amenable to the American ruling elite’s mercantile interests. Of course, that was justified as spreading freedom and democracy, a charade that fooled far more Americans than foreigners.

Domestically, freedom and free enterprise have taken back seats to other objectives, such as economic stability or national security. Capitalism in practice has meant a system of mercantilist privilege for wealthy interests, with harmful consequences at home and abroad. That is not something to be proud of. It is something to be condemned.

~ Sheldon Richman, "How Can You Love a Country?," Freedom Daily, December 3, 2008

Sheldon Richman on conservatives and nationalism

Worship of the nation and its government is in fact inconsistent with America’s founding ideals. Thomas Jefferson said the appropriate attitude of a free people toward the government is “jealousy” not “confidence,” much less adoration. He spoke of the need to keep it caged. He was right, but if he were around today, conservatives might accuse him of not loving his country. Stripped of its incidental characteristics, government is nothing but physical force. So government, even under the best of circumstances, must always be eyed with suspicion. No Jeffersonian can be comfortable with government activism in foreign affairs. Appeals to security are to be met with high skepticism, for it’s too easy a cover for political intrigue.

That conservatives relish almost any foreign activism shows how un-Jeffersonian they are. They are nationalists and state-worshipers. For them, to love America is to love the government (at least if it is run by one of their own) because it is the government that embodies the nation and the nation is great and deserving of reverence.

~ Sheldon Richman, "How Can You Love a Country?," Freedom Daily, December 3, 2008

Lew Rockwell on how the anti-communist movement undermined the limited government plank of the Republican Party

Murray Rothbard used to tell the story of speaking to conservative and Republican audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There would be large groups gathered for various talks on economics and politics. He would give a lecture on the problem of price controls, or protectionism, or high taxes. People really liked what he had to say. They would clap, and learn from his lecture.

Then he would sit down. At some point in the course of the conference, the appointed anti-communist speaker would rise to the podium. He would decry the evil of Russia and its atheistic system of government. He would call for beefing up nuclear weapons and hint darkly of the necessity of war. He would end with an apocalyptic statement about the need for everyone to completely dedicate themselves to eradicating the communists by any means necessary. No talk of limiting or cutting government; quite the opposite.

So how would these people, who clapped for Murray, respond to the warmonger? Insanely, wildly, uncontrollably. They would stand and scream and yell and cheer, getting up on their chairs and putting their hands together high in the air. The applause would go on for five minutes and more, and the speaker would be later mauled for autographs. His books would sell wildly.

Meanwhile, poor Murray would stand there in alarm. How could these same people cheer both a call for liberty and a call for empire, and, most notably, give their hearts over to the maniacal nationalist while being merely polite to a call for the same liberty that had led this party to oppose FDR's domestic and foreign-policy? It was experiences like these that led him to write the most important dissection of the Republican party ever to appear: The Betrayal of the American Right. It is here that Murray engages in a deep, soul-searching look at his own role in red-baiting in the 1950s. He had hoped to use the anti-communist movement to educate people about the need for freedom.

"It is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing," writes Murray. Instead of supporting freedom, the anti-communist movement ended up acculturating Republicans to the imperial mindset. The moral priority of crushing a foreign government trumped every other issue.

At the same time, the libertarianism of the GOP's domestic agenda was supplanted by a belief that "big government and domestic statism were perfectly acceptable, provided that they were steeped in some sort of Burkean tradition and enjoyed a Christian framework." Fiery individualism and radicalism were replaced by a longing for a static, controlling elite of the European sort. Liberty was washed away.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Triumph of the Red-State Fascists," LewRockwell.com, February 26, 2008