Nationalism, Old and New

In the course of American history, nationalism and republicanism have usually been enemies, not allies. The principal opponents of nationalism in American history have been republicans, and it is one of the ironies of our history that the political party that claims the republican name has been the chief vehicle since the Civil War of antirepublican nationalism. The appropriate formula for the expression of Middle-American material interests and cultural values is nationalism. American nationalism after Hamilton, especially through Abraham Lincoln, sought to rectify this flaw by defining the ideal of national unity in terms of a "great moral issue". Like the republican tradition, the new nationalism is essentially populist in tactics, locating the cultural and moral core of contemporary American society in a stratum that is the main victim of the regime that now prevails in the United States.