Roosevelt’s New Nationalism
In the 1912 presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt championed the principles of “New Nationalism,” the title of his 1910 speech inspired by Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life. Roosevelt and Croly believed the federal government should intervene more strongly in the economy and ensure the public welfare, especially against concentrations of corporate power and political privilege.
Conservatism is about a love of country, tradition, place, and posterity — born and unborn.
Roosevelt and Croly were dedicated American nationalists, but they were also progressives, not conservatives. The Progressive Era of American history — in which Roosevelt and Croly were two prominent political figures — was characterized by the expansion of federal power, when the phrase “the United States are” was replaced by the more uniform “the United States is.”
The New Nationalism sought to undermine local or regional power, including local legislatures, and redirect Americans’ loyalty to a central authority in Washington — not just the federal government, but specifically the executive branch. Roosevelt said in his famous speech:
The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers … This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare.
Over a century later, the heirs of American nationalism define themselves by the term “national conservatism,” proudly distinguishing themselves from the “market fundamentalism” of the Republican Party consensus during and after the Cold War. This movement unapologetically advocates industrial policy, protectionism and — like their progressive forerunners a hundred years ago — the use of federal power to advance their idea of the common good.
National conservatives, from Tucker Carlson to Sen. Josh Hawley, venerate Theodore Roosevelt as a paragon of American masculinity, patriotism, and leadership — a bona fide conservative hero, notwithstanding his progressivism.
National conservatism is a strange political development since nationalism and conservatism do not share a common tradition. Nationalism originated with the French Revolution and viewed the romantic mythos of “the people” as the source of legitimacy for the exercise of raw power in the modern nation state.
As historian and former Librarian of Congress James Billington explained, “the [nationalist] drive for power appropriated the new idea of popular sovereignty and pushed into the background the earlier Enlightenment concern about constitutional forms and rational balance.”
Ordered liberty and constitutional government — the pillars of Anglo-American conservatism — were wholly antithetical to the despotic nationalist regimes of the 20th century, in which the state became a surrogate god and vilified the Christian faith.
Roger Scruton pointed out that nationalism “occupies the space vacated by religion” and strives for meaning, consolation, and redemption through the national idea. In a secularized and deracinated United States, nationalism is not a cure, but a symptom of a spiritual malady in the American soul.
Nationalism Without Conservatism
With Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on the 2024 GOP presidential ticket, national conservatism is now the dominant faction on the right and has won over a majority of the Republican electorate. Yet it would be more sensible to describe their movement as “national progressivism” — or simply “nationalism” — since they have abandoned a commitment to genuine conservative principles.
The ostensible reason for the national conservative embrace of big-government politics was to advance a socially conservative agenda at the federal level after years of GOP failure to resist the left-wing onslaught against traditional American values. At last, the national conservatives are in the ascendancy, yet the Republican Party platform is now more liberal than the cigar-chomping Rockefeller Republicans could ever dream.
In 2024, the GOP is pro-choice and only opposes “Late Term Abortion.” It regards the defeat of Roe v. Wade as the final victory in the abortion debate, not the actual end of abortion in the United States. It claims to value the “Sanctity of Marriage,” yet does not define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Resisting today’s “woke” leftism while accepting yesterday’s progressive liberalism — and repeating this process as the Overton window shifts — demonstrates that American conservatism is feeble and lacks a coherent, compelling and unified vision.
Conservatism is about a love of country, tradition, place, and posterity — born and unborn. These are the means through which our identities are cultivated and may flourish, not chauvinistic exertions of federal power. As Edmund Burke wrote, “We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen.”
It is the sum of local, bottom-up attachments that comprise the national whole, but national conservatives are reversing this classical Tocquevillian distribution and adopting a top-down collectivist approach.
Unfortunately, in the Republican Party of 2024, nationalism has trumped conservatism.
Aidan Grogan is a doctoral student of history at Liberty University and the donor communications manager at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). Follow him on X @AidanGrogan.
READ MORE: