The 20th century gave us two kinds of nationalism, one compatible with liberalism classically understood, and another that is inimical to it.
Ludwig von Mises, a great liberal voice of the period laid out the right principle in 1919: "No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want." The resulting border divisions were far from perfect.
Human history is essentially different from zoology, and race is not everything, as it is among the rodents or the felines, and one does not have the right to go through the world fingering people's skulls, and taking them by the throat saying: 'You are of our blood; you belong to us!' Aside from anthropological characteristics, there are such things as reason, justice, the true, and the beautiful, which are the same for all.
These days, these two forms of nationalism - one by choice and one by force - are constantly conflated in the news and commentary on world affairs today.
The new prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, for example, has been trashed as a modern-day Mussolini but a close look at the situation on the ground reveals someone who speaks for a people who share a language and history and resents attempts by global organizations such as the European Commission and World Health Organization to take those away.
While the mainstream media warns of her dangers, no one can deny that a beast of a different sort poses a more immediate threat to the freedoms of all peoples in the world today.
The transition will certainly involve the rise of nationalism simply because rallying people around their shared ideals can be an effective tool for beating back a machinery that otherwise seems beyond the capacity of human beings to control.
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-pandemic-response-unleashed-two-kinds-of-nationalism/
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