… is this recent Facebook post by my emeritus George Mason University colleague, the great Nobel-laureate economist Vernon Smith:
I believe that Charles and David Koch opposed Trump because he is essentially Nationalist to the core. Cato, founded by CK and ED Crane (1977) has never blinked on the dangers of Nationalism; same for Reason; their consistently anti-interventionist foreign policy reflects this fundamental commitment to individual freedom in which the State exists to enhance the freedom of the individual to pursue L, L and happiness.
An appeal to “Make America Great Again,” is Nationalist; an appeal to the individual to find freedom/purpose in a national identity that is the antithesis of the miracle of the US constitution, and Bill of Rights, the antithesis of National Socialism, Socialism, Fascism, and Communism as it arose in Europe, Soviet Union, and is particularly onerous in North Korea, and most recently in Venezuela.
Nationalism also goes with anti-immigration policy, anti-trade, and unilateral intervention abroad to defend American interests. Our southern border violence is a direct consequence of having banned drugs in an environment in which the US is incapable of controlling its domestic demand for drugs, and the supply (unlike alcohol prohibition, produced domestically along with the violence) has come from abroad, thoroughly corrupting our neighbors south of the border. Now, those neighbors are challenged internally by the rising power of drug exporters, and our border problem is exacerbated by new waves of immigrants.
