The United Kingdom has officially left the European Union. Over three years ago the British people rushed to the polls in a national referendum to express their displeasure with global governance and their desire for a restoration of national sovereignty.

National sovereignty… that is the name of the game in our world today.

Much has been said about the rise of nationalism in the United States and across Europe today. People of all political stripes and colors have said their piece on whether nationalism is good or bad. So, is it? And what does nationalism mean for the United States today?

Two things can be true at once:

1. An international order of nation-states is the best way in which the world should be ordered. There are some caveats to this, but as an overall principle, “nation-ism” is the best way in which to order international relations. 

2. For the United States, nationalism and “nation-ism” is detrimental to our constitutional order.

Conservatives tend to view international authorities with skepticism, even if they were all created because of the leadership of the United States. Organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Hague are all suspicious to conservatives because of their bent towards “stealing” away America’s national sovereignty. This suspicion has extended into our nationalist moment here in the United States, as institutions such as NATO and the European Union are under close watch.

This uneasiness with international organization leads to a specific question about a particular characteristic about the United States of America. The question is this: Is the United States an idea, or is it a nation? This question is at the center of the debate within the conservative movement about the very nature of American conservatism, and how it relates not only to the Trump presidency, but also to the future direction in which the conservative movement will go in the very near future. Conservatives such as Tucker Carlson, Yoram Hazony, Josh Hawley, and Rich Lowry say that America is a nation, but other conservatives, George Will most notably, say that America is strictly an idea and nothing more.

The answer is that the United States is not a nation, but neither is it solely an idea, although it can be considered both. In the international sense, America would be considered a nation-state, but domestically that is not how our constitution orders this country. But thinking of ourselves as a nation-state only, in today’s understanding, could lead to nationalism. That is a slippery slope. Nationalism places the emphasis on the state as the solver of all problems. It inherently forces people to look to Washington to solve our differences and our issues. An ever-increasing state, one in which we have seen since the Great Depression, takes away our individual freedoms in the name of the nation. As conservatives, opposition to big government is in our blood.

In the debate between America is an idea and America is a nation, conservatives should lean more towards America being an idea, and there is historical evidence to back this up. America was founded on the idea of liberty. Our Founding Fathers fought a war for independence because they wanted to be free. But, an America built around the idea of liberty alone was not enough to create a new nation, as the failures of the Articles of Confederation showed our founders. 

This created a problem for the founders: how to create a country strong enough to be unified but have a government that was weak enough to preserve individual liberty; how to create a country that had a government strong enough to protect a new nation but still allow states to keep much of their authority. The result that came out of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 answered this dilemma. The founders found the key: a union built around this idea of liberty is what was needed to solve the young country’s ills.

The debates surrounding the ratification of the Constitution add to the arguments for “American Unionism” and show a clear allusion to the debates between whether America is an idea or a nation seen in the conservative movement today. Those who are familiar with American history will know that the debates over constitutional ratification were between the Federalists, led by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, and the Anti-Federalists, led by George Mason. Originally, the United States Constitution was without a Bill of Rights, and the Anti-Federalists were concerned that the Constitution in its current form would trample on the rights of states and individuals to take away their liberty. This is similar to the argument for America as an idea.

On the other side, the Federalists, Madison more so than Hamilton, were concerned with forming the more perfect union that was written about in the preamble. If the thirteen original colonies were not unified then there would have been a greater danger that lurked from the outside. America would not be respected, and the War for Independence would have simply been a fluke. The United States would not have been the United States as we know and love her today. This is similar to the argument for America as a nation.

Abraham Lincoln himself believed in unionism. His 1864 presidential reelection campaign slogan was “For Union and Constitution.” He was a fearless commander-in-chief, whose sole focus was leading the Union Army to victory in the Civil War to restore the very meaning of America. He knew and understood, as conservatives today need to relearn, that America is a union of liberty and national sovereignty that must be defended from enemies foreign and domestic.

The Preamble to the Constitution starts off by saying, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” The future of the conservative movement is unknown, but as long as conservatives realize that the bitter snapping they are doing to one another distracts them from their very purpose. Conservatives seek to conserve the American Founding. That is their job. Realizing that America is neither a nation or an idea will help conservatives better achieve their goals. Realizing that America is a Union will only help conservatives defend the very promise of this great country, while also bringing the conservative movement forward into its next great chapter.