The Economic Nationalist

Greetings, friends. Because this writer’s non-Economic Nationalist real life is trending busier, and moreover because the blog has already published most or all of the writer’s pertinent thoughts currently on the topic—because the blog would be dull to repeat itself—the blog is likely to pause now several months. There is no shortage of good economic nationalist text to read below. To read it is recommended to you.

In the meantime, the time has come to endorse a specific candidate for the presidency of the United States. Morally, the candidate to support in this blog’s view is Duncan Hunter, who has the right principles and the proper, balanced temperament for the post of the presidency. Mr. Hunter is an excellent candidate who would make a fine president, whom any U.S. economic nationalist should be pleased to have the chance to support.

Practically, the candidate to support is Mitt Romney. The blog explains why in posts below.

My wife and I have discussed the matter and have agreed that both candidates strongly merit our support. We do not like the idea of failing to support either of them. Therefore, she will vote Mr. Romney and I will vote Mr. Hunter. We recommend that you support either of the two at your discretion.

Obviously excluded, unfortunately, are Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul. Younger readers may find it hard to understand, but there is something in temperament that transcends policy. What is faintly lacking in Mr. Tancredo and more clearly lacking in Dr. Paul, fine men that they are, is an overall sense of balance, a sense that today’s problems are not the only serious problems the nation has faced or will face in the future, a sense that there is no new thing under the sun. In Dr. Paul’s case, well, I love the Constitution, too; but there is more to the life of a great nation and her people than only that. I know: such words can hardly sway a Tancredo or Paul supporter. This is well. I honor those candidates and their loyal brigades. I salute them. This blog however endorses Messrs. Hunter and Romney, and recommends in the more sober moments of reflection that you do so, too.

Keep the blog bookmarked. I have been very pleased to have you here as readers. The general election campaign is likely to provoke new posts here after Labor Day, 2008. In the meantime, I do still have a long draft of an historical article that re-examines the wisdom of British and American participation in World War II, admitting that Adolf Hitler (monster though he truly was) might actually, factually have been right about a few important things that the West has since gotten wrong; and that George S. Patton’s famously derided views at the end of the war, and Charles A. Lindbergh’s famously derided views at the beginning of the war, and Herbert Hoover’s then publicly unknown views regarding the war, may all have been more or less correct. The historical article is not nearly up to the blog’s standard yet, not least because the blog feels a strong duty not to risk dishonoring living American World War II combat veterans. The article may or may not appear before Labor Day, 2008. Otherwise, I’ll see you then.

Howard J. Harrison
The Economic Nationalist

Few things seem to frustrate some blog readers more than a blogger who generally agrees with them but supports a different political candidate than they do. Several readers of this blog have expressed incredulity over the past six months that The Economic Nationalist would consider supporting Mitt Romney for the U.S. presidency. It falls to me as the editor of The Economic Nationalist to explain why.

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A thing done heartily, energetically and well, though done imperfectly, can far excel a thing done with sterile precision. In The American Conservative, Daniel McCarthy heartily writes,

The conventional wisdom overvalues politics and undervalues the philosophy of the movement: it overlooks the ways in which [1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry] Goldwater succeeded far beyond the electoral success of a Johnson or a Nixon—or a Bush. [Goldwater’s 1960 book] The Conscience of a Conservative continues to be read today because it isn’t a political tract, a soulless campaign book of the sort generated by every other modern presidential effort.

The idealism and amateurism of the Goldwater people inspired a movement in a way that political professionals never could: indeed, the cynical professionalism and win-at-all-costs mentality of today’s conservatives, best represented by Karl Rove, has had the opposite effect. Goldwater galvanized America’s youth—Young Americans for Freedom grew directly out of Youth for Goldwater. Under the professional Republicans of the past decade, on the other hand, conservatives have lost whatever momentum they had with the next generation.

Wise words. The full article is recommended.