Intercollegiate Review is hosting a symposium on how to fix what is ailing conservatism. Here is an excerpt from my contribution:

One of the chief maladies afflicting conservatism today is American nationalism and its distorting effects on both policy and political culture. When I say American nationalism here, I am referring specifically to an Americanism dedicated to the maintenance of global “leadership” in the service of an America that is itself treated as an ideological project. This nationalism feeds off of patriotic loyalty, but it is far removed from patriotic love for our country. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, “the patriot never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of his country, but always and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it,” and this form of American nationalism is defined by boasting about the country’s “largeness” in the world. The future of American conservatism depends greatly on challenging this nationalism on both a cultural and a policy level and cultivating instead a deeper respect for both localities and regions on the one hand and foreign nations on the other.