Café Hayek’s Professor Don Boudreaux in a takedown of a book advocating immigration restrictions based on nationalism describes the “evil fueled by nationalism”:
...the evil powered by anthropomorphizing collectives – to the evil born of the mental practice of aggregating thousands or millions of individuals into one lump, calling the imaginary lump a “nation,” and then cavalierly assuming that that lump has moral standing on par with – nay, superior to – that of flesh-and-blood men and women and children…No concept has been responsible for more bloodshed and tyranny than has that of nationalism. In its frightful name individuals have been restricted, restrained, regulated, subsidized, brainwashed, taxed, and sacrificed. And let there be no mistake: nationalism that comes clothed as something more merciful or modern than Nazism is no less the evil because the garb it wears is superficially different from the garb worn in Germany 80 years ago by those who professed concern with protecting the “national identity.”
Nationalism, which indeed signifies as a feel good groupthink, has been promoted by governments and their institutional apologists to justify political control and taxation, for the purpose of preserving and expanding the privileges of the political elites, in the name of public weal.
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