America Needs Liberal Nationalism Back

Context

In a 29 May 2026 essay, Noah Smith looks at a strange public debate between a right-wing populist and a tech billionaire. The populist demands ethnic loyalty, while the billionaire suggests abandoning the physical nation for the internet. Smith points out that both factions miss what actually makes a country function. His diagnosis holds up well months later because it ignores the usual partisan categories entirely. To fix the current political fracture, he reaches back to the mid-twentieth century to argue for a revival of liberal nationalism—a shared civic identity that binds diverse people together.

Show notes