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Features

Introduction

Throughout the West, populist political parties are challenging the status quo. In response, political parties on both the Left and the Right claim that the populist challenges, many of which look to national histories and cultures for inspiration, are a “threat to democracy.” The established parties warn against “ethnocentrism,” which they claim fosters racism, stereotyping, discrimination, or xenophobia. Most likely, unless a credible alternative is offered, these political debates will continue for years.

One credible alternative is “personalist nationalism.” In his classic 1871 book, Democratic Vistas, America’s Walt Whitman espoused a personalist nationalism. He focused on the quality of Being, according to a person’s “own central idea and purpose.” He proposed a “healthy average personalism . . . the object of which should be to raise and supply through the States a copious race of superb American men and women, cheerful, religious, ahead of any yet known.”[1] For Whitman, it is only in the national context that a person can realize his or her true self: “The literature, songs, and esthetics of a country are of importance principally because they furnish the materials and suggestions of personality for the women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousand effective ways.”[2]

Similarly, in a 1980 speech to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known as UNESCO, Pope John Paul II explained how culture is the specific way of man’s existing and being. “Man always lives according to a culture which is specifically his, and which, in its turn, creates among men a tie which is also specifically theirs, determining the inter-human and social character of human existence.”[3]

Pope John Paul II urged UNESCO delegates:

"[W]ith all the means at your disposal, watch over the fundamental sovereignty that every Nation possesses by virtue of its own culture. Cherish it like the apple of your eye for the future of the great human family. Protect it! Do not allow this fundamental sovereignty to become the prey of some political or economic interest. Do not allow it to become a victim of totalitarian and imperialistic systems or hegemonies."[4]

This pillar of Global Governance Watch, provides resources in four areas critical to the success of personalist nationalism: Law and Liberty, Law and Religion, Law and Sovereignty, and Law and Economics.

[1] Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871), in Specimen Days, Democratic Vistas, and Other Prose, R. Shafer, ed. (Doubleday-Doran, New York) (1935), 294-295

[2] Id., 292.

[3] John Paul II, “Address to UNESCO,” June 2, 1980, https://inters.org/John-Paul-II-UNESCO-Culture

[4] Id.

Documents

Resources

Commentary

Personalist Nationalism

Washington Church Asks 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to Uphold Religious Liberty

April 17, 2025

Following a split decision by a three-judge panel, Cedar Park Assembly of God, a Seattle-area church, has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to uphold its religious liberties by exempting it from a law that would require the church to provide abortion coverage for its employees.
How Bad Legal Education Puts America's Judicial System at Risk

April 14, 2025

Ilya Shapiro's new book Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites warns of the dangers inherent in law school campuses that supress free speech.
The Danger of "Political" Librarians

March 31, 2025

Trump's executive order suggesting the closure of a handful of federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has been met with accusations of tyranny, but The Federalist's Mark Hemingway offers a different narrative.
The Contemporary Relevance of Tocqueville

March 31, 2025

Will Ogilvie Bega de Seoane from The Foundation for Economic Education reflects on Alexis de Toqueville's observations on democracy, and how they are still relevant today.
Putin's Gulag Archipelago

March 31, 2025

Politico's Casey Quackenbush takes a deep look into Russian "reeducation camps," where some say almost 20,000 Ukrainian children and teens have been forcibly sent from occupied Ukrainian territory.

Total Records: 26

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