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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

Mexico's Judicial Elections Move it Farther Away from "the Most Democratic Country in the World"

June 09, 2025

Contrary to promises made by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's recent judicial reforms take power away from the people, greatly weaken the separation of powers, and underminde "legal security and predictability."
Mexico's First Judicial Elections are Met with Controversy

June 06, 2025

While the Mexican government hailed it as a success, the country's first-ever judicial elections were met with low turnout and confusion around the complicated process.
The Promise of School Choice

June 03, 2025

Jeb Bush, Jr. makes the case that increased school choice will beneft, not harm, K-12 public education.
"Originalism" Class Pioneered in Texas Law Schools

May 29, 2025

United States District Judges Brantley Starr and Mark Pittman have begun teaching a course at Texas law schools focusing on the Constitution and "what the document's drafters intended when it was written."
Celebrating 100 Years of School Choice

May 29, 2025

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the landmark United States Supreme Court decision Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Paul E. Peterson summarizes the history of the school choice movement in America.

Total Records: 50

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