This article was originally published by Wanjiru Njoya at The Mises Institute. 

In his 1963 essay, “The Negro Revolution,” Murray Rothbard observes that by the 1930s and 1940s, American intellectuals had embraced two principles:

(1) all races and ethnic groups are intellectually and morally equal or identical, and (2) that therefore no one should be allowed to treat anyone else as if they were not equal, i.e., that the State should be used to compel absolute equality of treatment among the races.

As Rothbard points out, the first principle is incorrect, and the second principle is a non sequitur. Even if all human beings were intellectually and morally equal, which they are not, it would not follow that the state should be used to compel equal treatment. Yet these principles have been harnessed for decades to justify federal enforcement of equality. The promotion of equality has, in turn, been depicted as the hallmark of patriotism, with the idea being promoted that equality is an American ideal. Writing in the New York Times in 2013, the economist Joseph Stiglitz depicts equal opportunity as America’s “national myth,” an essential component of America’s “creed.” He decried inequality as a threat to the American dream and an affront to the ideal of America as a land of opportunity:

Without substantial policy changes, our self-image, and the image we project to the world, will diminish – and so will our economic standing and stability. Inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity reinforce each other – and contribute to economic weakness, as Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has emphasized. We have an economic, and not only moral, interest in saving the American dream.

Upholding the principle of equality is thus depicted as a component of patriotism. The idea that the state has an important role to play in enforcing equality is then said to follow. While state enforcement of equality in its modern form is rooted primarily in the civil rights regime, the antecedents of statist egalitarianism can be traced back to the Reconstruction era, when the federal government set out to “reconstruct” the South.

One of their stated priorities was to ensure that Southerners had “genuinely” accepted their defeat in the war, and to this end, they gave credence to propaganda that any Southern resistance to equal rights for black citizens should be construed as an attempt to reinstate slavery under a different guise. At first glance, it seems bizarre that the government would link attitudes towards racial equality to the outcome of the war, and this notion was indeed regarded with bewilderment and outrage in the South. First, the aim of the war, as they saw it, was to defend their independence. Further, their defeat was decisive – what more could be required by way of “accepting” the outcome, after the surrender of all Confederate armies and the soldiers’ return to their homes and to civilian life? The Confederate generals, in disbanding their armies, had emphasized to their men not only that the war was ended, but that they must do all they could to keep the peace and obey the law:

In his farewell address to his men at Gainesville, Alabama, on May 9, [Lt. General Nathan Bedford] Forrest stated: “I do not think it proper or necessary at this time to refer to causes which have reduced us to this extremity; nor is it now a matter of material consequence to us how such results were brought about. That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and any further resistance on our part would justly be regarded as the very height of folly and rashness.”

He ended his address by advising his men to “Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous.”

Conflating Patriotism with Loyalty to the Government

Yet it seems that surrender was not enough for the Radical Republicans who were driving the Reconstruction agenda. More than acquiescence in defeat, more even than respect for the law, they wanted to ensure that love for the federal government would triumph over devotion to state (i.e., each Southern state) in the hearts of the vanquished men. Loyalty to state was therefore seen as a threat to the Union even after both sides had set down their muskets. According to Carl Schurz, who was asked by President Andrew Johnson to report on the proposed reconstruction, in their hearts rebellious Southerners remained loyal to their own state rather than to the Union. Schurz complained that Southern surrender to the Union was mere “cold acquiescence” and that each man still viewed his Southern state as supreme:

In Georgia there is something worse than sham Unionism or cold acquiescence in the issue of battle: it is the universally prevalent doctrine of the supremacy of the State [Georgia] …The common sense of all classes pushes the necessity of allegiance to the State into the domain of morals as well as into that of politics; and he who did not “go with the State” in the Rebellion is held to have committed the unpardonable sin.… there is everywhere only cold toleration for the idea of national sovereignty, very little hope for the future of the State as a member of the Federal Union, and scarcely any pride in the strength and glory and renown of the United States of America.

In the American context, this notion of pride in the federal government was one of the innovations of this war. As David Gordon observes, “The great bloodletting that took place during Lincoln’s crusade was an essential means to bond all Americans together in love.” That bond of love was deemed to be a federal bond. This was a decisive break with the American tradition. Pride was traditionally felt for one’s own people, and not for the federal government. Until very recently, patriotism was expressed primarily in the devotion of each Southerner to his state. For South Carolina’s Tricentennial celebrations the children sang, “Yes, we live in the very best state of the USA!”

Patriotism was, therefore, traditionally defined by each man based on his love for his own people, whoever he conceives his people to be. In his essay, “Nations by Consent,” Murray Rothbard depicts patriotism, properly understood, as a devotion to one’s “nation,” and not devotion to an abstract notion of “the state.” He depicts the nation as: “one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions.” Rothbard points out that the nation is expressed in ties that bind people together. Each individual “is generally born into a ‘country.’ He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area.” It is in this light that Rothbard’s depiction of the war for Southern Independence as a just war should be understood. The Southern fight for “hearth and home” can also be seen as a reflection of the view expressed by Ludwig von Mises that, “He who wants to remain free, must fight unto death those who are intent upon depriving him of his freedom.”

Following Lincoln’s war, a concerted attempt was made during Reconstruction to break the bonds of devotion to state, meaning neighborhood and people, and link the idea of patriotism firmly to the federal government. The expectation of loyalty to centralized government was increasingly regarded as the hallmark of patriotism. This new loyalty, by driving a wedge between different races and depicting racial conflict as disloyalty to government, itself became a threat to social peace. As Gordon explains: “A seemingly recondite concept, the state as an abstract entity took on bodily form and was revealed, in the world wars of the 20th century, to be an all-devouring monster.” The centralized state demanded loyalty and “patriotic” acceptance of anything promoted in the guise of equality. Lew Rockwell warns that loyalty to the Leviathan state is not true patriotism:

But the central government is no longer an American institution. It is positively un-American. The only possible reason for wanting the Leviathan state to have legitimacy today is the belief that you and your friends are going to be in charge of it. But don’t call that patriotism. It’s nothing more than power lust.