The Rational Nationalist: Moving Beyond Partisanship Toward Prosperity

​

The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book “The Rational Nationalist: Moving Beyond Partisanship Toward Prosperity,” to be published on Feb. 3, 2026, by RealClear Publishing.

All politics is tribal in nature. It is the competition of one group of people against another. As social animals, one of our most basic instincts is to affiliate with one another and to form identities around these affiliations. These identities form a critical portion of most people’s egos, or views of themselves, and are an integral part of how people see themselves in the context of the world at large. People show a strong preference for fellow group members, or in-group members, over outsiders, or out-group members. There is a natural, instinctive tendency to fight for the survival and prosperity of groups to which you, as an individual, belong. This includes, at times and to varying degrees, prioritizing the well-being of in-group members over that of out-group members, up to and including directly or indirectly causing the death of those out-group members.

The most basic of these is genetic affiliation based on familial ties that can be observed in the clan structure of most prehistorical societies. As humans centralized and human groupings became larger and larger, the idea of who belonged to this fundamental in-group became larger and larger, including larger and larger towns, cities, and ethnic groups, and eventually, entire nations formed around a common cultural or racial identity. Of course, there are other bases for group formation, such as ideology or religion, which will coexist alongside national or ethnic identities, such as Polish Catholic or Lithuanian communist. Sometimes these competing identities coexist peacefully; other times, individuals find themselves torn between their own competing identities. Which identity is most salient depends on the individual, their priorities, and the situation facing them.

People’s loyalties tend to run inside-out; that is to say, they care most about their self-interest, followed by their families, their communities, and so on. At the same time, most people will have multiple group identities, including but not limited to a national identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, and often, an ideological identity. The degree to which each individual is attached to each identity will vary from individual to individual, with some individuals being strongly attached to all their in-groups, others clearly prioritizing one or two over others, and some caring only for themselves with little attachment to any of their in-groups. These identities largely drive political behavior.

Politics can fundamentally be boiled down into the competition of one group against another. In our most primitive stage, we competed for control of the basic resources for survival, such as water, food, and shelter. As societies grew more complex, we began to compete for the resources necessary for our society to flourish, most notably land, but also natural resources and trade routes. These competitions play out in a number of ways, from negotiated agreements to outright war, but they all boil down to one thing: power. Politics is intergroup competition over power.

Power, simply defined, is the ability to impact change in the world. It can be hard or soft. Hard power is the ability to impact change directly, and soft power is the ability to impact change indirectly. Hard power is a relatively simple concept to grasp and measure. It refers primarily to military or economic might, as well as anything that can be used to directly cause the result one seeks. Soft power is primarily persuasive, convincing other groups to use their hard power to cause the change one seeks. By way of demonstration, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States was successful not because of Black people’s economic or physical might, but because their movement was seen as just, persuading others to cooperate in many of the changes that the movement sought.

The fact that this all boils down to intergroup competition is often difficult to see because it’s obscured by the complexity of the interaction between various groups. As mentioned before, most individuals will have multiple group identities, such as a national identity and a religious identity. However, sometimes people will have multiple identities regarding the same quality. Take, for example, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. Someone could consider themselves both Scottish and British and thus be torn on how to vote on such an issue. Whether they voted yes or no would likely come down to which identity they consider more central to their self-identity; that is, whether they think of themselves more as a Brit or a Scot.

The simplicity of intergroup competition is further obscured by other factors. First, it’s entirely possible for people within a group to have disagreements on what is best for the group, or to have different visions of the world they want to create for their group. In our above example, it’s possible that some people thought of themselves more as a Scot than a Brit, but voted to remain, either because they thought it was a better strategic choice for Scotland or because they preferred a world with Scotland in the UK. This would lead them to vote in the same manner as someone prioritizing their British identity.

Furthermore, there are groups based on other facets of identity, such as religion or ideology, that also come into play. To go back to the Civil Rights Movement, the movement can be boiled down to competition between Black Americans and white Americans. However, there were many white Americans who joined in and supported the Civil Rights Movement. Why? Part of the answer is the effectiveness of the Black Americans’ exercise of soft power. Civil rights activists effectively garnered support for their cause through their courage, nonviolence, and the persuasiveness of their arguments. However, there is another reason related to identity that led white Americans to support the Civil Rights Movement: in addition to thinking of themselves as white, they also thought of themselves as Christian, liberal, or simply as a just person, and were motivated by these facets of their identity to act.

— — —

For more information on “The Rational Nationalist,” visit the author’s Substack. Purchase your copy via RealClear Publishing, Amazon, or B&N.