Nationalism, Old and NewnIn the course of American history, nationahsm and republicanismnhave usually been enemies, not allies. From the daysnof Alexander Hamilton, nationalism has meant unification ofnthe country under a centralized government, the supremacy ofnthe executive over the legislative branch, the reduction ofnstates’ rights and local and sectional parochialism, governmentalnregulation of the economy and engineering of social institutions,nand an activist foreign policy—expansionist, imperialist,nor globalist—that costs much money and requires atnleast occasional wars. Nationalism and its proponents have historicallynbeen Anglophiles, emulating the mercantilist dynasticnstate that flourished in Great Britain from the 18th century,nand for all their claims of overcoming sectionalism and privateninterests, they have been identified with the Northeasternnparts of the United States and its institutions—New England,nNew York City, the Ivy League, Big Banks and Big Business,nWall Street, and Washington. The national state the nationalistsndefended and constructed was bom with the ratificationnof the U.S. Constitution, reached adolescence in the victory ofnthe North in the Civil War, and grew to a corpulent adulthoodnin the 20th-century managerial state of Woodrow Wilson,nHerbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.nThe principal opponents of nationalism in American historynhave been republicans, and it is one of the ironies of our historynthat the political party that claims the republican name hasnbeen the chief vehicle since the Civil War of anti-republicannnationalism. The Antifederalists who opposed ratification ofnthe Constitution were men immersed in the political theory ofnSamuel Francis is a nationally syndicated columnist for thenWashington Times.n18/CHRONlCLESnby Samuel Francisnnnclassical republicanism, a school of thought that originated innmodern times with Machiavelli, found expression in 17thcenturynBritish resistance to the powers of the monarchy, andnin the 18th century influenced both radical Tories and radicalnWhigs. Deeply suspicious of centralized power of any kindnand of the corruption it bred, the Antifederalists opposednratification, demanded a Bill of Rights to limit federal power,ninsisted on a strict reading of the constitutional text as the basisnof law, defended the states against the federal governmentnand the Congress against the Presidency, and were generallyncontent with the limitations on wealth and national powernthat a small, restricted state imposed, in preference to what theyncondemned as the “luxury” and “empire” that national consolidationnand an interventionist foreign policy would encourage.n”The anti-federalists,” writes Professor Ralph Ketchamnin his introduction to a popular edition of their writings,nlooked to the Classical idealization of the small, pastoralnrepublic where virtuous, self-reliant citizens managedntheir own affairs and shunned the power and glorynof empire. To them, the victory in the American Revolutionnmeant not so much the big chance to become anwealthy world power, but rather the opportunity tonachieve a genuinely republican polity, far from thengreed, lust for power, and tyranny that had generallyncharacterized human society.nThough the Antifederalists lost, their ideas, far more than thosenof Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, have informed the longnAmerican tradition of resistance to the leviathan state of thennationalists, appearing in the thought and on the lips of Johnn