At the GOP convention last night, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger engaged in the silly, but destructive nationalism that is standard at such events:
The U.S. economy remains the envy of the world. We have the highest economic growth of any of the world’s major industrialized nations. Don’t you remember the pessimism of 20 years ago when the critics said Japan and Germany were overtaking the U.S.? Ridiculous! Now they say India and China are overtaking us. Don’t you believe it! We may hit a few bumps—but America always moves ahead! That’s what Americans do!
Schwarzenegger’s message is that Japan and Germany couldn’t “overtake” (whatever that would mean) America because the Japanese and Germans can’t measure up to the American people. And the same is true, he suggests, for the Indians and Chinese. Nationalist interpretations of economic affairs are not only ugly; they also damage the cause of classical liberalism and the free society. The reason the Japanese and Germans have not done as well as the Americans has nothing to do with blood and soil. It’s that Japan and Germany are mired in welfare-state mixed economies to a far greater extent than the United States has been. With real laissez-faire capitalism, there is no reason why Japan and Germany couldn’t be economic dynamos—and even “overtake” America if we remain on our current statist path with its accompanying cultural decline. The same is true for India and Japan. The controlling factors are freedom—property rights—and a culture of self-responsibility, not nationality.
