The biggest problem with politics is that labels generally have three to five meanings at any given time. Seriously, if you are writing a professional political science paper the very first thing you do is define your terms. Not esoteric stuff no one has ever heard of – the regular things like conservative, liberal, libertarian, globalist, nationalist – et al. The reason is simple – people are way too lazy to think up new words for slightly different things and politicians /activists are way too cagey not to use that confusion of language to their advantage.

Up to about a decade ago, I’d have been a nationalist. My opinion hasn’t really changed, but the meaning of the term has. Suddenly, nationalism is more than just the position that a country’s first priority should be its own nation-state. Nowadays it’s taken on a isolationist flavor – not only should we care about our own nation but we should do so to the exclusion of all foreign involvement.

I’m not sure when conservatives stopped being the grown ups but that’s just childish. Having the responsibility to look after our own cubby hole does not mean we can’t play with the other kids in the kindergarten. Or that we have to look the other way when one kid is beating up another – even though we’re big enough that just a good glare would break up the fight.

Here’s the thing – we’re all kinfolks in this kindergarten. There is no safe space where what’s going on in the other corner doesn’t affect us eventually. Sometimes it’s immediate; sometimes it creeps up on us, but the truth is everything relates to everything else in some way, shape or fashion. It may take you more than six degrees to get to Kevin Bacon – but you will get to him. Hopefully not while he’s in the middle of fighting one of the monsters from Tremors…

We are the world’s policeman – get over it. That became a thing before I was born – and before almost everyone else alive now was born, too. The ‘take our ball and go home’ thing is stupid – WE ARE HOME. This crazy mixed up but ultimately loveable country of ours is just the house – we can’t move out of the neighborhood. At least not until warp drive becomes a real thing.

There’s no cop for us to call – and everyone else in the neighborhood calls us at the first sign of trouble. We helped build this silly system and we can try to find good ways to change it but we can’t just walk away. There’s no where else to go. No matter how many devices you turn off, you’ll still know that the neighborhood is falling apart – and you’ll still hear the screams of the innocent as it happens.

I’m very much in the America first camp – you can’t take care of others if you’re all screwed up yourself. And we’ve got some straightening out to do here at home, make no mistake. But the world doesn’t stop just because we’re having a midlife crisis – the great thing about nation-states is that they can walk and chew gum at the same time.

It’s not an ‘either/or’ choice – we can and we must do both. Help the neighbors get their cat out of the tree then paint our living room – – only as a nation-state, we can do both at the same time!

So I’m a neo-nationalist. I want to improve my country at home and straighten out our mucked up domestic policy but I’m not willing to walk away and let the world burn while we do it. This isn’t the 18th Century. We can handle both foreign and domestic affairs while rubbing our heads and patting our tummies. We can select better candidates to be better representatives while supporting our troops abroad. This modern age gives us the tools we need.

The only thing stopping us, is us.