Jewish Conservatives Debate American Nationalism

From the Thomas Frank article:

“What Miller left unsaid, but implied, was also the contrast between home and doctrine. For the past two decades, prevailing opinion has embraced the idea of the United States as an “experiment,” a “propositional nation” or “creedal nation,” as Irving Kristol described it in 1995. In contrast to older nations, America is bound together by people “dedicated to the proposition” of constitutional democracy as laid out by Lincoln. …”

Neocon Irving Kristol’s hot take on Americanism has been the prevailing opinion for twenty years. In this time period, our common culture to the extent we ever had one has disintegrated.

Ben Shapiro:

“Because Trump’s definition of nationalism is not the conservative definition of nationalism. Conservatives love America because we believe it is a nation founded on an idea. Our interests ought to prevail because our principles ought to prevail: limited government, individual liberty, God-given natural rights, localism in politics, religious freedom, freedom of speech and of the press, and so forth. If America ceased to believe those things or stand for them, we would not deserve to win. “Make America Great Again” would then ring hollow with the same blood-and-soil nationalistic violence of the Old World. If greatness is measured in utilitarian terms rather than ideological ones, nationalism is merely tribalism broadened, a way of valuing the collective over the individual. …”

Jonah Goldberg:

“And that brings me to the context. Rich and Ramesh chose to defend nationalism at a moment when self-described nationalists at home and abroad are calling into question a host of democratic norms (though more abroad than at home, at least for now). Donald Trump talks a great deal about nationalism but precious little about liberty and the Constitution. His contempt for American exceptionalism seems rooted in the belief that our ideals get in the way of our being a serious country (as I write in today’s Los Angeles Times.) His chief ideologist of nationalism, Steve Bannon, has in the past made common cause with people who quite passionately admire ethno-nationalism. …”

Yuval Levin:

“But American nationalism doesn’t have to be this dark and harsh, and it usually isn’t. One of the means by which American nationalism can be enlightened and moderated—and one of the reasons that our nationalism has never quite gotten away from us in the way some European forms sometimes have—is the simultaneous concreteness and abstraction of our nationalism: It is a devotion to a people devoted to a set of ideas.”

I’m a plain-speaking Alabamian. I have a habit of just blurting things out that politically correct people dance around. I’d rather get straight to the point. That’s my Baptist culture.

You’ve got a bunch of Jews here who live in metropolitan areas. All of these Jews circle back to their own concept of America as a creedal nation. America is cosmopolitan liberalism. It is an “idea.” Anyone can be an American because America has no racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious foundation. This is Emma Lazarus’s America that is always invoked by these neocons, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

This version of Americanism has a history though. It was concocted by a group known as the New York Intellectuals in the 1930s. It was mainstreamed in the 1940s and 1950s by the newly created mass media. It triumphed in the counterculture of the 1960s. America is a miniature version of the United Nations united by classical liberalism. That’s a legacy of the Cold War and our cosmopolitan Jewish elite who in the late 20th century had the power to control the Narrative.

In the 19th century, Americans had never heard of the -isms and -phobias: racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. All of these -isms and -phobias which are held up to be secular sins today were created in the 20th century. The same is true of this worldview that America is cosmopolitan liberalism and Whites are guilty or something. As Professor Kaufmann explains in The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, “For the first time in its history, a considerable number of Anglo-American intellectuals openly disparaged the traditions of their own ethnic group.”

This doesn’t go any further back than Sinclair Lewis and Randolph Bourne. America had an Anglo-Protestant elite until the mid-20th century. The idea of America used to be radically different. This ought to be so obvious that I shouldn’t have to bring it up:

Not very nice, is it? That’s who we were even in New York state in the 19th century.

That’s not very nice either. But that’s who we were as late as the 1960s in Alabama. Did you know the concept of the Black Panther was a response to this? The proud White cock was the symbol of the Alabama Democratic Party on the ballot. It was the symbol of white supremacy.

Anyway, the point I am making is that Americanism was redefined by a bunch of Jewish intellectuals in the mid-20th century. New York produced Gov. Horatio Seymour who ran for president in 1868 as the candidate of the Democratic Party on the proposition that America is a White Man’s Country. New York City erupted in the famous draft riots in 1863. Even in New York City, that’s who we were.

Is Trumpism the introduction of an alien strain of European-style ethnonationalism? Maybe it is something else though. Maybe it is the beginning of a reversion to the older, indigenous strain of Americanism as the descendants of the New York Intellectuals lose their grip on power? What do you think?

Note: So we are a universal nation? We are the world? What a bunch of horseshit!

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
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30 Comments

      • They aren’t equal. That is why cock fighting is so popular. Even “Roots” featured “Chicken George”. Not to be confused with (Vox Day’s term) “The little-est Chicken Hawk” (((Ben Shapiro))) who refuses to debate Milo.

        The Littlest Chickenhawk v.s. Black Cock Fight. I like it.

  1. The problem with Shapiro and the rest is I cannot recognize any defense of any proposition I’ve ever held or wanted to hold.

    Whites must give up their seats for black people now.
    Christians must bake cakes for gay weddings.
    The Little Sisters of the Poor must pay for abortion drugs.
    White blue-collar workers – factories and mines – must retrain or commit suicide because their jobs moved to Mexico or China. And illegals are working in the local slaughterhouse and no one will deport them.

    I don’t have either Lexus/Nexis or Ann Coulter’s ability with it, but I doubt I can find any actual opposition or even notice of this in any writing by the above authors. If the proposition is demographic and cultural suicide of white Christians I wish no part of it.

    A memory from my parents in Detroit – a Jewish talk show host was praising the cross-district busing plan, when a caller pointed out he moved to the suburbs so wouldn’t be part of it, the response was “But Jews like to live together”. My parents moved shortly thereafter. You can have an open mind, but repression will be rejected. Once you are safe we can talk about racism, integration, or teh rest.

    Can you derive a proposition from white, Christian originalist American culture? Yes. Fine, but then lets push and force conformity with that proposition. It would end welfare and the rest is mostly what Trump is already doing. If you won’t learn to speak, read, and write in English, you should leave. If you won’t act based on the 10 commandments, you should leave. If welfare is anything but a temporary measure and should be handled by churches anyway, you should leave. I could go on but I expect everyone gets the point.

    If such an ideal was possible, I shouldn’t be able to tell the race or culture of people by what they are posting on social media. Instead we are clearly polarized and divided, and I find myself on the side represented by this blog. Not the intellectuals talking about but never really defining the proposition (and if there is one, it is that the Federal Government should be limited because men are fallen, but that means the south’s secession was legal).

    • ‘The problem with Shapiro and the rest is I cannot recognize any defense of any proposition I’ve ever held or wanted to hold.’

      I agree, TZL.

      In fact, I’d say that most of the Jewish community, in this country, is in danger of being so dangerously out of touch with their fellow citizens, of other strains, that they could be arguably considered enemies of The People, if not the state entire.

      I wonder if they will wake up and change their tune, before history, in some fashion or another, replays itself.

      Every plank has it’s tensile fracture point.

      • 70% of Jews voted for Obama twice, then Hillary.

        They are both out of touch, but also in the blue bubble echo-chamber where they might not understand that trying to destroy traditional white Christian America might provoke a backlash.

        It is one thing to hide Jews who have done no harm and may be your friends from the Nazis. It is another thing when they were marching with LGBTQ “Love Lives Here” (see the attack on Spencer’s Mother in Whitefish, MT), and want to get you fired or destroy your business.

        Kristalnacht is being committed by their side – strange, I don’t see condemnations of the nights of broken glass by (((Ben & Co.))).

        I’m perfectly willing to accept them as Americans if they would act 100% like Americans. Instead I think we both will be happier and more comfortable if they moved to their ethno-state of Israel.

        I regret that is the case, but I’m unwilling to tolerate a group that refuses to coexist and has for the last generation done everything to undermine and destroy everything I hold dear, from Wall Street to Hollywood, to the neocon wars, to the destroy-the-family think tanks.

        • ‘they (the Jewish Community) might not understand that trying to destroy traditional white Christian America might provoke a backlash.

          I guess they don’t, because they have been trying to destroy The Christian South since the 1940s.

          Our Tarheel KKK, when I was a child, was a clear backlash, but, alas, not powerful enough.

        • Unfortunately, TZL, I have no choice but to agree with you.

          The positive contributions of Jews (Mel Brooks 3 Stooges, and David Lee Roth) are not enough to compensate for the two Us – usury and usurpation.

          If I were governor of North Carolina, I would follow in Putin’s footsteps, and bar Jews from participating in the political process – with harsh sentences for those who would attempt to act as their fronts.

          Of course, Miss Denise would disagree with me, and say ‘off to the ovens’, but, I am no baker…

          • If I were the Commandant (military martial law a la Pinochet) I would use wholesale deportation and revocation of citizenship for all Jews except those that have overtly demonstrated patriotism and fealty to Founding Principles. All those on the anti-Constitution Left, either flogged and imprisoned in POW camps and/or deported. All Democratic voters suspended from any voting for 20 years.

            Women to vote only on a case-by-case basis. They are too emotional, gullible, and deficient in logic to be allowed wholesale voting rights.

    • “The problem with Shapiro and the rest is I cannot recognize any defense of any proposition I’ve ever held or wanted to hold.”

      The problem is that they justify white genocide. Whatever they are arguing, it always leads to a world without white people.

      After white people are genocided, I don’t care what “propositions” the miscellaneous masses that come after us are ruled by. That will be their affair; it has nothing to do with us.

      Are you pro-white, or are you pro-white-genocide? That is what matters.

      “Propositions” are just party lines. Next year there’ll be another party line. There is never any end to “propositions.”

  2. Gary Wills makes the compelling argument (in “Lincoln at Gettysburg”) that the idea of a propositional nation was first expressed, and more importantly accepted by Americans, by Lincoln during his remarks at Gettysburg. Even more to the point, Lincoln used the D. of Independence, NOT the federal Constitution, as his “founding” document. Whether the results are good or ill, Wills believes the incredible power of Lincoln’s oratory placed the USA on the course which it has now followed for over 150 years.

  3. ‘I’m a plain-speaking Alabamian. I have a habit of just blurting things
    out that politically correct people dance around. I’d rather get
    straight to the point. That’s my Baptist culture.’

    As my wife is this way, it must be a Southeast Alabama thang.

    Obviously I am like the two of y’all, as well; though, this characteristick is NOT characteristick of most Tarheels –

    All in all, we like to dance around the subject – Baptist or not:)))

  4. Catherine Austin Fitts (publisher of the Solari Report) stated on a radio podcast last week that during the election “you had a serious competition between two factions in the Deep State. One wanted to sacrifice the empire for North America and the other wanted to sacrifice the United States to preserve empire. And, the group that was arguing to re-gather energy back into North America and preserve North America won, That’s who, really at the end of the day, backed Trump.”

    Then she mentioned this article:
    http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21715653-biggest-business-idea-past-three-decades-deep-trouble-retreat-global

    She also said that suddenly the people needed to push the old model such as the media are no longer needed and they’re screaming and yelling and making up a storm.

  5. “Jewish Conservatives Debate American Nationalism”

    If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

  6. “Conservatives love America because we believe it is a nation founded on an idea.”

    How did the multicultural Soviet nation founded on the idea of Communism turn out when people became disillusioned with the idea? Does Benji Shapiro honestly believe that Mexican peasants and blacks will become converted to laissez faire economics and low capital gains taxes?

    Samuel Huntington warned against the fragility of Proposition Nations in his final book, Who are We? Huntington stated that when the idea no longer unites the people, a nation is not long for this world if it is not united by blood and soil. Huntington was unable to resolve his Conservative beliefs with ethnonationalism and called for weak solutions like Protestantism as a means to unite Americans. We are not concerned like Huntington was about being excluded from Harvard dinner parties so we will give White ethnonationalism a full throated roar.

  7. “Conservatives love America because we believe it is a nation founded on an idea”

    This is simply a hijacking of the term “conservative”. I would rather say that Conservative Americans love America because it is their country. It is their home. You don’t love your father and mother because of the ideas they hold. You love them because they are your father and mother.

  8. “Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.”

    – Joseph Conrad

  9. None of these metrosexual, North American Pavement Rodents have ever worked a real job, spent time with working people, of even outside their concrete and glass canyons of virtual anthills. They don’t know shit about nothin’.

    All abstractions and rhetoric, half-assed ideas they write for each other. It’s an inbred jerk circle. Blood and Soil is the recipe for disaster, eh? They need to be slapped in the face until the water sloshes in their craniums, and their fevered brains do a reset and reboot.

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