Police State Proposition Nation

Pack it up lads, it’s all over. Ethno-nationalism was destroyed by Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA. TPUSA is a campus group with a few identitarians in its ranks. It is defensive about “racism,” and regularly hosts “leadership summits” for non-whites. The next “Black Leadership Summit” is a month away.

This video shows how its leader, Charlie Kirk, “destroys” white advocacy. An audience member asks Mr. Kirk why he considers an ethnically homogeneous America “insane” when there are successful homogeneous nations around the world. He also asks why if, as Mr. Kirk says, white men are under attack, TPUSA doesn’t host white male leadership summits.

Mr. Kirk replies that being an American has nothing to do with color or religion. The questioner notes that before 1965, immigration policy reinforced that norm Americans were understood to be white. He does not note that America’s first immigration act reserved naturalization only for “free white persons.”

Mr. Kirk disagrees, saying that national origin, religion, or skin color don’t matter. He boasts of the success of the American multi-racial women’s gymnastics team as if this proves race doesn’t matter. “How about the U.S. men’s basketball team,” asks Mr. Kirk. “How many white people were on that team?”

Good question. Could there be racial differences in athletic ability? While we’re at it, how about the American Mathematical Olympiad team? Not many blacks there — or whites, for that matter. What about distance runners? Or swimming teams?

Mr. Kirk’s main point is that American identity is a state of mind. “You believe in a core set of ideas,” he says of American identity.

Of course, TPUSA promotes identity politics for non-whites and nationalism for other countries, but Mr. Kirk is describing Conservatism Inc.’s traditional position on American identity: It’s ideas, not blood.

And by the way, I don’t give a good damn about the so-called “browning of America.” Color doesn’t matter. Ideology does.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 16, 2017

But what “ideas?” Optimism is not a national identity. Henry Adams was a noted pessimist, but it would be absurd to say he wasn’t American. What about the conservative movement’s principles of limited government and free markets? Recent polls suggest more young people support socialism than capitalism. Are they no longer American?

TPUSA, quoting President Trump, claims “America will never be a socialist country.” Yet if mass immigration continues, the non-white majority will support socialism. TPUSA trumpets Martin Luther King Jr.’s supposed legacy of “colorblindness,” but King was a socialist who would oppose TPUSA’s program.

Polls show patriotism is declining, especially among young people and liberals. Conservatives often pay tribute to “traditional values,” but they’ve lost that battle. Only a minority of Generation Z and Millennials think patriotism, belief in God, and having children are important. If assimilating to America’s traditional values makes someone American, then there are fewer Americans every year.

If America is defined by “ideas,” then like the Soviet Union, it is an ideological state. Conservatives’ term “proposition nation” disguises this. Do America’s defining “ideas” include support for free markets, gun rights, and opposition to “identity politics?” Or can the country decide to ditch those ideas any time and come up with others?

Paleolibertarians have long recognized that limited government cannot exist with open borders and a large non-white population. For this reason, many who seriously believe in libertarianism have moved to the Dissident Right.

Finally, if being American is defined by ideas, anyone — anywhere — can be an American. A Tunisian peasant in his mud hut is an “American” so long as he has the right ideas.

These are the logical conclusions of Mr. Kirk’s ideological conception of citizenship. But again like the Soviet Union, if we have an ideological identity, we need thought police to enforce the ideology.

According to Mr. Kirk’s definition, we race realists are not Americans. He warns the questioner away from “white nationalism” and wants “nothing to do with ethno-nationalism.” Presumably, that means he also wants nothing to do with Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, or the other Founding Fathers who were essentially white nationalists. Mr. Kirk must also exclude the countless American leaders who believed in America’s white racial identity or who bemoaned the presence of blacks. Presumably, Mr. Kirk would not disavow the Founders, but if he were consistent, he would — just like the lefties he presumably opposes.

Recently, Mr. Kirk was caught on video saying America was just a “placeholder for timeless ideals.” He later clarified and admitted America is a “place, a people, and a history.” That’s not what he told this audience. He offered only a set of mushy ideas, not a real identity.

Whatever he really thinks, Mr. Kirk has to do this. If he talked about race or the consequences of demographic change, the corporate media would condemn him and the Beltway Right would disown him. Yet his anti-racist, ostensibly inclusive definition of American identity is more intolerant than that held by race realists.

Race realism does not require “pure” states. Japan, Korea, and China, all have ethnic minorities. However, if there is no core ethnic group, society fragments. As Lee Kuan Yew said, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” To prevent “identity politics,” a country’s core national, racial, and ethnic identity has to be taken for granted — as America’s was until recently.

This does not mean minorities are abused. In fact, a secure ethnic majority can more easily tolerate differences.

A nation-state is the political expression of a particular people. Racial identity is inherent to a people’s identity and is an immutable characteristic, like sex. A real nation does not have an ideological test for membership.

Admitting race exists and has political and social consequences does not mean we have to have a particular form of government. Race and ethnicity bind people together because they have something fundamental in common, despite different beliefs. Americans don’t have to support corporate tax cuts or root for Israel to be “real” Americans. Past American leaders such as Huey Long, Robert La Follette, or Woodrow Wilson don’t cease to be American because they were progressives.

Dinesh D’Souza has built a career blaming all of America’s problems on Democrats, even those from the 19th century. Are they to be drummed out of the community of Americans?

Mr. Kirk’s exchange with a skeptical questioner reveals a disturbing truth. Because of mass immigration and demographic change, American identity is fragmenting. It’s collapsing because Americans are being replaced. Mr. Kirk should heed Sam Francis’s warning: “[W]ithout the common blood that made us a nation in the first place, there will be no American nation, no matter what abstractions and forms we vainly invoke.”