Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part 3
by Scott P. Richert
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
At the heart of Barack Obama’s “Patriotism Tour” speech (discussed recently by Dr. Fleming and Dr. Trifkovic) lies the concept of credal nationhood. In the previous two installments of “Church and Nation,” I have mentioned that credal nationhood makes no sense whatsoever without reference to the state, because the promotion of credal nationhood has always been about increasing the power of the central state at the expense of any organic sense of American nationality.
Historically, that should be obvious, but we need to be cautious about the conclusions that we draw from this history.
For a Chronicles audience, I don’t need to rehearse Honest Abe’s use of an abstract nationalism to justify his actions during the Late Unpleasantness. Even after 1865, however, it was still possible that an American national identity, regionally Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic, could coalesce despite the destructive and divisive effects of the war. In fact, as John Lukacs has shown in Outgrowing Democracy, such an identity, with obvious regional differences, was beginning to emerge.
But other forces intervened, particularly a demographic shift in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Lukacs writes:
In 1850, 2.5 million of the population were foreign-born, in 1910 over 14 million (a total that equaled the number of natives in twenty-two states of the Union). In 1850 English was the native language of 97 percent of citizens who were foreign-born (this includes, of course, the great mass of the Irish), in 1910 it was 58 percent and decreasing fast, since by then the overwhelming majority of immigrants were coming from southern and eastern Europe and Russia.
Before World War I, German-Americans, long a significant minority, had overtaken Anglo-Americans as the dominant ethnic group in the United States. (The latter, however, still largely held the reins of political, cultural, and economic power, at least at the national level.) This demographic shift, combined with the condition that the new Southern and Eastern European immigrants’ “appearance and their expressions made them immediately recognizable, an alien element in the midst or on the edges of the American mass,” led to a groundswell of support for immigration restriction. The result was the Johnson Act of 1921, which established the “national origins” system, followed closely by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which favored Anglo and Northern European immigrants.
Immigration restriction was a reasonable response to the cultural and political transformation that was occurring in the early decades of the 20th century. And this response gives the lie to the idea that America has been, since the Declaration of Independence (or even since Lincoln’s nationalist reinterpretation of it), a “credal nation.” The 1921 and 1924 acts make no sense in the context of credal nationhood. They were, instead, concrete responses to the growing realization that Anglo-America was fading away.
Combined with the natural propensity of immigrants to form their own communities (or, in cities, their own neighborhoods), immigration restriction might well have led over time to the coalescence of a different, but still recognizably American, national identity, based on a broader European cultural identity.
But that was not to be. Instead, the federal government, in the 1920’s and 30’s, launched a crusade to “Americanize” the new immigrants, to try to create a credal nation by crushing the immigrants’ lingering European national identities. Nationality—an historic identity tied to a particular people and a particular place—became identified with citizenship, a political identity. (Even for some time after the Civil War, naturalized citizenship was granted through the states; now, it was entirely a federal concern.)
The public schools played a primary role, which is one reason why Catholic schools came under such bitter attack. Citizenship manuals such as Howard C. Hill’s The Life and Work of the Citizen (1935) encouraged the use of English, membership in such civic organizations as Rotary, and participation in wholesome American sports like baseball. To be a good American meant abandoning one’s history and traditions (and please, no more incense in church or garlic in your food!) and pledging fealty to the federal government. Hill’s book is festooned throughout with fasces, symbolizing the attempt to bind the diverse European national identities into a common American one and to create a uniform citizen-worker. (Even more ominously, the title page features four hands of different shades—symbolizing Law, Science, Order, and Trades)—grasping each other in the form of a swastika.)
Compared with the songs and stories, faith and food, language and kinship that compose a true national identity, it was all very thin gruel. And yet it triumphed, becoming the basis of post-World War II American nationalism. Small wonder that, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, opening the floodgates of immigration once again (and this time, to the entire world), that credal nationhood quickly crumbled.
And yet the idea lives on, both among the proponents of credal nationhood and among those who claim to oppose it. The problem with the writings of such Catholic critics of credal nationhood as John Rao and David Schindler is that they anachronistically project a largely 20th-century phenomenon back on the earliest days of America. They and others argue, essentially, that no true patriotism can exist in the United States, because credal nationalism is our Original Sin, and the only kind of baptism that could remove it is a baptism by fire, in which the United States itself would be consumed.
This, though, is really only the flip-side of what Barack Obama believes when he claims that “patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is also loyalty to America’s ideals—ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion.” Those who oppose credal nationalism but who argue (against the record of history) that it is the only possible American national identity do as much as Obama to empower the federal state that imposed this abstraction on us.
(Here I have to register a minor note of disagreement with my colleague Dr. Trifkovic. On this question of credal nationhood, Obama does not represent a “massive, revolutionary shift”; if anything, this is just one more area in which Obama has proved that he is not really an agent of “change” but merely a defender of the liberal and neoconservative status quo. It’s hard to see, for instance, why any FOX News commentator would object to Obama’s speech, except for the fact that Obama delivered it.)
The problem for those of us who understand that a credal nation is no nation at all is that, like everyone else, we are fixated on centralized government and centralized culture. We’re too focused on the forest to see the trees. Yet nations, like trees, are not imposed from the top down, but grow from the bottom up.
You say you want a revolution? Put down roots. Drop a few acorns. Grow your own forest.
And start studying American history, so that you can quit making yourself the prisoner of the ideological constructs that your opponents have imposed on your people and your native land.
Previous Installments in “Church and Nation”:
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Red Phillips on 3 July 2008:
“The problem with the writings of such Catholic critics of credal nationhood as John Rao and David Schindler is that they anachronistically project a largely 20th-century phenomenon back on the earliest days of America.”
Are you listening Patrick Hall?
2 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 3 July 2008:
Well done, Scott!
3 Comment by Patrick Hall on 3 July 2008:
I’ve been anxiously waiting for Mr Richert’s latest.
Once again, correct, “American nationalism” implies it is not propositional, but organic, natural, from the bottom up.
That’s not the United States. From the very beginning there were rival, different people, or “nations”, if you will. The Lowland planters were different from the Upland farmers, who were different from the Tidewater Virginians, who were different from the New England Yankees, etc. In a grand scale, Southerners were different from Northerners.
Even as early as 1804 there was talk of secession (among the weaker states of “New England” then). Not more than 15 years into the experiment, it wasn’t working, everyone knew there was no “nation”.
If anyone could find the first use of the term “American nation”, I would appreciate it. I can’t find anything outside of American Whigs/Republicans calling the United States a “nation”.
4 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 3 July 2008:
I second your point of difference with Dr. Trifkovic – you’re correct when you state this is the ideology of post-civil war america, and especially of the Progressive era.
But if we’re going to throw in the ‘credal’ Americanness. you may as well as thrown in British, as well as ‘Soviet’ that some older Russians cling to. It is not at all unique to the American case.
5 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 July 2008:
Mr Hall, you are quite right in what you have posted above, but America wasn’t intended to be a ‘nation’, merely an association of sovereign states. You’ve probably heard that before, but perhaps you need to study how this confederation was transformed into a phantom credal ‘nation’, beginning with Hamiltonians and Whigs, and why this was done.
Mr Richert, I have often wondered why it was that Americans were so willing to go overseas and kill or die for this credal ‘nation’, and likewise with the French after their revolution, and the Germans after unification, but the Italians were not. I think that Imperial Germany was less credal, which might help explain their case, but of course it doesn’t explain the Nazi era. Why were Germans willing to die for the credal Nazi state but the Italians weren’t willing to die for credal Faschist Italy?
Perhaps I’m being too repetitive but I’m trying to work this out in my own mind with little profit, and the answer may help us to fight credal nationalism, so I’ll rephrase it: Italy is nothing but a geographical expression, consisting of a government, a set of boundaries, and some kind of nationalist creed, and the same applies to America. What’s the difference? Is there something about the American creed that resonates better with the people, or are Americans just more deluded or more effectively brainwashed?
6 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 3 July 2008:
Patrick Hall (@3):
I’m not sure why you’ve been “anxiously waiting” for this piece, since your comment could have been written without reading a word that I wrote.
But once again, you’ve inadvertently proved my point:
What, pray tell, is the necessary connection between secession—a political act—and nationhood? Cannot one nation exist in two or more political entities?
The only way your comment makes sense is if you see a necessary connection between the nation and the state—if, in other words, you subscribe to the modern, liberal ideal of national self-determination. But as a traditionalist Catholic and a reactionary, surely you wouldn’t embrace Mr. Wilson’s fever dream?
7 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 3 July 2008:
Daniel Maxwell (@4):
Of course. This abstract nationalism, as John Lukacs has discussed at length for decades now and Dr. Fleming has been examining on this site recently, is a feature of the modern world.
8 Comment by Patrick Hall on 3 July 2008:
In no way do I support the idea of a connection between a nation and the state, but that in no way precludes me from also protesting the idea of an “American nation”. I brought up secession merely to point out the fact that from there very beginning, there were different “nations” within this proposition we call the United States.
The Lowland South, as a nation, tried to get out of this proposition; the Upland South, another nation, wasn’t so keen. From that came both the War Between the States and the American Civil War. The War Between the States was fought by the Union (“the North) and the Confederacy (“the South”). The Civil War was fought, primarily, by Upland Southerners against one another.
Mr Richert, we concur:
Put down roots. Drop a few acorns. Grow your own forest.
Americans were doing that up to 147 years ago, until the brutal enforcement of the Union proposition. Neither Lowland South, nor Upland South, nor New England, nor the Midwest, nor the Great Plains, nor the Northwest, nor the Southwest, NO WHERE was a separate, organic, nation allowed – the proposition of an American Nation, coast-to-coast, was enforced. The goals of the Whigs and the Democrats merged, taking the worst of both parties with them, “Propositional Nationalism” and “Manifest Destiny”.
9 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 3 July 2008:
Patrick Hall (@8):
Which is it?
Did Lincoln create something new, or did he simply enforce something that was there from the beginning? You seem to want to have it both ways. Yet if America was never anything more than a “proposition,” then Lincoln was simply the exemplary American, was he not?
This is what I mean about blindly accepting the narrative of your opponents. Whatever else it may mean in practice, it means at least that you have decided that they have the better argument. And in this case, that means that you only have something to fight against (the world their narrative has made) and nothing to fight for.
10 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 3 July 2008:
“The goals of the Whigs and the Democrats merged, taking the worst of both parties with them, “Propositional Nationalism” and “Manifest Destiny”.”
Yes, and with it, snuffed out most of the ‘radicalism’ that made these United States so wonderful. Even Democrats that upheld the classical liberal platform well post-war, such as Grover Cleveland, wouldnt go ‘as far’ as his pre-war brethren. The old ‘Birth of a Nation’ silent film, truly had a brilliant title. In a sense, the birth of this nation happened not on July 4th, 1776 but on April 9th, 1865. The Constitution also died at that time, now we have a Federal government that decides the limits of its own powers.
Any talk otherwise of a ‘nation’ prior to 1865 is ‘progressive’ Yankee fiction. While the word ‘nation’ was sometimes used, ‘Republic’ was the more common phrase used for the Union.
But back to the article – Mr. Richter, when I heard Obama’s speech, I immediately thought of your series of articles and said to myself, “Scott Richter is going to write a piece on it, I just know it”. Everything you say is true. Obama and all who came before him, created a false ‘nation’ out of one line from the Declaration of Independence. From his definition, any human is an ‘American’ as long he believes in the Lincolnite version of the Declaration of Independence – which is only one line.
You are correct to say though, before the Industrial Revolution we were more of an Anglo-Celtic culture – my own family history attests to that (Scottish immigrants first arriving in 1720). But remember, there were large numbers of Dutch immigrants and their decedents from Day 1 (ahem, Martin Van Buren).
11 Comment by Patrick Hall on 3 July 2008:
Did Lincoln create something new, or did he simply enforce something that was there from the beginning?
He expanded the Yankee nation to encompass the whole proposition called the United States by waging a war against the Lowland South and their Upland South allies.
The War made the proposition into a compulsion. The proposition of the United States was forced to become a nation of the United States – with the Yankee culture dominating. Of course, there are still separate nations within the United States; the victory of the North wasn’t total.
To elaborate on Mr Maxwell’s statement above: the American Nation wasn’t born in 1776, but conceived. Gestation time was 89 years.
Also, I believe Dr Rao’s point about the United State’s “Original Sin” is that it was founded upon principles of the Enlightenment, and not upon the Truth of the Church.
12 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 4 July 2008:
People do not have to have either a credal nation nor a centralised government to have a fellow feeling of shared nationality. In the beginning Americans had this fellow feeling or sentiment based on the common British ancestry, diverse Protestantism, and the common experience of the war of independence. It was a kind of patriotism that did not require ideology or central power and could easily include the Dutch, Germans, Huguenots, etc. This patriotism celebrated the citizen soldier but not the imperial military. Then Hamilton created the base for a central power in league with the money power. The war on the South, made possible only by a host of immigrants who had no heritage of the fellow feeling, and the years of hate propaganda against the South that preceded it, destroyed patriotism and substituted the creed. The creed was the ratioale and cover for the rule of capital and New England cultural imperialism.
In passing: Pat Buchanan’s latest column praises Hamilton’s creation of American centralised “nationalism.” And many people think Independence Day is for the celebration of the imperial armed forces.
13 Comment by MAP on 4 July 2008:
Great article and thought provoking posts!
14 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 4 July 2008:
I believe a genuine American nationality was in the process of forming in the WW II era, but the imperialists destroyed that when they fostered the 60s social revolution.
15 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 4 July 2008:
“.. diverse Protestantism,..”
Absolutely true. However, there were a small minority of Catholics here at the beginning – such as the Carroll family of Ireland (including Declaration of Independence signer Charles), as well as my own family (who mostly converted after the failure of the Jacobin rebellions in Scotland).
“In passing: Pat Buchanan’s latest column praises Hamilton’s creation of American centralised “nationalism.” ”
Mr. Buchanan is right about so much, but wrong often enough to make note of. If the War for Southern Independence had been successful, he would definitely be in the Whig camp (I will never forget his defense of the British corn laws).
16 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 4 July 2008:
Error on my part – I meant ‘Jacobite’, not ‘Jacobin’.
17 Comment by Theodore M. Van Oosbree on 4 July 2008:
Mr. Buchanan is a divided man on this subject. He is both an admirer of the Confederacy and a nationalist in the Whig/Hamilton mode. I believe his political and economic principles lean toward Whiggery but his family loyalties lie elsewhere (his father was a Confederatophile and had ancestors in the Confederate army).
18 Comment by Allen Wilson on 4 July 2008:
I cant think of a better way to describe credal nationalism than as a ‘fever dream’. It just seems to fit, though ‘delusion’ might be a more convenient term.
As Dr Wilson has suggested, we dont need credal nationalism or centralism for a feeling of nationality. Combine this with Mr Richert’s post above, to the effect that there is no necessary connection between nation and state, and you must come to the conclusion that credal nationalism is a propaganda hoax used by those in control of the state to manipulate and control the people. That is credal nationalism in it’s essence. Therefore, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are hated by credalists because they compete with the very creed that supports and justifies the centralised state, as do all regional or local identities and cultures.
What we are left with is the fact that credal nationalism, like all ideologies, cannot tolerate religion or culture of any kind, nor real patriotism, and must destroy them all or be destroyed by them.
Consider the effect which the confusion of patriotism with credal nationalism has had on people’s perceptions of events. Just as Stalin couldn’t motivate Russians to die for Communism, and had to present the war with Germany as a ‘Great Patriotic War’ to save Mother Russia, so it is also impossible to get Americans to defend ‘America’ or ‘the country’ from mass immigration. If you tell them that the immigrants will destroy ‘the country’ they think of that word in credal terms, as an abstract concept, and no sane person will kill or die for abstractions. Those who are willing to go overseas to kill or die for ‘the country’ think of it in patriotic terms, not credal. Now we see why Liberals dont even go overseas to fight their own wars. They are unable to believe in their abstractions strongly enough to do that. Thus we see the root of the current nihilism.
19 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 4 July 2008:
Scott: Excellent piece, and a great read for the morning of July 4!
Scott: “Instead, the federal government, in the 1920’s and 30’s, launched a crusade to “Americanize” the new immigrants, to try to create a credal nation by crushing the immigrants’ lingering European national identities.”
This is very well true. Having spent a few years doing DNA genealogy, I have found that if one were to create a statistical composite of your average white Midwesterner, he would probably be Celtic/Anglo/Germanic. Indeed, the three of these are somewhat related. The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic, and the Celts and Germans look similar The Romans, in fact, would often confuse Celts and Germans. But where does this leave our composite today? What is he?
20 Comment by Ronduck on 4 July 2008:
The public schools played a primary role, which is one reason why Catholic schools came under such bitter attack. Citizenship manuals such as Howard C. Hill’s The Life and Work of the Citizen (1935) encouraged the use of English, membership in such civic organizations as Rotary, and participation in wholesome American sports like baseball.
What is wrong with encouraging the use of English? There will always be some people who cannot master a second language, for them we need to make sure the language they speak is English. Second, even if everyone can master a second language they prefer to converse and organize in their native tongue which needs to be common to everyone for the Republic to survive. Are you saying diversity is strength?
To be a good American meant abandoning one’s history and traditions (and please, no more incense in church or garlic in your food!) and pledging fealty to the federal government.
The Bible states that ‘no man can serve two masters,’ who else were these immigrants to pledge fealty to? If you believe that they should have pledged their loyalty to their states of residence then you need to state whether you think the modern US should exist. I’m beginning to think you and Patrick Hall are of the same mind.
Hill’s book is festooned throughout with fasces, symbolizing the attempt to bind the diverse European national identities into a common American one and to create a uniform citizen-worker. (Even more ominously, the title page features four hands of different shades—symbolizing Law, Science, Order, and Trades)—grasping each other in the form of a swastika.)
Argumentum ad Hitlerum!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_Hitlerum
What are you proposing instead, that America be a tower of Babel? If we do this to the Mexicans-in-America is this an attempt to build a credal nation, or is it an attempt to show the newcomers who we really are?
I would have preferred that there be no immigration then or now, but once it has occured, I want them to completely lose their culture and adopt mine. Put simply, I want their culture to make no contributions to the US, instead I want this country to be based on Anglo-Saxon Protestantism.
21 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 4 July 2008:
20. I would prefer that the immigrants do not speak English. They will be easier to keep from the rights of natives and to deport. “English only” is a counterproductive appeal to the assimilationist myth.
22 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 4 July 2008:
Ronduck (@20):
Grow up. I didn’t invoke Hitler; I mentioned the symbolism of the swastika, which had a history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries of which Hitler and the Nazis are only one part. If you’d bother to read, you might actually catch the fact that I mentioned that the four hands were of different shades–hardly a symbol of Aryan racial purity. Likewise, Howard C. Hill was not a Nazi but an American nationalist.
The point about the swastika, of course, is that it was used, not as a symbol of racial purity, but, like the fasces, of the unitary state.
Let me turn the question around: Was the United States, as a federation, legitimate before the federal government usurped the powers of the several states? If so, why is it wrong to believe that now?
The point, as should be clear by now, is that the Americanization program was about increasing the power of the federal government–which means not only extirpating the remnants of the non-Anglo European-American identities of recent immigrants but also further eroding the power of the several states.
On the question of English, Clyde Wilson is absolutely correct about the connection between English-only policies and the assimilationist myth. The point here is not that the immigrant in the interwar period shouldn’t have learned English; it’s that the imposition of English-only actually impedes true, organic assimilation. Merely abandoning one’s native language does not make one an American.
I’m not proposing anything. My discussion so far has been entirely historical. But let’s add another bit of history that I’ve discussed before in Chronicles and elsewhere. My father’s family (on both his mother’s and his father’s sides) came to the United States in 1832. They were Germans from Alsace-Lorraine. They learned English very quickly, yet they continued to speak German. Their language of worship (they were Lutherans) was German until 1917, when the anti-German sentiment of World War I convinced them to abandon the language. (They offered classes at the church school in German until 1917 as well.)
Was this “a tower of Babel”? Of course not. The German community of Harrison County, Indiana, lived in harmony with the English majority. But the history does indicate that, in this discussion, you’re much closer to Mr. Hall than I am. Both of you have very unrealistic expectations about how shared identities are made. If, in close to a century, my ancestors had not fully assimilated, how can you possibly expect “their culture to make no contributions to the US”?
None of which is to say that I want to see a wholesale cultural transformation of the United States–far from it. Even as a Catholic, I would be much happier in a country that still resembled the Old Republic, culturally as well as politically.
What we need to understand, however, is that the creation of an American national identity from the top down has been tried, and it has failed. Repeating the same policies will serve only to enhance the power of the federal state, while continuing to undermine what is left of a truly American identity.
23 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 4 July 2008:
Clyde Wilson (@14):
John Lukacs makes a similar remark about the coalescence of a national identity post-World War II. And obviously, 1965 killed that possibility.
But if such a process was indeed occurring, would you agree that it was in spite of, rather than because of, the earlier Americanization campaign? I’m convinced (as my essay indicates) that the Americanization campaign made the disruption of the 60’s more likely, rather than less so.
Paradoxically, credal nationhood might make men more likely to fight to spread the creed, but it seems to make them less likely to fight to defend anything real.
24 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 4 July 2008:
Patrick Hall (@11):
I made that very clear in the first installment of this series (“Church and Nation: America’s Original Sin”). I’m not sure what your point is, unless you’re suggesting that Rao doesn’t see credal nationhood as part of the legacy of the Enlightenment.
25 Comment by JSBolton on 4 July 2008:
Obama is above quoted as saying that patriotism is more than loyalty to a territory and citizenry, and that statement needs to be criticized also. It is national loyalty to fellow citizens first, relative to foreigners, which is the minimum which any national creed is added on to. If the American Creed, such as the racial-ethnic- religious egalitarian one endlessly repeated from Myrdal, contradicts the minimum loyalty to fellow nationals first, it will be a fiction and no part of patriotism. Anti-discrimination cannot substitute for loyalty to fellow citizens relative to foreigners, since the two are radically in contradiction, and national loyalty is the least we can have and still have a nation of any kind. A citizen who intellectually rejects every distinctively American law, and every item of creed claimed to be national, but who is still loyal to fellow citizens relative to foreigners, is still a citizen. A foreigner who believes in every distinctively American law and creed item, is still a foreigner. Therefore, necessarily, it is the loyalty to fellow citizens first, which defines the nation, and no claimed national creed can legitimately be added in a way which contradicts that national loyalty.
26 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 4 July 2008:
JSBolton (@25):
I think that you intend to put the emphasis in the right place, but in discussing everything in terms of loyalty to fellow citizens (rather than, say, countrymen), you’re making nationality a function of the political order. That puts you at least halfway toward accepting the idea of credal nationhood, and, indeed, you seem to have no problem with such an idea, as long as the creed doesn’t place the foreigner before the citizen. But here is where Patrick Hall is at least partly right: Since citizenship in the United States today has nothing whatsoever to do with nationality, one could be a foreigner one day and a citizen the very next. And yet the only thing that will change is his political status, not his nationality.
27 Comment by Patrick Hall on 4 July 2008:
Mr Richert, in my reference to Dr Rao, above, I can’t quite remember exactly to what I was refering. Consider the comment struck from the record, as you pointed out the fact that credal nationhood is a legacy of Enlightenment values; I’ll accept that since I can not remember, exactly, then I was mistaken to have written it.
Now:
You state: “[T]he creation of an American national identity from the top down has been tried, and it has failed.”
It is all clear now (I think). Mr Richert, you are proposing that an American nation could have been (organically) built out of what existed in, say, 1820, correct? That America, no matter it’s government(s), could have contained a people that belonged to it; the best descriptor of the Latin “patria”, or “fatherland” – a people that, perhaps, are different from one another in distinct ways, but “American” nonethless because there is a distinct definition of Land called “America” and the people that identify with the Land, no matter their differences, would be “Americans”; correct, or no?
For example, an “American” living in Key West may have drastically different “folkways” from one living in North Dakota, but the Conch feels a stronger bond between himself and North Dakota than he does, say, Cuba, unless, of course, you say Cubans are Americans as well – which one could make a valid argument.
Which brings up a question I have asked before: what makes an “American”? Are Canadians American? What about the Quebeckers? Cajuns? Or Tejanos? Et cetera.
28 Comment by JSBolton on 5 July 2008:
A new citizen, if he shares the loyalty of Americans first, has really broken with his nation and probably family even. That would be so rare that, it almost doesn’t even figure in the comparison. So nationality and citizenship in my minimum sense are almost indistinguishable, so long as those who would be loyal in that way are inside the borders of a sovereign state already. Wanting to include incipient nation-states in ‘Nation’ is understandable, but wouldn’t the above principle still be able to apply, as they are not about to become a true nation-state, if they would not then have that loyalty once they’ve won the territory. Sovereignty is not a deity, but it does have the one loyalty which can be commanded, and thus is higher in worldly power than all others. I don’t think this is even a small fraction of the way toward propositional ‘nation’-hood, since only real nations will evoke that loyalty to fellow nationals, over against all foreigners, no matter how they may suffer, or be co-religionists, or co-ethnics of some kind, or be relatives even; is a formidable boundary to cross and hold people to, if they don’t spontaneously feel it. So it seems that only naturally coherent nations, or very rich and favored ones, could have it without hard compulsion.
29 Comment by G.L.A. on 5 July 2008:
As stated, Americans began, with the Lincoln Republican take over, to shift to “a credal Americanism” or a “loyalty to ideal” with citizenship becoming more and more of a politcal idendity. However, it should be noted that the take over was not a political coup as much as it was an economic coup. Lincoln and his Republican centralist served the new Northeastern, industrial commercial barons and not vise versa. The over riding conditioning of Americans was a loyalty to the crede of materialism and consumption. Wall Street, Madison Ave. and Hollywood had far more influence in turning the localized, family/community/church oriented countrymen of America into the
nationalized, deracinated, amoral, consumer-citizen of the 1950’s and beyond than did Washington and its puppets.
The WWII generation (my parents) were materialist before they were New Deal or Eisenhower idealoques. The excuse I always herad was, “after all they grew up during the Depression and know what it’s like to be without”. For whatever the reasons are, human nature in general, Protestanism or others, Americans’ greatest weakness has been its material longing. The Northeastern ruling elite understood this weakness, perpetuated it on a mass scale and used the weakness as the primary means to turn Americans from a free people to financial and corpoarte slaves.
I’m not saying that other parallel forces to the reconditioning of Americans were not at play such as New Deal and Great Society state welfare, military and regulatory enticements. But even with these national political offerings the bait was in most cases material or economic gain (SS, medicaid, Agri subsidies, military bases, inner city welfare etc, etc.) and then the switch to idealogical loyalty (national citizen, abstract ideals of government rights) came as the second move.
30 Comment by TJF on 5 July 2008:
I have asked the Webmaster to block future posts from Patrick Hall. His persistence in repeating errors that have been refuted, combined with immaturity and rudeness, make him an inappropriate person to participate in what we hope to be civil discussions. We shall be happy to reconsider this decision when we receive an apology as direct as his insults and his attacks on what I believe to be the country of his citizenship. Our country has long suffered from grave and perhaps fatal flaws, but “Screw the US” is not language we are going to tolerate. He may address his apologies–preferably abject–to the Webmaster.
31 Comment by Ronduck on 5 July 2008:
Mr Richert, in #22 you state:
The point here is…that the imposition of English-only actually impedes true, organic assimilation.
In your many posts on this thread and others you seem to define assimilation as “separate groups growing together over time, but the definition given by wikipedia is different:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_assimilation
Cultural assimilation (often called merely assimilation) is a process of integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural community (such as immigrants, or ethnic minorities) are “absorbed” into another, generally larger, community. This implies the loss of the characteristics of the absorbed group, such as language, customs, ethnicity and self-identity.
When I read your posts you seem to mean syncretism(also from wiki:
…The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths….
There could be a better term than syncretism, but you seem to mean groups naturally growing together over time as equals, not groups losing their culture to take up another one. I feel we would be better able to argue this out with better terms, as such I am open to a better alternative to syncretism.
Let me turn the question around: Was the United States, as a federation, legitimate before the federal government usurped the powers of the several states?
Yes.
If so, why is it wrong to believe that now?
Our government is being delegitimized by its’ own behavior in displacing its’ native population, both through immigration and through allowing Black to destroy entire cities. I consider myself a loyal citizen of this country and of this government, but I am finding that my loyalty is not being reciprocated. Further, I am finding that my government is trying to reduce me to subject status, from the position of citizen I currently hold.
32 Comment by TJF on 5 July 2008:
This is a very difficult and complicated problem to discuss, much less to resolve. I made a stab in my contribution to our book on immigration, but it is no more than that. Small numbers of not-too dissimilar immigrants may be successfully assimilated to the extent that their only distinctive characteristics, apart from their identity as part of their adopted nation, are funny little customs such as many families keep, e.g. when they open presents at Christmas, whether they serve lamb or (ugh) ham at Easter. The trouble with massive waves of immigration such as we are suffering now and between, say, 1860 and 1920, is that the immigrants tend never to assimilate fully, even if they believe they have. To the extent Americans speak of being hyphenated, e.g. Irish-American, they are not American in the sense that the term was once used. On the other hand, nationalistic campaigns to force assimilation only assimilate the immigrants to a sterile and invented nationalist identity. It is a bad situation either way, which is one of the principal reasons for supporting a highly restrictionist policy. And, I would add, anyone who says, “But that policy might have excluded my ancestors,” is still unassimilated. I am speaking now as a hybrid who has ancestors of both types. The Romans faced a similar problem, but their empire claimed universality, based on Hellenic culture, Rome’s legal system, the Roman duty missionize the world, and, later, Christianity. We have the opposite: cultural institutions rooted in divisivenenss and self-hate.
33 Comment by Michael Warning on 5 July 2008:
“Was the United States, as a federation, legitimate before the federal government usurped the powers of the several states?”
No.
Of the four types of regime, The United States falls under the regime that: acquired power unjustly and is currently using power unjustly.
The United States as a federation, acquired power unjustly, blood was split first before any declaration of Independence and before any Constitution. It was a revolt against the legitimate authority at the time.
As for the current federal government, the use of power is unjust.
As for the federal government usurping the powers of the several states it is nothing but an organic growth of a bad beginning.
Our system or form of government does not work. No need to spend hours of unnecessary study to figure that one out.
You truly want a revolution then………oh well why bother?
34 Comment by PH on 5 July 2008:
I am a proud citizen of Bavaria.
That entitles me to absolutely nothing, but a citizen of Bavaria I am, nonetheless.
35 Comment by Ronduck on 5 July 2008:
32TJF
….On the other hand, nationalistic campaigns to force assimilation only assimilate the immigrants to a sterile and invented nationalist identity.
This may be true, but in the case of Irish and Italians who have been here for over a hundred years the process must be driven to its’ final conclusion if we are to have domestic unity, or even a functioning government. Also, it is good to remember that with a standard of what constitutes an American that is publicly acknowledged we can then publicly condemn that which deviates from it knowing the rest of the population has the same values we do.
Small numbers of not-too dissimilar immigrants may be successfully assimilated to the extent that their only distinctive characteristics, apart from their identity as part of their adopted nation, are funny little customs such as many families keep, e.g. when they open presents at Christmas, whether they serve lamb or (ugh) ham at Easter.
I work the overnight shift at a grocery store here in Mesa, AZ and our former frozen stocker was a Hispanic who had turkey, dressing, yams and cranberry sauce for Easter, and probably every other major holiday too.
I have lived in the same small area of west Mesa for the last 12 years, I even went to high school and junior high here and I have been in the same store working nights for the last 6. Since I have worked nights, isolated from the rest of the stores employees, I have encountered Serb-refugee truck drivers, illegal Mexicans from Chicago, a Mexican indian who can’t speak Spanish, a Korean immigrant, a Filipino immigrant, a black Spanish speaking Dominican, White meth-freaks, and even hordes of Mormons. I live an isolated life, sleeping days, rarely venturing out and otherwise only associating with a few select people. Despite my isolation all of this diversity has come to me, despite my attempts to avoid it and everyone else.
What is even more shocking than watching an area founded by White Mormon colonists turn brown is watching it turn Black. The Blacks who used to live in inner city Phoenix are being pushed out by the gentrifiers and the Mexicans into my neighborhood here in Mesa. Now as I drive the streets I rode on in junior high I see small packs of Negroes walking around everywhere.
This is the neighborhood I have lived in for half of my short life, if I have to move because of the Brown Tide I am leaving the state altogether.
36 Comment by Steve Berg on 6 July 2008:
In retrospect, the notion of credal nationality seems rather far fetched. Just because you have a bunch of mismatched people all mumbling the Pledge of Allegiance in relative unison certainly is not going to guarantee much national feeling, much less cohesion. It really would not be much of an improvement if they were all stumbling their way through the Declaration of Independence all the way up to the part where the king’s transgressions are spelled out. This section tends to be ignored, especially the part where it says, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. ” You can also see that merely reciting a creed has done little to combat ethnic differences in the Church. Even back when the Mass was Really Catholic, and in Latin, there were Irish churches, Italian churches, Slovak churches, Polish churches, and even German churches all with the same liturgy, and all frequently were within walking distance of each other in many towns. Even now, as Dr. Fleming has pointed out, there is friction between Novus Ordo and Traditional Mass partisans, even of the same nationality and ethnicity. As Dr. Fleming has also stated, determining assimilation is extremely difficult. In an earlier thread on this topic it was suggested that you belonged to a country where you felt at home. This sort of thing is almost impossible to analyze rationally, but Ronduck above has given a good example of how it works in practice.
37 Comment by robert m. peters on 6 July 2008:
Dr. Wilson:
Yours words:
“I believe a genuine American nationality was in the process of forming in the WW II era, but the imperialists destroyed that when they fostered the 60s social revolution.”
The natural growth of a genuine American national identity was thwarted by at least four things, likely there were many more, than in the 60’s:
1. Civil Rights Legislation which took away our freedom of association domestically.
2. The 1965 Immigration Act which took away our freedom of association as it related to aliens.
3. The Vietnam War which was an imperialistic adventure which alienated us from one another.
4. The “social revolution” which was a Marxist/New Left movement aid and abet the undermining of traditions and relations, not the least of which being the family.
38 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 6 July 2008:
Mr. Peters, you hit the nail square (as usual).
39 Comment by MAP on 7 July 2008:
GLA @ 29. A valid point. Richard Weaver wrote at length about the chivalric code that served to separate us as civilized and had it origins within the Christian moral code. But I have read little (though I have not read everything!) about that other great upheaval of the Enlightenment, the rise of new money as a result of English industrialisation. In time this new money replaced the ruling class of nobles and lords. Richard Weaver’s views could be applied here as well. A system of rule based upon Christian values was replaced by one whose only values were profit and greed; what you can gain became paramount, not how you achieve it. Lincoln’s victory was a victory for an entirely different value system.
40 Comment by TJF on 7 July 2008:
If there were to be an “American nation,” it would have to have a common language, religion, culture, and sense of history. Even in 1960 all we had was a common language, the pathetic fiction of “Judaeo-Christianity, a commercial culture, and an historical sense that had no roots, except for a few people who had views that conflicted with the national ideology–e.g., southerners, Mormons, traditional Catholics. Even returning to the 1950’s would do little to help. successful polyethnic states–Austria-Hungary and Switzerland–had to be cantonized to succeed, but even that solution does not always work. The Austrians were fairly decent toward Czechs and Slovenes, but the Hungarians insisted on Madyarizing the Croats and Slovaks. The Swiss example could not probably not succeed in the case of a powerful nation-state, and it did not prevent French and Germans from supporting their ethnic brothers in WW I. I agree entirely with Clyde Wilson and Donald Livingston that highly regional confederacies would be vastly preferable to what we have, but devolution is unlikely to take place except during a collapse.
The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that America was never a nation, much less a credal nation, and the series of revolutions that transformed the government–1776, 1787, 1860, 1932, 1968, etc–have left us nothing but a brightly painted shell covering something very distasteful–imagine an M&M filled with excrement.
41 Pingback by People Smarter Than Me « Saint Superman on 7 July 2008:
[...] July 7, 2008 in culture, people smarter than me America as Credal Nation [...]
42 Comment by John Willson on 7 July 2008:
Actually, credal nationhood peaked in 1965, when LBJ’s administration completed the New Deal version of progressivism. In 1965 Democrats were ascendant, “civil rights” triumphant, Liberal Internationalism “surging” in Vietnam, the new immigration act opening the floodgates; the age of Equality about to become a reality. But about ten years later the only ones who still believed all this nonsense were the small conspiracy of neoconservatives who were just beginning to make their long march through the institutions. They are like Gorbachev communists, looking for any way they can find to keep the old slogans alive, even under different names, believing that the slogans will serve to keep the discredited ideas in power. So far it’s worked (much longer than it did for poor Gorbachev) because as so many have pointed out in this forum, there was no real nation behind the failed creed, and no new creed has come along to take its place. Whether one places the blame for the progressive creed on Hamilton, Lincoln, Wilson, or FDR (actually, I think Herbert Croly articulated it best), it was a powerful creed, and it is still hard to kill. I would like to suggest that I hope the political culture of the US never achieves anything like real nationhood. We would be worse than the 20th century ideologues, if only because we are so much richer and more powerful. Our hope is in the villages, small cities, neighborhoods (even regions no longer exist: name one!) that can somehow hide from Leviathan. Wonderful post, Scott.
43 Comment by JSBolton on 10 July 2008:
Another blast at the propositionalist approach:
An insuperable contradiction-in-terms arises from assuming that those who do not believe in the anti-discrimination creed were outside the nation, if it defines them thus outside, it discriminates on the basis of creed; if it doesn’t, the supposed national creed does not define the nation.
44 Comment by Ronduck on 11 July 2008:
Mr. Richert I am sorely disappointed with you.
I provoked this series about ‘Church and Nation’ by writing a series of anti-Catholic and anti-Ted responses to a Pat Buchanan article posted on this blog. I wrote a memorable post asking rhetorically if Ted is the public face of the Church’s inner corruption, which you angrily responded to, claiming that I believed in wild-eyed anti-Catholic conspiracy theories.
Here is the post which started it all:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=584#comment-145038
I have read second-hand that Peter Brimelow wrote in Alien Nation that at some point America’s Catholics will have to choose between being a Catholic and being an American. I am only one-third through the ebook of Alien Nation and haven’t found the quote yet, but I hope to find it. Since the Rockford Institute is a supporter of the John Randolph club, at its’ next meeting you may want to ask Brimelow if he feels the Roman church is incompatible with being an American.
You must address these questions or else your series on church and nation is merely squid ink intended to sidetrack your readers arguing the pointless:
1. Is the American church completely corrupt?
2. Is Catholicism compatible with the American founding? This can’t be argued with anecdotes or statistics.
3. Is Catholicism compatible with the survival of America?
This last question is extra:
3. Massachusetts was originally founded by Puritans who intended to ‘purify’ the Church of England of its remaining Catholic influences. Do you find it significant that 50% of the population in Mass. is now Catholic?
45 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 12 July 2008:
Mr. Ronduck, there used to be a question that was quite common in American parlance, back in the days when people either HAD manners; believed that manners were a valuable trait to cultivate, or at very least FEIGN the existence of. The question was “Who raised you?” The question however is (and was) rhetorical, and meant purely to ask you to phrase your comments in a way that does not threaten or throttle your interlocutor. Pardon me for preaching. And thank you.
46 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 12 July 2008:
Mark Doane (@44):
You give yourself too much credit. This series has been literally a dozen years in the making, as can be seen by browsing my articles for Chronicles starting in late 1996.
I never “claimed” that you “believed in wild-eyed anti-Catholic conspiracy theories”; instead, I stated quite plainly the fact that anyone who believes that Ted Kennedy was manufactured by the Catholic hierarchy in order to bring about the destruction of the United States has taken leave of his senses. Sadly, you continue to prove that I’m simply stating facts, not making claims.
Since The Rockford Institute owns the John Randolph Club . . .
Would that be the same Peter Brimelow who, in February 2007, married a Catholic in a Catholic ceremony? Just asking . . .
Must I, now? Tell you what, Mr. Doane: Send a donation to The Rockford Institute equivalent to my salary for a week, and I’ll address any question you want. Until then, I’ll address the questions I want to address.
And yet, oddly, you keep coming back. A fan of squid ink, are you?
As for your indispensable questions, #1 means nothing. The American hierarchy could be completely corrupt (it is not, as the presence of such men as Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford proves), and yet it would tell us nothing about whether one could be both a good Catholic and a good American. If you can’t get that point, Mr. Doane, then you’re the most Jansenistic Protestant I’ve ever run into.
I’ve dealt with #2 in the first four parts of this series, without getting into statistics (though I’ll admit to using a few anecdotes to illustrate points, since I don’t believe in making merely abstract arguments).
And as for #3 (the first #3; this Catholic, at least, knows that 4 follows 3, rather than 3 following itself), all in good time. I made it very clear in the first article that this is the point of this series.
As for the second #3 (what we traditionalist Catholics would insist on calling #4), of course it is significant, historically, culturally, and politically, that 50 percent of the population of Massachusetts today self-identifies as Catholic. It’s also significant that the vast majority of that 50 percent dissents from one or more doctrines of the Faith, and that probably less than 20 percent of the 50 percent sets foot in a church once a month.
But that, of course, is not what you’re asking. And so to answer the question that you’re too timid to ask straight out (Do I believe that the fact that 50 percent of the population of Massachusetts is now Catholic is proof that the Vatican deliberately set out to undermine that Puritan paradise?), the answer, of course, is no. But then, I’m not certifiable.
Feel free to ask more questions. I promise to provide a thoughtful answer to each one, just as soon as your donation arrives.
47 Comment by G.S. on 12 July 2008:
For my part, I demand to know:
1) Who put the “bomp” in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp?
and
2) Who who put the “ram” in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?
48 Comment by G.S. on 12 July 2008:
My hypothesis?
The Jesuits.
49 Comment by Ronduck on 13 July 2008:
I was going from memory on who ran the JRC, here was the article that I partly remembered:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/080514_pendleton.htm
The American hierarchy could be completely corrupt, and yet it would tell us nothing about whether one could be both a good Catholic and a good American.
If the American hierarchy is corrupt it does tell us whether a person can be loyal to it and remain a good American. The fact is that the church is the hierarchy and the hierarchy is the church, any church that is not under the authority of the local bishop is not Catholic. So let me rephrase my question: Is the presence of the hierarchy in the US compatible with the American founding? I chose the above quote from your response because you seem to imply that being a good Catholic is independent of how the church leadership behaves. That quote could be interpreted to mean that a person could be good Catholic without the hierarchy at all, which in reality would render them outside the church. The fact is that if the church leadership misbehaves it hangs over all those who choose to follow them.
I have a short explanation as to why Mass. Catholics are loathe to attend church:
The local priests and bishops are the spiritual leaders of the community, and if they either discard biblical morality or put minor social issues ahead of teaching the Bible, then they are implying that the Bible is not relevant. If the Bible is not relevant then it couldn’t have been written by a god, meaning either that that deity wrote nothing, it wrote something else, or it does not exist. The laity take this practical atheism from their spiritual teachers seriously and stop attending an institution founded to worship a god that does not exist. Had the church maintained a hard line in that state, then it would not have empty pews on Sunday. Also. had the church maintained a hard line on morality then Mass. would not have become what it is today. In order to take a hard line they would have had to expel prominent members who claim the name of the church while misbehaving in public.
Please give me a few minutes and I will search Alien Nation for the quotes.
50 Comment by Ronduck on 13 July 2008:
It’s been more than a few minutes and I have found the quote, not in Alien Nation, but on Vdare. I used this string in Google to search the Vdare site for the quote I was looking for: “site:vdare.com choose catholic choice”. From Brimelow’s article on June 5, 2006:
http://www.vdare.com/pb/060605_gulag.htm
Many of our strongest articles are by patriotic American Catholics articulately appalled by much of their hierarchy’s relentless support for immigration. But I increasingly get equally articulate articles from non-Catholic readers who have simply decided, on the basis of the bishops’ behavior, that the Catholic Church is a Bad Thing and, in particular, incompatible with the survival of the American nation-state.
In effect, the post-1965 immigration disaster, and the bishops’ foolish response to it, threatens to revive a controversy about the Catholic Church in America that had been dormant since the days of Nation editor Paul Blanshard’s 1949 best-selling polemic American Freedom and Catholic Power and John F. Kennedy’s celebrated 1960 speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, which was in many ways an answer. American Catholics may face the prospect of being forced by their bishops to chose between their country and their faith. Americans who are not Catholics face the prospect of losing not just their country but their friends.
I will admit I was wrong on one point, Brimelow does not express any malice toward the church in this article, but he does make the point that America’s Catholics may have to choose between Rome and America. Incidentally, I am also an American who has decided that the church is a Bad Thing.
I believe that with proper searching I can provide some veiled malice from Brimelow towards the church, but for now I will finish here.
51 Comment by T. Chan on 13 July 2008:
but he does make the point that America’s Catholics may have to choose between Rome and America.
The leadership of the country does not need the American bishops (not the same as “Rome” or the pope) to justify their immigration policies. It’s been doing fine without them.
52 Comment by NGPM on 13 July 2008:
“The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that America was never a nation, much less a credal nation, and the series of revolutions that transformed the government–1776, 1787, 1860, 1932, 1968, etc–have left us nothing but a brightly painted shell covering something very distasteful–imagine an M&M filled with excrement.”
So would our best bet be to rejoin the British Empire after all? It does seem interesting that the 1921 and 1924 Immigration Acts were based upon ethno-cultural national concerns but the attempt to assimilate the new immigrants was basically credal and not ethnic. Was this inevitable without the monarch?
“I have a short explanation as to why Mass. Catholics are loathe to attend church”
The situation you describe is more or less the same as the situation in France, where liberal Gallican-inspired clergy have become effectively agents of the godless state and the Lefebvrite wing is fast becoming the only piece of the Church that attracts any attendance. There’s just no point in swallowing a leftist toxin pointlessly seasoned with holy oil when it goes down just fine on its own.
53 Comment by NGPM on 13 July 2008:
“And, I would add, anyone who says, “But that policy might have excluded my ancestors,” is still unassimilated. I am speaking now as a hybrid who has ancestors of both types. The Romans faced a similar problem, but their empire claimed universality, based on Hellenic culture, Rome’s legal system, the Roman duty missionize the world, and, later, Christianity. We have the opposite: cultural institutions rooted in divisivenenss and self-hate.”
Is there ANY positive solution? Catholicise the country? Restore the monarchy? Break the place into a federation of crown colonies and Imperial Free Cities? All of the above? Or should we just throw in the towel, stop eating Italian food, stop attending Mass, quit loving brownstone architecture, quit speaking French, above all hate Catholic ideals of community and paternalism and embrace McDonald’s, Britney Spears, McMansions, the megachurch and radical individualism and feminism as the hallmark of my culture?
The time for a “highly restrictionist policy” to conserve any sort of cultural unity has LONG past. I’m not saying we have to believe it can or will happen, but if we’re going to denounce the current institutions we’ve got to propose a positive alternative or we risk falling into nihilistic despair.
54 Comment by G.S. on 14 July 2008:
Isn’t America a bit …. *large* to expect it to have a single, monolithic culture? Rather like expecting Europe to have a single, monolithic culture?
If Mr. Duck wants this country “to be based on Anglo-Saxon Protestantism”, then I suppose we can start by ethnically purging Louisiana, and eradicate the Scotch-Irish elements from Appalachia.
We can also ban bluegrass music, given that the banjo is an innovation given us by the negroe.
The treatment of religion here is a little weird, too. If Mr. Duck were to tell my preacher-uncle that his Free-Will Baptist Church can be tolerated because it is compatible “with the survival of the American nation-state,” — well, I’m not sure what kind of a response that would draw, but probably not the one Mr. Duck desires.
Oddly enough I think some Protestants may think their manner of worship preferable because it is the way to Heaven, not because it keeps out furriners.
That is, if somebody mistrusts and dislikes the Vatican — OK, fine, I can certainly understand that.
But we’re drawing dangerously close to the position that a person must have NO allegiances prior to those for nation, kin, family, culture, etc.
I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure that ANY serious reading of Christianity would rule that out. The Catholic position is that loyalty to nation, kin, and family is valid, but that it exists on a hierarchy of loyalties and is by no means the very apex.
If Mr. Duck dissents from this he does not set himself against Catholicism alone but against Christ, Who has some fairly explicit comments on the subject.
Yes, the particular meaning and application can be debated — but I think it is pretty evident to anybody who takes His words seriously that He did *not* mean to market the Gospel as a form of nativist ancestor-worship.
Christ is an end, the Omega — not a means or tool by which to buttress “the American nation-state”.
It is an insult to every early Christian convert — who was forced to painfully move away from the paganism or Judaism of their fathers — to suggest otherwise.
By Mr. Duck’s reasoning the Roman emperors and Japanese shoguns who mercilessly tortured and murdered Christians were quite right to do so; since they were protecting the traditional native faith from change.
55 Comment by G.S. on 14 July 2008:
In other words, the problem with universalist ideology of any flavor is not, as some posters with nationalist leanings seem to think, that it’s “foreign” or “by-golly-un-American”.
The problem with universalist ideology is that it is UNTRUE.
56 Comment by G.S. on 14 July 2008:
NGPM:
“The time for a ‘highly restrictionist policy’ to conserve any sort of cultural unity has LONG past.”
I’m not sure if I understand what you’re driving at, but I’d point out that a redemptive view of the world suggests that we seek to transform a people, rather than see them displaced and eventually swept away by another people (Mexicans, or whoever) that are more in line with Catholic ideals of paternalism & community.
I.e., when St. X arrived in Japan, his aim was to convert the pagan peoples (whom he greatly loved, for all their faults) — not conquer and replace them with already-Christianized Spanish colonists.
57 Comment by NGPM on 14 July 2008:
I apologise for being unclear.
My point was that if there was a distinct Anglo-American civilisation to preserve with restrictionist immigration policies, there no longer is. It may or may not have been too late in 1924, but in the forty-three years following Johnson’s disastrous signature it has certainly degenerated to that point, and not JUST becuase of immigration.
58 Comment by T. Chan on 14 July 2008:
My point was that if there was a distinct Anglo-American civilisation to preserve with restrictionist immigration policies
I think Southerners would claim that while it is fading, it still has some presence in the South. Hence I sympathize with their desire to preserve their culture.
59 Comment by Ronduck on 14 July 2008:
52NGPM wrote:
The situation you describe is more or less the same as the situation in France, where liberal Gallican-inspired clergy have become effectively agents of the godless state…
If you read this article you will find that the bishops in France are nominated by the Vatican after negotiation with the French state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briand-Ceretti_Agreement
Since so many of Europe’s churches are liberal and state run good nationalists retreat into atheism as a way of fighting off the fecay of their country. I believe, but do not have a link to prove it, that the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party is dominated by secular Germans.
60 Comment by Ronduck on 14 July 2008:
I meant decay, not fecay.
61 Comment by Ronduck on 14 July 2008:
53NGPM
Is there ANY positive solution?
As far as I see it we have three options for the future:
1. Flight
In this scenario the White population flees the US for somewhere else, leaving the territory behind. Of course where would 200 million people find refuge? This also ignores that since the problem is with us, we may well end up taking it with us. To put it another way, you can’t run from yourself. If we flee we may repeat the past, with a successful America swamped with waves of people from the third world claiming they are refugees from our actions or from some suffering that they did not bring on themselves.
This option may also come about after a loss in civil war 2.
2. Fight
If we do this we need to name the forces in the US body politic that are retarding our efforts to fence our southern border and who are promoting bilingual education. In order to kill bilingual ed we may have to end foreign language education in the public schools. Instead of ending second language instruction we could replace it with an inoffensive language such as Latin that has no ethnic constituency to back it.
Also, we would have to confront the liberalism in the Roman church head on, since it is the source of so much trouble to the US. This may require the laity to ask the Vatican to fire those bishops who are playing politician instead of bishop. A simple project to get this rolling would be to list the American bishops and next to their names note whether they are liberal or conservative.
Above all we need the will to confront this, instead of putting it off.
3. Failure
In this scenario the historic American nation passes into history and our traditions of free speech, property and the common law become footnotes to history. We go on to become an English speaking minority among poor Spanish speaking peasants who despise us. In failure we would be like the Jews of Western Europe, a people without a home who must wander with only their language and a record of the laws they once had.
It is worth noting that the illegals are entering through a hole in our heads not a hole in our fence. And that hole in our heads just happens to be shaped like a communion wafer.
62 Comment by NGPM on 14 July 2008:
“I think Southerners would claim that while it is fading, it still has some presence in the South. Hence I sympathize with their desire to preserve their culture.”
And a perfectly legitimate desire it would be, but even Dr. Wilson believes that “a genuine American nationality was in the process of forming in the WW II era, but the imperialists destroyed that when they fostered the 60s social revolution.” The preceding decades precipitated that social revolution: the Depression, the FDR courts, the wars themselves, suburbanisation, and so forth.
Another problem: most Americans are *not* Southerners and there are a few scattered decent people outside that region. So even if we do imagine that a separated South would successfully fend off McWorld-Coca-Colonisation (which I doubt), we’ve still got a bit of work ahead of us.
“If you read this article you will find that the bishops in France are nominated by the Vatican after negotiation with the French state”
The key here: “after negotiation with the French state.” Anyone familiar with the history of France would not be surprised. The whole modus operandi of the Enlightenment was the destruction of the Catholic Church, and this was best done by removing or reducing the influence of the Pope, seizing Church property and so forth.
Thus we should not be surprised that when a solid cleric like Marcel Lefebvre (who, FYI, is said to have expressed off-the-cuff support for J.M. Le Pen) does make it through he is relegated to a less significant bishopric. The atheist French state and the liberal clergy it creates will not stand for anything more.
What to make of this? I conclude that the Republic of France is complicit in the destruction of the French people, and not merely in the nature of its particular politicians but in the very existance of laws like this designed to asphyxiate the traditional institutions that define the nation.
“Since so many of Europe’s churches are liberal and state run good nationalists retreat into atheism as a way of fighting off the fecay of their country. I believe, but do not have a link to prove it, that the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party is dominated by secular Germans.”
You’ll get no argument from me that the post-conciliar Church is philosophically indistinguishable from soft-core atheism. Where we disagree is on the point that religion should be subordinate to “good nationalism.” That thinking, in its most benign form, leads to Maurrasianism, or in its worst, Naziism.
63 Comment by Ronduck on 15 July 2008:
@62NGPM
Even if the clergy in France is an arm of the state, that doesn’t explain how the clergy in so many other countries ends up being so liberal. The state of Massachusetts doesn’t negotiate with the Vatican over who will be bishop. I was watching TV and on a PBS show they stated that the majority of Hugo Chavez’s support comes from areas where the Catholic church is active. I believe that the Catholic church is a major promoter of social liberalism and it is wrong on the National Question, that doesn’t make me a Nazi.
If you go to this page it shows the percentage of each states population that is Catholic and summarizes the results in a map.
You will have to scroll down to the section marked ‘Catholicism by state.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_the_United_States
Looking at the map Dixie stands out as the only major region where the largest denomination isn’t Catholic, with South Carolina and Mississippi being the two least Catholic in the region. It should be obvious that the only region where the Catholic church does not have a plurality is the most conservative.
To put it more directly Catholicism is Liberalism, and this liberalism leads to support for immigration, both legal and illegal.
64 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 16 July 2008:
Clyde Wilson’s point at #12 is the ne plus ultra.
65 Comment by NGPM on 18 July 2008:
@Ronduck: Look up “Lefebvre,” “Lefebvrism,” “FSSPX,” “SSPX,” “Jansenism,” “Gallicanism,” “Ultramontanism,” “Enlightenment,” “Joseph de Maistre,” “Counter-Enlightenment,” “Syllabus of Errors,” “Vatican I,” “Vatican II” and “Unitarianism.”
Until then I have absolutely nothing to discuss vis-à-vis the preposterous claim that “Catholicism is liberalism.”
66 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 19 July 2008:
Amen, Nicholas! After that I might suggest he ponder people such as : Chris Check, Thomas Fleming, R. Cort Kirkwood, Nicholas Moses, Fr. Hugh Barbour, Scott Richert; Fr. Joseph Fessio; Pope Benedict XVI; Bishop Doran; Cardinal Egan; Dale Vree; Chilton Williamson; Tom Piatak; Fr. Ian Boyd; Christopher Dawson; Hilaire Belloc; GK Chesterton; JRR Tolkien; John Blewett; Fr. McLucas; Joseph Pearce; Thomas Woods; Michael Rose; Fr. Gruner; Thomas Storck; E. Michael Jones; Steve O’Brien; Edwin Faust; Cardinal Stickler; Diane Moczar; Alice von Hildebrand; Dietrich von Hildebrand; Dale Ahlquist; Sean Dailey; Chris Ferrara; Eric Scheske; Michael Davies (RIP); Brent Bozell (RIP); Thomas Molnar; John Lukacs; Pat Buchanan; Jim Holman; (and I’ll even through in some neo-conservatives if you want, since they at least consider themselves conservative : Deal Hudson; George Weigel; William Donohue; Fr. Richard Neuhaus). MOst of the above are writers and/or scholars, with published works, of more than a small amount of influence.