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Tag Archives: Identity Politics

Jefferson as Post-National Prophet

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Federalism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American National Identity, American nationalism, American Unity, Identity Politics, Jim Langcuster, Socialism, The American Left

Jefferson-Memorial

The Jefferson Memorial (Photo: Courtesy of SamsonSimpson20)

A recent column in Vox explores the decline of dominant American identity and the ways that this identity could be rebuilt amid widespread demographic division and economic distress.

Ezra Klein, the author, contends that the vibrant, effusive American identity that prevailed throughout the 20th century was forged primarily on the basis of two world wars and the 70-year threat of Soviet communism.

I’m inclined to take a slightly different view. The modest imperial standing America acquired in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War formed a critical component of 20th century America identity too. Millions of Americans were carried on a wave of imperial euphoria, confident that the acquisition of a modest, backwater empire heralded our virtually unimpeded ascent to national greatness. And much of this was bound up in the war’s success in re-enlisting the defeated South in nation- and empire-building that followed in the aftermath of this war.

Up to that time, many people in the former Confederate states spent the Fourth of July commemorating the fall of Vicksburg rather than celebrating American Independence.

At the turn of century, some 35 years after one of the bloodiest struggles in history, the South reasoned that if it couldn’t have its own nation, it at least could participate in the building of a nation destined to ascend to the front ranks of global leadership.

This was a fortuitous turn of events for the American national enterprise: The post-Civil War South ended up supplying this nation not only with a significant share of its patriotic ballast but also a generous portion of men and women to guard the outposts of the global American empire that emerged after World War II.

Yet, we seem to be reaching an critical juncture, if not a major impasse, in defining American identity. And one wonders: How much practical value is derived from doubling down on one-nation rhetoric and insisting on more dialogue?

In the view of a growing number of heartland Americans, the only rhetoric deemed unifying by our ruling classes is that which conforms to the agenda of the left.

Moreover, another vital adhesive of American identity, centralized federalism, seems to be losing its efficacy too. Americans seem less inclined than ever to operate off the same page on issues that were once seen as vital to national security, such as regulating immigration and guarding our borders. Some on the left are even calling for the elimination of the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE).

Perhaps most disturbing of all, though, we seem to be rapidly approaching a cultural impasse that surprisingly few pundits have considered: namely, how this country will manage to soldier on when it is no longer regarded by ordinary Americans as standing at the pinnacle of the world’s most successful and exceptional nations.

So much of American unity and national identity is bound up with its perceived greatness and singularity.

A recent study ranked tiny Finland and several of the other Scandinavian countries as the world’s happiest, although the United States failed to rank in the top ten. Indeed, the results of the study point out a remarkable anomaly: Despite the United States possessing the world’s largest economy, millions of its citizens grapple with rising levels of obesity, substance abuse and high rates of depression, not unlike the problems that plagued the Soviet Union in the years leading up to its collapse.

Some on the left have expressed a desire to build a new national identity on the basis of socialism and identitarian politics, with the long-term goal of ridding the country of what they characterize as a historically evil and malignant white patrimony that has existed since the nation’s founding.

Given all these deep divisions over how to define the American enterprise in the future, perhaps we will return to some version of Thomas Jefferson’s 18th century vision of an American Empire: a continent of smaller states, either loosely tied or wholly independent of each other, sharing some degree of historical and cultural affinity.

Jefferson, it seems, may prove to a prophet of post-national American unity. At least, one can hope, amid all of this national division and rancor, that we can muster some semblance of mutual affinity and continental unity.

Whatever the case, a socialist, identitarian America should hold no appeal for any decent person, irrespective of race or ethnicity, who cherishes ordered liberty and constitutional government.

But if, God forbid, such an America emerges in the next 30 years, I suppose I’ll be one of those passing my autumn and winter years in a socialist gulag, at least, deriving a measure of solace that I will be living among what remains of sane people in America.

The Limits of Identitarianism

08 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Devolution, The Passing Scene

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authoritarianism, Federalism, identitarianism, Identity Politics, Jim Langcuster

San-Franciso-demonstration

Photo: Courtesy of Pax Ahimsa Gethen.

I have consumed a lot of  blog space lately discussing the horrifying totalitarian undertones of identitarian politics.  And I’m surprised by the increasing number of left-of-center news outlets that have been cornered into confronting the implications of this ideology.

One of the more prominent ones, The Guardian, recently served up a reasonably balanced exploration of this topic.

What many ordinary Americans simply do NOT get  – yet, at least – is that the expansion of identity politics virtually assures the end of the civil society that has held this uniquely American experiment in self-government together for roughly the last quarter millennium. (Read Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” for more details.)

The left has predictably hoisted itself on its own petard. It’s one thing to talk about equality under the law – to express a wish to be assimilated into the broader American matrix, which was Martin Luther King’s officially expressed view. But when exclusivist rhetoric, reflected in the demonization of other groups as a means of refining and enhancing identity, becomes the quasi-official policy of a major political party and the orthodoxy of the predominant culture – well, you can rest virtually assured that things are going to take a very ugly turn.

We are approaching a point similar to the post-WWI abandonment of the Hapsburg monarchy, the symbolic adhesive that kept sundry tribes at peace among each other within the bounds of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.  And this has brought us to a crossroads.  We either undertake a systemic reform of the American federal system to reflect the new realities in this country – namely, the deep cultural, political and ethnic divisions that threaten to sunder us apart – or we prepare ourselves for a new centralized and increasingly authoritarian order aimed a keeping these highly fissiparous tendencies in check.

Yet, as history has demonstrated time and again, the second option ultimately runs against the grain of human nature.  It will only engender more tribal animosities, which will spark calls on the left for more educational efforts, coupled with more subdued (or, as the case may be in the future, overt) forms of authoritarianism to redress these increasing divisions.

Reflecting on all of this, I recall an observation posited some 35 years ago by one of my graduate school professors, a self-described Marxisant.  As he observed, federal policymakers and jurists in the mid-1960’s operated on the premise that while they could never alter the hearts and minds of racists, they could legislate changes in overt behavior.

We seem to have moved a long way past this.  Our ruling class seems to think with with a doubling down of cultural warfare and federal policy we can still finesse this – we can still make it work.  Even in the face of rankly exclusivist ideology, we can somehow still manage to inculcate future generations of Americans, particularly whites, with new hearts and minds.

We’ve been down this road before.  We appear to be confronted with a zealotry that bears more than a passing resemblance to the one that gave rise to efforts toward building Home Sovieticus.

In the end, though, this whole project is inimical to human freedom, at least, as freedom historically has been understood within the Anglo-American context. And it runs against the very grain of human nature.  And one must remember that rank-and-file Soviet citizens came to regard efforts to build new Soviet man with profound cynicism and contempt.  Sooner or later, likely sooner, will prove to the the case here in America, too – of that I have no doubt.

 

A Techless Revolution?

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Conservatism, U.S. Politics

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Tags

Donald Trump, Identity Politics, Jim Langcuster, Middle American Radicals, Ruy Teixeira, Samuel Francis, social media, Talk Radio

samuel-francis

Samuel T. Francis, the paleocon intellectual who anticipated the MARs revolution a generation ago. 

I was with a close friend last night watching a Fox New interview with James Webb, who discussed the Democratic Party’s embrace of  identity politics and the role it has played in sapping the party’s historic support from the white working class.

At one point, my friend turned to me and observed, “Can you believe that it’s finally possible to watch these sorts of anti-PC discussions on television?”

He’s right, of course, and it reflects the fact that identity politics is a double-edged sword. Sooner or later, working-class whites inevitably would wise up to its unpalatable, if not frightening, implications and embrace a  version of their own identity politics – or so went conventional thinking.  Indeed the late paleoconservative intellectual and Washington Times columnist Sam Francis, who coined the term Middle American Radicals (MARs), foresaw this trend emerging a generation ago.  It emerged briefly around columnists Pat Buchanan’s short-lived celebrity candidacy in 1992.

Yet, I wonder:  Was Middle American Radicalism, which finally succeeded with Donald Trump, really an inevitable outcome?  A quarter century ago, this radicalism gained only a tenuous and brief hold under Pat Buchanan. But should we be surprised?  Unlike other other groups – African-Americans, feminists and LGBTs, for example – MARs lacked any discernible support among media, higher education, etc.

Only with the advent of alternative news outlets – Talk Radio, Fox News and, more recently and perhaps most notably, social media – has Middle American Radical sentiment managed to coalesce and to become self-aware.

Despite the entirely unexpected and unprecedented Trump victory, MARs face an unusually steep uphill climb over the next few years, certainly in demographic terms.

Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira accurately observes that the Trump/MARs realignment will likely turn out to be a short-lived political resurgence that is increasingly supplanted by the shift of college-educated Millennials to the Democratic base, one that already is augmented by the all but unwavering support of Asian, African-American and Latino voters.

Emerging tech supplied the means through which the MARs insurgency coalesced around the unprecedented candidacy of Donald Trump.  Now a soon-to-be President Trump must supply the vision to ensure that this insurgency is not remembered a century from now merely as a flash in the political pan.

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