This is my response to Kenneth Silber’s April 12th “Nationalist Failures”.
It misses certain realities. Starting at the bottom, if a nation doesn't reflect its majority what can it do? What is it? To have a majority national identity in no way happens at the expense of minorities. The responsible majority must tolerate minorities, but in no way must they celebrate them.
This is straight out of the left-wing playbook, which has been used to justify elevating certain groups (and generally, assigning people to groups) at the expense of the majority, which also ought to have cultural rights.
In little more than a generation we’ve allowed cultural suicide to fester. Everything in the past is bad, including even old movies, due to a lack of minority representation, which therefore renders them illegitimate. This descends into using race and other characteristics as the measure of all things, which is the opposite of a free and equal society.
The majority in this country has been remarkably tolerant and patient, forced to acknowledge every possible minority or tendency but their own. Populism is an overdue response to the social disintegration rotten left-wing elites have engineered. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s reality.
Furthermore it’s international. It’s spreading in Europe, and now even Latin America, so if anything, Israel and Netanyahu are in synch with the phenomenon, which right now is the wave of the future. It’s our present regime that is out of synch with the world, not the reverse. You miss all of this if your worldview is informed by left-wing sources at home, or shrinking socialist entities abroad.
Nevertheless, authoritarianism is a potential possibility which is why rock-solid constitutional protections are essential. But it’s the radical left regime that has undermined and delegitimized the law, not the right. That can result in a temptation to go authoritarian in retaliation simply because the institutions have been delegitimized. It’s an emotional response and possibility we must strenuously resist, for taking the same illegitimate measures would undermine the whole system. It’s incumbent on us instead to be vigilant with regard to constitutional law and be scrupulous in its restoration. If George Washington didn’t go that route we can’t allow lesser men to do so, and will not.
Finally, this reflects the true nature of the populist right, which is more libertarian than authoritarian, essentially saying, “leave us alone,” not “do what we say.” It’s the latter we suffer under currently. I’m not saying that abroad there aren’t some committed authoritarians but domestically that simply isn’t the case. Hillbillies and other deplorables don’t elect dictators, but would be the first in line to resist. The demand here is leave us alone, but also stop messing up our lives with your consistently failing best intentions, and it’s fully justified.
