07/13/2011
The American Thinker is one of the better mainstream conservative websites out there. Although simply designed and without a major publisher, the website has higher traffic than some corporate-funded sites like Human Events and it is frequently cited on talk radio. It does not flinch in taking on the Southern Poverty Law Center [$PLC to VDARE.com], Hate Crimes Legislation, this summer’s spate of black flash mobs, and Obama’s blatantly anti-white agenda.
But the American Thinker has just showed it is still hopelessly stuck in the “Proposition Nation” mythology by publishing an article [Identity politics: The Denial of American Exceptionalism, July 10, 2011] by former District Attorney and GOP congressional Candidate Dean Malik attacking “white nationalists” — specifically the late columnist Sam Francis and Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance and author of Paved With Good Intentions and, most recently, White Identity.
Malik makes several arguments trying to prove that “white nationalists” are not American patriots. Each one falls flat on its face.
Malik’s mistakes begin with his terminology. He describes the views he proceeds to attribute to Francis and Taylor as “white supremacy, emerging over the past generation re-cast as ‘white nationalism.’”
There’s some dispute over whether Sam Francis was or would have described himself as a “white nationalist”. Scott McConnell in his American Conservative magazine obituary of Francis (not available online) argued not; VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow in his own obituary thought he was, although Brimelow makes a distinction between “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” that has obviously not penetrated Malik’s world-view.
But Jared Taylor explicitly rejects the term “white nationalist”, preferring to call himself a “race realist”. It would be one thing to use the term “white nationalist” as a pejorative, but it is simply incorrect to suggest Taylor has “re-cast” himself as such. (However, for the sake of argument I will use this term, albeit in scare quotes, for this article).
Malik also argues that “white nationalists” are not patriots but “global in nature” because “American Renaissance prominently features links to similar white identity groups in Europe, Sam Francis quotes with fraternal admiration French Nationalist Jean Raspail, who speaks of the loss of the French ‘Fatherland.’” [VDARE.com note: Link in original — the term "Fatherland"(patrie) is that used in the French National Anthem.]
John Quincy Adams famously wrote,
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
The right wing parties of Europe are fighting for the freedom and independence of their own countries from global elites and a Third World invasion. Jared Taylor and Sam Francis were and are “well-wishers” to these countries. But they never called for, say invading Brussels to put the Vlaams Belang in charge. [See The Enemy of the Nation, by Samuel Francis, Chronicles, October 1st, 2004]
However, recognizing the national identity of other nations does not mean you do not care about your own. Thus the American Thinker’s About Us page states: “The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us.” Does this make the American Thinkers globalists and unpatriotic? If not, why can’t Jared Taylor be concerned about European nations’ survival and right to exist?
The crux of Malik’s argument: “white nationalists” are no different than radical black and Hispanic Activists like MeCHA and the Congressional Black Caucus (whom he also bashes). Because they identify by their race, Malik claims, all groups “equally denigrate the American Dream”. The American Dream, Malik argues, is rooted in “American Exceptionalism” that comes from the Constitution and other founding documents.
It is quite true that Taylor and Francis, like La Raza and the NAACP, advocate for their race. However, the similarities end there.
In the latter respect, the views of “white nationalists” are fully compatible with the constitutional vision of the Founding Fathers.
Malik explicitly denies this reality. Malik instead claims that the Founding Fathers believed in a universalistic and colorblind American Exceptionalism.
This, he argues, began with the Puritan leader John Winthrop’s much-cited “City upon a hill” trope.
But Winthrop’s city was for whites — and, even more specifically, British Puritans. Winthrop owned Indian slaves and oversaw the introduction of the African slave trade into his colony.
Malik acknowledges that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence includes the phrase "of our common blood.” However, he says this is irrelevant because the “the canons of statutory construction mandate the exact opposite conclusion”.
But how does he explain that the Constitution explicitly enshrined slavery? Or that in 1790, three years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress passed the Naturalization Act which limited American citizenship to “free white persons”?
Of course, this historical reality does not mean we must embrace past mistreatment of Indians and blacks. However, we must honestly acknowledge that race consciousness was integral to the founding of our great nation. As Theodore Roosevelt wrote in the Winning of the West:
"American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people."
Malik asks:
“[I]f America is simply a blood-and-soil state, what is there to make it exceptional? The answer is: nothing. America is simply a re-constituted, mongrelized, tribe of Europe.”
But that is exactly what Israel Zangwill, the Jewish playwright who coined the phrase — much loved by neoconservatives — “the melting pot”, in the play of the same name, thought America was:
“America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!” [My emphasis].
That said, neither Zangwill, the founders, nor today’s “white nationalists” believed America was “simply” based on race. In many ways, America is indeed “exceptional”. A virgin continent, inhabited by primitives, which was conquered and colonized by Europeans, will have different manners, customs, and government than a Europe inhabited by the same race for millennia.
However, this does not mean that the fact that America was founded by Europeans is not integral to its identity — or that a non-white America will necessarily be able to maintain the same manners, customs, and government.
America was not built upon racial identity — rather, that racial identity was taken for granted.
When the entire country, from La Raza to the Republicans, refuses to acknowledge this, it becomes more necessary to point out these truths. [Tell American Thinker — be polite!] But it doesn’t make us obsessed with race.
“White nationalism”, if that means the views expressed by Jared Taylor and Sam Francis, is simply good old-fashioned American Patriotism.
Charles Bloch is a Jewish supporter of Pat Buchanan.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.