The end of the civic nationalist

All of us have heard conservatives – piously or smugly as the case may be – signal their virtue by pontificating about how [insert minority here] is a Fine American because he supports Conservative Values and how said conservative would rather live surrounded by Fine [insert minority here] Americans than white liberals. And while there is a certain logic to that position, the problem is that it is based on an entirely false assumption, which is that Fine [insert minority here] Americans vote according to their expressed ideological values.

And to say they do not do so is putting it mildly. Here is how black conservatives actually voted in 2016.

In other words, even if a black individual describes himself as a conservative, firmly believes in God, views homosexual relations as sinful, opposes affirmative action, thinks income taxes are too high, and is pro-life, there is still a 96.2 chance that he will vote Democrat. More or less the same identity-first behavior holds true for other minority groups.

Identity always trumps ideology for anyone who actually possesses an identity. Which, of course, is why Americans have been methodically stripped of their sense of identity for the last 100 years.