Tag: history

Calling Mary Beard

Mary Beard, to the front desk. Your services are required.

Historians believe the Queen is a descendant to the founder of Islam – after tracing her family tree back 43 generations.

The claim makes the British monarch a distant ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad.

The findings were first published in 1986 by Burke’s Peerage, a British authority on royal pedigrees.

But the claim has recently resurfaced after a Moroccan newspaper said it had traced the queen’s lineage back to the Prophet.

Forget Londonistan. Ukistan is go!

Mailvox: Stupid cons and Smoot-Hawley

Sean asks about an old conservative trade chestnut:

The Conservatives on talk radio keep screaming about Smoot-Hawley. Those tarriffs if I remember right, the prevailing wisdom made the depression worse. What is the counter argument to that and how does it apply to what is going on now? Just curious. I have a hard time grasping arguments, and I know Vox is right but I would just like to better understand why the Levin’s are wrong.

I really do not understand why conservatives insist on continuing to pay attention to ignorant and deceitful posers like (((Ben Shapiro))) and (((Mark Levin))). These guys simply do not know what they are talking about and it is absolutely and eminently clear to everyone who does that they neither know the basic facts involved nor understand the core conceptual issues that make those facts important.

Every single talking head who makes any reference whatsoever to Smoot-Hawley is a poser and a fraud who knows nothing about economics or economic history. This is basically a variant of the “Um, Ricardo?” pseudo-rebuttal to an argument for tariffs or other forms of protectionism. It is proof that the speaker has heard about the subject, but doesn’t actually know the subject at all.

The point is so trivial that I dealt with it in a single paragraph in The Return of the Great Depression ten years ago and haven’t seen the need to mention it again since.

For many years, it was supposed that the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 played a major role in the economic contraction of the Great Depression. As more economists are gradually coming to realize, this was unlikely to have been the case for several reasons. First, the 15.5 percent annual decline in exports from 1929 to 1933 was less precipitous than the pre-tariff 18.3 percent decline from 1920 to 1922. Second, because the amount of imports also fell, the net effect of the $328 million reduction in the balance of trade on the economy amounted to only 0.3 percent of 1929 GDP. Third, the balance of trade turned negative and by 1940 had increased to nearly ten times the size of the 1929 positive balance while the economy was growing.

Unless Levin is concocting some new and highly improbable mathematical scenario based on chaos theory and the Smoot-Hawley butterfly, he’s flat-out wrong. To put it in more simple terms, there was nowhere nearly enough international trade taking place at the time to cause or account for the Great Depression. Whoever originally came up with that idea didn’t know what they were talking about and didn’t understand economics. And neither does anyone who still takes the ridiculous idea seriously.

The reason the Great Depression happened was the same reason that the financial crisis of 2008 happened. Everyone was overleveraged and the total amount of money being borrowed collapsed. That is why an average of 1,287 banks failed every year from 1930 to 1933. The historical credit collapse had vastly more impact on the economy than a smaller annual decline in exports than had been experienced seven years before as a result of the Fordney–McCumber tariff act.

The younger religion

There has been a similar debate at Steve Sailer’s over the propagandistic term “Judeo-Christian”. There were four things in particular that I noted from the comments:

1) The great American intellectual Harold Bloom reached a similar conclusion about the myth of the “Judeo-Christian tradition”.

There is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition. That is absolutely ridiculous. And fascinatingly enough there are two things that I’ve said throughout my life when I’ve addressed Jewish audiences, say at the Jewish Theological Seminary or such places, and they always get furious at me. But they’re both true. One is that nowhere in the whole of the Tanakh does it say that a whole people can make themselves holy through study of texts. That’s a purely Platonic idea, and comes out of Plato’s Laws. That simply shows how thoroughly Platonized the rabbis of the second century were. The other one, which I say in this book and it has already given some offense, is that in fact not only is Judaism, which is a product of the second century of the common era—and it’s worked out by people like you know Akiba and his friends and opponents like Ishmael and Tarphon and the others, is a younger religion than Christianity is. Christianity in some form exists in the first century of the common era. What we now call Judaism comes along in the second century of the common era. Christianity is actually the older religion, though it infuriates Jews when you say that to them.

2) Christianity has considerably more in common with Islam than with Judaism. The Muslims regard Jesus Christ as a divinely inspired prophet. The Jews regard him as at best a fraud, and at worst, an evil sorcerer who is in Hell boiling in excrement. The Jews are also awaiting the Antichrist and will worship him. The Muslims are not.

Unlike Islam, Judaism does not accept Jesus as a prophet or as having performed any miracles. The rabbi’s best guess was that Jesus was the illegitimate offspring of a Roman soldier and that Mary made up the “virgin” thing as an excuse. Nowadays they would go on Maury Povich and get a paternity test. They most certainly do not believe that Jesus came back to life after his crucifixion and then flew up to heaven. 

3) Oliver Cromwell never allowed the Jews to legally return to England. The celebration of the “informal resettlement” is pure historical revisionism meant to hide the fact that they were illegal infiltrators there for hundreds of years, until 1858. And it was the same sort of evangelical ecumenites as today’s churchian cuckservatives who were responsible for the legal emancipation of the Catholics and the Jews. Less than a century later, England found itself enmeshed in global wars, lost its empire, then its sovereignty, and was invaded by third world savages. Sound familiar?

4) This exchange was both informative and hilarious. The amusing thing is the way in which that David Goldberg’s semi-autistic fan actually thinks he’s being conciliatory rather than infuriating.

As a Jew, I have nothing against Jesus. At best, “Jesus” is a fairy tale creation, akin to Santa or the Easter Bunny. At worst, Jesus was a dangerous cult leader/sorcerer/terrorist, but who cares cause he’s dead. The real issue is political reality. And the fact is, Israel needs evangelical support.
– SpenglerFan

Really? Why is that? Why not use your awe-inspiring 115 IQs to take care of yourselves for once? I’d also like to let you know how much I enjoyed hearing the rationalist, “fairy tale” explanation of Jesus, juxtaposed with the suggestion that he might really have been an evil sorcerer. You don’t get that combination very often.
– Anon

Denying Jesus and America

The relentlessly dishonest Ben Shapiro was quick to publicly deny both Jesus Christ and the Christian heritage of America while taking speedy exception to a rabbi telling Christians the truth about her religion. Shut it down! Unfortunately for the Littlest Chickenhawk, Twitter was well-informed and having none of it. Do not be deceived. Shapiro is a lying, parasitical snake; he is a Fake Right Fake American who has been artificially propped up in the media for nearly two decades in order to lead Christians and conservatives astray.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg@TheRaDR
This might be a good time to note that “Judeo-Christian” is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
This is nonsense.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
Judaism and Christianity are deeply intertwined. American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.

Ben Shapiro‏@benshapiro
The fact that America is Judeo-Christian and not merely Christian is a reflection of those facts.

Crew@CarborundumCrew
Ben, there is no Judeo-Christ!

Heather Anne@cler_morgaine
Judaism and Christianity are both *Abrahamic* faiths. The term ‘judeo-christian’ is used to to fake religious pluralism while excluding Islam, which arguably has more in common with both than they do each other.

Dr. Ramone, Esq.@melvinramone
Judaism rejects the core premise of Christianity. You’re making up facts.

Cornelius Rye@CorneliusRye2
It’s literally not. It’s a very recent invention by YOUR PEOPLE. Jews have very little to do with America pre-WWII.

JOHNMEYER@JOHNMEY28401489
You represent Talmudism. Different thing.

#BroniesForTrump@GWSSDelta
White evangelical Christians’ rate Jews 69 out of 100, but Jews rate evangelical Christians 34 out of 100. I look forward to the day when Christians wake up from the “Judeo-Christian” “greatest ally” con and realize that Jews hate them.

Emprah’sFinest@SamHydeShooter
Please tell me which of the Founders was a Jew.

Deplorable Unum ??@deplorable_unum
Wrong. America predates the 20th Century, when the “Judeo-Christan”  term first appeared. Stop trying to rewrite America history, little Benny.

The Forgotten Man@_ForgottenMan
As many of the presidents of the past have said, “This is a Christian nation.” The Judeo-Christian makes no sense, Judaism and Christianity are two very different religions.

And then, of course, there is the absolute, conclusive proof that America was never “Judeo-Christian” in any sense, as the term in its current form didn’t even exist prior to WWII.

However, the rabbi is not entirely correct. It isn’t so much “American Christianity” that attempts to falsely conflate Christianity and the post-Temple rabbinical talmudism that presently passes for Judaism. It is self-serving diasporans resident in the US like Ben Shapiro who have done so, in a moderately successful post-WWII propaganda campaign fueled by a poem and a play to deceive Americans about their own Christian heritage and the central importance of Christianity to both America and the West.

If you don’t get why I bother to make these historical clarifications, if you don’t realize the importance of the understanding the truth of this matter for Christians, I encourage you to contemplate the warnings from the Book of Revelation about the deception of the saints. From what nation will the Lawless One come? From what tribe will the False Messiah hail? In what city will he rule? What group of people are most central to the ongoing attempts to legally restrict the ability of badthinkers and thought criminals to make a living, to ensure that no one can buy or sell who does not have their mark of approval? On behalf of what nation have laws been passed to eliminate the right of Americans and others across the West to freely express their opinions about history and trade? What group of people and what religion relentlessly preach the New Babel and oppose nationalism in almost every nation around the world? Precisely how is the world to be “healed” and what would this healed world look like?

Make no mistake about this: Judeo Christ is another name for pseudokhristos and an ecumenical satanism that includes this anti-Christian, ahistorical, explicitly anti-Biblical “Judeochristianity” is his religion. But you need not take my word for the mythical nature of Judeo-Christianity. Even the early neocons were more honest, as Arthur Cohen attested in his 1969 Commentary article entitled “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition”.

It is an apparent truism that the concept of the Judeo-Christian tradition has particular currency and significance in the United States. It is not a commonplace in Europe as it is here; rather, Europeans since the war have become habituated to speak of Jewish-Christian amity, to define the foundations and frontiers of community, to describe and, in describing, to put to rest, historic canards and libels. In Europe they are not addicted as we are here to proclaiming a tradition in which distinctions are fudged, diversities reconciled, differences overwhelmed by sloppy and sentimental approaches to falling in love after centuries of misunderstanding and estrangement. I need not speak at length here of the religion of American secularism, that uncritical Jacobinism which is neither fish nor fowl, and certainly neither Christian nor Jewish. Suffice it to say that such secular religiosity is correctly perceived by both communities to be dangerous; it is the common quicksand of Jews and Christians. And it is here that we can identify the myth. Jews and Christians have conspired together to promote a tradition of common experience and common belief, whereas in fact they have joined together to reinforce themselves in the face of a common disaster. Inundated institutions have made common cause before a world that regards them as hopelessly irrelevant, and meaningless. The myth, then, is a projection of the will to endure of both Jews and Christians, an identification of common enemies, an abandonment of millennial antagonisms in the face of threats which do not discriminate between Judaism and Christianity; and these threats, the whole of the Triple Revolution—automation, the population explosion, nuclear warfare—these are the threats which evoke the formation of the myth.

The threats are real and desperate, but patching-over will not, in the long run, help. Patching-over can only deteriorate further what it seeks to protect. The Judeo-Christian tradition is an eschatological myth for the Christian who no longer can deal with actual history and a historical myth for Jews who can no longer deal with the radical negations of eschatology.

Or, alternatively, take the word of Dr. Jacob Klatzkin, the late editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica:

We are not hyphenated Jews; we are Jews with no qualifications or reservations. We are simply aliens; we are a foreign people in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish to stay that way. There is a wide gap between you and us, so wide that no bridge can be laid across it. Your spirit is alien to us; your myths, legends, habits, customs, traditions and national heritage, your religious and national shrines, your Sundays and holidays… They are all alien to us.

And if Marco Rubio, of all people, is selling the “Judea-Christian heritage” concept, that alone should be more than enough to confirm that it is false.

The debate after #Parkland reminds us We The People don’t really like each other very much. We smear those who refuse to agree with us. We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease 

The point is that We are not The People, we are now multiple peoples, multiple nations, and multiple religions, all caught up in conflict over who will wield the imperial power over whom. More importantly, there is no “Judeo-Christianity”. There is no “Judeo-Christian tradition” and there are no “Judeo-Christian values”. You cannot follow both Jesus Christ and Judeo Christ.

Mailvox: ideological ignorance

Jack Burroughs demonstrates his complete ignorance of virtually every single left-wing ideology, party, and movement in human history in seeking to argue that the Nazis Are Too White Right-Wing Christian Conservative Republicans.

Read the Munich Manifesto. The fact that you’ve swallowed the ahistorical revisionism doesn’t change history. The Mensheviks fought the Bolsheviks too, the SPD fought the KPD too, that didn’t make any of them parties of the Right.”

I have read it, Vox. The issue here is not my ignorance of history, but rather that you insist on approaching this question as an extremely narrow definitional argument, almost as if you can, through linguistic sorcery, magically define the Nazis out of the history of the Right. You don’t usually argue that way, but for some reason you do it with this question.

Yes, there are some Left wing elements in the National Socialist platform. I have never denied that. My point is that National Socialism is blatantly anti-egalitarian in spirit and racially supremacist at its foundation, and for that reason cannot be called primarily Left wing. It was a sui generis experiment in political hybridization that was unmistakably Right wing in spirit, while making certain concessions to the collectivist Zeitgeist as a means of preempting the Communist threat.

The Nazi’s ideological commitment to anti-egalitarian racial biology, along with their astonishingly vivid and imposing rallies and heroic iconography radiate Right wing energy like a fever dream. That is why people with Far Right tendencies are often drawn to Nazism, and that is why people with Left wing tendencies are universally repulsed by it.

The call for equal rights for Germans in the Munich manifesto was, in effect, a call for an organic meritocracy, with free and flexible social mobility, such that the most gifted people from the lower classes could rise, and the pseudo-elites at the top could be purged. It was also a declaration of social and political holism: every person, of every class, had value to the whole of the State.

But It was not in any sense a Left wing claim that everyone is basically alike, but for differences in economics and social circumstances.

My argument in this case is no different than my argument in every other one. Jack simply doesn’t know what he is talking about because he is a historical and ideological ignoramus. By his bizarre definition of the ideological Left, even the Leninists and Stalinists and Jacobins and Zapatistas and Nasserites and Khmer Rouge and Maoists were all right-wing. All of these major leftist movements were extremely conscious of the difference between their countrymen and everyone else on the planet. It will be interesting to hear how Jack tries to explain how Stalin and Bukharin’s “socialism in one country”, which became formal Soviet policy as early as 1925, and Nasser’s socialist Pan-Arabism, are somehow of the ideological Right.

Jack has no case whatsoever because he doesn’t understand what it means to be of the political Left. The absolute egalitarianism of globalism is a recent and extreme form of Leftism, it is very far from defining the historical limits of Leftism. It is well to the Left of both Trotsky and Stalin; even Trotsky’s “World Revolution” ideology openly acknowledged that everyone is not “basically alike but for differences in economics and social circumstances.”

And neither nationalism nor ethnocentrism is intrinsically of the Right either. As I pointed out in my debate with Greg Johnson, the national socialist parties that historically preceded and followed the German variant in China, Vietnam, and Egypt were also all of the Left. Jack’s equation of the Left with absolute global egalitarianism is not merely wrong, it is completely ahistorical. And when Jack talks about “an extremely narrow definitional argument”, he is observably projecting his own approach.

Better than Reagan

You may recall that I told you the God-Emperor would be better than Reagan. Trump will be known as the greatest US president since Lincoln by the time his first term is done. And he will easily win re-election in a Trumpslide.

The Trump administration has pursued policies that have hewed remarkably close to the recommendations of a leading conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which found in a new review that nearly two-thirds of its ideas had been carried out or embraced by the White House over the past year.

Not one to dwell on the details of governing, President Trump has shown a considerable degree of deference to groups within the conservative movement like Heritage, leading to a rightward shift in social, environmental, immigration and foreign policy.

The results, Heritage found in its review, exceeded even the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, whose tenure has long been the conservative gold standard.”

Heritage began developing in 2016 a list of 334 policy prescriptions that a new Republican administration could adopt. It included a variety of actions, like reimposing work requirements for welfare recipients, ending the program that shields young immigrants brought here illegally as children, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and eliminating certain gender identity protections.

Heritage said that 64 percent of those items were enacted by the administration either through executive order or another means of enforcement, or included in Mr. Trump’s budget, which has not been voted on by Congress.

In Reagan’s first year, only 49 percent of Heritage’s wish list items were embraced by the president or enacted. At the time, Heritage identified a familiar problem for why the administration’s policies were wanting. In almost every federal agency, Heritage said in November 1981, “delayed appointments, unqualified or misqualified appointments, or the appointment of individuals who are not committed to the President’s goals and policies” had delayed or thwarted policy changes.”

And yes, I know that Lincoln was actually a disastrous president and one of the worst in US history. I’m just utilizing the mainstream standard and stating that Trump will be publicly viewed as one of the four or five greatest presidents despite the entire media doing their level best to destroy him even before the start.

Me-So was right!

I stand corrected. Apparently Japan has had the ability to invade California all along:

With its official operational date fast approaching, Japan’s first Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade kicked off the bilateral Iron Fist 2018 exercise on Friday with an opening ceremony alongside its Marine Corps hosts. It wasn’t a time for long speeches.

Over the next month, 350 soldiers with the Japan Ground Self Defense Force will train closely with Marines to hone skills that will run the gamut from amphibious reconnaissance and fire-and-maneuver assaults to close-air support and staff planning. They will fire mortars and artillery, land on beaches aboard rubber boats and assault craft and attack and defend “friendly” land from foes in various training scenarios.

The soldiers are members of Western Army Infantry Regiment, a light infantry force that Japan has tasked with creating the first brigade of sea soldiers – with the goal to be ready by April 1, 2018 – that can conduct amphibious operations ultimately as part of a broader “dynamic joint defense force.”

This year’s Iron Fist exercise – it runs from Jan. 12 to Feb. 12 – marks the 13th iteration of the annual training that focuses on amphibious operations, with I Marine Expeditionary Force as a primary host.

Time to dust off those old Japanese internment camps. Well done, Michelle!

Mailvox: roles are not interchangeable

Szopen shares an important observation from recent Polish history:

One acute political commenter made once a remark, that great guerilla leaders do not necesarily make great generals in regular war, nor great political leaders in time of peace. He noted that in context of Poland: that to oppose the communism and fight it effectively, one had very specific mindset. Sniffing the enemy agents, conspiracies, be suspicious, not willing to make compromise etc. That were the great traits when you were in conspiracy – but later made awful politicians when communism was (somewhat) defeated. Most of the great leaders of so called “democratic opposition” went on to become leaders of infighting, low blows, unable to compromise over even tiny issues in order to defeat the recovering left. He proposed that leaders of the resistance should get state salaries, become cult objects and then put into solitary luxury mansions, with everyone trying very hard to make their lifes comfortable and as far from the current politics as it is possible.

I guess most of current leading figures of the alt-right, with VD, Milo and Molyneaux should get their million dollars when the right take over the institutions and win the culture fight.

Another thing, from my observation is that people fighting against all odds, who are constantly being called the worst names, either become broken and give up – or start to share also similar traits. Cejrowski was on of the few guys who influenced hundreds of thousands young Poles. I loved watching his programs. However, in his later age he became an unbearable, arrogant arsehole. There is something similar about few other “lone fighters”. They raised the generation of rightwingers, but they lost something of their soul in the process, carrying the load in the times when no one was appreciating them. They seem to gain “f* you” attitude about everything they did. That’s understandable; otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do what they did. But still, for me they look like old, battle-hardened veterans with scars all over.

It’s amazing that VD is able to still be able to be, at least sometimes, polite.

One thing that people consistently fail to understand about me versus my fellow “leading figures” for lack of a better word is that I have always been an athlete. Not only that, but I have excelled in both individual and team sports, and discovered that I vastly prefer team sports.

That is why I can work effectively with others, and why I completely refuse to even try to work with those I identify as being self-serving, attention-seeking, or simply incapable of playing well with others. As I often tell people, the best way to get to know a man’s true character is to play with him on the soccer field. Every characteristic, from courage and determination to laziness and a desire to avoid responsibility, becomes readily apparent to his teammates. You just can’t hide anything from them.

It’s disappointing when those who have been assisted and supported by others affect to have become too important for them and attempt to move on, but then, they will learn their lesson soon enough as the support they need will not be there for them when opposition arises, as it always does. That is why it is always vital to never forget either your base or your allies, or to fail to protect their interests as assiduously as you look out for your own. The more the Right learns to do that, the more effective it will become.

Wikipedia buries CNN scandal

This sort of thing is exactly why I put Infogalactic at the top of the priority list. Because we need a way of accurately preserving the history that SJWs are always trying to revise and rewrite:

CNN Blackmail Controversy Buried on Wikipedia with Help of Partisan Editors

Following CNN’s blackmail controversy, left-wing Wikipedia editors had the Wikipedia article on the incident removed and its contents buried at the bottom of a page on CNN controversies. Editors then proceeded to gut this article of roughly a third of its content about controversies at the network in the latest example of liberal bias at the online encyclopedia.

Roughly an hour after the article on CNN’s recent blackmail scandal was originally created, editor NorthBySouthBaranof started a discussion on having the article made into a redirect to a CNN controversies article with a small section about the incident. Baranof was previously one of the anti-GamerGate editors banned from edits about the ethics in games journalism controversy due to his aggressive agenda-driven editing.

Over the course of the discussion, 23 regular editors on the site expressed support for the move. Although a majority of editors supporting the move in the discussion have some history of editing in favor of progressive positions, most notable are a group of five (MrX, Volunteer Marek, Objective3000, Sagecandor, and ValarianB) who also participated in a discussion on deleting the article about President Trump sharing classified information on ISIS terrorist activities with Russia.

Standard operating procedure at the SJW-converged site. Rather like the BEA, which has retroactively eliminated the 2001 recession from the official GDP figures, SJW history reflects nothing more than their version of what it suits them now to claim happened then.

The collapse of the American nation

Selwyn Duke addresses the way in which the very concept of nation has been erased from American minds:

When hearing about invaders streaming across our border, often with a sense of entitlement, we should be filled with righteous anger motivating us to robustly defend the homeland. We’re not. Or not enough of us are. In fact, a good percentage of the country works against the common good, passionate about the wrong things and acting as traitors would. Too many of the rest are comfortably numb.

This is why invasion has been tolerated (and often encouraged), why we talk about amnesty for people who should be unceremoniously shipped south, and why there isn’t yet funding for a border wall despite a record Republican House majority.

The reason for this, sadly, is that we’re not a nation — properly understood. A nation is an extension of the tribe, which itself is an extension of the family; it’s defined by blood, faith, language and culture. For example, the Sioux Nation wasn’t a “country” or “state”; it was a very large family sharing the aforementioned elements.

This truth was once recognized and emphasized. It was mentioned among the Founding Fathers that we enjoyed the benefit of “consanguinity,” meaning, a relationship based on having the same remote ancestors. This became less of a reality after the waves of 19th-century immigration, yet emphasis was still placed on maintaining nationhood. For example, President Teddy Roosevelt said in 1907 that treating people with “equality” was not a given, but was “predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American.”

He went on to say, “Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.” Now consider how many people will describe themselves as a/an _________-American or, worse still, will say “I’m _________” (fill in, Polish, Irish, Greek, Italian, etc.). They may not be bad people; they may mean well. But they’re unwittingly strengthening the all-too-prevalent internationalist mentality and are acting contrary to the cause of nationhood.

Nationhood was defended legislatively in 1921 with the Emergency Quota Act and in 1924 with the enactment of the National Origins Act, which used immigration quotas to maintain our country’s demographic balance. This is called “racist” today, even though some Europeans had greater quotas than other Europeans (and they’re the same race), but demographic upheaval is precisely how you destroy a nation. Ask the Tibetans, American Indians or the Ainu in Japan (if you can find any) about that.

It is the conflation of “state” with “nation”, combined with the “proposition nation” nonsense that was created to sell “the melting pot” that has resulted in this state. Only aggressive and fairly ruthless nationalism has any chance of saving the American nation now, and the more time that passes, the less likely it becomes.

It’s understandable why Americans embraced civic nationalism after the horrors of the Civil War. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were wrong to do so, and that it has had consequences that have destroyed the Union far more thoroughly than the Confederacy ever could.