Which Tribe Are You On?

Stokely Carmichael, Donald Trump's ideological father

Just as Bernie Sanders is not a socialist, Donald Trump is not a fascist, nor are his followers.  They resemble fascists – with their worship of the strong leader, their dreams of unmediated state power, their casual attitude toward violence, their embrace of barbarism, and their hostility toward minorities – but they also differ in very important ways.  They don’t wish to end democracy, for instance, or embark upon wars of conquest.   Indeed, Trump defends majority rule and denounces foreign interventionism (though inconsistently).

But Trump does share one notable thing with historical fascists: he has borrowed the tactics and style of his opponents on the left.  In fact, right-wing movements traditionally take on the stylistic attributes of their contemporaries on the left.  Hitler famously adopted the organizational and rhetorical style of the Communists of his day.  The Birchers of the 1950’s self-consciously organized themselves into cells modeled on those of the Communists.  The Goldwater-Reagan right of the 1960’s created and nurtured a slew of conservative media and think-tanks to counter the then-dominance of liberal institutions.  The Moral Majority of the 1970’s portrayed itself as a Christian version of the Civil Rights Movement, claiming to be victims of anti-religious prejudice.  In each case, the right-wing movement in question became the mirror of its left-wing counterpart – only with inegalitarian goals.  They were all wolves in left-wing clothing.

And as our present left consists of identity politics – promoting the interests of traditionally oppressed groups: blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, etc. – so the new right that Trump is crafting consists of white identity politics; in its distilled version: politics for straight, white, Christian men.  White identity politics has been the lurking in the shadows on the right for decades, and though we’ve occasionally glimpsed its sinister face, conservatism’s Reaganite masters have generally kept it hidden (while still happily profiting from its electoral support, of course).  But Trump has dragged it into the bright sunshine and made it the shining, shouting, strutting star.  Trump is not a present-day Hitler, he’s a white Al Sharpton.

Consider Trump’s attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who has ruled unfavorably for Trump in the ongoing Trump University fraud case.  Trump complained that Curiel can’t be fair to him because he’s “Mexican” (on an earlier occasion he called him “Spanish”) and therefore, presumably, must be angry at Trump’s anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant positions.  Curiel was actually born in Indiana of Mexican immigrant parents, and Trump seemed to imply he’s not American because he’s not white, and that is inarguably racist.  But was it racist to question the judge’s objectivity?

Many seem to think so, even many conservatives.  Republican Speaker of the House and 2012 nominee for Vice President Paul Ryan explained:

Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.

But that’s not quite fair.  Trump wasn’t complaining that Curiel was incompetent because of his national descent; he wasn’t saying that his race made him an inherently inferior judge, as a classic racist might; he was complaining that he was irredeemably biased against Trump.  At best, Trump was saying that Curiel couldn’t possibly be objective in the face of Trump’s well known anti-Mexican animus.  That’s not necessarily racist, since anyone’s bias might affect his or her objectivity.  At worst, Trump was saying the judge couldn’t possibly be fair to a white man.  Even that isn’t necessarily racist, since racial animosity, regrettably, can be found everywhere.  Though it’s reasonable to wonder if he meant that all non-whites are irredeemably hostile to whites, since he based his conclusion on little more than Curiel’s ethnic background.  And that would definitely be racist.

But the point is not whether Trump was being racist, the point is he was being self-consciously white, he was engaging in white identity politics.  And he was doing it just like leftists do it.  That is, left-wing identity politics isn’t simply about advancing the interests of oppressed racial and sexual groups, goals that are themselves tremendously necessary and important; it’s also about group consciousness, group pride and, crucially, group loyalty.  One of its axioms is that only members of an oppressed group can really understanding that oppression, and only they can apply that understanding as needed.  So only blacks can really understand the black experience and only blacks can do it justice; only gays know what it means to be gay and only gays can represent that, and so on.  This is the reasoning that says, for instance, that minorities need to be well represented in the judiciary, because white judges can’t be counted on to treat minorities fairly.  This seems plausible, as far as it goes.  But some on the left drive it off the rails when they claim, for example, that only a black person can fairly judge another one.  Trump has merely turned that logic back on itself, saying that only whites can be fair to whites.

He seems to be adopting the entirety of identity thinking, with all of its concomitant dogmatism and intolerance.  We begin to see the squalid outlines of this newest right, and it’s not a new fascism, it’s White Lives Matter.  Its first premise is that whites are themselves victimized by other groups, notably immigrants and Muslims, also by liberals and blacks.  And, crucially, they are victims of political correctness.  That is, the commonly accepted rules of political discourse prevent whites from asserting their values and interests.  This is a direct borrowing of the post-modern belief common on the left that received notions of propriety, reason, and truth are merely tools the oppressors use to squash dissent.  Following the rules is for suckers.  So almost anything – name-calling, attacking motives, suppressing opposition, even violence – is justified in the interests of one’s tribe.  And this is the essence of the new white nationalism: Whites have interests as whites, interests that can only be properly addressed when informed by consciousness of that whiteness.  The least self-aware person in America is leading whites into a deeper self-consciousness of themselves as white!

But this is how Trump and his followers understand, if only viscerally, their current situation, and it explains why they love him so.  To them, politics is about who is screwing who, and they’re determined to be the ones doing the screwing.  In this telling, there are various innately antagonistic tribes in America, defined primarily by skin color, the non-white tribes have been ganging up on the whites, and the whites are finally fighting back.  Politicians and activists can argue about capital-gains tax rates and Obamacare subsidies and abortion, but those issues don’t really matter.  They’re only symbols for signaling where one’s loyalties lie, and that’s all that really matters: loyalty to one’s tribe.  There are white conservatives on one side and blacks, gays, Muslims, and all the other racially, religiously and sexually dubious tribes on the other, and all that matters is who wins.  And white liberals, obviously, are traitors to their own tribe, and are therefore worthy of the worst scorn.  Tribe is all.

Which America?  And great how?

And America belongs to the white tribe.  Or it once did.  There was a time, not so long ago, when being a true American meant being a white, straight, Christian; others were casually consigned to the periphery.  That’s why Trump thinks Curiel can’t really be American.  Some white nationalists wish to restore male whiteness to its proper place at the center of American identity and social deference.  Other Trumpians merely feel that working whites in particular have been unfairly denigrated as backward, ignorant, malicious.  But all Trumpians share the conviction that whites are being treated unfairly by society at large.  When they hear Trump say “Make America Great Again”, they know he means them, only them.

It is, of course, foolish to think that whites per se are an oppressed group.  They still hold the vast majority of the wealth and power in this country.  And there are still oceans of anti-black, anti-gay, anti-Hispanic, etc. feeling out there; Trump’s rise demonstrates that all too well (there is ample rigorous empirical evidence, as well).  And it’s reasonable to think, for example, that a white judge might be unfair to a Hispanic claimant in a way that a Hispanic judge would be less likely to.  Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that a thoroughly white judiciary would be significantly less sympathetic and fair to minorities.

But the reverse is true as well.  There are probably fewer racially hostile minority figures in authority – judges, politicians, policemen, lawyers, etc. – than racially hostile white ones, because white supremacy has been and still is such a potent and insidious force in our national life, even if it is now largely unconscious.  But it’s highly unlikely that there are no non-white authorities who would be tougher on a white person.  And there is truth to the charge that working-class whites have been systematically and unfairly disdained by political and cultural elites.   (And of course working whites are being genuinely exploited, not by blacks or Muslims or gays, but by investors and globalist politicians.  That is, they’re being oppressed not as whites but as workers.)  And consider that programs like affirmative action are explicitly designed to lessen the number of white men in certain occupations.  Whatever good such programs may do (and they don’t do much good, even for minorities) is done by artificially maintaining higher barriers for whites.  This is a minor injustice compared to the universe of injustice that America has dispensed to racial and sexual minorities, but it is nonetheless an actual injustice committed against the individual whites in question.

But need justice be a zero-sum affair?  Is it necessary to lower whites in order to raise others? Are the Trumpians right that America is only a cage match of hostile tribes?  Either the logic of identity applies to all the tribes or it applies to none.  As the Civil Rights Movement was winding down, white liberals and black activists decided that blacks would be better off claiming blackness as their primary identity and loyalty – but what good has that done them?  One increasingly obvious result is that it has provided white nationalists with the perfect rationale for fighting for the interests of whites as whites.  It’s true that it has helped bring a small number of minorities into the higher echelons of American power.  But how does that help minorities stuck in the ghetto?  In practice, left-wing identity politics has been an abject failure.  It’s only changed the color of the CEO’s.  If whites embrace it too, it will do as little for them.

Our real enemy is racial consciousness itself.  America wallowed in racial identity politics for hundreds of years before the Civil Rights Movement, but the answer to white consciousness is not black consciousness, nor the reverse.  Race is a fiction, a social construct that has no objective existence, though plenty of racists have believed otherwise.  The early Civil Rights Movement understood this and worked mightily to overcome race consciousness and replace it with color-blindness.  But that short period was the only time in our long history when fully color-blind assimilation was seen as the ideal, when the very idea of race was attacked as meaningless and destructive.  The full weight of our sordid history has made race a most powerful and implacable fiction, one powerful enough to destroy us yet.  If whites follow Trump – and their own worst instincts – they’ll make real that other unimaginably destructive fiction: that we are nothing more than that war of all tribes against all.  And that can only unleash mistrust and hatred so horrible that we can barely imagine it now.

There are social constructs that are objectively real, and unlike race, national culture is one of them.  We all speak the same vernacular; we all share the same folkways and traditions; we’re all products of the same history.  We’re all Americans.  When generations of white Americans thought minorities were not real Americans, they were wrong.  And when black nationalists and white leftists think they themselves are not real Americans, they’re wrong too.  Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass and Robert E. Lee and Susan B. Anthony and Cesar Chavez and Malcolm X and Judith Butler and Donald Trump and Gonzalo Curiel are all irredeemably American, even if they may not all recognize each other – or even themselves! – as such.  But this is the consciousness that must be raised, that must be re-invigorated, that must be embraced if we are to avoid the hideous nightmare into which both Trump and his obliging leftist opponents are so eager to lead us.  Only if we resist those false identities and accept our common, actual identity can we have any hope of making life better for all of us.  Let’s make America conscious again.

The Third Party

These people are not conservatives

Conservatism is dead.  If you don’t believe me, listen to the man who killed it.  Here’s Donald Trump at a recent Republican event in California:

I’m a conservative, but at this point, who cares?

Let that sink in.  Since at least the time of Ronald Reagan the GOP has been the furiously self-proclaimed party of conservatism.  And in the last few years Tea Party grassroots conservatives have crusaded against their own Republican establishment for being insufficiently fanatical in ideology and tactics.  But now, when given the opportunity, those same grassroots true believers have chosen for their nominee a man who not only diverges markedly from conservative doctrine, but who explicitly dismisses conservatism as irrelevant!  What gives?

Trump’s triumph has rudely revealed that there are really two Republican Parties, both of whom think of themselves as the true conservatives and the other as traitors to the cause.  What we think of as traditional conservatism, the conservatism that has dominated the party for decades, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is a program of free markets and free trade, scaling back the welfare-regulatory state, and maintaining American supremacy in the world.  Think of Reagan crushing the air-traffic controllers union or George W. Bush attempting to privatize Social Security.  The conservatives have a libertarian view of the federal government and a Social Darwinist view of capitalist success and failure.  Their core constituency is the investor class, and for decades these Reaganite conservatives have run the Republican Party, and they’ve run it for the benefit of that class, with the casual assurance that what benefits investors will eventually benefit everyone else.

But it turns out that much – perhaps even a majority – of the Republican constituency means something very different when they call themselves conservative.  For them conservatism means the blind conviction that America is the best country on Earth.  They see everyday, straight, white, Christian, American men, with their simple moral toughness, as the backbone of society and the best people in the world.  Some of those men regret the demise of the traditional American social structure, in which racial, sexual and religious minorities deferred to them, while some simply worry – not entirely without reason – that they’re now disdained and despised by American elites; and in practice the two perceptions readily blur together.  But either way, for decades the basic premise of this conservatism is that the social status of those men is unfairly under assault, and they’ve looked to the Reagan conservatives to protect and assert it. 

These white working class conservatives weren’t really interested in lowering capital gains tax rates or cutting Obamacare subsidies, though they made a good show of caring about such things.  Indeed, these conservatives actively support the welfare state; they’re all too anxious to receive the Social Security and Medicare benefits their Reaganite masters yearn to curtail.  And they particularly object to the free trade and lax immigration policies of the Reaganites, policies that send good jobs overseas and drive down wages at home.  But, for decades the conservative intelligentsia, in the think tanks and the magazines, on talk radio and Fox News, underwritten by big money, has worked to indoctrinate the grassroots in the intricacies of conservative dogma, while enforcing ideological rigidity among conservative politicians.  The populists may have been dissatisfied, but they couldn’t very well vote for liberals.

But Reaganite conservatism hasn’t kept its promises. Trump hasn’t really killed it, it was killed by its own abysmal failures, particularly the War in Iraq and the Great Recession.  It couldn’t survive its comprehensive inability to protect the interests and values of white working people.  It’s actually been dead since 2008, but tricked out to appear healthy with hefty doses of donor money, media bombast, and undying populist aversion to cultural liberalism and its racially and sexually suspicious beneficiaries.  What Trump has done is kill the illusion of conservatism.  As a man ignorant enough to overlook ideological considerations, rich enough to be indifferent to movement money, and self-assured enough (to put it mildly!) to dismiss received notions of propriety, he was perfectly constituted to override the conservative establishment and express and exploit the blunt instincts of those unhappy white populists, instincts he precisely shares.

And now that he’s exploited those instincts all the way to the nomination, they constitute the new conservatism.  The old conservatism, however, came to own the party through a very different strategy.  The Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservatives had to fight for years against the moderate Eisenhower establishment Republicans who controlled the party in the post-war years, and who had made their peace with the New Deal and Cold War stalemate.  Convinced that both the welfare state and international communism could be aggressively rolled back, they worked the grassroots, the media, the think tanks, the elections, etc., as they slowly took over the party from the inside.  Their first big triumph was the nomination of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964.  In 1968, segregationist and Democratic Alabama Governor George Wallace pulled white southern conservative populists out of the New Deal coalition when he ran for president as an independent, and they never went back (not at the presidential level).  Richard Nixon – who brilliantly straddled

Governor Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to 
prevent the enrollment of black students 
at the University of Alabama, 1963

the moderate vs. conservative divide – added them and their white northern collaborators to his own coalition four years later.  At the same time, northern moderate and liberal Republicans – i.e. Eisenhower, Rockefeller and Lindsay Republicans – left the GOP for the Democratic Party.  And though Goldwater badly lost his general election, Nixon’s and Reagan’s cynical and skillful campaigning brought the white populists securely into the conservative movement and the Republican Party, leaving the Reaganites in charge.

But conservatism has now split in two, or rather it has reverted to its two naturally antagonistic groupings, with each side considering itself the heirs of Reagan and seeing the other as the successors of the hated Eisenhower-ish moderate establishment.  Both groups are technically conservative, given their belief in innate natural hierarchy.  And that means that neither group is really libertarian, or classically liberal, though some conservatives perceive themselves to be; in practice they don’t defend individual freedom against social coercion.  And neither group is Burkean, or classically conservative in the aristocratic European sense, in that neither affirms pragmatism or conciliation; both groups are intensely idealistic, even utopian, consisting of righteous, low-church crusaders working to create the City of God on Earth.  And both groups hold to a Social Darwinism that sees society’s winners as virtuously deserving their winnings.  It’s just that Trumpians believe that the natural aristocracy consists of those aforementioned straight, white, Christian, American men, while the Reaganites believe it’s successful capitalists.  Trumpism is about identity, Reaganism is about money.  And the Trumpians are less principled, more expedient, more willing to play dirty to advance the interests of their tribe.  Such is the logic of tribalism.

We can agree – with Donald Trump! – to call the Reaganites the True Conservatives, since they’ve claimed the title for so long, and they probably are closer to the classically conservative Burkean ideal, with their worship of plutocrats as aristocrats born to rule at home and abroad.  A true Burkean would condemn Reaganite worship of free markets as destabilizing and intemperate.  But a true Burkean would even more forcefully reject Trumpian recklessness and thoughtlessness; as he would reject Trumpian majoritarianism, not because it fails to respect liberal individual rights, but because it fails to defer to its rightful aristocratic masters.  So even with their right-wing inegalitarianism, it’s fair to call the Trumpians Populists, since they share much substance with left-wing populists, in particular instinctual embrace of the popular and the everyday, and animosity toward the rich and powerful.

Given these ideological incompatibilities and conservatism’s abject policy failures, it was quite likely that something like Trumpism would come along and topple Reaganism from its precarious perch at the top of the GOP.  But the Trumpian revolt, unlike the Reaganite overthrow of the moderates, has occurred in one fell swoop.  That’s because they didn’t have to conquer someone else’s party; they didn’t have to convert anyone, or bring in like-minded outsiders, or drive out ideological opponents.  The party has been theirs for the asking all along.

Of course, the Reaganites fought against the Trumpian takeover tooth and nail, caucus vote by delegate count, negative ad by convention rule.  They’ve been on top so long, and they’ve spent so much time and energy convincing themselves they’re America’s ordained saviors, they can’t let go of the political party meant to be the instrument of that salvation.  And there are still Reaganites among the grassroots; that’s who voted for Ted Cruz.  Some have accepted their new subordinate status within the exotic new right-wing order and are supporting Trump as an evil lesser than Hillary.  But some diehards are promising to sit out the general election, some are working to deny Trump the presidency, some are considering a true conservative third-party campaign, and some are so unhappy with Trump they say they’ll even vote for Hillary!  Of course, much of the Reaganite opposition to Trump has less to do with the Trumpian program and more to do with the man himself, with his flagrant irresponsibility and doltish ignorance.  Though it’s hard not to wonder if some of those never-Trump folks would so adamantly oppose an irresponsible and doltish nominee who toed the Reaganite line.  After all, most of them defended Sarah Palin.

But Trumpism – with or without the man himself – is here to stay.  Reaganism is dead.  Because of its complex of think tanks and media outlets, the Reaganites will continue to make noise and influence the discourse for some time to come.  But for a long time to come, no GOP nominee will be openly advocate free trade or looser immigration policies.  And many supposedly conservative politicians and media personalities have already happily pledged support for Trump, demonstrating that they were really populists – or shameless opportunists – all along.  Even some of the right-wing media and think-tank crowd have turned out to be populists.  Some politicians, like Paul Ryan, are trying to finesse the differences.  Rush Limbaugh has shown himself just as brilliant at straddling the present-day Reaganite-Trumpian divide as Nixon was at straddling the Eisenhower-Reaganite divide of his day.  When there are full-fledged, self-consciously right-wing populist think tanks to confront the Reaganite ones, the dying roar of Reaganism will wind down to a whisper.

In the grand history of the United States, it may turn out that the ultimate role of modern conservatism will be to give birth to a powerful and resentful white populist nationalism.  Nixon and Reagan thought they had stolen Wallace’s power, but maybe all they really did was unleash it.  It’s likely that Trump is the Goldwater of right-wing populism, not it’s Reagan, and he’ll come in for a solid defeat in November.  But a smarter, shrewder, more presentable Trump is waiting in our future.  We may be saved from that coming populist Reagan by the continuing demographic shifts transforming our society, shifts that seem likely to make white nationalism an electoral dead end (at least at the presidential level).  But can anyone – other than demagogues, fanatics, and fools – desire greater racial polarization and animosity?  A popular white nationalist movement, even one with no chance of winning the presidency, can bring nothing but division and destruction and horror.  And, for the moment, it’s a white nationalist movement with a reckless sideshow clown as its leader. We stare, more starkly than we have in a long time, into the sinister side of our collective unconscious; we walk dangerously close to the edge of the deep, dark American abyss, with little more than Hillary and her bland, neo-liberal platitudes to keep us from falling directly in. 

Patriotism Unraveled

Military equipment left behind by the Iraqi Army as they fled from ISIS

No one is a better representative of old-time right-wing populism than Pat Buchanan, and no one understands better than an old-time right-wing populist why men are willing to fight and die in war.  When Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter bitterly complained that the city of Ramadi had fallen to vicious ISIS jihadis because the Iraqi Army lacked the “will to fight”, Buchanan jumped up with the explanation:

Why do these rebels seem willing to fight for what we see as antiquated beliefs, but all too often our friends do not fight? Perhaps the answer is found in Thomas Babington Macaulay: “And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?”

Tribe and faith. Those are the causes for which Middle Eastern men will fight. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists will die for the faith. Persians and Arabs will fight to defend their lands, as will Kurds and Turks.

People who’s primary loyalty is Sunni or Shiite will fight to promote or protect their faith, and people who’s primary loyalty is to their nation (Persians, Kurds, etc.) will fight to promote or protect their nation.  These are natural, visceral motivations; a society, or a gang, or a hunter-gatherer tribe, or a band of chimpanzees – each takes what it wants and keeps what it takes.  As a fundamentalist himself, Buchanan may wrestle with the facts of biological evolution, but he well understands the animal nature of man.

But do liberals?  Pat doesn’t think liberalism can really motivate anyone, or at least anyone in the Middle East:

But who among the tribes of the Middle East will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom, and marriage equality?

Rod Dreher takes the argument to its logical next step (his italics):

The more unsettling question is coming our way may well be: But who among the tribes of the United States will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom, and marriage equality?

Would anyone fight for modern liberalism, for the cult of individual expression, for the impoverished post-modern liberation from all commitment?  The question answers itself.  But what about the other side of modern liberalism, the social justice warriors brimming with idealistic commitments to racial and gender equality, etc.?  Those are wholly admirable and laudable ideals, but could that ideological commitment motivate the sacrifice and devotion that are required for an ideology’s survival in an eminently hostile world?  Consider that the objective of the social justice warriors is a world in which everyone, regardless of race, gender, etc., is openly admitted to that aforementioned empty freedom, that emaciated emancipation.  Of course, fighting for freedom is a cliché, but a misleading one.  Fighting for freedom typically means fighting to remove some outside domination over one’s group; it’s about collective freedom, not individual license. And freedom per se, freedom devoid of content or purpose, is just not something worth dying for. 

Is it conceivable that a society composed of only social justice warriors would take up arms to defend itself against military incursion by religious fundamentalists or Ayn Rand supporters or any other similarly retrograde group?  Barely.  But would they defend America if it were under attack?  How can we suppose that when it’s not clear that they would defend their own hypothetical Social Justice Utopia?  And they tend to be some version of pacifist.  And they generally consider national allegiance to be old-fashioned, foolish and destructive.  Some of them are skeptical that America is a place worth saving.  But some are not.

Fascists and communists in the inter-war years were also quite certain the liberal democrats would prove feckless when push came to shove, that they would not have the courage or determination to resist the totalitarian onslaught.  They were a little right at first – Chamberlain at Munich, 1938 – and very wrong later – Hitler in the Bunker, 1945.  So, hasn’t liberalism proven itself?  No, the liberalism that defeated fascism was a very different liberalism than the modern kind; or more precisely, it wasn’t just liberalism.  It’s true that the American leaders and American military men and women were fighting for liberal values like freedom and equality, but they were also fighting for their homeland and their people.  They fought because they loved their country, and a country is much more than just its political principles.  The British fought for their empire, the French fought to repel the Nazis, as did most of Europe.  Even the Soviets fought for Mother Russia.  Buchanan’s truth wins again. Liberalism alone without pre-liberal, pre-modern commitments of blood and soil is incapable of eliciting the devotion and sacrifice needed to withstand the invader’s onslaught.

Even now, most of the men and women in the American military are true patriots (and those who needed a career or a simply a steady job).  And patriots in America today are more likely to be conservative (sometimes excessively so).  So, if we can’t rely on liberals to fight for America, we always have conservatives to fall back on, right?

Well, maybe.  Rod Dreher, conservative but thoughtful Christian, worries that America, in becoming more liberal, more sexually liberated, is becoming hostile to traditional Christianity.  And he’s not happy at the thought of his own children fighting overseas for an America that no longer solidly represents him and his values:

And I don’t want them killing or dying to replace the very real evils of traditional societies with the evils of our own civilization — especially when our civilization, in law and custom, is in the process of turning on people of my religion, and seeing us as the enemy within. Put bluntly, I don’t want my children to risk death — their own or somebody else’s — for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom, and marriage equality, especially when the most important American value — freedom of religion — is going into eclipse.

Dreher contends, not entirely without reason, that opposition to gay marriage (and other aspects of the sexual revolution) has evoked social condemnation of traditionalist Christians as homophobes and bigots.  He is, in effect, saying that traditionalists have become something of a persecuted minority in their own country, and it’s not fair to ask them to fight for a country that doesn’t treat them fairly.  That is, Christians now are a little like blacks were in the bad old days.  When Muhammed Ali refused to fight in Vietnam for a country that denied his equality at home he explained, “No Vietcong ever called me n----r.”  Dreher is saying, “No jihadi ever called me homophobe.”  Apparently, both he and Ali knew who their real enemies were.

Who's he talking to?

To be sure, Dreher’s hesitation to fight for America only applies to overseas missions; he would be only too eager to defend America herself from attack.  And it’s not clear how much Dreher’s pessimism regarding anti-Christian persecution is felt among the wider conservative Christian population.  But conservatives are becoming more and more aware that the America they thought they owned is slipping away from them.  What will happen when conservatives as a whole conclude that defending America is for them a losing proposition?  Will both sides disdain America as belonging to the other?  Is every version of American patriotism unraveling?

If it does come to pass that conservatives, in effect, opt out of American identity – as liberals have already substantially done – then almost no one will willingly fight for America in a foreign land.  Would our expeditionary forces then be only mercenary?  But there can be no doubt – can there? – that if America were being invaded almost every American would come to her rescue.  And we know that conservatives will.  That is, conservatives, being conservatives, will always love the land and their piece of it, and always be willing to fight and die for it.  Even if they no longer feel compelled by America as a whole, they will always be compelled by some version of Buchanan’s ties of tribe and faith.  That is their strength and their failing.

Modern liberals make truly admirable political and social and intellectual leaders, but terrible soldiers.  Just as conservatism un-moderated by liberal notions of individualism and equality slips too easily into parochialism and intolerance, liberalism unmoored from national affection and commitment slips too easily into cosmopolitan affectation and universalist uselessness.  We need each other.  And more to the point, America would be much better off under an intelligent synthesis of both world-views, alloyed with good amounts of pragmatism and conciliation.  Conservatives need to understand that America is more than a vessel and instrument of static conservatism.  It’s a growing, changing, evolving, living thing.  And liberals need to bring their idealism back down to earth.   They could think globally and act nationally, but only if the nation actually means something to them.  And all that really means is recognizing that they are Americans, essentially and irrevocably.  Liberalism is as much an organic outgrowth of American history as is conservatism.  We are all heirs of our common history.  But that history has hope of continuing only if we’re all willing to accept that inheritance, and the responsibilities it brings, and each other.

Hollow Populisms

Union members and supporters protest Governor Scott Walker's assault on unions
Madison, Wisconsin, 2012

Conservative populism is inherently unstable; it must constantly struggle to keep cultural populism from bleeding over into economic issues.  That is, white working people are encouraged to resent snobbish, over-educated, cosmopolitan, elitist liberals who look down on them for their unsophisticated tastes, crude manners and backward views.  But they must never resent the rich simply for being rich; they must never consider the injustice of being forced to work for less pay in worse conditions while CEO’s and hedge-fund managers make millions.  Since in conservative mythology, capitalism always rewards the virtuous and punishes the lazy, conservative populism must be about attitudes and humiliation, never about wages and power.  It must remain purely affective, never material.  You’re only allowed to hate someone for their condescension, never for their money.  Thus is real populism neutered.

But that’s what makes the conservative split on immigration so interesting: it sneaks in some genuine economic populism through the back door.  Conservative elites – commentators, writers, the Republican establishment, the Chamber of Commerce, big money – are quite happy to let in lots of unskilled workers from other countries.  It provides cheap labor, and it indulges their stark libertarianism, the view that any interference in the market – even a national boundary – is the work of the devil.  And after Hispanics voted overwhelmingly in 2012 against Mitt Romney and his severely restrictive anti-immigration position, Republican leaders are eager to appear more accommodating toward Hispanics.  And did I mention that immigration provides lots of cheap labor?

The conservative base, of course, is strongly opposed to both allowing in more immigrants and allowing undocumented immigrants to stay.  Their reasons are partly cultural: they’re afraid that too many foreigners will resist assimilation and alter the national character.  And on the farther reaches the reasons become more nativist and racial: they’re convinced America is meant for white Christians.  But their objections also include perfectly defensible and plausible economic concerns: they don’t want to compete against cheap labor.  Of course, that’s the same cheap labor – I may have mentioned – that employers and investors are quite happy to have them compete against.  So the split on immigration between the conservative establishment and the conservative base is an economic split.  It’s a split defined by class.  Not class in the sense of who’s looking down his nose at who, but in the sense of who holds economic power and who is subject to it.

Into that breach has stepped Scott Walker, the conservative Republican governor of Wisconsin and credible presidential candidate.  During an interview with conservative Glenn Beck, Walker staked out what breitbart.com calls a “pro-American-worker” position:

In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying—the next president and the next congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages, because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to [Alabama] Senator Sessions and others out there—but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today—is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward.

Clearly, Walker is siding with the base against the establishment.  But to do so, he’s taken a populist position, an economically populist position: the rich and the powerful are making decisions that hurt everyday people, that hurt them in their pocketbooks.

Now Scott Walker, like most conservatives, is not exactly a friend of policies and institutions that promote the economic interests of working people.  Indeed, he’s loved by conservatives specifically because of the ferocious battles he fought against organized labor in Wisconsin.  And many conservative commentators consider Walker’s newfound suspicion of a completely free labor market to be a real betrayal of conservative principle (there are exceptions).  Consider Philip Klein's delightfully dogmatic reaction:

The idea that policymakers should protect current American workers from competition from immigrants who come here legally and are willing and eager to work hard is a perversion of American ideals and a recipe for decline.

But in addition to Walker’s newfound moderation regarding market purity, there is his newfound immoderation on the immigration issue itself; i.e. he’s gone quite a few steps further than most of his conservative presidential rivals by questioning not only illegal immigration, but legal immigration.  Together these deviations add up to a new, more comprehensive conservative populism.  That is, Walker is positioning himself, consciously or otherwise, to be the genuine voice of working America (white working America, at least) championing both its cultural instincts and its economic interests.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Or so it would appear.  But will Walker embrace a broader range of policies helping working people?  Will he support raising the minimum wage or progressive taxes or public works?  Will he come out fighting in favor of unions?  If he does none of those things his populism will have been detained at the border’s edge.  If it seems that the immigration controversy might be the herald of a more genuinely populist conservatism, it isn’t happening yet, and it probably won’t happen any time soon.  And that’s because conservatives – even populist ones – believe that American workers merit special consideration only for being American, not for being workers.  American workers should be protected from competition from foreigners but not from the depredations of American capitalism.  This is the full extent of conservative concern for American workers: they must remain American.

But if conservatives have no concern for American workers as workers, liberals have no concern for them as Americans.  Indeed, most liberals seem to have no more consideration for American workers than they do for workers from other countries.  It’s true that the Democratic economic agenda – minimum wage increases, Obamacare, etc. – is directed at helping working people, but when faced with the choice between American workers and immigrants, liberals choose the immigrants.  Have their national feelings attenuated that far? They’re terribly concerned about the injustice suffered by African-Americans, Hispanics, other racial minorities, women, gays, the handicapped, etc., and rightly so.  But do they have no particular consideration for their fellow Americans as Americans?

If not, if liberals have gone that far, then American liberalism is on a short one-way trip to history’s dust bin.  No one will vote for a party that doesn’t put a special priority upon the interests of its own citizens.  Indeed, no one should!  Especially if one supports the social welfare state and hopes for a more egalitarian and just society, since those are practically possible only within the confines of a well-defined polity.  It’s much easier to convince a rich New Yorker to pay taxes for doctors in Texas than for doctors in Bangladesh.  Liberalism without patriotism is liberalism standing upon thin air.

Liberals used to understand this.  Only a few years ago they were much more willing to express worry about the effect of immigration on American wages.  Now they only worry about doing even the tiniest damage to their demographically expanding non-white electoral coalition.  And by spending so much time and energy portraying any conservative resistance to immigration as based entirely upon racism, they’ve made it too politically costly to question immigration themselves.  Their populism is a victim of their own propaganda and their own hypertrophied broad-mindedness.  To love everyone is to be of no use to anyone.

And conservatives, whose national feelings could probably do with a little attenuation, are all too happy to demonstrate how this undermines liberal economic populism.  Here is the Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey H. Anderson explaining how immigration shows that liberals don’t care about workers (in a piece written before Walker staked out his anti-immigration position):

If there is anything that liberals and Big Business can seemingly agree upon, it’s that we don’t need an approach to immigration that benefits Main Street.  It remains to be seen whether anyone running for president will seize this opening and buck the liberal-corporate consensus.

But liberals seem blithely unaware how much they’re playing into that consensus.  Hillary has even come out in favor of more immigration!  And that’s in perfect keeping with her pro-business positions and the general cosmopolitan tilt of liberal elites.  And, of course, it helps Democrats cement their support among Hispanics.  But it drastically undermines liberal credibility among working Americans, the very people that liberalism used to be about.

We’re left with no real populism.  Liberal populism shrivels before our eyes.  And a hollow conservative version tries to steal its place.  But the only American populism worthy of the name is one that actively works for the material good of American workers.  Liberals may call that nativism and conservatives may call it socialism.  But in reality it’s neither, it’s justice made practical.