Stephen W. Wolfe joins me to discuss his new book, The Case for Christian Nationalism: How to Build a Christian Identity in America, and why he believes that Christianity is the most important religion in America.
00:02:44.960All right, Stephen, so I think we'll start at kind of the 5,000-foot view, because this might be too simple for some, but I think it's important to define our terms here.
00:02:53.520A lot of people just use jargon without being familiar with the actual background or understanding, and I think it's important if we're going to frame this discussion to have these terms defined.
00:03:02.500So for people who aren't familiar or maybe have only had contact with kind of an Abrahamic faith, what is the difference between a particularist religion and a universal religion, and does Christianity qualify as a universalist religion?
00:03:18.580So I would think that a particularist religion would be one in which that is more you have local deities or you have some sort of ancestral ties to the dead that are buried and localized in the place.
00:03:32.300And that was very common across the world before, you could say, you know, the monotheistic or the Abrahamic religions.
00:03:40.220And so the problem with that is they're false, but the good side, the effect of that can be that people are attached to their homeland because through essentially natural affections.
00:03:55.800So they have the long dead who are buried next to them, and there's some kind of spiritual connection that they believe.
00:04:03.500And the benefit is it connects them to the people in place, and I do think that Christianity is a universalistic religion, meaning that it's a universal religion, meaning that it is for all people.
00:04:17.580It is the only true religion, and that means all other religions are false, at least in their totality.
00:04:25.120And so it is a universal religion as a religion, and so I would agree with that.
00:04:31.200I kind of know where this is going in terms of politics.
00:04:34.740I think in terms of politics, you can still maintain a particularist approach, that is, you have a people and a place that are distinct to that place, distinct to as a people and their cultural particularities, and yet also at the same time be Christian.
00:04:49.560And actually a large part of my work and in the book is me trying to resolve that question because there is, as I said, there is the good of having a particular people in place.
00:05:00.420It's also true that the true religion is a universal religion.
00:05:03.780So, yeah, so that was my concern to try to reconcile those two things in the book.
00:05:13.720Yeah, like I said, a lot of people, I think, who have just grown up in America, familiar with kind of the modern conception of Christianity, they're not familiar with any of these other faiths.
00:05:26.180If they don't know this history, again, I've repped this book several times, but I'll do it yet again.
00:05:31.740Festelle de Colange's The Ancient City is a fantastic book for people who want to really get a grasp of what ancient religions might have looked like and what that kind of almost ancestor worship or deities very particular to the city and commuting with deities that are specifically only to the city.
00:05:49.120Like how that changes and shifts mentalities quite a bit.
00:05:53.040And like you said, you know, Christianity is the true faith.
00:05:56.460And so we're not trying to over romanticize that particular aspect of it.
00:06:00.460But that is usually the argument I see from many like kind of online pagans.
00:06:06.360And I don't want to give this too much airtime since I don't feel like this is a significant group that really has a huge purchase on, you know, political life in the United States or spiritual life in the United States.
00:06:17.340But the criticism they bring on a regular basis is because of the universal nature of Christianity, it's always going to destroy nations.
00:06:25.900It's always eventually going to lead this idea that we have to get rid of borders, that people are allowed to have their own home countries, this kind of thing.
00:06:33.460And so if we can just purge Christianity from the West, which I think is kind of hilarious since that literally is what defines the West that they know and love.
00:06:41.800But if we could just purge this ancient faith of our fathers from that, then we could get back to real traditions like the pagan ones that we never practice.
00:06:49.420And that will actually save Western nations from being consumed by this globalist ideology.
00:06:54.540Yeah, well, I will say that the people who bring that critique, they have a point to an extent.
00:07:06.800And the point is, the point they're making is rooted in that many Christians today do have, they take the universality of the religion, and they do bring that down to nations.
00:07:17.520They essentially make their political theology or their political theory a sort of universalist political theology.
00:07:24.740They neglect customs, they neglect ancestry, they neglect civil traditions and that sort of thing.
00:07:34.200And so if they're reacting to that in a way, if that's how they're interpreting what Christianity is, then in a way they might be correct.
00:07:43.540And I will say that the tendency to universalize all the way down and into politics and politicalized civil life is a sort of vice that Christians can have.
00:07:52.980I think it's false, but I can understand how someone can go from there and end up doing that.
00:07:59.680But I think that the tradition, the Christian tradition itself, basically speaks very directly against that.
00:08:05.380I think the tendency among modern Christians to do that is really due not to Christianity, but to basically modern life.
00:08:11.860I think since World War II, we've had this, as we call the consensus, is there's been this push for universality to be part of every aspect of life for various reasons.
00:08:24.420And what they've done is they've essentially brought, they've theologized that consensus.
00:08:30.240So I think they've been socialized into a type of universality.
00:08:36.100And then when they encounter Christian theology, they have to account for it, especially among Protestants who basically tend to want to theologize everything.
00:08:45.780And so they bring that into their own theology.
00:08:50.160I think it's contrary to the broad Christian tradition among many different traditions, from Roman Catholic to classical Protestant and others.
00:08:59.240And so I think it's an error, nevertheless.
00:09:02.580I do think, and this is one of the reasons I wrote the book and my other work, is to combat what I think is a modern error.
00:09:10.360And I think in a way it's anti-human, because I think we as humans are designed to adopt a sort of second nature.
00:09:19.140That second nature is going to be a type of ethical life that is informed by people and place and culture, heritage traditions, parents.
00:09:26.480And there's going to be an attachment to it.
00:09:30.940And so part of what I've been arguing is that actually grace does not destroy what is fundamentally human.
00:09:36.880It does not destroy, like you accepting the gospel and becoming a Christian does not eradicate the fact that you're American or Nigerian or French or English.
00:09:51.660What grace does, it perfects, it completes, and it corrects error.
00:09:56.940But it also assumes the fundamental things of our nature.
00:10:01.020And that distinction of nature and grace is really central to my project.
00:10:05.260It was central to the Reformers' projects.
00:10:07.940Just across the board, everyone basically affirmed that.
00:10:10.240And of course, it's, you know, solid within the Thomistic tradition as well.
00:10:13.980So that's how, you know, I can get more and more detail on that.
00:10:18.940But that's how I think that we can account for these basic human needs that we have to belong to a place across time.
00:10:28.100And at the same time, affirm a universal religion.
00:10:31.880They're perfectly reconcilable, if you just give a little bit of thought.
00:10:35.340Yeah, it's always amazing to me that there are so many kind of Christian spokesmen, I guess, on, you know, the moderate right or something that they act as if real Christianity begin with the Civil Rights Act or something like that.
00:10:53.620That's actually when Christians finally, you know, realized what the Bible actually said once it had been, you know, you got the hermeneutic of the Civil Rights Act, and that allowed you to finally truly understand what the Bible was telling you.
00:11:05.720And that seems like so much of what is spouted at, you know, people, and we can get into this in a little bit if you'd like also a little bit later.
00:11:15.320I have my own problems with the moniker Christian nationalism, but I'm very sympathetic to the political project itself.
00:11:22.640You know, I obviously believe that, you know, God's word is truth and aligning ourselves with it will bring about a better nation.
00:11:29.540And part of the fulfillment of that is reflecting it in the laws and customs of our own nation.
00:11:35.340But, you know, a lot of the problem with guys who are really going after this hard in the paint is they seem to have just lifted up kind of, I don't know, not even particularly, you know, not even classical liberalism, but liberalism for the last 30 years and just kind of run it through a little bit of theology.
00:11:52.100And on the other side comes this new version of Christianity that they just discovered.
00:11:56.800And thank goodness, because all these church fathers before, they just had never, they didn't knew nothing about the Bible.
00:12:02.140So I read someone like Joseph Demetra, who himself is a Catholic, so he even believes in the universal church.
00:12:07.960But he's very clear as a very staunch Christian about how different nations will be governed differently, that they will have radically different governments because those will reflect the people and that the people will change over time.
00:12:19.540And they may need new and different governments.
00:12:21.360And there's, you know, there is a correct form of government, but is correct to each people based on, you know, their way of being, their place, their customs, these things, as opposed to just this universal system that will be impressed on everybody and that everyone joins once they recognize that your nation is actually the real instantiation of Christianity.
00:12:39.640Christianity. And so I guess before I kick it over to you, my final thing is just when I look at a lot of these guys, they say, well, Christianity is the only thing that defines the United States.
00:12:50.580And again, of course, it's foundational. It's critical to what the United States is.
00:12:54.480But there are many Christian nations. And so obviously, if we're going to talk about what a nation is and avoid the errors that you already pointed out, where people just take on this universalist bent Christianity,
00:13:06.280then we have to recognize that there are differences between Christian nations and that America is not like the one perfect instantiation of the true will of God. It can't be the same thing.
00:13:18.220Right. I mean, we even saw this back in the Iraq war in 2003 and the decades that followed is that we can simply show up and establish, you know, these principles of freedom and liberty and a political system.
00:13:33.800And that's all you need. Like inside every heart is just a modern liberal. And that's just been that's been theologized.
00:13:41.860And so, I mean, you have guys that are basically saying that the more sanctified you are, the basically more American liberal you are.
00:13:49.760And this will be true around the world. It's just a branch of the type of liberal imperialism that we've seen for a long time.
00:13:56.460And again, just theologized. But of course, that's that's all false.
00:14:01.260I think Protestantism is central to the the American, say, the American project or American culture, American political system.
00:14:10.220But that itself is rooted in an Anglo tradition.
00:14:13.420And so this is why we often talk about Anglo Protestantism as the foundation of our political system, of our culture, of our civic life.
00:14:22.120And that that's endured for a long time. But that is very particular.
00:14:26.620I mean, there's universalistic elements of that. We talk about natural rights.
00:14:30.020Natural rights being natural means are universal.
00:14:32.680And yet that doesn't mean that everyone's going to acknowledge them or is prepared to acknowledge them.
00:14:36.640I mean, it took a long time with very particular events in, you know, the Anglo tradition for the for these things to happen, going all the way back to Magna Carta, which itself didn't just, you know, didn't appear from the sky.
00:14:49.880What was because of very particular political situations among the people.
00:14:55.960And so it's just kind of ridiculous to think that you could have people come over or people can just be affirm the right doctrine and all of a sudden touch the soil of the United States.
00:15:06.640And they magically become good Anglo Protestants or they are sanctified into whatever, you know.
00:15:13.420And so it's again, it's theologized into a form of liberalism that is not suitable for all people.
00:15:19.480I mean, one of the most common things you'll find in the tradition is a recognition of one different political regimes, you know, going back to Aristotle and all that.
00:15:27.000But that's all reflected in the Christian tradition.
00:15:29.780They regularly would talk about how the characteristics of the people themselves make this or that political system more suitable.
00:15:37.420And it's there's a type of like American liberal arrogance that's been theologized that that we have to then say that, well, every Christian is just going to just adopt in sanctification our our way of life.
00:15:51.600And that's simply simply not not true.
00:15:53.440And I think it's like I've been to Hungary, I've been other places, you know, there's a lot of Protestants in Hungary.
00:15:59.820They're they're different than Americans and they they'll tell you they'll tell you straight up that they're different than Americans.
00:16:08.140This is one of the great aspects of the old paleo conservative tradition, which is the recognition of difference and actually mutual respect of difference.
00:16:16.640Yes. But if you universalize everything and you think that your way of life is the universal, you end up then now import or exporting your way of life everywhere and demanding that the Christian conforms because that's the only true way of life.
00:16:30.900And so there's an element of arrogance and arrogance to that when actually I think that we should just respect difference.
00:16:36.500And by the way, that's just kind of the tradition that we've been in that for for millennia.
00:16:42.200So, yeah, I agree. And I will say something that you said earlier about Christian nationalism, the label, I I understand why many people on the right don't like the word nationalism, partly because nationalism has historically been a homogenizing force among, you know, under state power.
00:17:02.260So I actually I very much respect that disagreement on that. I also understand why people would be uncomfortable with Christian nationalism because for the universal aspects we've already talked about.
00:17:12.300But what I've been trying to say is, again, that you reconcile universal and and and the particular.
00:17:20.720So, yeah, that's my argument. I don't know. There might be others claiming the label who who believe differently, but at least that's that's what I'm arguing for.
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00:18:00.440Yeah. And again, for me, the label is really only a problem tactically more than anything else. The left very much the press especially seemed to want to elevate that very aggressively because what they wanted to say, it's it's white Christian nationalism.
00:18:16.080Obviously, obviously, that's that's what they really wanted to try to push that. This is this is the same thing. But more importantly, and I think, you know, this is something you touch on your book.
00:18:26.420So this is not a criticism of you at all, because you do have the courage to go into it.
00:18:29.900But I think one of the problems, again, with the phrase Christian nationalism is it avoids for some people, the messier discussions of what nationalism actually is, because they can just kind of say because, you know, I was I was at NatCon when Josh, Josh Hawley kind of tried to redefine Christian nationalism live on on television.
00:18:46.360And it looks very, very, very, very, very, very different from, you know, something that you're laying out.
00:18:51.700And so, again, not a criticism of your work or your position, ultimately, but I think a criticism that the label is perhaps too flexible, both both for the ill when the left is trying to use it in a militant manner and for conservatives when they're attempting to actually define it.
00:19:11.060But again, this is me being sensitive to kind of dialectic online and that kind of thing, as opposed to perhaps, you know, just talking about the truth or veracity of that particular label.
00:19:24.040Yeah. And I've I've said actually from the very beginning, I've said that I really don't care if people adopt the label.
00:19:28.820I just I just want them to affirm the ideas associated with it, whether they call it new Christian, right, or they call it, I don't know, Commonwealth.
00:19:36.620Well, I don't know. I don't care what they call it. But, you know, in the end, a term is meant to capture certain ideas.
00:19:43.580And I prefer people adopt the ideas. I will say something about the ideas is just to clear up some confusion.
00:19:49.980I think that my project, contrary to what people say, is actually very anti-ideological or it's in ideology in the sort of negative connotation of it.
00:20:02.280And so, you know, I don't think like I said, I don't think every place has to look the same.
00:20:07.960I don't think that that there's there's a absolute set of laws or political systems that must be in place.
00:20:16.200There are some people in the Protestant camp that would disagree with that, even some who might adopt the label.
00:20:22.000But it really comes down to the the nation itself.
00:20:25.360The reason I like the label Christian nationalism is because I could then tease out and say, OK, nationalism assumes there's this thing called the nation.
00:20:33.020And so I spend a lot of time trying to describe and define that nation in ways where in a way, in a way, the practices are very organic to the people.
00:20:44.380They're created over time. They're not imposed so much from above.
00:20:48.540And it's very much an organic thing, meaning that it arises from human interaction across time through ancestry and all that.
00:20:55.760And so it's actually grounded in very much like my Christian nationalism is grounded, actually, in a nature, in a natural law, in a fundamentally human thing.
00:21:06.060And that fundamentally human thing is, as I said earlier, is receptive.
00:21:10.020We are born receptive to receive the way of life of our of our people becomes a second nature such that when we left, if we went to become missionaries somewhere in a foreign country, we would be foreigners.
00:21:23.760And not only foreigners in a legal sense, we'd be foreigners in our own.
00:21:27.340We'd feed foreign. And I'm sure everyone who's been in a foreign country, even if you're you know, it's safe and you're excited to be there, you still feel foreign.
00:21:35.220In fact, that's why it's exciting, because you are a foreigner in a in another land.
00:21:39.740But you can't get rid of that. The same thing if I grew up in California.
00:21:43.540Now I live in North Carolina. I still am Californian.
00:21:47.580I still have I still have these great, fond childhood memories of the town I grew up in and that that'll never change.
00:21:56.340It's hard for me to believe even living here for, you know, if I live here for decades, that I will be able to replace that sentiment I have for my hometown in California with the hometown with the town I am now.
00:22:07.720Now my kids will be different. So there's just something that we receive.
00:22:11.440And that's what I wanted to reintroduce into the Christian political discourse, because there's far too much of a type of like it's all about law.
00:22:23.760You know, so you have some guys in the in the Protestant world who think it's all about God's law being imposed.
00:22:30.640And I think actually, yeah, you have to have law, but it's but there's also that that natural cultural aspect that must be reaffirmed and preserved in our theology and in our political practice.
00:22:45.780Well, I think it would probably be useful at this point to get into a deeper discussion about what a nation is.
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00:23:51.240So, Stephen, one of the things that I've been trying to do is get people to be more aware of kind of the historical understanding of a nation.
00:24:04.280The current idea that we have is, well, that nations are just ideas.
00:24:09.700It's a free-floating set of principles that are inscribed somewhere in a piece of parchment.
00:24:14.480And that's ultimately what it means to be a nation is to like, you know, there's this proposition and you affirm it.
00:24:21.440And now you, too, are American or, well, this doesn't work for any other nation, really.
00:24:28.120But, you know, for some reason, there's something about Western nations that allows them to be entirely based on, like, these abstract principles that you adopt.
00:24:35.560And what I've been trying to help people to try to grasp is that, no, those ideas come from somewhere.
00:24:42.500Like, you believe those things because you came up somewhere and were taught them and they were part of your tradition.
00:24:50.440Yes, they make sense alongside your faith.
00:24:52.700You know, God's truth can be in those principles.
00:24:55.560But those principles will often be reflected differently in different places, even if they are themselves Christian.
00:25:01.760And so, yes, there are truths that are particular to, you know, God's truth, but there are also truths that are particular to your people and the way that those manifest can be particular to your people.
00:25:12.220And so when you are looking at the propositions of your nation, it's not that there are no ideas behind the American founding or the founding of other nations, but that these ideas are tied to something beyond just like your abstract acceptance of that thing.
00:25:42.680We have different phrases that will, you know, talk about ideas of natural rights and inequality, self-government, all that sort of thing.
00:25:51.920And so I do think those matter to a people on the idea front, though, I again would, you know, I guess repeat what I've already said, which is that those ideas were developed along a certain tradition and we are attached to that, that tradition.
00:26:06.980And so we have respect for someone, maybe not everyone, but certain respect for people like John Locke and others who have produced or developed these ideas.
00:26:15.780And of course, the tradition that Locke himself was a part of, which is also deeply Protestant.
00:26:20.940And so we're kind of part of that tradition that we respect.
00:26:24.100And I would not expect anyone who comes from outside that tradition to really respect that tradition, at least not fundamentally in their sort of being, like this sense of I ought to, that there's, they might come to the conclusion that people are right through rationalistic reasoning, but they don't have that sense of which this is my tradition that from which I work out my ideas.
00:26:47.300And so I do think, yeah, ideas, but when I, when I think of what a, what a nation is, I think of it in terms of there, there's a connection of people to the place and this spans across time.
00:27:04.880So it's intergenerational, it means, and, and this means that in a way it's like, I often speak of a, like an old family farm or an old family house.
00:27:13.700There's a connection you have to that place, to that house or that land or the backyard or whatever it is, not only because you were there, but because your grandparents lived there.
00:27:25.620And perhaps they don't, you don't own it, it's sold to someone else, but every time you drive past that house, you look over and you have this sort of fondness for that place.
00:27:34.900And it might not be an exceptional house.
00:27:36.920It might be barely standing, but you still have this sense of this connection to that place.
00:27:41.980And you'd feel sad if that house burned down or was bulldozed or went away.
00:27:47.020Whereas you would not feel that for some random house, you know, a few blocks over.
00:27:51.560And so I think you can expand that out to your, your town, to your county, to your state, to your nation.
00:27:59.620And you have these different points in time that connect you to that.
00:28:03.840So people have their grandparents fought in World War II.
00:28:07.860My grandparents did, one grandparent did at least.
00:28:10.000I have connections going back to the Mayflower.
00:28:13.920And so you have these, you have these historical moments that your ancestors participated in,
00:28:20.360which means that it's more than just facts and figures and history and dates that you read in a book.
00:28:25.160You're actually connected to the very people from which you sprung, you know, from, and you have a natural affection for those people.
00:28:32.920And I think this is true for any nation.
00:28:35.060Some, you know, many nations are much older than, than ours.
00:28:37.760Um, and they can trace their history a lot farther than we can, uh, in this place, but that, that unites you, that connects you.
00:28:45.700And so it's not, uh, but what I do push up, push against is that belonging is as a matter of just pure genetics, as if, Hey, let's look at your genetic picture, your percentages and say, okay, well, you're, you know, you're too Italian or something like that.
00:29:01.220Or, you know, you're too Hispanic or whatever.
00:29:03.380Or I think it's actually far more a matter of your experience in the world, um, that kind of communicates who your people are and who are not your people.
00:29:12.840So when I, when I lived in California, the town I was in, had a lot, a large Hispanic population.
00:29:19.160And since I, I didn't have any sort of ideas of race or anything like that back then, um, I, I would be friends with Hispanics who were just like me, what theme shows, what play basketball during recess.
00:29:30.580Um, basically the same in terms of culture, except they'd have 50 cousins and I'd have maybe eight, you know, that's the only kind of difference we'd have that we'd have be perfectly perfect, perfect friends without any sort of barrier.
00:29:43.340So in our own experience, we were one, we, we were actually together in this place, in this nation, despite having different origin or different ancestry going back.
00:29:53.900But there was a clear distinction between those guys and Hispanics who had been there, maybe they may be their first generation, they would dress different, not speak English very well.
00:30:03.220Um, often have a short sort of chip on their shoulder, very, very strange.
00:30:07.060Um, but, uh, but there was a difference.
00:30:09.780And so this is how I think just from observation experience, you could say, actually you can have a, a oneness, a sort of togetherness in a nation.
00:30:20.060That's not so much a genetic type of, uh, you know, uh, quant, quantity, like a quantifiable genetic marker of inclusion, but actually one that's far more based in, in, in experience.
00:30:32.500And this is why you can have people who are very German or very, um, Irish or very English in this country.
00:30:39.060Um, you can be, have Hispanics, the same, same as I said before, and that, that I think makes a people, but I do want to emphasize though, that ancestry does matter, but it matters because that means you are united with them in the net, in the nations of, uh, key events, or even the mundane events of that nation.
00:30:57.300And so it's across time, um, but what, what, in a way, what unites me to, uh, Hispanics who've been here a long time is the fact that their ancestors have been here a long time as well, which means that my ancestors likely interacted or in some way was together on a collective project with them.
00:31:17.420So I think that that's a far more, uh, um, non-ideological, non-abstract way of understanding who the people are and who your people, you know, not your people.
00:31:29.460You know, that's not like a geometric sort of determination of who's in and who's out, but I, um, but something, but not everything can be measured, um, or determined geometrically.
00:31:39.360Um, so it is, it makes things difficult and nevertheless, that that's how I understand nation connected ancestry, connected to culture, connected to, um, basic similarities of a way of life that, uh, unites you across time and in the present.
00:31:56.260Um, I think it's better than, than an abstract ideological, like, let's just do purely racialized.
00:32:01.440If you're white, you're in, if you're white, you're out.
00:32:03.080But, but I think that just violates basic experience, um, that if people reflect on that, they'd realize that actually there are people who are, who are not, you know, a hundred percent white and, and yet have a type of unity with you in the, in the same place and the same project.
00:32:22.620He talks about how one of the problems with, uh, modernity is the desire to just draw hard boundaries on everything and not leave enough play in the joints.
00:32:31.940Uh, you know, everything has to be ideologically rationally determined, you know, beforehand so that you can put everything into the right compartment where actually life is far more messy.
00:32:41.180And there's a lot more of, uh, you know, sensing the way of being sensing the, the, you know, the experience rather than necessarily defining it beforehand.
00:32:50.140And if you look at, uh, even like the perennial traditionalists, you read a guy like Spangler, he didn't like the geneticizing of race.
00:32:57.140He didn't like the, uh, turning it entirely scientific because he thought it was too, uh, too narrow.
00:33:02.580You know, uh, it didn't take in the more metaphysical aspects, uh, uh, of, uh, you know, identity.
00:33:08.160And so therefore like even guys like that were like, no, you, you don't want to just turn this into like, you know, checking someone's 23 and me, uh, to, to figure out whether or not they, they belong here.
00:33:17.480Which I guess, uh, could, could bring us to another interesting question.
00:33:21.680Uh, obviously, uh, nationalism and nations are themselves kind of tricky questions because, uh, the, the terms change so much.
00:33:30.740So for instance, people will talk about nations.
00:33:33.160And I think when in the Bible, they're thinking about like an ethnos as where today people think nation and they actually literally just think the state, the state and the nation are the same thing.
00:33:43.240They don't have an idea of these things being separate. Uh, and then there are of course, nationalistic movements, uh, in many countries, which destroyed the individual ethnos of different areas, different cultures, uh, inside what became the unified state.
00:33:58.660So, uh, I, I don't know if there's a specific question in there, but just an observation about the, the changing, uh, use of the word nation and nationalism can make it very difficult for people to grasp.
00:34:10.160Like what level of identity you're trying to discuss when you address nationalism.
00:34:16.880Yeah. Yeah. I think these, these subjects are the, the terms are tricky and I I've gotten in trouble because people have interpreted when I say nation as nation state.
00:34:25.460And, and so they think I'm advocating for a sort of ethno state and, uh, so, but yeah, I, I, the way I, I use nation, um, in, in, in, in my work is mainly the, uh, as I already described.
00:34:39.980Um, and, but, but, but it also is the case that when you attach it, when you talk about nationalism, there has been that historically that homogenizing force.
00:34:51.100Uh, but you certainly see it, you saw it in France, um, uh, over a couple of centuries, few centuries.
00:34:57.060And so that, that's absolutely the case that, that, that occurred.
00:35:00.300And so again, I, I understand that, that critique and that concern.
00:35:03.360Um, I, I, I guess I'm thinking in terms of the, the American context where I actually think American nationalism and, you know, I'm curious what you think about this.
00:35:13.520I think American nationalism has actually been able to preserve a lot of regional difference, um, what me, a very large country.
00:35:22.300Uh, and yet, I mean, my experience in the army is interesting because, or my experience point where you have people from all over the country in this little place in New York.
00:35:32.240And what's interesting is that we were, you know, different from different parts, but I, I had good friends who were from Georgia and, and, and New York and California.
00:35:41.840And what it made me realize is that, yeah, like we can, we can make fun of each other.
00:35:55.000We can, we can tease each other in the way that men do, um, in a friendly way.
00:35:59.940And, and he goes back to Georgia and he's, he remains, you know, Georgia and the New Yorker becomes, remains a New Yorker.
00:36:05.880So I think that we, that in the United States, our nationalism has been able to reconcile that regional difference with a nationalist, um, sentiment.
00:36:15.480And, um, as someone who's lived in a lot of many places in the country, being, being in the army, uh, what's, I, you could go up to New Jersey and go out in the country and see flags waving.
00:36:24.880I mean, I've been in cigar bars out in these small towns in, in New Jersey and sit down and feel just right at home.
00:36:31.140Same thing is true down in Louisiana, where I lived for a while.
00:36:34.100There is a type of common sentiment among, uh, Americans, particularly conservative Americans.
00:36:40.080And yet still different accents, different food, different cultures, sometimes different music that we've been able to retain.
00:36:45.680So, I mean, so I, the point being is that like, I'm, I'm thinking of this kind of American form of nationalism where there is national sentiment and yet also maintaining a regional difference.
00:36:54.660So I'm, I'm curious actually what you think about that.
00:36:57.680I think that has definitely been true in the past.
00:37:00.720And, you know, uh, Doug Wilson used this, uh, example recently we was on, but I do agree with it.
00:37:05.620He said, you know, I, I go to, uh, the UK, I'm a Yankee.
00:37:08.980You call me a Yankee here, you're going to get hit, you know, like, you know, so, so there's a, there's a recognition that yes, America is at some level a people to where, if you go somewhere else, they know you're American, nobody needs to explain it to them.
00:37:22.960They know the mannerisms, they know the attitude, they understand the overall.
00:37:26.680However, once you start breaking down, what is America?
00:37:29.760You find that actually there are many other identities inside of America.
00:37:33.360Uh, and this is of course true, you know, again, of, of other nations, you know, uh, the Catalonians in Spain, these things, you know, they're very, very different, um, identities, even though they're subsumed into this like larger identity, though Catalonia is not the best example for subsuming itself.
00:37:46.860But the point being is, um, uh, you know, when we look at the American nation, it was certainly a scenario where people understood themselves as, you know, residents of their states first.
00:37:58.220You know, this is very hard for, you know, I taught high school and trained to explain, uh, to, to students that like, no, uh, you know, uh, general Lee decided that he had to be a Virginian before he was an American.
00:38:14.340Like that there, that does not have any resonance with them because they've been taught that actually no, you know, America is just a bunch of widgets and you just pick them up and drop them wherever.
00:38:24.300And so I think probably prior to the civil war, uh, it was definitely true that America, uh, was able to preserve a high degree of particularity in regionality.
00:38:34.520And it's, uh, I think that's also why the Republican form of government worked much better at that time because we had, uh, a true understanding of localism, uh, but, uh, you know, after the civil war and certainly after FDR, uh, I think we started to lose that, uh, that independent character.
00:38:49.460A lot of that comes not just with ideological or, you know, political outcomes.
00:38:54.140Also, it comes with, uh, technology, you know, the, the, the railroad, uh, the TV, the radio, these things, the university, they destroy particularity and regionality just as, if not more than the political machinations of, you know, uh, FDR or Abraham Lincoln or these kinds of guys.
00:39:12.600And so I think that there is, um, a difficulty there in maintaining that not, not just because, oh, we, the, like the constitution didn't do its job or something.
00:39:21.600No, because like literally modernity has this impact, I think on, on everyone.
00:39:29.920I certainly after, yeah, uh, after civil war and then in the, in 20th century, uh, FDR, there has been a tendency of homogenization from, from, through technology.
00:39:41.380I think you're right about that though.
00:39:43.780I, I, you can still experience the, um, some of it with that, within the, I think another element is, is, uh, mass movement.
00:39:53.640And so a lot of people like myself have moved North Carolina and, uh, and Colorado and other places, um, from, from the Northeast and from, from the West, which is sort of diluting.
00:40:04.760I, I can tell within my own neighborhood in a way, many people are actually from somewhere else and you can see how the, the very local, uh, identity of central North Carolina can be diluted, um, because of everyone's kind of from somewhere else.
00:40:19.040And they've, and what do you do your commonalities in this broad kind of national culture rather than a local regional culture.
00:40:28.240Um, and, uh, I, I don't know how to, how to fix all that, but I, but at least within my realm, which is kind of the realm of ideas, but I've tried to emphasize to people is that we do need to actually restore a sense of similarity.
00:40:41.840And togetherness, um, along cultural lines, and those are worth preserving.
00:40:47.840Um, and, uh, and we were under basically under assault from mass migration, from the things you mentioned already to lose our various, um, regional, local, and even national identity.
00:40:59.760There's no demand for assimilation for newcomers.
00:41:02.960It's just, uh, it's a matter of GDP and economic growth.
00:41:05.880That's all anyone ever cares about because after all, we are just an economic zone and all those things need to be reasserted.
00:41:12.820And so within my little world of, I guess, of the new right, I've tried to emphasize among Christians, actually, you do not need to adopt, um, I guess to go full circle here.
00:41:22.920We do not need to adopt this universalistic theology that comes to impact politics and essentially like conform ourselves.
00:41:30.920We, we do not need to conform ourselves to the spirit of the age and the spirit of an age is to universalize everything into this sort of bare humanity.
00:41:40.160Um, but actually to love your neighbor, to love your neighbor is actually to seek the sort of community that is, um, sufficiently homogenous in culture where we can understand each other, have common social expectations, common traditions that we can actually correct one another because we have a common basis of values and morals.
00:41:59.660And we're, we're, we're not just atomized individuals kind of floating out in the social sea, but we're actually, uh, people, uh, united with one another, uh, in a, in a, a common way of life.
00:42:16.480And that all of that is under assault.
00:42:18.600So, yeah, anyway, that's what, um, yeah, it's, it's hard to know like where to go forward,
00:42:25.360given the, the various, uh, significant changes in our country, but we, at least at first have to get our ideas, right.
00:42:33.140And I think there's a lot of danger, like damaging ideas that, that many evangelicals and Christians have adopted.
00:42:40.520So, Stephen, are you telling me that there's a middle ground between, uh, you know, complete white ethno state and recognizing that nations are different and peoples are different,
00:42:51.360and it's okay to have differences and you can find the things that you share and bond over them without like completely obliterating the like particular aspects of those cultures and those peoples.
00:43:03.840But again, it's, it's anti, this is not, um, this is not me trying to be a sort of nuanced bro.
00:43:11.340Who's trying to get away from a type of white nationalism or white ethno state.
00:43:14.980Um, I just, as I reflect upon experience and I won't repeat it all, but you've heard it already, I, I just can't see how these people who have different ancestry than me, who are basically me, um, for the most part are to be excluded in the future.
00:43:32.380Um, that being said, there are a lot of people to exclude.
00:43:38.240And so I think you can make the deduction there.
00:43:40.940Um, but, uh, so anyway, but that's the.
00:43:44.500Um, yeah, so there, I, I think there is a sort of middle position, a moderating position that still would label you with all the labels you can think of from the left.
00:43:55.060Um, and yet I think it's, it's more attuned to reality itself and the, the way we live in the world.
00:44:01.780Um, the, the way that we can acknowledge art of, you know, uh, you know, accidental difference versus more essential ones in social life that we just do every day.
00:44:10.300Um, but that being said, I do think that we, as a Anglo-Protestant country, there is an Anglo-Protestant culture, political, all that stuff, as I mentioned, that is the core of what America is.
00:44:21.960It is the core of what of America, what America is.
00:44:24.480Many Roman Catholics who are obviously not Protestant have, I would say, Protestantized in their, in their various, in their thinking and have very much conformed to that Anglo-Protestant mindset.
00:44:37.320And we, we, everyone has seen that video of Scalia acknowledging that we are, you know, not a Roman Catholic, we're actually a, this, this English Protestant country.
00:44:46.560And, uh, and those are the sorts of things that we, we should demand people assimilate to that.
00:44:52.640Um, and that to be fully American, dare I say, to be fully American is to be a Christian committed to assimilating at the very least into that, um, Anglo-Protestant project.
00:45:03.880And it, it, it, it's silly to, to think that conversion itself is going to, going to bring that about, uh, people are going to remain, they're going to retain the customs, even in the third or fourth generation of the places that they came from.
00:45:17.200It keeps, it takes a concerted effort, um, in order to conform, um, to the place around you.
00:45:22.120I have tried as a Californian in the South to become more Southerner.
00:45:26.140I will never be a Southerner just because it's impossible for someone to do something like that.
00:45:31.840But I hope that my, my children and grandchildren identify as Southerners and have, uh, have that culture.
00:45:38.760So, um, yeah, that, that's, uh, well, if you're one of the good ones, we won't run you out.