Real Nationalism Is Exclusive ｜ 6⧸11⧸26
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Toxicity
1
sentences flagged
Hate speech
11
sentences flagged
Summary
As the United States deals with mass immigration, the question of what is an American has emerged as a critical issue on the right. And now, for the first time in a long time, conservatives are having to navigate one of the most important aspects of the human experience: identity.
Transcript
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After decades of brutal race and gender politics from the political left,
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conservatives started to treat the very concept of identity as toxic.
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That's an entirely understandable reaction to fighting a grueling battle against a sinister ideology.
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Humans need to have a firm sense of who they are and where they belong.
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The fact that progressives exploited that impulse in a twisted and artificial manner
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doesn't change the fact that the impulse is natural and healthy.
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As the United States deals with mass immigration,
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the question of what is an American has emerged as a critical issue on the right.
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The question is one about the nature of identity,
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conservatives are having to navigate one of the most important aspects of the human experience.
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Identity feels like a dangerous topic because it absolutely is.
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From the beginning of time, identity has been the thing that people are willing to kill and die for.
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People can and do go to war over things that they've chosen voluntarily.
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But the point about identity is that it largely consists of things you didn't choose.
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Human beings don't voluntarily choose where they're born or to whom.
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They don't choose the role of brother or sister or son or daughter.
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While there's a voluntary aspect of maintaining a religious practice,
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people don't decide what tradition they're born into.
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Identity is what you can't leave behind, usually because you never chose it in the first place.
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This is why identity so often brings about real existential conflict.
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Its involuntary nature means that people can't simply opt out when the going gets tough.
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If someone wanted to, say, kill all the people who are fans of the movie Jaws,
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well, you could just stop being a fan of the movie Jaws.
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But if someone wants to start killing everyone who's born an Englishman,
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well, you can't just stop being English, so you have no option left but to fight.
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This is why the post-World War II consensus sought to suppress as many of these identities as
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possible. If people don't have strong connections to their heritage, tradition, or religion,
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then they're less likely to see them as points of existential conflict.
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This is understandable. Again, no one wants to see more wars of religion or another world war
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fought over nationalism, but the shift doesn't come without a cost. Without the boundaries of
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nation or religion, we're driven towards an open borders globalism, which is deeply unhealthy.
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A lack of national identity means a country that has no sense of what the public good is,
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what they should be pursuing. The man whose family has been in the U.S. since its founding
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has different priorities than the newly arrived immigrant who's hoping to move his entire extended
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family into the country. The Christian who wants to see his faith reflected in his ancestral nation
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has conflicting interests with the Muslim who wants to see his new home implement Sharia law.
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The state can't be neutral in these questions. It must decide which identity takes priority,
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which version of the public good it will pursue. Neutrality is a lie, and so identity becomes an
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inescapable question. As a nation like the United States tries to unwind the open borders mess that
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liberalism has led to, the need to reassert a concrete identity has become clear. Illegal
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immigration was a huge problem, but legal immigration has been just as deleterious.
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If being an American is more than obtaining a piece of paper legally, then uncomfortable lines
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have to be drawn. Identities are inherently about exclusion. Some people are in and some people are
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out. This feels dangerous because it is, but we no longer have the ability to ignore the issue.
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Turning a blind eye to these hard questions is what got us here in the first place,
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and we won't get out without addressing the issue head on.
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It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music, and new shared memories.
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The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.
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Modern people like strongly defined categories, but identity has always been about strong centers with some flexibility at the margin.
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A traditional biological family is the best outcome and something that should be preferred among all other options at all times.
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But if a child is adopted, we leave enough room in the concept to allow them to be part of a family.
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People inherently understand what a woman is, but when we try to define it for progressives, we often end up drawing a rigid category.
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If you tell a liberal that a woman is someone who can bear children, they'll immediately point to a female who's sterile and say,
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well, are they still a woman? The modern rigidity of the category is used by the progressive to
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deconstruct it. Instead, we should understand identity not as simply a scientific reality or
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something entirely voluntary, but a situatedness that draws us towards a particular end. Americans
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were born with certain inalienable rights, but also with particular duties. Our identity as
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Americans, as Christians, as a son or a brother or a father, those identities should cost us
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something. It's not just about rights, choices, or freedoms, but about limitations. There are
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things that you can't be when you're a father or a Christian or American. There is an exclusive
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nature to these categories. They're flexible, but that doesn't mean they're fluid. Our modern
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globalist paradigm hates borders. It hates limitations because this creates friction for
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economies of scale. McDonald's wants to sell the same hamburger to everyone the same way.
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If they need to make allowances for Hindus or Catholics, if they have to close the restaurants
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on Sunday in the U.S. and Saturday in Israel, this reduces efficiency and profitability.
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Uniformity is the key to maximizing the advantages of scale, which is why every government
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corporation, and NGO is trying to homogenize every population on the planet. But identity
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should create friction. People need borders and limitations. Only when we know who we are and who
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we are not can we collectively chart a beneficial course for our nation. The task of defining our
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American identity will be difficult, but it starts with friction. Borders must be closed and illegals
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must be deported that part it's not negotiable legal immigration should be radically limited
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or ideally completely ended until we work through this issue 20 30 years whatever we need the
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moratorium now that said every tribe has had a path for few select members to eventually join
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but the cost should be very steep if you're given the gracious opportunity to become an american
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it should be at great personal sacrifice, not just for your own monetary benefit.
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The Bible provides us with a model for this form of assimilation in the story of Ruth,
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your people will be my people and your God will be my God.
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She doesn't try to keep her former identity.
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She abandons her former people, her former religion, and marries into the tribe.
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Becoming part of the Hebrew people involved a lot of friction.
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It was done at great cost, but that's also how you know it was worth it.
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To be an American is to be something distinct and set apart, and if anyone is going to have
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the privilege of joining in that identity, it should be very difficult.
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Only through that sacrifice can someone prove worthy of our great nation.
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