Since the first human settlements, people inside a human society have needed something to bind them together. They may have had common interests, like protection of a hunting ground or agricultural land, but economic interests are transitory. In order for people to sacrifice for one another or defend the society, they needed a shared belief, a common sense of reality that defined them versus outsiders. In addition to blood and soil, the commonly held set of rules held by a people is what defines them as a people.

One of the things that set the Athenians against the Spartans was the realization by the Athenians that the Spartans were enslaving Greeks. The Athenians always knew this in the abstract sense, but once they saw it up close after the earthquake of 464 BC, the reality of this difference between themselves and the Spartans was made plain. No matter how much they had in common, no matter their past cooperation, Athens did not enslave their fellow Greeks. It’s not who they were, to use a term familiar today.

Now, there were many other causes, more important causes, to the Peloponnese War, but this sense of a great difference between the two powers, in terms of their identity as people, made war easy. The American Civil War is another obvious example, where families and communities were divided over a moral question. The sense of identity, built around a common morality, can transcend blood relations. The phrase, “That is not who were are” is probably responsible for more violence than any other expression.

This is something the civic nationalists get right. The shared reality, along with a shared morality, is what defines a people, more so than blood and soil alone. When they talk about the American creed, they are not wrong that it is what defines the high concepts of American identity. Europeans think of Americans as relentless moralizers, because that’s the identity projected to them by politicians and the media. That’s because America is mostly defined by its sense of morality, rather than its history.

This is not just an American thing. France used to make a fetish of what it meant to be French, because there is a lot of diversity within France. The people in Brittany are different than the people of Provence. Therefore, it was necessary to impose this unifying French identity in order to hold the nation together. On the other hand, Swedes never developed a strong civic religion, because until their recent madness, it was obvious to everyone what it meant to be Swedish. The Finns are another good example.

The thing that American civic nationalists and credalists get wrong though is who decides these definitions. People like Ben Shapiro can never bring themselves to say who came up with the American Creed. His counterparts on the Left intimate that America as an idea just sort of happened by magic. They love quoting the Declaration, but never mention the men who wrote it or why they wrote it. For the modern credalists, the America Creed is disconnected from the American people, like a cloud hovering over the land.

That’s why it cannot work. While every society has a shared reality with a common morality, it is always tied to the people. It is the people who shape that reality and define that morality. Most important, the people inside define who is and who is not inside that shared reality. For example, to call yourself a Jew, you have to meet certain criteria, but also be accepted in by the Tribe. Similarly, if you wish to call yourself a Native American, you have to prove it to the people of one of the tribes. They decide, not you.

It’s why banishment has always been one of harshest punishments in human society, reserved for those who commit crimes against the people. To expel someone from society literally strips the identity from the person. At the same time, unlike death, it offers the opportunity for redemption. If the banished can prove he belongs, the people can restore him to the group. Again, this is not based on objective criteria handed down from some mysterious place. The people decide when the banished can return.

The way civic nationalists imagine this working is the people have no say in who is and who is not inside the group. If a Somali believes in the carried interest deduction and a hawkish foreign policy, he can be an American, according to Ben Shapiro. If a Guatemalan is good with a leaf blower and promises to vote Democrat, he’s ready to be an American according to the modern Progressive. Since no one inside has a say in the matter, everyone on earth can become an American just by saying so.

This obviously drops the value of being an American to zero, as something anyone can have for the asking is by definition worthless. It also makes citizenship entirely unworkable, as citizenship relies on exclusivity. The citizen is someone inside a well-defined society. If everyone can just walk in and be a citizen, then there is no well-defined society, so no such thing as a citizen. The very basis of human organization collapses, leaving nothing but ad hoc collections of deracinated people.

The truth of these binding ideals like an American Creed or French civic nationalism or Britishness, is that these shared ideals are the mortar that binds the bricks of society. The bricks are things like biology, race, shared history, physical location and even shared interests. The shared reality and common morality bind these together to define the wall between the people inside and the people outside. From time to time the people will need to repoint the wall with new ideals, but it is always in service to that defining wall.

Ultimately, what defines identity, whether it is national identity or culturally identity, is who defines it. For a national identity to exist, you first need a nation willing to define it and enforce it. Similarly with a cultural or religious identity. It’s why every religion has a process for new adherents. They must prove to those inside that they are worthy of inclusion in the faith. The American Creed can only exist if Americans exists with a separate and unique identity, one they define and enforce.

To support my work, subscribe here.

One of the unmistakable features of the modern Left is the increasing hostility to Jews and Jewish issues, particularly Israel. The new darlings of the coalition of the vibrant have a habit of displaying hostility to Israel. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) sounds like a member of Hamas when it comes to our greatest ally. Despite the loud noises from other members of the Left, Omar has suffered no consequences. You can’t help but get the feeling that behind closed doors, the woke women of the Left are not enthusiastic for the Tribe.

Another unmistakable feature of the modern Left is they tend to preach against that which is a feature of Jews and Israel. A current example popular on the Right is the fact that the Left hates walls, but Israel seems to love walls. The Israelis have built border walls that are just only impressive. They work. In fact, the Israelis are really proud of having solved their problem with Arabs secretly crossing the border. Meanwhile, here in the United States, opposing a wall on the southern border is the top priority of the Left.

It’s not just political things either. Group solidarity has become the new fascism with the Left, even as their demands for conformity get shriller. The surest way to get fired from your job is to say out loud that white people have a right to exist. Those “It’s OK To Be White” signs are treated like acts of terrorism now. Yet, tribal solidity is very Jewish. It is the defining feature of Jews. In fact, it is the quality that has allowed them to survive and thrive in the West. You see it in this story about their efforts to fight Tay-Sachs disease.

Genetic diseases tend to be very nasty, as nature tends to use harsh measures to defend against harsh threats. Resistance to malaria, a terrible disease common in sub-Saharan Africa, is the great example. One copy of the gene is a powerful weapon against a powerful disease. Two copies means a monstrous death. Tay-Sachs disease is a rare inherited disorder that progressively destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord of new born children. Afflicted children die a terrible death in a few years after birth.

Tay-Sachs was never common, but it was not unknown either. Jewish hospitals had wards just for sufferers of the disease, so it was common enough. In the late 1960’s a test was devised to check if someone was a carrier of the disease. Parental screening had the effect of preventing the birth of children with the disease, but also encouraging carriers to have children. Screening allowed parent to choose a different path in order to make sure their children did not have the disease. As a result, Tay-Saks closed to wiped out.

That is a remarkable result and it is only possible when a group of people has both a strong sense of identity and a strong sense of a shared future. That tribalism that has kept Jews from being swallowed up by their host populations turns out to be pretty good for all sorts of things that are good for the Tribe. The campaign against breast cancer is another example. Jewish women have much higher rates of breast cancer. Jewish activism and philanthropy has made it the best funded cancer research on earth.

Jews should be very proud of having worked together to prevent a terrible disease and it should be an example to all people. It’s not about the shared past, so much as the desire for a shared future that makes tribalism work in the modern world. If you look at your people as a large extended family, you will want your people to survive and thrive into the future. That means you cannot just look at yourself as a lonely individual looking out only for you. You are part of a larger whole and must sacrifice for the greater good.

Despite this obvious upside to group identity and solidarity, the Left is violently opposed to even the hint of it. Even Jews are getting the treatment, as we see with the bright new faces of the ascendant. It’s a strange thing that many write off to some secret conspiracy, but it may simply be an example of implicit rightness. The people having this bizarre response to identity politics are the people most likely to experience it up close and personal, so it is informing their politics, like a reaction to an infectious disease.

In America, Progressivism is based exclusively on the college campus. The days of left-wingers organizing the working classes are no more. The defining feature of the Left is their fear of being anywhere near real work. Instead, they fester and boil on the college campus, where they come up with new ways to rage about the people on the other side of the walls. They also spend a lot of time around Jews. Other than maybe finance or perhaps the law, Jews are most over represented on the college campus.

As a result, American Progressives are the people most exposed to Jews. An ideology that is supposed to explicitly trump biology is therefore going to evolve in response to the most extreme version of ethnic-nationalism. In other words, this indomitable quality of the Jewish people is what Progressivism has evolved to oppose. Let loose on the general population of America, a people with a frontier mentality, the result is like small pox on the American Indians. Wokeness is the Tay-Saks of white America.

Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing it. The reason Jews are the most successful tribe in human history is they have a shared identity and shared future. That sense of a collective self is what has seen them through the worst of times, despite being a tiny minority. Ethnic identity is what made it possible for the West to accelerate past the rest of the world. Identity politics is the antidote to the mind virus of Progressivism. It turns out, implicit whiteness is the germ of complicit rightness.

To support my work, subscribe here.

They say all cons start with flattery. The conman finds a way to flatter the mark, who then foolishly places his trust in the conman. Usually that means playing on the vanity of the target, as everyone likes to be told that their opinion of themselves is correct. Even the most cynical have some weakness in this regard. Deep down, even the most jaded, has a vision of their idealized self. When that vision of the self is confirmed, even by a stranger, the person confirming it goes up in the estimation of the person being flattered.

Of course, flattery has always been the most important tool in democratic politics, as the voters are the quintessential marks. If you think about it, anyone wanting to hold political office should be disqualified on that basis alone, as no normal decent person should want to hold political office in a democracy. Therefore, the first job of the politician is to convince you he is not morally unfit. To do that he tells you the thing you most want to hear about politics. You are right and your opponents are morally wrong.

This feature of democracy is why such systems are quickly overwhelmed by sociopaths and dangerously unbalanced lunatics. Nature is pretty clear on this. You get more of what you select for and less of what you select against. Any system that benefits the pathological liar over the honest will inevitably be dominated by the former at the expense of the latter. Strangely, this is why the Right in America is so easily fooled into supporting that which is against their interests. They are the honest in a game of liars.

For example, Oliver North was recently pushed out of the National Rifle Association, after he tried to extort the long serving leader Wayne LaPierre. Oliver North is, of course, a notorious right-wing grifter, who has been hustling gullible white people for going on four decades. His public career started when he put on his old uniform to perform in front of Congress during the Iran-Contra hearings. That was in the 1980’s. Since then, he has been waving around his service and the American flag as part of his act.

Peddling shabby patriotism to middle-class white people seems harmless, but it inevitably it leads the patriotic into supporting people, who have no intention of actually representing their interests. North was more than happy to subvert the venerable gun group so he could haul away some of its cash. The terrible decisions by the group of late in terms of cucking to the gun grabbers all seem to lead to North. His interest was to stuff his pockets with money, not advance the interests of gun owner and gun rights.

It is a good example of how the con works in politics. North has spent a lifetime flattering the sorts of people willing to give money to the NRA. He is very good at flattering these sorts of people, which is how he made a TV career telling other people’s war stories. He is very good at flattering middle-class white people. The National Rifle Association naturally assumed he would be a good face for them, as he appeals to the sorts of people they represent. They made the mistake of trusting someone who flattered them.

Another example of this is Ben Shapiro. At first blush, there’s no reason for him to be wildly popular among civic nationalists. Here you have this hyper-tribal Jewish dwarf, repeating catch phrases from decades before he was born. If he walked into a room full of his target audience, and they did not know him, they would assume the little guy was lost or maybe part of the entertainment. Everything about him is outside of the norm for the people who follow him, but he flatters them so well, they overlook it.

Like Oliver North, his grift is primarily a money grift, but Shapiro also works to subvert the interests of his target audience. A good example of this is his reaction to the on-going censorship by the big social media platforms. On the one hand, he will repeat all the usual civic nationalist platitudes about free speech in a democracy. On the other hand, he opposes any effort to actually accomplish these goals. If someone mentions the government regulating these firms, he starts maniacally blowing the libertarian shofar.

Like everyone else in Conservative Inc., Ben Shapiro is happy to talk about the issues that concern middle-class white Americans, but he is strongly opposed to actually doing anything to defend those interests. That’s because the interests of his audience may conflict with his own interests. Just as Oliver North was willing to compromise on your gun rights so he could collect on his fat contract, Ben Shapiro is willing to sacrifice your speech rights so that he can remain in good standing with Big Media.

It’s why for dissidents, the right-wing grifter is the most immediate problem in the effort to win over converts. The primary function of guys like Shapiro is to prevent middle-class white people from defending their own interests. He even goes so far as to declare that middle-class white people don’t have interests. That’s what he means when he says it is ideology that matters, not ethnic identity. His rhetoric is intended to flip your morality on its head, where your highest duty is to sacrifice your interests for his interests.

One of the defining features of this age is that it is hard to keep pace with the absurdity we see promoted by the people who rule over us. The degree of nuttiness is certainly a big part of our growing revulsion, but it is also the speed. In the 1990’s, it was possible for Bill Clinton, the leader of the respectable Left, to dismiss homosexual marriage. Ten years later, no one on the Left dared do that. Ten years ago, men in dresses were freaks to be mocked. Today they are objects of worship by the finest people in the land.

There are a lot of people offering up explanations for why the people in charge have suddenly gone mad. Mass mental illness, caused by a pathogen would not only explain the problem, but make for an interesting movie plot. Perhaps this is just what the end of a historical epoch is like. Having lost a reason to exist, the ruling classes indulge in whatever craziness they can muster. Maybe our rulers are so alien to us that their sense of normal falls well outside what the rest of us consider decent and proper.

Another reason may be that democracy lacks an innate legitimacy and authority, so it relies on openness to sustain itself. The authority of a parent relies on the fact the father is the head of the household. He is in charge because he can impose his will. Democracy lacks this natural ability to impose its will on the public, so it must seek consensus, which requires a public expression of the general will. In order for everyone to go along with whatever has been decided, they need to see that the majority is in favor of it.

This openness can only work if everyone in the society is welcome to participate in the process of deciding things. It’s why all modern experiments with democracy quickly move from a limited franchise to a full franchise. Once the West started experimenting with democracy in the 19th century, the franchise expanded quickly, even though most nations still had some form of monarchy. In modern America we are handing ballots to the mentally ill, prisoners and to foreigners now. The door to the voting booth is wide open.

The thing is, culture and morality, the shared intellectual space of every society, can only exist with clear borders. What defines French culture from German culture is not just physical distance and biology. There is a shared reality of the French that excludes all others. It is the opposite of open. It is closed. The same is true of moral systems. To exist, they must draw lines between what is and what is not acceptable. That which defines a people is the rejection of openness in favor of a closed, exclusive mode of thought.

Saying “this is not who we are” seems to track with not knowing who we are or why we are even a “we” anymore. The reason for that is the great effort to fulfill the needs of democracy has left western countries as deconstructed components of what used to be a rational, bounded society. France is no longer a closed system, but simply a remnant of a society, the pieces of what used to make up France. No one talks about what it means to be French, because everyone can be French. It’s a thing with no form now.

If the theoretical end point of liberal democracy is a world without boundaries, physical or cultural, then it is a world without morality. After all, morality is a world of fences and gates that control human behavior within the closed social system. In order for there to be a moral order, there must be order and that must include boundaries. Once the boundaries lose their purpose, the fences and gates are simply gravestones in a cemetery of a long forgotten people. No one cares if the kids knock over the grave stones.

In fact, in a world without form, the hunt for something to level becomes increasingly urgent as there is less and less to knock over. Once the statues of the great men of the past are removed, their names must be removed. Once the basics of family life have been destroyed through divorce and feminism, the innocence of childhood is attacked via the degeneracy of transgenderism. Those hunting for grave stones to topple become increasing frantic as the supply of objects to desecrate dwindles after every spasm.

Maybe the people in late empire Rome, or just before the French Revolution, thought the world was going crazy too. Perhaps part of the social cycle is a period of frantic lunacy that is really just a form of panic at the prospect of cultural death. There was certainly a lot of weirdness with the Romans toward the end of the Republic. The French aristocracy was painting themselves up like clowns toward the end. Maybe to the normal people in those ages, these things were as revolting as seeing drag queen story time.

On the other hand, what we think of today as liberal democracy is a great novelty with which we have little experience. Full democracy in America has only existed since the middle of the last century. That’s roughly three generations. The same is true of Europe, where it was imposed after the last war. Eastern Europe has little of the degeneracy we see in the West, mostly because they just adopted liberal democracy. We could simply be seeing what John Adams observed. Democracies always murder themselves.