Christian Nationalism
Since Christian nationalism is in the news again lately, I thought I would talk about it more. When properly understood, I am a Christian nationalist. Christian nationalism is a genuine alternative to the liberal world order. Marjorie Taylor Green defines what I would call a broad Christian nationalism. What I would call myself is an Integralist Catholic nationalist.
A broad Christian nationalism is a non-denominational Christianity with varying understandings of nationalism, from America as a "civic nation" to America as a more traditional nation. In short, a civic nation is defined by Dennis Prager, where “we don’t care where you are from. We don’t care about your blood origins, your ethnic origins, your racial origins, your religious origins. We don’t care. From the many, one: you work with us to make America, you are one of us, whatever your color, creed, race or what have you". On the other hand, a traditional nation (root word natio meaning origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe) is a tribe or ethnic group of people sharing the same ancestry, history, traditions and culture. Our Founding Fathers understood a nation in its traditional sense. Founding Father John Jay described America as "one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs”.
A "civic nation" as explained by Dennis Prager is a contradiction in terms. A nation simply cannot be a people sharing no ancestry, no history, no tradition and no culture. That would more accurately be called an anti-nation. However, a nation can grow and remain cohesive within a small threshold of immigrants who are given enough time to adequately assimilate (our current immigration policy is open borders where assimilation is ridiculed as 'racist' or 'white supremacist').
Now that Christian and nationalism have been explained, what is a Christian nationalist? The essence and function of any government is to resolve controvertible issues according to some conception of the good. The government must necessarily use its authority and power to discriminate among different conceptions. For example, the government must discriminate between property owner and trespasser according to some conception of property. Government neutrality is thus an incoherent concept. The only real question is what conception of the good will the government use to resolve these controvertible issues? A Christian nationalist believes that the government should use its authority and power to advance the common good of the American people according to a broadly Christian understanding of the common good.
My position is a more specific kind of Christian nationalism traditionally called Catholic Integralism. Catholic Integralism "is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power". Since our ultimate good is to know God and avoid sin, government authority and power should promote virtue and discourage vice from a specifically Catholic understanding of the common good. How this plays out in practice is open for debate (e.g. hard vs soft integralism).