53percenter's Blog

In order to make arguments for nationalism, we have to define it.

The first definition in Merriam-Webster is “loyalty and devotion to a nation.” But in a second paragraph, it adds, “especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.”

Let’s be clear: If the second paragraph is the only definition of nationalism, nationalism is always a bad thing. Furthermore, I acknowledge that this definition is what some people have in mind when they call themselves nationalists.

At the same time, even anti-nationalists would have to acknowledge that if the first paragraph is the definition of “nationalism,” nationalism can often be a beautiful thing.

So, if we are to be honest, the answer to the question of whether nationalism is good or bad is “How do you define it?”

Dictionary.com offers seven definitions.

The first is “spirit or aspirations common to the whole nation.”

The second is “devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism.”

Only when we get to the third definition is the definition pejorative: “excessive patriotism; chauvinism.”

Therefore, a) based on the competing definitions of the term, b) assuming both definitions can be true and c) if intellectual honesty is to govern our discussion, we can reach only one conclusion: There is good nationalism and bad nationalism.

That — not “nationalism is always good” or “nationalism is always bad” — is the only accurate assessment.

Therefore, morally speaking, nationalism is no different from anything else in life.

There is moral violence (in self-defense, in defense of innocents, in defense of a society under unjust attack, etc.) and immoral violence (murder of innocents, wars of aggression, etc.).

There is moral sex (consensual sex between adults and, in the Judeo-Christian value system, within marriage) and immoral sex (such as rape, incest and with a child).

There is moral use of a gun (in self-defense, etc.) and immoral use of a gun (against an innocent, etc.).

Knives are used morally by chefs and surgeons and immorally by murderers, muggers and torturers.

Even love must be morally assessed according to context. Love is not always beautiful and moral. Germans’ love of Hitler, Chinese people’s love of Mao and Russians’ love of Stalin were evil.

Nationalism is beautiful when it involves commitment to an essentially decent nation and when it welcomes other people’s commitment to their nations. Nationalism is evil when it is used to celebrate an evil regime, when it celebrates a nation as inherently superior to all others and when it denigrates all other national commitments.

One should add that nationalism is evil when it celebrates race, but that is not nationalism; it is racism. Nationalism and racism may be conjoined, as German Nazism did. But they are not definitionally related. While some Americans have conjoined American nationalism with race (such as the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan and currently various fringe “white identity” movements), American nationalism, based as it is on the motto “e pluribus unum” (“out of many, one”), by definition includes Americans of all races and ethnicities. That is how conservatives define American nationalism. I have never met a conservative who defined American national identity as definitionally “white.”

Otherwise, nationalism — the celebration of one’s nation and one’s national identity — is almost always a beautiful thing.

The creation of nations was a major moral achievement. It got people to identify with something beyond their families and tribes, which always involved violent feuds and warfare. The creation of the nation is one of the main reasons the West developed morally and in many other ways ahead of other cultures.

And the lack of a unifying national identity is one of the two main reasons (the other being corruption) that much of Africa lags behind other regions. If Hutus and Tutsis would have identified first as Rwandans, one of the worst genocides in the contemporary world — the Hutu slaughter of nearly 1 million Tutsis in a little over three months in 1994 — would likely never have happened. It was murder at a greater pace than the Nazi genocide of the Jews in the Holocaust — and without any modern machines of death. It was done one-on-one almost entirely using machetes.

Today, nationalism in Europe is increasing primarily because of the belief among many Europeans that the European Union is overbearing and because many Europeans do not believe that a “European” identity can offer anywhere near the comfort, emotional sustenance and communal ties a national identity offers.

Human beings need a descending order of commitments: first to oneself, then to one’s family, then to one’s community, then to one’s nation and then to humanity. It is neither possible nor praiseworthy to cry over a family killed in a car crash on the other side of the world as one would cry over the death of one’s own family or a family in one’s neighborhood or in one’s own country.

The great teaching of the Bible is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It does not say “Love all of humanity as yourself.” Love must begin with our neighbor. It should never end with our neighbor, but it must begin with him.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is “The Rational Bible,” a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

If there were ever two evenings that exposed the economic idiocy of the Democratic Party, it was both debate nights.  Every single candidate promises a wish list of free things for all, including a $1,000-a-month income (Yang) courtesy of the government.  College will be free; health care will be free, even for illegal aliens; abortion will be free on demand; student debt will be erased; etc.  Not one of them explains where all this money will come from; perhaps they think they can just print it.  They always claim that it will come from the undeserving rich, but it never does.  There are not near enough rich people to plunder for that much money.  It would be extracted from middle-class taxpayers, as Bernie Sanders admitted, because that is where the most money is.  Like all socialists, they mean to take from people who work and provide for those who do not work or produce.  Every one of them is as economically illiterate as Ocasio-Cortez, but they are all old enough to know better.  It was a pathetic display of ignorance and shameless pandering.  They still think the American people are easily manipulated with their bluster.  But then the moderators are themselves well known leftists who have worked hard every day of their lives since 2015 to defeat Trump and promote impeachment.  For what should he be impeached?  Because they are mad that he won.

And if there was ever an evening that made American citizens double down on protecting their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, it was hearing all of them talk about abrogating that right.  They all clearly believe that law-abiding citizens should not own guns.  It is perennially lost on them that criminals will always have guns and without them, good people have no means to defend themselves.  Given the historical fact that every tyranny on the planet began by confiscating guns — Hitler, Mao, Chávez — we should all be very afraid if any one of these people is elected.  Each one of them would, they make clear, immediately embark on the path every tyrant of the past took on his way to genocide and socialist devastation, like what is now happening in Venezuela.  Starving one’s people is a form of genocide, is it not? 

There were very few challenging questions.  Elizabeth Warren was not asked about her fake American Indian ancestry.  They were not asked about their support of infanticide.  Not one of them was asked about his anti-Israel sentiment.  All of them but Delaney want to take away our private health insurance but not give up their own.  Biden was not asked about his son’s multi-million-dollar “businesses” in Ukraine and China.  Buttigeig was only gently asked about his race problem in South Bend, and he demurred.  He fired his city’s first black police chief.  His “thing” is attacking Christians who he assumes are homophobic; he never offers any evidence.  Being gay may help him with one identity community, but he has a race problem with another.  He is no more popular in South Bend than the Che-loving de Blasio is in New York.  Neither of them is remotely prepared to be president.

They all are abjectly committed to the hoax that is climate alarmism, which proves that all of them are a bit dim, ignorant of science, and subject to mass hypnosis.  If any one of them knows better, he is too afraid to say so.  Only Biden had the guts to say the U.S. is not the problem with regard to CO2 emissions, but he still thinks we should pay for the pollutants of other nations, like China and India!  Even that was a brave thing to do.  But then he got raked over the coals by Harris on the busing issue.  Talk about old news.  She lied about her own experience; her Berkeley district was not segregated.  Forced busing was a terrible solution to a very real problem in the early 1970s.  Biden was right to oppose the program; it was awful for all involved.  Harris claimed she was one of those kids bused and almost tearfully claims to have benefited, but her mother was an academic.  It’s doubtful she would have ever attended a school of which her mother did not approve.  Busing was a classic case of big government’s good intentions having disastrous results.  Some kids spent four hours on buses each day!

Bernie Sanders is by far the most unpleasant candidate of the lot.  (Swalwell is a close second.)  Sanders is angry; he rages with furious envy at people who have worked hard and become successful.  He loathes such people and wants to destroy them.  He will never be the candidate; no person with such a vitriolic and aggressive personality has ever been or will ever be elected to the presidency.  He is hard to listen to because he is so green with envy of successful, happy people.  He is a communist of the worst kind.  He would love nothing better than to condemn all “rich” people to gulags.  All this from a man who owns three homes. 

Sanders and Warren spend much of their fury attacking corporations as if they were the scourge of American life.  But most of our lives are made easier and more comfortable by all the corporations who make things we want and need: cars, washers, dryers, televisions, smartphones, toilet paper, fast food, fresh food, etc.  Where would we be without them?  They employ millions of people, but Warren wants them punished.  Just as “Medicare for all” would bankrupt every hospital in the country, going after corporations would be equally counter-productive. 

The most destructive policy they all support is open borders.  To this bunch, illegal migrants, the hundreds of thousands of them breaching our border, are far more important than American citizens.  They should be allowed to break our laws.  They should be taken care of while our own homeless are ignored.  If they try to buy a gun, they should not be reported.  If they commit rape, murder, DUI, etc., they should be forgiven and neither imprisoned nor deported.  The Democrats want the U.S. to be a sanctuary nation, no matter the catastrophic results of such a policy.  Our Left rolls out the red carpet for illegals, plans to shower them with all manner of welfare and protect them from our legal establishment.  It is truly shocking.

These candidates want to transform America even more than Obama did.  American citizens be damned.  Every single candidate wants our borders to be overrun like most of Europe has been.  European culture has been forever altered by the influx of Muslim refugees who have no intention of assimilating.  They mean to impose their culture on Europe, and they are succeeding.  Our Hispanic immigrants, however well-meaning, serve only to hurt our own labor force.

Trump has effected the lowest unemployment for all groups in over fifty years — quite an accomplishment.  The U.S. is now energy independent.  The stock market has had a phenomenal run.  Kamala Harris thinks that does not matter, since not all Americans own stocks.  But the unions and pension funds of the companies they work for do; the success of the stock market benefits millions of people who do not purchase stocks themselves.

The difference between Trump, who loves this country, and all twenty Democrat candidates who seem to hate everything about America could not have been clearer in these two debates.  Their hatred of Trump has eaten away at their wisdom and conscience.  It has poisoned their souls.  What we saw those two nights is what is left of them: misery; intolerance; and their disdain for freedom, the Constitution, and the American people. 

Image: Guardian News via YouTube.

If there were ever two evenings that exposed the economic idiocy of the Democratic Party, it was both debate nights.  Every single candidate promises a wish list of free things for all, including a $1,000-a-month income (Yang) courtesy of the government.  College will be free; health care will be free, even for illegal aliens; abortion will be free on demand; student debt will be erased; etc.  Not one of them explains where all this money will come from; perhaps they think they can just print it.  They always claim that it will come from the undeserving rich, but it never does.  There are not near enough rich people to plunder for that much money.  It would be extracted from middle-class taxpayers, as Bernie Sanders admitted, because that is where the most money is.  Like all socialists, they mean to take from people who work and provide for those who do not work or produce.  Every one of them is as economically illiterate as Ocasio-Cortez, but they are all old enough to know better.  It was a pathetic display of ignorance and shameless pandering.  They still think the American people are easily manipulated with their bluster.  But then the moderators are themselves well known leftists who have worked hard every day of their lives since 2015 to defeat Trump and promote impeachment.  For what should he be impeached?  Because they are mad that he won.

And if there was ever an evening that made American citizens double down on protecting their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, it was hearing all of them talk about abrogating that right.  They all clearly believe that law-abiding citizens should not own guns.  It is perennially lost on them that criminals will always have guns and without them, good people have no means to defend themselves.  Given the historical fact that every tyranny on the planet began by confiscating guns — Hitler, Mao, Chávez — we should all be very afraid if any one of these people is elected.  Each one of them would, they make clear, immediately embark on the path every tyrant of the past took on his way to genocide and socialist devastation, like what is now happening in Venezuela.  Starving one’s people is a form of genocide, is it not? 

There were very few challenging questions.  Elizabeth Warren was not asked about her fake American Indian ancestry.  They were not asked about their support of infanticide.  Not one of them was asked about his anti-Israel sentiment.  All of them but Delaney want to take away our private health insurance but not give up their own.  Biden was not asked about his son’s multi-million-dollar “businesses” in Ukraine and China.  Buttigeig was only gently asked about his race problem in South Bend, and he demurred.  He fired his city’s first black police chief.  His “thing” is attacking Christians who he assumes are homophobic; he never offers any evidence.  Being gay may help him with one identity community, but he has a race problem with another.  He is no more popular in South Bend than the Che-loving de Blasio is in New York.  Neither of them is remotely prepared to be president.

They all are abjectly committed to the hoax that is climate alarmism, which proves that all of them are a bit dim, ignorant of science, and subject to mass hypnosis.  If any one of them knows better, he is too afraid to say so.  Only Biden had the guts to say the U.S. is not the problem with regard to CO2 emissions, but he still thinks we should pay for the pollutants of other nations, like China and India!  Even that was a brave thing to do.  But then he got raked over the coals by Harris on the busing issue.  Talk about old news.  She lied about her own experience; her Berkeley district was not segregated.  Forced busing was a terrible solution to a very real problem in the early 1970s.  Biden was right to oppose the program; it was awful for all involved.  Harris claimed she was one of those kids bused and almost tearfully claims to have benefited, but her mother was an academic.  It’s doubtful she would have ever attended a school of which her mother did not approve.  Busing was a classic case of big government’s good intentions having disastrous results.  Some kids spent four hours on buses each day!

Bernie Sanders is by far the most unpleasant candidate of the lot.  (Swalwell is a close second.)  Sanders is angry; he rages with furious envy at people who have worked hard and become successful.  He loathes such people and wants to destroy them.  He will never be the candidate; no person with such a vitriolic and aggressive personality has ever been or will ever be elected to the presidency.  He is hard to listen to because he is so green with envy of successful, happy people.  He is a communist of the worst kind.  He would love nothing better than to condemn all “rich” people to gulags.  All this from a man who owns three homes. 

Sanders and Warren spend much of their fury attacking corporations as if they were the scourge of American life.  But most of our lives are made easier and more comfortable by all the corporations who make things we want and need: cars, washers, dryers, televisions, smartphones, toilet paper, fast food, fresh food, etc.  Where would we be without them?  They employ millions of people, but Warren wants them punished.  Just as “Medicare for all” would bankrupt every hospital in the country, going after corporations would be equally counter-productive. 

The most destructive policy they all support is open borders.  To this bunch, illegal migrants, the hundreds of thousands of them breaching our border, are far more important than American citizens.  They should be allowed to break our laws.  They should be taken care of while our own homeless are ignored.  If they try to buy a gun, they should not be reported.  If they commit rape, murder, DUI, etc., they should be forgiven and neither imprisoned nor deported.  The Democrats want the U.S. to be a sanctuary nation, no matter the catastrophic results of such a policy.  Our Left rolls out the red carpet for illegals, plans to shower them with all manner of welfare and protect them from our legal establishment.  It is truly shocking.

These candidates want to transform America even more than Obama did.  American citizens be damned.  Every single candidate wants our borders to be overrun like most of Europe has been.  European culture has been forever altered by the influx of Muslim refugees who have no intention of assimilating.  They mean to impose their culture on Europe, and they are succeeding.  Our Hispanic immigrants, however well-meaning, serve only to hurt our own labor force.

Trump has effected the lowest unemployment for all groups in over fifty years — quite an accomplishment.  The U.S. is now energy independent.  The stock market has had a phenomenal run.  Kamala Harris thinks that does not matter, since not all Americans own stocks.  But the unions and pension funds of the companies they work for do; the success of the stock market benefits millions of people who do not purchase stocks themselves.

The difference between Trump, who loves this country, and all twenty Democrat candidates who seem to hate everything about America could not have been clearer in these two debates.  Their hatred of Trump has eaten away at their wisdom and conscience.  It has poisoned their souls.  What we saw those two nights is what is left of them: misery; intolerance; and their disdain for freedom, the Constitution, and the American people. 

Image: Guardian News via YouTube.

A federal district judge issued a permanent injunction on Friday blocking construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall, holding that it was illegal for his administration to spend current funding for that purpose. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will immediately appeal.

There are several ongoing lawsuits trying to stop the border wall. This case is before Judge Haywood Gilliam for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, who was appointed by Barack Obama. The left-wing Sierra Club brought suit in that court because it is currently one of the most liberal federal trial courts in the nation.

The Trump administration is reprogramming funds from Sections 8005 and 9002 of the National Defense Authorization Act to build the wall and provide security at the U.S.-Mexican border. The Sierra Club argued that the reprogramming of those funds violates federal law.

DOJ argued in court that “plaintiffs fall outside the zone of interests of § 8005 and thus cannot sue to enforce it,” and besides that, that the Defense Department “has satisfied the requirements set forth in § 8005.” Gilliam rejected those arguments.

He also held that § 8005 funds could be used only for “unforeseen military requirements” and that constructing the border wall did not qualify.

The Sierra Club also argued that the use of these military funds under another part of federal law, 10 U.S.C. § 284, is illegal. But since those funds go through the Sections 8005 and 9002 accounts in any event, Gilliam declined to rule separately on the legality of Section 284 funds.

One win for the Trump administration in this case is that Gilliam continued to reject Sierra Club’s claims under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The left has had high hopes that it could block the wall by arguing that building the wall is illegal because the federal government has not gone through NEPA’s cumbersome and time-consuming requirements, but even Gilliam acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had authority to waive those requirements, which the department did.

Finally, although parts of the case are ongoing and therefore normally this case would be stuck in district court for the time being, Gilliam certified his partial summary judgment decision for immediate appeal. As a consequence, the Justice Department will now take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The case is Sierra Club v. Trump, No. 4:19-cv-892 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Ken Klukowski is senior legal analyst for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.