WHO IS AN AMERICAN?
From the very beginning, Americans were confronted with three real external dynamics that shaped our character, our spirit. First, we were on our own. Old Europe was too far away, and we were isolated though that also means we are geopolitically well situated. Second, we had to contend with, and subdue, the hostile environment around us whether that environment contained Native Indians or the elements or rough terrain and untamed wilderness or remnants of some European power. Third, we had to collaborate with a lot of different people in doing all of this, and important in that regard was the need to fashion these different peoples into a sort of cohesive unit if we were to survive and succeed.
All of this demanded and brought forth ingenuity, creativity, pragmatism, toughness, candor, and optimism as well as a raft of other traits and virtues not the least of which was courage from the people who made this place[1]. Everyone had to pull their own weight and pull together. The American wilderness was the ideal place for adventurers, explorers, and brave settlers who blazed the way for more and better settlement. It took nearly three hundred years, or from 1607 to 1890 which, if we count thirty years as a generation, is 10 generations, 15 if we count twenty years as a generation. That is a long time. And in that time a certain character comprised of traits and virtues became engrained in Americans, especially in those closest to the frontier. These were passed down, and are being passed down, from generation to generation and infuse and infused American society at large. The people who tamed the wilderness and fought the enemies were people that came primarily from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Holland, and peoples from other parts of Europe came to America to continue this destiny. They worked, fought, lived, and propagated on this land forging an irrevocable bond with this soil, making a new nation, a new identity — American.
John Eppstein was just one of many who identified the existence and source of American identity: “American nationality is as real, as closely related to the enjoyment of national rights as the British, Irish, German, Italian or Polish nationality of the forefathers of those who are now American citizens.”[2]
Reason and pragmatism (and with it a certain informality) are important aspects of the American character, arising from our experience and patrimony. Both of these traits set us to seeking and finding truth. This in turn helped us to recognize the existence of God, Who is more powerful than us, even all-powerful. He set out certain rules and inspired the Bible which contained those rules. The Decalogue presented a knowable, practical way to live in family, and in small communities, especially when on the front lines of the effort to turn the wilderness into a homeland. Jesus Christ was known and accepted by the Americans not only because of the Bible, but also because of the various Christian sects that abounded. Americans made an early acquaintance with Christ and the Ten Commandments, and we maintain such to this day. This entire dynamic is a road to Catholicizing this fatherland as Catholics are called to do and as Alexis De Tocqueville predicted would happen to at least a part of the population.
All of this was reinforced by the Common Law, best set forth by William Blackstone in his Commentaries, and forming the basis of every colony, later State, that came into existence during those ten to fifteen generations of struggle. Even though the Republicanism of Thomas Jefferson and others went to work like acid to remove aspects of the Common Law, much of it remained and, again, was knowable while at the same time forming a unifying factor amongst the growing American nation. It ordered relations amongst Americans and presented the combined wisdom and knowledge of centuries of European forebears to explain daily existence. This Common Law was instrumental in making this land fruitful by helping bring together formerly disparate European peoples to accept a common cultural baseline presented in English, a language that the Americans adapted to this land and our existence.
The work of the Americans in tilling the ground, extracting minerals, building roads and cities, defending and expanding land, and having babies on this soil was the work of cooperating in creation with the Almighty and fellow frontiersmen. Adherence to God’s will in the form of the Natural Law was essential to this cooperation or work and it too was a way to unify the various groups in their struggles. One aspect of the Natural Law is the doctrine of Providential Destination, or making the land fruitful, a concept recognized by jurists from the School of Salamanca to recent times. Americans are tied to the soil, the land, and so we could discern better the Natural Law written on our hearts.
From this struggle to subdue nature and enemies and build a country out of nothing, came other traits or virtues such as truth-seeking, honesty, hard work, self-control, and responsibility. These infuse the American spirit, form our habits, and shape our character. Traditions, customs, and culture developed based on experience and character, further defining Americans. History was commemorated and statues erected to great people in daring poses. By private agreement and by law, holidays were created and respected — Christmas, Good Friday, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day. All of this and more exhibited identity and patriotism at work building a people tied to this land.
To further give order and governance to the land and society, Americans turned to their own history and experience on this continent. Things like elected leaders and written constitutions were used because we were familiar with them as colonists. Individual initiative, limited powers of government, and righteous criticism of officials came about on these shores and comported with the character of a new people largely on their own in this big place called North America. The principles of Liberalism, with their roots in Dutch and English commercial classes, became known and accepted to the nascent Americans beginning in the 1720s because of the work of publicists as well as preachers and ministers. These ideas, comporting well with American experience and necessity, kept initiative in society with private actors in the name of “civil society”. This helped unify the colonies, turned States, and with the Constitution ordered society on the national level, meaning the level of discourse above that of the States. All of this set the stage for the creation of great wealth and innovation which gave Americans a competitive advantage to other peoples of the World. An important part of wealth creation was trade, finance, and industrialization all of which went together and was advanced by Liberalism and the political platform known as the Constitution.
Liberalism also had an external purpose. It was a powerful ideological force, or tool, or weapon that was spread about the world to reorder societies and to assist with the ascendancy of the United States. This in turn benefitted the residents of the United States, while also seemingly benefitting the residents of other countries. The advancement of these principles was seen as part of Americans’ patriotic duty, and gave a missionary impulse to American foreign policy. All of this went to ordering the land a certain way as Carl Schmitt would write nearly two hundred years later in Nomos of the Earth. But as I discuss elsewhere, the presence of the Liberal ideology helped to create a real struggle in the American heart.
All of these things mentioned above were part of a shared experience that tied Americans to each other and to this land known as the United States and America. All of this is part of our heritage. People from many different places of Europe there formed one people on this land – e pluribus unum.
The Founding Generation and the US Government classified Americans – those of European descent — as White, a classification that originated with Europeans who encountered other peoples around the globe. Despite that classification, we were, and are, referred to and known as American by commentators, historians, and Church leaders. Essential characteristics of an ethnic American are that he is a White Christian who is born here, speaks American English, and is heir to a certain heritage (character, traditions, history, culture, customs, habits).
White Rural Rage
For any system to work for the people, the people with power and wealth have to think and act in solidarity with the rest and for everyone’s improvement materially and spiritually. That was probably asking too much for Liberalism because this system gave rise to great fortunes, and great concentrations of wealth. The allure of Mammon was greater than that of God. The principles of this ideology, severed from the land and from the people, untethered from any understanding of God and the Natural Law, became a weapon to be used against the residents of the United States so as to increase, concentrate and protect wealth and the wealthy.
And the residents of the United States are from many different peoples. Those from Europe assimilated relatively easily. Others did not. Americans became distinguishable from the other major groups that live on this land as a result of a number of factors, though many of our beliefs, habits, and virtues were imparted to other peoples not of European ancestry. Before we go any further, we have to recognize that the term “American” is also used to designate citizens of the United States, regardless of one’s ethnicity. When people become US citizens, they are called to their better nature. Citizenship carries with it certain duties and responsibilities for all of us, and there are virtues, habits, and traits that are best at effectively discharging these duties and responsibilities. Many of the virtues, habits and traits needed to discharge these duties are found in the character of the American ethnic group. A further discussion of all of this is left to another time and is beyond the scope of this paper.
For a long time, the elites have been tampering with, degrading, a strong culture that offers many advantages and hopes. Now, more than ever, the elites are desirous of destroying solidarity, and redefining what it means to be an American. They call Americans “White” and use that designation as a badge of shame to attack American identity and ethnicity while stoking the fires of ethnic conflict so as to make a new, more pliable people, all the while destroying the engines of assimilation. The elites do not want the American as an independent people tied to this land with European ancestry, Christian beliefs, a memory, and a unique heritage. They want to make American an ideological construct, to remake American character, and in doing so they are threatening the base of United States power, which will have global effects. National security demands a strong people – the Americans. The actions by the socio-economic elites are a threat to national security, and it is my view that the influence of these elites most certainly must be curtailed or ended.
The most effective way to advance the elites’ purposes, aside from direct government action which they are often able to obtain, is to use the cultural engines against Americans and against all the peoples of the United States for that matter. The talk of civil war has been on the rise these days. Ray Dalio in November, 2021 said that he believed the chances of a civil war occurring in the United States in the next ten years was at 30%.[3] A poll in Summer, 2022 had respondents saying the chance of civil war in the next ten years was up to 40%.[4] Barbara Walter [18] writing the same year cited to the CIA on the matter in explaining the stages of societal conflict leading up to a shooting civil war.[5] She was of the view that at most the situation in the United States had progressed to stage five and superfactions – groups “whose members share not only the same ethnic or racial identity but also the same religion, class, and geographic location”[6] – were on the rise.
Walter references the authors of The Federalist Papers for the view that the “greatest threat to the republic…was not an outside adversary but a homegrown group ravenous for control”.[7] Leaders of these groups would consolidate power and act “adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”[8] Social media was fueling the divisions and the “biggest ethnic entrepreneur”[9] was Donald Trump who appealed to Whites, especially working class Whites, who lived in rural America.
Another approved spokesman for the plutocracy is Tom Schaller who with Paul Waldman wrote White Rural Rage which says the threat to American democracy comes from Whites living in rural America desirous of protecting their interests and identity. In other words, Americans are the existential threat to America.
Schaller and Waldman are somewhat more precise than Walter in pointing to the supposed source of the problem. They name the White farmer as the center of gravity of American identity and existence. The White farmer is the psychological if not also spiritual and material backbone of America. In making their point, they reference Presidential candidates who tap into this deep-seated American identity with advertisements of themselves pumping their own gas or chopping wood on a ranch. Schaller and Waldman quote Thomas Jefferson from 1785 to support their claim of the centrality of the American farmer:
“…cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. As long therefore as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.”[10]
These cultivators, the White rural population in general, are “god-fearing, small town, flag-waving citizens” which means that the White rural population is a people, and a healthy one at that. They pose a threat to America’s democracy according to Schaller and Waldman.[11] The backbone of America is the American ethnic group which formed with the help of God. The heart of that group is the American rural dweller, and even more so, the American farmer.
Schaller and Waldman, like Walter, claim Whites in rural America have disproportionate political power. They add that the rural infrastructure is decaying and that radical Republicans like Trump and others are taking advantage of their plight, and stoking the fires of anger. These authors posit that this is being done by blaming others (what we would consider the left) while instituting an ideological agenda that actually hurts the Whites living in rural America. There may be a glimmer of some truth in what they are saying. Americans — ethnic Americans — identify with Trump. Reading Trump’s two books, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America, and also Time to Get Tough: Make America Great Again!, we see a number of good policy initiatives such as taking steps to hinder China’s rise, returning jobs to the United States, striking down Obamacare, lowering taxes, protecting guns, and ending illegal immigration. These books, and others, contain a repeat of past “conservative” themes, which could mean “conservative” ideology. Trump and the Republicans would do better to also develop plans to restore the essence of being an American, which is their core constituency.
A plan to make America great again should include teaching good American history, replacing torn down statues, renaming places to bear the names they held for many years before recent events, and simply telling the American people they are good people while outlawing things like CRT and DEI which are based on a wrong understanding, a weaponized understanding, of race, DNA and skin color. More initiatives would be to promote policies that encourage a normal, healthy family, encourage childbearing and rearing, eliminate LGBTQ+ and public approval of perversions and freaks in the world, advance policies that teach the Natural Law and look favorably upon Christ’s law, and mandate a healthy culture as well as responsibility by the MSM.
So, what is the attack?
The elites are intent on redefining “American” as a purely ideological construct that excludes Christ and God’s Law. To do that, they have to change how we have viewed things for generations. This involves removing, erasing, the White face, and our heritage, from the American image whether you like it or not because White means American and American heritage. The White face we see unites us with our people, our history, our country, our culture. With that White face gone, many millions will be alienated from the country their ancestors founded and built. And, if this attempt is successful, it will destroy the foundation of United States power.
The elites [17] are doing this by pushing false ideas, false ideologies, down on us to erase us by supplanting our trust in and obedience to God. This is also designed to cause us to forget our past, which is a great and glorious one. These ideologies go against the Natural Law and against something I have spoken of a lot, the Divine Positive Law. One of the false ideas that is being pushed on us is that there is no such thing as a nation and that race is only skin color. That has been the case since Gunnar Myrdal, the Carnegie Foundation, and Henry Luce said so in 1944. Hence, Americans become White with nothing else.
Along with changing the American character, the elites are seeking to change the public image of an American from the ethnic American to a Black, or an Indian[13], or something else. The image of a rural American is also targeted for change, or confusion, despite the overwhelming majority being ethnic Americans. This is one reason Beyonce is doing a Country Western album which is confusion and re-engineering as method and goal. [12] This goes hand in glove with increasing the number of minorities in rural America so that “rural American” comes to mean something it has not meant. We must understand that this is all by design and that it employs force – the power of the media and the sanctions of law in certain situations – and fraud – the lies that we are all the same, nations don’t exist, and race is just skin colors. This is happening in a condensed period of time so as to prevent the organic processes in society from properly working. As stated earlier, the goal is the creation of a new people, a new identity, with memory erased, that is an ideological construct of recent creation so that allegiance will be to their creators, the elites, the Owners as George Carlin famously said.
Meanwhile, the discussion to amend, curtail, or do away with the Electoral College continues. Another avenue of attack on rural America is to run more moderate Republican candidates who will provide more payola so that the ethnic Americans fall into a soma like trance as they are gently erased. And all of this is going on while big corporations and billionaires purchase farmland as part of a long term plan to starve the population, commodify the roots of American existence, and subdue a proud and independent people who made the existence of these greedy people possible. By pursuing the love of money and their own wealth and power, these powerful private interests break trust with all American citizens and violate the spirit, if not the letter, of their citizenship. They serve wealth and not God which opens the door to all forms of evil.
This is re-education by any means, as well as cultural and moral subversion at its root. This can only be bad for all residents of the United States, if not also of the world. Already, Americans (“Whites”) are not signing up for the Army, Navy or Coast Guard and enlistment goals amongst Americans are unmet.[14] This suggests that the American is realizing the ruling regime is turning the institutions of his country against him, and if so that has dire consequences. Fr. J. T. Delos, OP, in La Societe Internationale, Cultural Function of Nationality set forth the importance of nation and the extent of patriotism:
“Nationality puts the individual, without effort on his part, in possession of a certain measure of civilization, and raises him to a certain level of development. That is its natural and providential mission. It is this mission that creates our moral obligation to the nation. From it man receives a heritage of civilization; and in it he finds the social milieu necessary for his further development. He is bound to respect it as a means furnished by nature for the perfecting of himself and of others; to injure or destroy the nation would be to compromise his own destiny, and that of this fellow-citizens. Everyone is bound, therefore, to defend his country, even at the peril of his life, `as long as it has not become evident that the continued existence of that society has become harmful’….”[15]
While there is a growing sense that the regime in America is turning the country toxic, many people are not willing to equate the regime with the powerful private interests, the rich, the corporations, the billionaires. It is even a forbidden topic to mention these people and these interests as the cause of national strife and disorder as I have repeatedly experienced. Part of the reason for this response is as Jimmy Dore recently indicated: the elites are distracting us with things like DEI and CRT and endless charges of systemic racism, especially since the end of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and these distractions work to keep people from realizing the real culprits who are the elites.[16].
The Global War on Terror was heartily supported by ethnic Americans. The current World War between the United States and the Eurasian Alliance (Russia-China-Iran-North Korea), does not draw our undivided passion. The disaffection, and divergence, becomes evident with provocations by a Catholic President who publicizes Easter Sunday as Transgender Appreciation Day or some such in which transgenders are called “America.”
How will things develop?
The motion picture Civil War is due out on April 11. Directed and written by the British-Lebanese Alex Garland, there is precious little to evaluate at this time about the movie other than three short video clips that reside on You Tube at present and a number of other articles about other peoples’ impressions of the film. From A24 Studios, the only description is “An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor’s edge.”
The attack on the Twin Towers occurred on September 11, 2001 which was about 100 days after the motion picture, Pearl Harbor (starring Ben Affleck) appeared in the theaters over Memorial Day Weekend of that same year. That film itself was a foreshadowing of what was to come. So, with that background, are the elites trying to tell us something with Civil War? Will there be a civil war in the United States? Or is someone planning a false flag that makes the population respond in predictable – or hoped for – and manageable ways? What would be the basis of the civil war and who would constitute the two sides? Will the movie turn people away from a segment of the population? Will the movie turn us all away from civil war, or bring us closer to one? Will the movie convince us we cannot work together anymore, that American institutions have irretrievably failed, that the USA is finished? Can Nick Offerman convincingly play a dramatic role, or does his presence tell us not to take the movie seriously?
Perhaps the answer to some of these (except for the first part of the last question concerning Nick Offerman) and other questions depends on the answer to another question, one that is put forth by one of the main characters of Civil War, a blonde-haired, camouflage wearing, rifle toting American played by Jesse Plemons. Plemons is the real life husband of Kirsten Dunst who plays the main character, the dominant wife-photographer-reporter trying with her mixed race (mixed nation) family and friend to get to Washington, D.C. as the forces of the Western and Florida Alliances move in the same direction.
That question in a moment of confrontation between Plemons and Dunst with family is in response to Dunst’s husband’s statement that “We are Americans.” Plemons asks somewhat skeptically, “Ok. What kind of Americans?”
The question points to deep division in America, and begs the question, Who is an American? It is a moment of existential crisis at a time of global conflict, and it challenges the Grotian-Lockean conception of the polity. The answer to that question may determine if this country remains at peace with itself, if it remains a world power, rightly orders the American people to other peoples, or if it returns to the Triune God as the best and truest way to insure its rightful place in the World. Or, the answer could be the signal that it is all over for the USA.
Yes, it will be interesting to hear the answer to Plemons’ question. What do you think that answer will be? Maybe we already know it.
[1] This article is not meant to address all the aspects and peculiarities of the American character or culture. Books have been written on American culture and tradition.
[2] John Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, p. 384.
[3] Ray Dalio, The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail.
[4] Martin Pengelly, “More than 40% of Americans think civil war likely in a decade,” August 30, 2022, The Guardian.
[5] Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start.
[6] Ibid., 39.
[7] Ibid., 141.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 145
[10] Tom Schaller, Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, p. 93.
[11] Ibid., 9-21.
[12] AFP, “Beyonce goes cowboycore with new album heavy on Texas roots,” March 27, 2024, www.msn.com.
[13] See, the cover of Time, October 23, 2023, and the article entitled “Growing Up Is Harder Than Ever.”
[14] Robert Clark, “White men no longer want to fight for a nation that scorns them,” January 18, 2024, The Telegraph accessed at https://news.yahoo.com/white-men-no-longer-want-183357841.html.
[15] Eppstein, 370.
[16] The Jimmy Dore Show, March 30, 2024, You Tube, “Guest Calls Out `The View’ Hosts for Pushing Racial Division!”
[17] There have always been two Americas, and the one is now trying to eradicate the other. The ideologues and servants of Mammon are seeking to destroy those who serve God, and, if successful, the consequences will be dire. Americans (and what we represent) are a threat to the power of the elites who have been able to manipulate the democracy and its laws to their advantage and to the harm of the citizens of the country. This is the classic definition of tyranny given by St. Robert Bellarmine and understood through the ages. The elites, the plutocracy, the rich and the powerful private interests that they lead are, and were, the ones using the laws and institutions to destroy by putting in place things like gender ideology with “transgender mutilation,” DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+ as well as the sewage that comes from Hollywood. All of these things destroy solidarity between peoples and within peoples (and I am not just talking about Americans), and all of these things destroy peoples leading to unconnected and isolated individuals without a memory and defined by the elites and their various forms of advertising and manipulation. This is one important way the elites keep and concentrate their power by using the so-called rule of law.
[18] Walter is a Professor of International Relations at the University of California, San Diego and a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her voice is heard on The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs making her an approved voice for the plutocracy.